if he hadn’t been so young, hadn’t latched on to David and Five Star so hard, he wouldn’t have sunk so low when it ended.
He’d protect Chris. Keep him home as long as he needed to until he was sure his boy was ready to face the crap waiting out there for him.
He glanced at the door. Anyone who wanted him bad enough would knock. He picked up his putter, but he couldn’t even line up on the ball.
Mulligans and Christian were all that had kept him sane and sober these past ten years. Now there was this zoning “opposition,” whatever the hell that meant. And Christian was determined to skip out on the normal, middle-class life Mason had worked so hard to put together for them. Crap. He’d never been much of a thinker. Give him a job and he’d get it done. But there was nothing concrete here, nothing he could pin down.
He flicked open his e-mail. He highlighted five stock tips, two penis-enlargement messages and three other messages that looked like spam, and started to push delete when he saw the name. David. [email protected]. He blinked.
Just looking at the name made him sick, remembering the last time he’d spoken to David, fourteen years ago. Mason had been begging. Been so far out of it, wasted didn’t even begin to describe it. Somehow he’d gotten it into his mind that Five Star would take him back if they heard the song he had been working on. He’d been singing, or doing what his hollowed-out brain thought was singing, and David cursed him out.
David Giles. The guy had been like an older brother once. The most important man in his life. The man who screwed him up so much he almost didn’t make it.
Mason opened the e-mail, but his finger hovered over the delete key.
Mason,
Heyman. Been a while. I guess you know me and the guys are still touring. Not the same without you. Guess you know that, too. We’re in the studio now, cutting a new album. Sounds amazing. You should come up. Bring your songs. Give me a call when you get this. (212) 555–2413.
David
So that was what it looked like. The invitation had finally come but it was fourteen years too late.
There’d been a time when this was all he’d wanted. Five Star, the guys he thought of as his family, had reconsidered and invited him back.
Still touring. Yeah. With his songs and his name. Not the same without you. That would have had more pull if they hadn’t been the ones who booted him out of the band with no warning, no time for talking and not one single look backward. Bring your songs. As if he owed them one more thing.
Mason felt a satisfaction all out of proportion to reality when he pressed the delete key. He refused to admit he also felt a twist of panic when he closed the door on Five Star again. He didn’t want that life back. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t unnerving to say no to the offer when the life he had here was falling to pieces.
“DAVID GILES WOULD GET cut in the auditions for American Idol,” Jake said. He was standing behind Anna, watching the monitor over her shoulder as she ran some of the footage they’d shot during the recording session earlier that day. Five Star’s rented studio was a converted warehouse in Jersey City. The band had given them a small room to use as an office. It was windowless and with enough lingering scent of Lysol that Anna suspected it had formerly been a janitor’s closet. Still, it was privacy, which mattered. She’d never worked on a project where she felt so uncomfortable with the subjects. Even the politicians they’d worked with for campaign ads had more integrity than this group. The only one of the four band members who didn’t set off her liar warning system was Harris Coleman, the keyboard player. As far as Anna could tell in the two months they’d spent with the band, he didn’t talk. Ever.
“Blue Maverick rule number 4, Don’t Make Fun of the Documentary Subject,” she said absently to her brother, eyes on the screen, mind running over all the problems with what she was watching.
“I’m stating a fact. That’s allowed.” Jake turned the volume on the monitor down slightly. Anna slapped his hand away and shot him an annoyed look. Jake’s my-sister-is-a-big-fat-meanie expression hadn’t changed since he was three years old. “It’s hurting my ears,” he said.
Anna paused the video and turned off the monitor. “This is serious. If they keep sucking this much there isn’t going to be an album to promote, much less a film.”
If the album had come together, Five Star might be almost finished in the studio and the movie would be well on its way to complete. As it was, the music was so bad, Anna was sure the footage they had was as useless as the session tapes.
Although the band and their managers had agreed to let her include some archival footage and do new interviews—she’d explained it as framing for the story—she’d gotten nothing about the crash or Terri. Chet, Nick, even the normally silent Harris, had all given her the same noncommittal answers. Hard show, late night, everyone bunked down, no idea how the driver lost control. No one knew Terri or why she’d been on the bus. The only interesting thing she’d heard was when every one of them asked some form of the same question. Did you talk to David?
David. He told several stories about heroic crew members pulling Mason Star out of the bus after the crash, several more about his own injuries, which as far as she could tell consisted mainly of a fat lip and interrupted sleep. Then he said if she wanted to know about the crash she should talk to Mason. So everyone pointed to David and then he turned right around to point at Mason. In Anna’s experience, when fingers got pointed it was because there was something to point at. Somewhere in the intersection of David and Mason there was something to know. Her instincts told her that something was Terri’s story.
“You know what David told me? Mason’s mom was a dancer—in nightclubs. She changed her name legally to Sierra Star. Isn’t that wild? Imagine being a boy, growing up with a stripper name?”
Suddenly the door opened behind them and David Giles walked in. He hadn’t knocked, of course. David played bass and had taken over as lead singer when Mason left. He was larger than life with an outsize ego and the mistaken belief that he was irresistible.
It looked as if David had drawn a line in the sand, daring age forty to touch him. His shoulder-length blond hair was highlighted, teased and sprayed to cover the fact that he had passed “thinning” and was well on the way to “bald up top.” His fake tan was more Sunkist than sun kissed and, while his skinny jeans were probably the same size he’d worn in his twenties, considerably more of David Giles’s middle spilled over the waistband than seemed comfortable.
“Anna!” He came up behind her and rubbed her shoulders, more irritation than massage. “How’s my beautiful director today?”
Jake answered, “I’m great. Thanks for asking.”
“Oh. Ha. Ha. You wish you were as good-looking as your sister here. Look at this hair—it’s just begging to be touched.”
Anna’s curly brown hair had been exasperating her for the past thirty years. The way David obsessed over it and felt free to touch it was making her crazy. He was pushing her closer than she’d ever been to breaking Blue Maverick rule number 18, Don’t Punch the Client. She shifted and rolled the chair to the left, temporarily out of punching distance.
“Going over the film?” David’s high, excited voice grated even when he wasn’t singing. “Does it look as good as it sounds?”
Jake crossed his arms and said, “Yep.”
Anna lifted her shoulder and turned her head, hiding her mouth in her sleeve so David wouldn’t see her smile. “We’re jazzed about the stuff we have down,” David went on. “It’s gelling. Organic, you know?”
Anna kept her eyes on David—if she looked at Jake she’d laugh. The music was organic in the same way half-cured compost was organic. “We’re glad you’re feeling good.”
David shifted, touching his hair with his fingertips,