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“The deal is this: Two of your best tracks on a sample CD, recording for which begins immediately. We’ll book you at least twelve gigs for the first six months. Nothing really huge, mind you. Clubs, coffee houses, pubs. Radio spots if you generate enough interest. That sort of thing.”
“Why nothing bigger?”
“Shut it, Rick. Let the man talk.”
“If you make it worth my while, another six months, another twenty shows, and an LP. And the reason for small venues, Rick, is because you’re meant to have them knocking down the doors to hear you play. The sexiest club in the city is the one that’s so full, they’re stopping people at the door, isn’t it? You want to be a rock star? You’ve got to make everyone want to get in your pants.”
Billy searched the young man’s expression and kohl-rimmed eyes drilled right back to his. The proposition was as intriguing as it was unexpected, and Christ, Billy wanted to believe.
“Tortiloquy Records,” he read slowly from Monaghan’s business card. “And that means what?”
Monaghan gave him a wonky grin, “Crooked speech.”
“Meaning you’re full of pissing wind, then?” Billy grinned back.
“Nah, means I stuttered as a kid,” the man answered, his grin softening as he drained the last of his beer. “Just think about it, yeah? Come by the studio, if you like. It’s not Abbey Road, but I can make you sound just as good. Cheers.”
Billy watched him cross the pub, chatting up girls and exchanging hugs and handshakes with blokes. Dom Monaghan. He looked to be all of twenty-five, his blondish hair mussed and touched with blue and red sprays that caught the black-lights in the walls. Nails varnished on and leather trousers nearly so. He oozed confidence, and gave it away too.
“Christ, Boyd, you still on about that kid?”
Billy shrugged, “A record deal’s a record deal, John. It wouldn’t hurt to check it out, see his place, that’s all.”
“He was full of shit. Could sell you the green in your eyes, but he was still bluffing.”
Billy eyed BJ across the booth. BJ said nothing of it, but then BJ wanted it as much as he did. Billy finished off his pint.
I stuttered as a kid. A bloke didn’t just tell a perfect stranger in a pub something so personal, did they?
•
Billy looked up at the building, and back down at address on the card. This was the place all right, but… it wasn’t what he expected.
The building was a rundown brick storefront circa last century, situated between an adult bookstore and Chinese restaurant just this side of Leicester, and bore no signs of business or inhabitance at all. Even the sign above the door had been painted quickly over so the previous Janosz’s Homeopathic Apocathary was still visible beneath the white primer.
He could turn around and go back the way he came. He could take the tube back to the East End and drop a few quid on a greasy breakfast, and then he’d go back to the bindery Monday morning. No more of this unreasonable idea of getting the lads back together after so many years, playing a few gigs and suddenly being discovered. He’d always write down the tunes in his head, but it didn’t have to take him places. Nothing would have to change.
Billy knocked on the glass and waited. Nothing happened. He tried the door handle and found it locked. Jiggling it for a moment he huffed and let go. It was just as well. He stuck Monaghan’s card into the crack of the doorframe, shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking briskly away.
“Oi!”
Billy turned back to find the door had opened and out crashed a wide-eyed and spaced looking Dominic Monaghan with a paint brush in one hand.
“I know you!” the lad said, scratching paint-smudged fingers behind his ear and leaving a ridiculous dark purple streak. “The gig, St John’s… erm… B-Ben, no… BILL! Angel’s Share! Yeah?”
Billy laughed and looked him over. Far removed from the slick looking clubber of last night, this Dominic wore a purple splattered Ramone’s tee that had seen many better days, and loose jeans over checkered vans. His hair was soft in the breeze and showed funny pinkish and baby blue patches in the blond, over what may have been simple mousy brown hair at one point. Only his eyes still showed smudges of liner that hadn’t come clean. And he had stuttered after all. They say it never goes away.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Billy scrubbed a hand over his own hair and rounded his brows, “Erm, I guess I’ve come at a bad time–“
“No! Fuck no, mate, just…” Monaghan blinked and chewed his lip, eyes bright even as he squinted through the sunlight, “I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d actually come at all.”
He breathed fast, panted really in his excitement, and Billy chuckled uncomfortably. He’d come down here with both enormous expectations and no expectations at all, and now here was this lad, this schizophrenic kid who was as immediately likeable as he had been slick and brazen before, and Billy didn’t quite know what to think.
“Do you… ah, want to come in, then?” Monaghan gestured back at the door, dripping paint on the sidewalk. “I mean, it’s not much right now but I don’t mind.”
