Born to Rock (6 page)

King grasped my hand and shook it, and actually smiled at me. In all the CD covers and publicity shots and Internet sites, I'd never seen him smile before. It didn't fit the image of the Angriest Band in America.

“Thanks for coming down,” he told me. “I'm really looking forward to this.”

Then he turned away, and I wasn't there anymore.

It took me a moment to come to terms with the fact that, in King's eyes, I had suddenly ceased to exist. It was Bernie who ushered me back into the main part of the suite, where the Post-it girl had awakened, and various Concussed officials were reclaiming their notes from her body.

The manager gave me a sympathetic smile. “You get used to King's style. When you're the
man
, you're like a drug, and everybody wants a toot. He's not shutting you out. It's just his way of making sure there's enough of him to go around.”

I didn't reply. I was wondering if that's how it was with my mother eighteen years ago.

[10]

BERNIE WAS RIGHT ABOUT KING BEING
like a drug. I must have been on
something.
How else could I have agreed to join a traveling punk rock festival without even considering what my parents were going to say?

The thought didn't occur to me until I was at a pay phone in Grand Central station, calling my dad to let him know what train I'd be on.

“Brickfield Hardware.”

“Hi, Dad. I made the four-oh-eight. Can you pick me up around five-thirty?”

“No problem.”

“One more thing”—sucking air—“I'm not going to be able to work with you at the store this summer. I—I've got another job lined up.”

“Always the wheeler-dealer, huh, Leo?” he chuckled. “Okay, lay it on me. What's so important that it's worth leaving your old man shorthanded? You're the new president of the Stock Exchange, I suppose.”

“I'm going to be a roadie for Purge.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Be serious.”

“It's the truth.” I filled him in on the details of my meeting with Bernie and King.

“Do you have any idea what goes on with a tour like that?”

“Do you?” I countered.

“When Purge comes to town, it's like a state of emergency! Cities hire extra police, impose curfews—”

“That was the eighties, Dad. They're all like
you
now—regular middle-aged guys. Besides, most of that stuff was probably hype. The media distorts everything.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

“Look, it's all for Harvard, okay? If I had my scholarship, none of this would be necessary.”

“And King Maggot agreed to fork over forty grand?” he persisted. “Just like that?”

“I haven't mentioned it yet,” I confessed. “Not until the DNA tests come back. By then I'll have known the guy for a month, and I won't seem like a gold digger.”

I could hear his unspoken response over the dead air:
Seem?

“It's the only way, Dad. Trust me.”

He was silent for another moment. Then: “I want to meet him.”

“There's no time,” I argued. “Concussed starts in a few days.”

“If King Maggot wants to take
my
son on a thirty-city tour, first he's going to look me in the eye and promise me you'll be okay.”

“Yeah, but you'll never get an appointment. He's got wall-to-wall interviews.”

He came to a decision. “I'll be there in an hour.”

I was horrified. “Dad—no!”

“The St. Moritz, right?”

Click.

Now I was nervous. I noticed something in Dad's voice that I hadn't heard in years. Not since the day he'd decided to give up the commuting life after Mr. Rapaport's heart attack. When Erik Caraway set himself on a course of action, you couldn't change his mind with a howitzer. He'd never drive a Harley through a plate glass window, but in his own way, he was just as hell-bent.

I called back, and got a recording. Dad was already on his way.

The meeting of my two fathers, regular and biological, was something I would gladly have put off until doomsday. Talk about a clash of opposites. King was a rock star; Dad owned a small-town store. King could pull forty grand out of petty cash; Dad was a regular Joe with regular finances. King had seduced my mother before Dad had even held her hand. Worst of all, it was King's DNA, not Dad's, that made up half the sole heir to Brickfield Hardware. Dad knew all that, and had accepted it a long time ago. But to stand next to Marion X. McMurphy—that had to be a bitter pill the size of a U-boat.

At five o'clock I stood outside the St. Moritz. It was another half hour before Dad emerged from the hotel garage, looking stressed and disgusted.

