5. Team Meeting
5
TEAM MEETING
MAL
“I’m sorry, can we back up?” Nicky’s cute, blonde face was frowning in her little tile on my laptop screen. “I don’t mean to disrupt the meeting, but what did you just say, Mal?”
Our agent, Phil, frowned in his quarter of the screen, but I loved Nicky a lot more than I loved Phil. She was my little-sister-by-choice before she was Ian’s girlfriend or our marketing manager, so she got priority.
“I said I’m taking an old friend to a gala on Saturday.”
Archer nodded with disinterest from beside me on our ratty sofa. No reason to sit up here. Ian, at his home twenty minutes away, had a similar reaction. Phil just wanted to get on with the agenda. He had that “I’m on LA time” authority and was doing his best to herd the cats of Aftermath into something professional.
Nicky, however, wanted more. And since she’d proven very useful in the past whenever Aftermath had a hard time discussing things, I paid attention when she asked for more details.
“What? What do you need to know?”
“Who’s the friend?” Nicky asked.
Phil rolled his eyes. “Can we get back to the schedule for the new album?”
She flapped a hand. “Two minutes. Sorry, Phil. Who are you going to the gala with?”
“Prentice Luce from high school.”
Both Archer and Ian immediately hooted, and Archer filled in the details Ian didn’t bother to say. “She wants you baaaaaaad,” he crooned.
“Shut up, man.” Archer, I could hit—unlike Ian, who was grinning on-screen. “She does not. I’m just taking her so Johnston Furneau won’t torment her.”
“The more things change,” Ian said.
“Why?” Nicky asked. “We’ve seen this before?”
“Only every damned day since we met this guy.” Archer knocked his fist against my shoulder, and I sneered at him. “Here’s the sitch. Don’t panic, Phil. This will take thirty seconds.” Archer sat up to dish some ancient dirt with the light of gossip in his eyes. “Mal has an archenemy—this rich asshole, Johnston.” I’d never told Archer or Ian about my father or my half brother, so they saw Johnston as my enemy and nothing more. That was the way I liked it. “That Johnston guy likes to torment this girl, Prentice. And Mal can’t help but get in the way of that, so Prentice has a huge crush on this guy.” He smacked me again.
I shook my head, not denying the facts but annoyed at the delight he took in my life’s primary drama.
“Aw,” Nicky cooed. “That’s sweet.”
“Hang on,” Ian spoke up. “Is that who you were talking to at the Paramount?” I nodded, and Ian raised an eyebrow in appreciation. Ian-speak for, She looks good .
I matched his eyebrow, a mute reply of, Yeah, she does .
“Wait, how did I miss this?” Archer rounded on me. “She’s hot now?”
“All right,” Phil said. “Can you discuss this after I’m off the call?”
All right with me, but Nicky wasn’t done yet.
“No, wait. Mal is going to a gala. So what are you going to wear?”
I shrugged. “I’ll go rent a tux somewhere.”
Nicky wasn’t just our marketing manager. She was also the band stylist. She looked at me from her office in Delaware and shook her head in despair. “Mal, it’s Tuesday.”
“That’s true.” All three non-barking members of Aftermath agreed with her.
“Honey. You’re going to need your suit tailored, or you’re going to look like you’re wearing a formal box.”
“Huh?”
Nicky blathered on about something called the drop, which we eventually sussed out to mean the difference between my shoulders and my waist. “You’re built like a weight lifter,” she said. “A rental suit that fits your shoulders is going to have room for a bigger guy’s belly. You need your jacket to be tapered— seriously tapered.”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“Well, do you want this Prentice woman to be embarrassed by her date?”
Fuck no. Prentice was a sweetie. If I was going to be considered a hero, I couldn’t look like a clown. “So . . . what do I do?”
Nicky nodded and brought the conversation back to our agent. “Phil, what are the chances that Aftermath will be invited to the Grammys this year?”
Phil perked right up. Ian, Archer, and I all tried to make sense of the question.
“The Grammys?” Archer’s voice was astonished and hopeful.
Mine was more realistic. “Come on. Be serious,” I scoffed.
Phil, however, actually took the question seriously. “I told you, Laser is producing the next album. Laser . He’s the hottest producer in the world right now. Of course you’re going to be invited to the Grammys. It’s a sure thing. You might take home a win.”
“W-what?” Archer’s voice broke our astonished silence. Ian was frowning in disbelief, and I realized I must look like Charlotte when she heard a sound she couldn’t process. Only in my case, it wasn’t so much the opening of a new bag of dog kibble and more the idea that Aftermath might—might?—
“Are you kidding?” I asked.
Phil sat back in his fancy LA office and gave us a smug grin. “I knew you didn’t understand how big it was that Laser is going to produce you. Yes, boys. Definitely plan on attending the Grammys, and maybe start thinking of your acceptance speech.”