“So, you don’t really have a studio,” Bill blurted suddenly, surprising himself and wincing internally as Monaghan’s face fell.
“I… it’s… well, it’s not f-finished, I mean, it’s brand-fucking-new, mate, s-so….” He squeezed his eyes shut. Billy began to wonder if he was going to crack a tooth.
But then the eyes popped open and fixed on him, exactly as they had in the pub, and the voice was less Manchester lisp and more low, slow business tongue, “Listen, right? We’ve not signed anyone yet, and we’re only just getting started. I wouldn’t have come to you if I didn’t think you’ve got what it takes, yeah? I want you. If you’re my first signature, you can bet I’ll do anything and everything to put you on the map. Trust me.”
Billy blinked, watching his mouth as it formed the words, and felt a tingly flutter in his gut.
“Mate, I’ve not spent eight thousand quid already to fuck you about, yeah? Come inside, let me show you the plan.” Monaghan gave him that silly, toothy grin as he backed towards the door, “Just give me an itch and a week or two, and I’ll be your new best friend.”
He opened the door and held it, gesturing Billy inside with the dripping paintbrush and glinting eyes. Billy moistened his lips, privately certain he was getting himself into an awful lot of trouble, and went inside.
The small front area was drywall (splattered and graffitied with numerous choice phrases and recognizable song lyrics), but just beyond and to the left lay a stairwell to the upper floor. Straight ahead past the foyer was what looked to be an office and to the right was another room in which a boom box played Gomez turned quite far down.
“I was painting in here when you knocked, but I wasn’t sure anyone was actually there. This is all gonna be darker when it dries, looks kind of weird and Teletubby now…” Monaghan said, “This will be the booth, obviously, and that – I need to ring that fucking glass man back for the window – that through there will be the studio, and you can see…” putting down the brush on the paint bucket, he ushered Bill through, “I’ve just bought all these rolls of insulator and foam and shite for the walls. Gonna really pad it down, too. I reckon the restaurant next door won’t give me half off anymore if I go and piss them off, yeah? And I’ve got… upstairs, I bought a discounted equalizer from some old place that closed, was cheap just because it was scratched, and Nigel’s got this fabulous computer sound system being shipped, it’ll all be on his laptop… Fucking wild.”
Dominic paused in his mile-a-minute run, blinking widely at Billy. “Hey, how about I take you out to lunch, eh? Next door? They have good noodles, rice beer?”
Billy chuckled, shaking his head in amusement. There was no way around it. Monaghan was fucking cute.
“Yeah, all right,” he answered.
Dom grinned so hard Billy thought his face might split. He grabbed Billy’s shoulders in a hug. “Fuck, mate, I can’t believe you’re here.”
And with absolutely no warning, he backed off and pulled his paint smudged shirt right the fuck over his head, gave Billy’s cheek a pat, lifted his chin, lowered his lashes and purred, “Be right back.”
Billy pulled his jaw back up to center and tried to breathe again, watching Monaghan’s naked (nice, wiry, freckled) back retreat up the stairs.
“Oh, I’m an idiot,” he muttered to the purple walls.
•
“My mate Elijah – he’s a Yank, and probably the weirdest looking bloke you’d ever see… supports West Ham too, if you can believe it, the bloody cunt. Anyway, he and his sister hung about here after he finished school. Loves music as much as I do. Same sort of bands, loves the Beatles, the Strokes and all that. We went to a hundred shows together, and then his grandpa died or summat, left him a load of money. And so we’re starting the label, him in the states with Simian, and me here. He’s already signed his first. I owe him a night out for losing that bet.”
Dom scooped up another mouthful of noodles with chopsticks, chewing thoughtfully. He’d changed his painting clothes to a fresh t-shirt and an arse-hugging pair of ripped jeans, but the streak of purple paint on his neck just below his ear remained. Just below it was a large freckle, and below that, a pulse the sped whenever Monaghan got excited in his story. It drew Billy’s gaze like a magnet, until Dom looked back at him with those dark effusive eyes.
“Are you going to eat that?” Dom abruptly asked, poking Billy’s last dumpling with his chopstick.
“Hmm?” Billy pulled his cheek from his palm, and cleared his throat, “No, go on.”
Dom stabbed the dumpling and popped it in his mouth. “Anyway, you caught me. But give me a week, mate. Two, tops. I promise you, I’ll have that place ready to kick out a CD by the time you convince Rick and the rest of your crew to sign.”
His grin was so knowing that Billy had to look down at his empty plate. It was true, BJ wanted it, the fame, the crowds, he drank it in on stage as much as Billy did. It was getting the others to commit that would take some convincing. They had comfy jobs with benefits after all, not like working the bindery when you could be outsourced by the next third world country.