“Forty bucks for parking,” he muttered. “If I can find a spot on the street the next thousand times I come to the city, I'll save enough money to pay your tuition.”

“You don't have to do this,” I urged gently.

“The hell I don't.”

We went upstairs to the suite, which was, if anything, even more chaotic than before. The Stem Cells had arrived, and were prancing and mugging for a gaggle of photographers. Guitarist Pete Vukovich was shirtless, showing off a brand new diamond stud in his pierced nipple. I thought Dad was going to throw up.

“Come on,” I chided. “To each his own.”

But the piercing wasn't what offended Dad's sensibilities. “Poser,” he scoffed. “When did you ever see Johnny Rotten with a two-carat rock in his boob?”

I pulled up short. “You know about this kind of music?”

“In high school we used to take the train into the city to go to CBGB. Everybody was there—the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, the Dead Boys—”

“Purge?”

“They came later,” he told me. “I'm talking about the early days, when punk was just starting out.”

Could it be that Dad was more comfortable in this scene than I was?

Everybody was ignoring us. Worse, we seemed to be in the way. Photographers kept backing into us. Dad knocked over a TV crew's lighting rig, which nearly brained one of the Hatchlings.

Finally, he marched up to a small desk and barked, “Is King Maggot available?”

A young man with a reverse Mohawk—bushy hair on the sides and a bald stripe shaved down the middle—surveyed him up and down. “And you are?”

“His son's father.”

Reverse Mohawk never even questioned it. “King's in with
Rolling Stone
right now,” he told us. “You'll have to chill.”

We chilled on the edge of a leather ottoman, sharing space with a stray amplifier. As regular business hours drew on into evening, new people continued to arrive, rougher around the edges, if such a thing was possible. A room service cart packed with champagne bottles was wheeled into the suite. Someone cranked up the music—all I could make out was the refrain, which sounded like “kill the poor.”

“Dead Kennedys,” Dad supplied. “Early eighties.”

The business office was transforming into a party. Women, dressed to shock, were trawling for rock stars. Pete Vukovich was the catch of the day. “Shove over, yo,” he mumbled to us, joined at the lips to his hoochie. As they squeezed in beside us, she climbed onto his lap for space conservation and possibly other reasons.

“Let's get out of here,” I hissed at Dad.

His expression would not have been out of place on the stone heads of Easter Island.

A hot buffet showed up on another room service cart, along with more champagne. I checked my watch. It was coming up on eight o'clock! Where was King?

And then a familiar earlobe appeared out of the throng, attached to the body of my bio-dad. Bernie was with him, steering the punk icon through the maelstrom of worshipful high fives that swirled around them. The cousins McMurphy looked tired and anxious to leave. But Bernie stopped when he spotted me on the edge of the ottoman.

“Hey, Cuz—have you been here all this time?”

It had to be the most awkward moment in history. “King, Bernie”—my voice sounded unnaturally high—“this is my father. I mean—”

Dad spoke up. “I need to talk to you, Maggot or McMurphy, or whatever your name is. You've only been a father for a few hours; I've been at it for seventeen years, so let me give you a little friendly advice: if you're going to let your kid go gallivanting across the country with a man like you, you'd better make sure he's not going to be exposed to anything sick.” He tossed a thumb in the direction of Pete and his girl, who were approaching the “get-a-room” stage.

I waited for King to sic the goon squad on us. But the rock star didn't call for his army of roadies. He didn't even seem to be offended. He looked like he was thinking it over.

Finally, he said, “What do you suggest?”

Dad, who had been anticipating a punch in the nose—and maybe even hoping for it so he'd have an excuse to pound King Maggot—was caught off guard. “Huh?”

“For Leo,” King elaborated. “What special arrangements should we make for him?”

This left Dad hemming and hawing. That Purge's notorious front man might ask for a laundry list of demands was the last thing he'd prepared for. “Well, uh, he's not a baby. But he's not—you know—one of you.”

“Fair enough.” King stuck out his hand, and Dad shook it—an image still scorched on my retinas.

