Angels on Sunset Boulevard (2 page)

Tonight Johnny was headlining at the Viper Room, to launch his new album. It was meant to be a small, intimate concert, VIPs and industry insiders only, but demand was so intense, they opened it up to the public. When tickets went at record-breaking levels—two and then four more dates were added. Now his label was talking world tour, even before he had sold one copy. Stadiums in Germany, airfields in France, the Staples Center. They were talking laser light shows, digital projection screens, adding a twenty-piece string orchestra and a gospel choir. It was going to be a production, an event, bigger than Woodstock, bigger than Lollapalooza, bigger than anything the world had ever seen.

And it had all started on TAP.

With a simple TAP request.

JohnnyS11 wants to be your friend. Approve? Deny?

Taj had checked out his page—noted the moody, black-and-white photo of Johnny bent over a guitar, his white-blond bangs covering half his face. Made a note of his interests: taxidermy, ukelele, the Church of the Sub-Genius. Usually Taj never approved requests from boys she didn't know. So many of them were simply collectors, posting up pictures of half-naked women on their sites like baseball cards. The collectors always wanted to know if she had a webcam (she didn't). Her TAP icon was like a magnet for the crazies and the weirdos. But JohnnyS11's friend list was a normal array of slacker boys and nerdy-chic girls. His quote was the usual Andy Warhol one about fame, except in reverse: “In fifteen minutes, everybody will be famous.” Taj was intrigued. She'd clicked Approve.

A few days later there was an e-mail message.

Check out my new show. Johnny Silver's Manic Hour.

It was on a college radio station Taj sometimes listened to late at night. Most of the time it was utter
crap—just a bunch of pretentious college kids playing their jazz records and thinking they were cool. The kind of kids who turned up their noses at Franz Ferdinand when the band hit the mainstream.

Johnny had started out as a break-staff DJ, one of the high school kids who ran the radio station over the summer and holidays when the college kids went home for break. Johnny's show was different. It was obvious he loved music, and not just what was obscure or hard to find; he was as liable to play a Dylan classic as he was an unknown garage band. His energy was infectious and his playlist eclectic.

On a whim Taj had called the station to request a song, and soon the two of them were talking well into the night, Johnny's voice low and slow over the wires—he had such a radio voice, the kind that melted in your ear and made you want to never turn off the dial. And unlike most DJs, he actually looked like he sounded—sexy. Justin Timberlake might have brought sexy back, but Johnny Silver had never lost it.

That was a year ago. Now Johnny wasn't just playing the records. He was making them. And those songs—those songs he had played for her in her bedroom, those songs he'd sworn were hers alone—had made him a star. It had all happened so fast: He'd posted a few of them on his TAP page, and before you
knew it, the kids were downloading them, trading them, begging for more. Then the TAP parties happened. He'd played a beach house in Malibu, a birthday party for some celebrity at Hyde, then to a standing-room-only crowd in Palm Springs. More and more kids began coming to the gigs, and the legend of Johnny Silver grew …

And now here he was, at the top of the Chateau Marmont, the famed Hollywood hotel known for the numerous celebrity scandals it had weathered inside its fortresslike walls. John Belushi overdosed in Bungalow 2. Jim Morrison hurt his back jumping off the balcony. Greta Garbo repaired to its premises when she “vanted to be alone.”

The penthouse had been Johnny's de facto address for the past several months now. They had become regulars at the pool, grown accustomed to the sight of Sting playing the piano in the lounge or a glimpse of the celebrity couple du jour in the paneled dining room. Taj was half appalled and half amused by the whole thing. Not too long ago she and Johnny had made do with standing in line on La Brea for a cheap Pink's hot dog. Now caviar was being sent to his room by the bucketload.

She walked over to the next room, where a large white seamless background screen had been set up
and a large silver umbrella kept the lighting at the optimum angle.

Johnny was sitting on a stool, his guitar on his lap, while the photographer—one of the most famous ones in the business; Taj recognized him from his
Vanity Fair
contributor profile and numerous appearances on VH1's lifestyle shows—was behind the camera, clicking away.

The reporter girl, one of those women who were thirty-five going on fifteen—“ironic” butterfly barrettes in her hair, obligatory Marc Jacobs jacket, clodhopper boots, the zippy personality of a seasoned celebrity ass-kisser—stood to the side, cooing over each shot.

She turned to Taj. “Doesn't he look sooo hot?” Taj shrugged in reply, and the reporter looked nervous. Taj noticed that women who wanted to look like teenagers always seemed to be intimidated when they were in the company of real teenagers. The ersatz meeting the authentic and it wasn't pretty.

“Great shoes!” the reporter said as a friendly gesture, pointing down at Taj's feet. “Where'd you get them?”

“Oh,” Taj said, trying to remember. She was a superb bargain-hunter and found most of her treasures in flea markets and designer clearance bins. She also
made a lot of her clothing herself, or ripped up vintage items and refashioned them to her own tastes. “Some secondhand store in Pasadena, I think?”

Johnny looked up, moved his bowl-cut bangs off his face, and noticed Taj.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.” She shrugged. “My uncle's worried. I haven't been home in a week. Wants to make sure I'm still alive,” she joked. Mama Fay was a permissive parent, but even drag queens had their limits.
Come home,
Mama Fay had ordered.
I miss your pretty face.

He frowned slightly. “Stay.”

“Can't.”

Johnny sighed, as if she had wounded him deeply.

Once upon a time those limpid violet eyes of his could have induced her to do anything—she had let him
in,
damn it. Had let that voice, and that hair (fine, platinum blond, and soft as a baby duck's feathers), and those eyes do the trick—had let him talk her into doing so many things (like taking off her clothes, like sleeping with him on the first date, like putting up with the other girls—and with Johnny there were always other girls; it was part of the territory, part of the lifestyle, as he liked to call it, and she would have to be “cool” about it if she wanted to be with him, he'd explained).