“What about the rest of your crew?” Billy had to ask, “Who does your booking? Advertising? Have you got a lawyer to write things up? And how the bloody hell are you going to get a bunch of old farts from Cranhill to be… what… what you’re looking for?”
Billy had to admit he had his doubts. So many years ago he’d washed cars and sold milk bottles for pence to buy his first guitar, and he and BJ had sat under the bridge until the wee hours of the morning teaching themselves and each other how to play. When they were teens taking the bus all the way out to the fancy park to play for well-off people’s pocket change… that was when this was supposed to happen. That was when boys became rock stars. Now, they just called it a midlife crisis.
Dom’s smile was soft when Billy looked back, and the lines around his eyes thoughtful. “Last night, in that club, the bloke I saw on the stage wasn’t in it for fame. He was in it to write music, and to play, and to sing like no one else was in the room. That’s your job, mate. I’ll do the rest.”
Billy licked his lips. Fuck, but Monaghan was slick. He could see it in front of his face, like that snake with the nursery rhyme about the colors. One was harmless, but the other… the other was dangerous.
Billy liked both sides of the rhyme.
The waiter came back with two fortune cookies in cellophane wrap on a plate. Dom pushed it toward him, urging him silently to pick first.
He broke open the hard cookie, never having liked them, and read: Anything worth doing can be done.
“What’s it say?” Dom asked.
Billy pocketed it. “Doesn’t come true if I tell, does it?”
“I thought that was birthday candles.”
“Nah, fortune cookies.”
Dom grinned and read his own fortune. A crease formed between his brows as he did, but then it was gone, and Dom smiled up at him, taking the bill and his wallet from those tight jeans and leaving the table to pay at the counter.
The scrap of paper holding Dom’s fortune sat wadded on the red tablecloth by a plate. It was silly, but Billy had always been curious to a fault. He couldn’t really help himself.
It's ok to let a fool kiss you, but don't let a kiss fool you.
Billy looked up and found Dom smiling back over his shoulder from the till, eyeing the slip of paper in his guilty fingers.
•
This contract signifies a binding business agreement between the Undersigned and the Manager, to which all terms must be held to for the duration of the agreed period. The Undersigned agrees to all terms within this document. These terms include:
Billy read over the bullets carefully. Everything Monaghan had mentioned was there. The sample, the LP, payment percentages, the number of guaranteed bookings, etc.
When he’d brought the lads round a week and a half later, the studio was fully painted, maple floors sanded and gleaming, the recording booth padded to perfection, and the mixing room shone with sleek plastics, lights and gauges, a keyboard, Nigel’s Powerbook and Nigel himself, who was tall and clean cut and had known Dom since primary school. Dominic’s office was painted sunshine yellow on one side with the window to the back alley and violet on the other, decorated with choice vinyls, sticker covered file cabinets, and photos of various oddities. He sat behind a desk like the CEO of a corporate powerhouse, but one who wore tight jeans, neckties over T-shirts, and nail varnish.
“What’s this bit?” BJ asked. “At no time will the Undersigned receive preferential treatment within nor outside of the terms of this agreement. ”
“Oh, that’s just a failsafe,” Dom explained, “If I sign other bands, you see, I can’t have anyone thinking that one artist gets more of my time than the other. But at the moment,” Dom grinned at Billy, “You lot have my unconditional attention. Speaking of which, I have a proposition about your name.”
“What about it?” John asked. It was him that came up with The Angel’s Share in the first place.
“Well, it’s a bit… narrow.”
“Eh?”
“Not everyone drinks whiskey, you know. And even those who do aren’t always familiar with such a term. And it’s a bit… long, you know, you don’t want to go on Letterman and have to repeat the whole damn thing dozens of times because the bastard can’t hear you.”
“You want us to rename the band, then?” asked Rick.
Dom leaned back and laced his hands behind his head. “I’m simply suggesting the possibility. You know, before we get T-shirts printed, bumper stickers, that sort of thing.”
He flashed the grin again. Billy saw visions of T-shirts, same as he knew the boys did. Audiences full of people wearing the same T-shirts. No. Different T-shirts, but all if them relating to the band, and with lists on the back of tour dates and cities all over the fucking world: London, Glasgow, Los Angeles, New York…
“Why do you have a picture of a cake covered in bees on your desk?” asked John.
They all looked at the picture together.