With that, King and Bernie were out the door and gone. Dad was shell-shocked. Maybe he was going over the conversation in his mind, searching for the place where he'd missed his chance to make a big stink. At any moment, he might burst out with “And furthermore…!” only to find himself talking to the back of somebody's head.

But he just said, “What the
hell
are we going to tell your mother?”

[11]

OUR HOUSE LOOKED LIKE AN ART GALLERY
tilted ninety degrees. Every table, counter, cabinet top, and a good percentage of floor space hosted an elaborate jigsaw puzzle. Images ranging from the Last Supper, to an aerial photograph of Mount Everest, to a scientifically labeled close-up of a tarantula festooned our home. The simple act of moving from room to room became a tightrope walk. Heaven help the poor slob who accidentally stepped on a completed work.

Mom was quiet in her focus, but that peacefulness was deceiving. When my toe accidentally dislodged one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, Mom threw a book at me, which only served to knock a piece off Michelangelo's
David
that I'm sure David would dearly love to have back.

She scrambled to restore the famous sculpture. “Watch it, will you? I'm trying to do a puzzle!”

“You're not doing
a
puzzle,” I retorted. “You're doing fifty puzzles because you won't face the fact that I'm going on Concussed.”

Dad stuck up for me. “Don't treat this like it isn't real, Donna. Leo will be eighteen soon. We can't hold him back forever.”

“I hope you told that degenerate we're holding him responsible for anything that happens on that traveling freak show!” She seethed at Dad.

“No worries,” Dad assured her. “I set Maggot straight.”

I didn't hear anything more from King, but Bernie faxed me directions to a nearby lab where he had scheduled my DNA test. A courier arrived with a packet of information about Concussed—festival venues, hotels, and maps.

I was with the band.

tor•ture
,
n
:
1
) The infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.

2
) Having to march up on the graduation stage and shake Mr. Borman's hand (
see Caraway, Leo
).

“Leo's hard work over the past four years has brought him numerous honors, including early acceptance to Harvard,” the assistant principal announced to polite applause as I accepted my diploma.

It made my blood boil. I mean, Borman knew exactly what had happened to my scholarship, and that, as things stood, Harvard was a pipe dream for me. And he had the
nerve
to take credit for my academic success while at the same time rubbing it in that I wouldn't get to go.

I
was angry, but McMurphy wanted him dead. Just because I was going on tour with Purge didn't mean my genetic hitchhiker was under control. Now that he was not just my father, but also my employer, Project X was more important than ever.

I bottled up McMurphy and marched off the stage into the high-fiving mass of seniors. That was where I found myself nose to nose ring with Melinda. We hadn't spoken since the Concussed press conference.

“Congratulations, Leo,” she mumbled.

“You, too. And you,” I added to Owen, who had materialized over her shoulder. During the ceremony, Mr. Borman had gone on and on about Owen's gifted status in a fatherly
I-taught-him-everything-he-knows
tone. As if Borman hadn't ruined my life in his attempt to ruin Owen's. Was our A.P. a class act or what?

Melinda wouldn't look me in the eye. “So did you ever get in touch with him?”

I didn't have to ask who she was talking about. “I met him. He's pretty nice.”

This prompted a little gasp from her. “And?”

“We think it's probably true. Him being my father. I have the McMurphy ear.” I flipped up my notched lobe. “We're doing DNA, just to be sure.”

I waited for her to demand every detail of my conversation with the burning bush. Instead, she turned away. Funny—my history with Melinda was pre-preschool. We'd started with precious little in common, and seemed to have less every year. But even as she grew into a goth, and I grew into a Republican, we always got along. Who knew that the one thing that would come between us would be the one thing we actually shared?

King Maggot was her idol. You'd think that me being his flesh and blood would be good in her eyes. But she seemed to resent it, like I'd snuck up and stolen him from her.

The only normal comment came from, of all people, Owen. “That's really cool, Leo, finding your roots like that.” Then he spoiled it by adding, “Your mom must have been totally hot before she got middle-aged.”

“You have a nice summer too,” I managed.

I couldn't get out of there fast enough.