“I told you, I can't do this anymore,” Taj said. “I'm leaving.”

Johnny stood up and put his guitar down. “Hold on a sec,” he told his entourage.

He followed her to the hallway, grabbed her hands, and stroked them softly, his touch like the tremor of butterfly wings.

“You know it's just a game,” he said, smiling. “It's not real.”

“It's not that,” Taj shrugged. “I just … well, you know.”

“But I need you, Taj. It doesn't mean anything without you.”

Taj sighed. She could never say no to him; that was the problem. “I'll be back. Before the show.”

Johnny drew her close and hugged her tightly. He kissed her forehead, her nose, and leaned down to kiss her lips gently, pressing upon her until she closed her eyes and kissed him back. She inhaled his scent—cigarettes and leather and lighter fluid and a trace of something sweet and expensive: cologne that came in crystal bottles from fancy department stores. She had found it in his medicine cabinet one evening and had teased him. It was gone the next day, but the smell remained.

“It's going to be all right,” Johnny said, smiling with his eyes half-lidded. “You'll see.”

“I hope so.”

Taj watched him walk—no, strut—back to the photo shoot. The reporter girl was watching them from the doorway.

“Johnny—can we do the interview now? Okay? Tell me, where do you get your inspiration? What made you write ‘Bright Eyes'?”

Johnny looked at Taj before answering to see what she would say. Taj remained silent.

“Actually Haven—it is Haven, isn't it?” Johnny asked, putting an arm around the reporter's shoulders. “I wrote the song for you.”

The woman giggled.

Johnny's honeyed voice continued its slow seduction.

Taj rolled her eyes.
Walk out, walk away. You don't have to put up with this anymore. You don't have to be part of this charade.
The whole media maelstrom, the whole star treatment. It was all bullshit. She fetched her skateboard, exited the hotel suite, grabbed the Sunday
Times
from the doorway She noted another missing-kids headline and while taking the elevator down to the lobby checked to see if she knew anyone they were looking for.

Kids were disappearing all over Los Angeles. It had started a few months back, when a sixteen-year-old
Westlake Village girl was reported missing by her parents over Labor Day weekend. She'd never made it home from a beach bonfire. Taj remembered that party. It was a TAP event. The newspaper said that foul play was not suspected at this time; the police suspected the girl had simply run away. Runaways hardly made the news anymore, except that these were private school kids—rich kids with parents who owned summer homes in Malibu. What would they be running away from, exactly? Taj knew there were missing kids from her neighborhood too, but no one seemed to care about kids who disappeared from Echo Park and Hollywood. She folded the paper under her arm and walked out of the elevator to the hotel patio.

It was noon, and the SoCal sun flattened everything in sight, making everything look two-dimensional, as if drawn on a postcard—the guests lounging in bikinis by the David Hockney-blue swimming pool, the pool boys in their crisp white linens. At the Chateau, time seemed to stop in a cocoon of decadent luxury.

She carried her board on her left hip and walked past the valet stand, where a Bentley convertible was parked. Johnny's new car. Another gift from the record label.

Taj lay down her skateboard and pushed off
with her back foot—mongo style, they called it, because it was a bit more awkward and harder to pull off—balancing down the hill, cruising all the way. Johnny owned a different set of wheels now, but she still preferred to skate.

The crowd gathered in front of the hotel suddenly went berserk, screaming and hooting. Taj looked up. Johnny had finally come out to the balcony; he was blowing kisses and waving. He caught her eye and smiled, gave her the thumbs-up. Taj nodded but didn't return the smile. She weaved her way through the crying fans.

To them, Johnny Silver was a hero. A rebel. An icon. A god.

But to Taj, he was just the boy she loved who had broken her heart.

NICK HUNTINGTON WAS RUNNING LATE. AGAIN. IT
was the usual story—too many things to do, too little time to do it all. School, then soccer practice, a shower, dinner with his stepsister, Fish—who at thirteen was left alone way too much, in his opinion, since their parents were never around—trying to get to Sunset before the weekend traffic hit, and failing miserably. He'd been stuck on Santa Monica for what seemed like hours, and when he finally pulled into one of the overpriced parking lots across from the club, the line in front of the Viper Room was ten deep on the sidewalk and snaked all the way down the hill.

“River Phoenix bit it right here,” he heard someone say. It was the first thing anyone ever said about the Viper, as if claiming a dead actor added to the mystique of the place, and it probably did.

Nick wormed his way through to the front. He had VIP tickets, thanks to Maxine; he was supposed to meet her in a booth in the lounge with the rest of the crew. He hoped she wouldn't be too annoyed that he was late again. He really didn't feel up to any Maxine drama right then.

The club was packed wall-to-wall, by far the biggest crowd he'd ever seen at the Viper.
Where did all these people come from?
he wondered. What was the big deal? Sure, he liked Johnny Silver's songs as much as anybody; he'd been one of the lucky few who'd seen the guy play at that party in the desert, when it seemed like everyone attending had experienced the same high, had shared the same visceral energy—it was the first time Nick understood what people meant when they described music as transporting them to a different place. Maybe it had been that TAP thing he'd drunk. That stuff they were handing out to everyone at the event. And afterward he couldn't even remember what was so great about it, only that it had been an experience he wanted to feel again.

What was it about this kid, Johnny Silver? Nick had heard he was some kind of homeschooled music prodigy some Internet phenom whose popularity had
spread from the Los Angeles basin all the way around the world.