“Well, it’s a cake, and its covered in bees. It’s sweet and dangerous and… I dunno, my mum sent it to me on holiday from Barcelona.”
“Cake with bees,” BJ said, raising a finger. “You know, like the band, Cake, only with bees.”
“Bee-Like-Cake?”
“Beecake.”
“Sounds like Beefcake.”
“Yeah. Is that bad?”
“Erm…. I guess not.”
“It’s shorter than The Angel’s Share.”
“But I like The Angel’s Share!”
“You don’t get The Angel’s Share. You’re not an angel.”
“It was better than Foreign Country, you cunt. We’re not foreign, for one.”
“Yeah, but anyone could have Beecake. Imagine summer birthday parties outside, and the damned bees get in the cake, because it’s sweet, you know, and it’s right there for everybody…”
“Oi, it was 1986 and everybody’s band had a shite name like that. Like Europe. Remember them?”
“No.”
“We named the band for Foreigner. Like a cover band.”
“You’re off your end, mate. We never covered Foreigner.”
“Yes we did. Head Games, that one night at that Karaoke in Sterling.”
“Oh Christ, don’t remind me.”
Billy watched his three best friends toss this round and round while Dom was trying his damnedest not to laugh behind his fist. Billy tipped a wink in his direction.
“I like Beecake.” Billy said quietly. The lads left off, looking back at the photograph. Billy was the front man, after all; he had a certain amount of pull.
“Me too.”
“Aye.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Beecake, eh?” Dom said, as though thinking it over, but Billy could tell he was decided. “We’ll let you think on it. But not too long, you’ll want to have cover art in the next six weeks. I’ve got a mate who does amazing graphics.”
“Six weeks?”
Dom blinked back at them, almost innocently. Almost. “For your sample. To sell at your first gig, at the…” he paused, lifting a page on the calendar on his wall, “The Water Rats. June seventh, at ten pm. Five pound cover. You’ll make double that if we’ve got the sample ready for sale.”
“The Water Rats,” Billy repeated, stunned.
Dom grinned around at them, stopping at Billy, “Birthplace of Oasis, mate. Told you I wouldn’t fuck you around, didn’t I?”
“How the fuck did you get us in on that stage?” Rick gaped, and Billy knew he was sold.
“I know a guy who knows a guy,” Dom shrugged, looking smug and indifferent at the same time, which was an interesting feat.
“If this guy you know could get us to play King Tut’s, I’ll quit my fucking day job.”
Dom raised his brows, but the smile never wavered. Pushing the four triplicate contracts across the desk and divvying out a pen on top of each one, he lured them in, “I’ll see what sort of mood he’s in. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to give me your first set of autographs, mates… I’ll make you famous.”
*
ETA: So, this story was originally spurred on by Beizy and Laerwen, back in the day, who basically coerced me into writing out their sordid fantasy. The following is the original Comment fic that spawned it.
*
"So, you want to be a rock star?" Dom asked, looking Billy over with the tip of his tongue between his teeth, "You've got to look the part."
"That's where you'd come in, yeah? You've got it down, obviously," the words just fell out of Bill's mouth before he snapped it shut, then tried again. "Your look works... for you, I mean, but I don't know if... I could, ehm, wear that."
Dom looked down at the tight leather trousers Billy indicated and begged to differ, but the man was right. His music and his every-man sort of vibe called for something different. He grabbed the nearest jacket: a brown tweed, very geeky, "Here, put this on."
"With jeans?" Billy asked skeptically, "And I've not got the right type of shirt on."
"Who's your stylist, man? Put it on."
Billy shrugged into the blazer, turning to the shop's full length mirror. Dom leaned against a table full of ties and watched, dark eyes under bushy brows making Billy feel hot in the wool. "It's too tight."
"Rubbish," Dom said, "It's that whole vintage thing. Looks older than it feels, eh? Like you."
Billy could feel the flush crawling up his forehead, thankful Dom turned away for the moment so he could get himself under control. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, not supposed to think about fucking the boss Bill, not supposed to.
"Just needs a little touch of flavour," Dom spoke and Billy jumped; Dom's breath was hot behind his ear. Wide-eyed now, Billy froze as Dom looped a bright red tie around his neck, a hand firm on his hip to turn him so Dom could tie it from the front. Dom's lashes feathered black against his cheeks as he watched his fingers work, flicking up now and again with a crooked grin. "There."
He was turned again to see the complete picture. Dom remained right behind him and one hand came round to tug the tie just a little loose and unbutton the collar. The hand lingered, and so did Dom, speaking in a low rumble at the two of them in the mirror, "And there you are, rock star."