Fuck me. What was supposed to come after exhalation again?
“This is what I’m saying,” Nicky said in triumph. “How you guys look is going to be important, and all three of you are going to need tuxes for the Grammys. The fact that Mal needs his in five days makes the issue more immediate, but it’s still something we should address now.”
I shook my head in an attempt to clear it, but it didn’t help.
“The Grammys?” Ian said.
“A tux? For the Grammys?” Archer was as interested in how he’d look as Ian was in hobnobbing with his musical heroes. I had no idea how I felt.
“A tux. Three tuxes.” Nicky’s bedrock certainty filled me with gratitude. At least one of us knew what to do. “And I know who to call about this too.” She pulled out her cell phone without hitting mute. Even Phil watched her, openmouthed. “O’Connor—hey, babe!” Nicky was grinning.
Archer sat all the way up. He was dating the woman known across the internet as Opinionated O’Connor, a social media influencer who had tortured Archer online for weeks before finally succumbing to his undeniable charm. Anything that touched on her got Archer’s full attention.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Nicky waved him off. “I’ll tell her to call you later, Archer. Hush now. O’Connor, the guys need tuxes. For the Grammys, of course, but Mal needs something perfect and very conservative for this Saturday. What? No, they have no budget. They’ll pay what they need to—really? That would be awesome. Okay. Okay. I’ll wait to hear from you. Oh, and call Archer.” She sniggered at whatever O’Connor said and ended the call.
“What did she say?” Archer asked.
“She’s got some thoughts, and she’s making a call. She’ll get back to us.”
“What did she say about me ?”
Nicky laughed. “Not fit for mixed company. Go ahead with your agenda, Phil. I’ll let you know what the plan is when she calls me back.”
Which was how the three of us—plus Charlotte—found ourselves double-parked outside of Penn Station not five hours later, at ten minutes to midnight. Ian ran in to meet Nicky’s train (and probably to assault her with the kisses she didn’t seem to mind at all), and then we followed the directions on Nicky’s phone to the most disreputable neighborhood I’d ever seen in Manhattan. Who knew there were still combat zones in the most expensive city on the planet? But this place fit the bill. The most hardened thug would have moved on.
None of the streetlights were working, and no lights came from the industrial windows in the nearby buildings. Down the street, a few guys watched us from the lip of a closed loading bay.
“What now?” I asked.
“We’re supposed to knock on the door.” Nicky was reading the instructions that had come by email. “This is definitely the right address, but I don’t know. Could O’Connor be kidding?”
“I’ll go,” Ian said. “Nicky, stay in the truck.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“Me too.” Archer unclipped his seat belt and got out.
“Then I’m not waiting here!” Nicky scrambled out behind Ian, and Charlotte leaped out with her. Ian immediately got between Nicky and the guys on the loading dock.
One of them hopped down and started toward us at a lazy slouch. Three more followed.
Until Charlotte, now the size of a reasonably large pony, lifted her ears and uttered a clear warning in the form of a deep, rumbling growl. The quartet heading toward us came to a halt.
“Heel, girl,” Archer said quietly. He snapped his fingers, and Charlotte—he’d been working with her—obeyed him. She rested her shoulder against his thigh, never taking her eyes off the toughs.
“Shit,” one of them said.
We were now grouped into a surprisingly effective fighting force. Archer and his dog, and big Ian and clever Nicky. Okay, two fighting pairs. The lone man was me, biggest of all of us. The next move was mine.
“Let me go knock on the door,” I said easily, as if the situation wasn’t threatening. A dark street in an empty neighborhood after midnight? Gang warfare clearly about to break out at any minute? Nothing to it. Just an average day.
“Yeah,” Archer said, never looking away from the quartet.
The man who answered the door looked like a banker in a charcoal-gray suit. Every button of the vest was neatly done up. The shirt was pristine, the tie in a fussy and precise knot. Blazing light fell past him onto the street.
“Well,” he said. “I can tell you are beginners because you have arrived on time.” He had a faint accent I couldn’t place. Was there an accent known as “vaguely European”? “I am Alberto. Come in. Is that your truck? For goodness’ sake, don’t leave it out here. You’ll come back to it up on blocks. I’ll open the garage. Come on, come on, I don’t have all day.”
His style was hard to read: welcoming and friendly in one breath, fussy and possibly angry in the next. Alberto had a prissy little mustache and a conservative, tidy head of graying hair. He waited until Archer backed the BFT into a cavernous garage and lowered the massive steel door, locking us safely behind the castle gates. Once he’d herded us into a large, overlit studio, he turned to examine us.
“I see,” he said, as if responding to someone we couldn’t hear. “You need formalwear for the Grammys. You’re right to come to me so early. Henry? Henry!”
A younger but equally conservative man bustled into the room. “Is this Aftermath?” he asked.
“It is. Sent to us by my dear friend O’Connor. Be ready with your tape measure, and I’ll need you to take notes. You’re the stylist?”
It took a moment for Nicky to realize he was suddenly speaking to her. “Yes. I’m Nicky Swanson.”
“Forgive my impertinence, but do you know what you’re doing, dear?”
Nicky blinked and then shook her head. “No.”
Alberto’s face broke into a huge fatherly smile. “Darling! How I love you! Very good. Now, tell me what you’re thinking. What are our parameters?”
She and Alberto put their heads together and whispered. Henry offered the rest of us cocktails. “Or I have artisanal water from a Nepalese monastery on the slopes of Mount Everest. May I get you a carafe?”
We declined, but he put down a bowl for Charlotte, and she slurped a little of the monk’s finest. She was polite about it. Like all dogs, Charlotte appreciated artisanal water from Nepal.
Duh.
“You don’t mind that we brought a dog?” Archer asked Henry.
“Oh, you love. Last week, a perfectly dreadful rapper brought a tiger on a chain. That cat had no manners at all. I can still smell the funk. You can’t still smell it, can you? We scrubbed, and then I had our shaman in to smudge the whole building.” He spoke to Archer, which freed Ian and me to glance at each other and try to smother our manly giggles.
“Archer,” Nicky called. “We’re going to start with you.”
Archer loved to be looked at, so he went willingly, but Alberto’s assessment was so chilled and professional that I didn’t think Archer got much of a buzz out of it.
“He wears white?” Alberto confirmed with Nicky.
“That’s our goal. All white, or maybe faded denim.”
Alberto was unsuccessful in suppressing his shudder of disgust. Apparently faded denim was something to be removed from the wardrobe with nervous fingers. Or maybe tongs.
“I want to see your legs,” he said sternly. At Archer’s confusion, Alberto clarified. “Skin off those”—he gestured with his hands as he fought to find the right words—“pants, I suppose.”
Archer looked to Ian and me to assess our confusion while Nicky snickered. He was wearing white cotton trousers. Boring. Inoffensive. What was Alberto’s issue?
Archer shrugged, stepped on the back of his sneakers to remove them, and dropped his trou. Nudity wasn’t something Archer much feared.
“I do not neglect calf day in my workouts,” he said proudly.
Alberto offered a fatherly smile at the sight of all the skin between Archer’s white boxer briefs and his white athletic socks. “Yes. I’ve been waiting for you.” Archer preened happily. “You have no problem with androgyny? A man in a dress, for example?”
Archer’s eyebrows went up, an expression Ian and I shared. “A dress?” A grin bloomed across Archer’s face. “You want to put me in a dress? That’s so glam rock. I love it!”
Alberto shook his head. “No, darling. Not quite. I’m going to make you a perfectly beautiful tuxedo jacket in a luscious white, which you will wear with a classic wing-collar shirt, and a white satin bow tie and cummerbund. But instead of trousers . . .”
He stepped back, holding his chin in thoughtful consideration. We waited breathlessly. Instead of trousers—what?
He shook his head. “The vision is unclear. I know I want a high-low skirt. Above the knees in the front, floor length in the back. Can you manage a train, darling? A small train?”
Archer was caught off guard. “A train? Like a princess dress?”
“Yes, darling. Just a little one. Stunning on the red carpet but pure misery afterward, when everyone and their agent will step on it. I’ll bustle it for you.”
Archer turned to Nicky for translation.
“Small buttons on the back of the skirt to fold the train off the floor,” she explained.
Archer’s grin was back. “That sounds so badass!”
“Yes,” Alberto agreed absently. “Badass, yes. Hm. But the skirt—flat-fronted? A curve from front to back, or is a curve too feminine? What if the skirt was all right angles? What do you think, Henry?”
Henry looked like he was blurring his eyes as he stared at Archer in his underwear. At last, he offered his opinion.
“Kilted,” he said.
“Pleats!” Alberto was in heaven. He grabbed Henry’s skull to plant a kiss on his forehead. “This is why I keep you around! Razor-sharp pleats, short in front and falling to the floor in back. This might make it to the print version of Vogue .”
This was apparently significant. Alberto seemed quite pleased with himself.
“What if I did the whole tux thing but didn’t wear a shirt?” Archer was overstimulated.
Alberto winced. “Ugh,” he said, turning away from the idea in distaste. “Go with Henry. You need to be measured. And don’t tell me you know what your sizes are. That’s just ridiculous. Now, what about this tall drink of water?” He stood in front of Ian, who wasn’t as comfortable as Archer at being examined.
“I’d rather not strip,” Ian said. From his voice, he knew it was hopeless. If Alberto wanted to know if Ian respected calf day in his workouts, Alberto would have his answer.
But the maestro was not to be distracted. “Nicky, my little love, tell me again. Always black? He’s supposed to be death?”
“Death at a formal event,” she offered.
“Hm. Well, no sparkle. No bling. That’s obvious.” Ian looked relieved. “I love the scar,” Alberto said unexpectedly.
Ian had a massive scar down one side of his face from a meeting he’d had with a large chunk of some sharp rock during a mountain-biking adventure. He’d tried to hide it behind a lot of dark hair until Nicky reminded him that a scar was very rock ’n’ roll. She was the one who’d gotten him to pretty much shave his head.
And she’d taught him how to smile again.
“I love the scar too,” Nicky said with a smile.
“I find you inspirational,” Alberto said to Ian. “I need my camera. Henry, get my camera when you’re done with your measurements!”
Henry popped out from behind the screen, where he was measuring Archer. He pulled open a cabinet and grabbed an enormous machine with hasselblad printed across the top.
“Here you go, Alberto.”
“Thank you. Stand still, sir.”
“Why do you need a photo of my scar?” Ian asked woodenly.
Alberto studied the screen. “Yes, that’s fine. Why? Because I’m going to reproduce this line in the lapel of your jacket. The front of your coat will be asymmetrical—more cloth on this side than that. It will look odd when unbuttoned, so keep it buttoned up. It won’t be too hot, though, because I’ll use an extremely thin and supple black wool. Otherwise, the hood won’t hang right.”
“The hood?” Nicky asked the question, but we were all wondering.
“Death’s hood,” Alberto said as if he were explaining everything. “He’ll pull the hood up to walk the red carpet for photos, and then it can lie flat along his spine for the rest of the evening.” He saw us staring. “Well, the nastiest sweatshirt can have a hood. Why can’t a tuxedo jacket? Thank you, Henry.” Henry had offered spontaneous applause.
“It’ll be like you got an Elven cloak from Galadriel,” I whispered to Ian, who began to grin.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
“Right,” Alberto said with satisfaction. “Off you go. Another customer for your measuring tape, Henry. And last, sir, let’s look at you.”
I was then the subject of this unusual man’s focus. At first I’d thought he was a tailor and then upgraded him to stylist. Now I realized I was being considered by a couture designer—one who never advertised or even wanted to be appealing to the general public.
“This is the one who wears purple?” he asked Nicky.
She nodded, having picked up Alberto’s habit of looking at someone as if they were a department-store mannequin. “Archer is the avenging angel, Ian is death. Mal is the living embodiment of judgment.”
Alberto nodded thoughtfully. “It’s clever. Imaginative. Purple, hm? And he’s going to a conservative formal event.”
“A gala,” she said, “at a yacht club.”
The sound he made seemed to imply amusement. “I could do it in a truly regal shade of aubergine. A classic, boring tuxedo in the very darkest purple?”
Nicky shook her head firmly. “A yacht club,” she repeated.
He sighed. “All right. Black it is. I’ll make him the most conservative, boring formalwear. We’ll rely on impeccable tailoring to his admittedly spectacular body to make our statement. And we’ll meet again before the Grammys to see if we want to branch off into something actually worthy of attention. But not for now, alas. Young man, if you need this by Saturday, I’ll need to see you twice more for fittings.”
“Wow,” I said thoughtlessly. “Really?”
“Yes, really. Do as you are told, and be grateful that O’Connor is a friend of yours. Nicky, love, he’s a musician.”
“Yes. The drummer.”
“The drummer. And you want him to look like everyone else.”
“Well, Alberto, isn’t that the goal of a tuxedo? It’s like a uniform, right? So the women shine brighter?”
Alberto shook his head sadly. “In the avian world, the male bird always has the best plumage, and it’s the female who is drab and dull. But Nicky, he’s a drummer. I understand that he has to blend ”—he said the word as if it revolted him—“but you’ve got to let him express his spirit in just one place.”
“What are you thinking?”
Alberto eyed me again. Ian, Archer, and Henry leaned from around the screen to watch. The pause drew out until I thought I’d scream.
“Shoes,” Alberto said. We all jumped in surprise at the determination in his voice. “You’ll let me fit this boy for some zebra dancing slippers. Won’t you?”
He looked at her. She looked at me. I couldn’t hide my grin. “Fuckin’ A!”
“Do it,” Nicky confirmed. The Greek chorus by the screen cheered.
“Very good! This is a good evening’s work. We have much to do. Let’s get you measured.”
Nicky sidled up to me as I headed for the measuring department. “Now . . . do you know how to behave at a yacht-club gala?”