12. The Evidence File
THE EVIDENCE FILE
Sandy's scandal pattern has reached the point where the label sends emails with subject lines in all capitals.
RE: URGENT—GAUNTLET MEDIA EXPOSURE—ACTION REQUIRED
RE: BELLADONNAS CONTRACT REVIEW—ARTIST MANAGEMENT CONCERNS
RE: IMMEDIATE RESPONSE NEEDED
By the time the sun’s properly up I’ve read the same three emails four times, and none of them get less unhinged with rereading.
The label wants a statement by noon and a reminder they want the whole band at the industry event tonight, in an attempt to repair our image.
He also wants me to know, that one more incident like this and the contract renewal is back on the table.
I text Lena:
What are you doing right now?
She answers fast. Procrastinating on email. You?
Damage control. Sandy went viral and it’s very bad.
How bad?
There was a slap and a seventeen-part story. Please send help. Or snacks.
Sending my prayers
The band meets at Jo and Rebecca’s.
I get there early. Jo’s already up, hair wet, moving around the kitchen like she’s been awake for hours, and when I come in she doesn’t say a word about the video or the label or the six months of frost between us. She just pours a second cup and holds it out.
“You look like you haven’t slept,” she says.
“I haven’t.”
“Figured.” I take the cup. I take the terrible sweet coffee.
“Hiya Rhonda.”
I wave back.
Rebecca comes in leggings with her hair in a claw clip, kissing the top of Jo’s head on her way to the couch. Jeremy in a beanie, wearing the face of a man who wants no part of any of this. Ana second to last, already holding her phone and showing us the damage on the socials.
Sandy arrives last, twenty minutes after the time I gave her, carrying a cardboard tray of coffees nobody asked for.
“She’s up to seventeen parts,” Ana says, before Sandy’s even got her coat off.
She turns the phone around. Olivia Fox, devastated in matching loungewear, mascara placed rather than smudged, over a caption calling Sandy a narcissistic commitment-phobe who broke her heart.
There’s a clip too: Sandy scrambling up out of the hallway clutter the night of the awards, Olivia ranting, then the slap.
“We weren’t together,” Sandy says, to the room, to no one. “We were never—”
“The internet doesn’t buy arrangements,” I say. “It buys stories. And right now the story is that our guitarist is a heartless narcissist who got what she deserved, and four million people have decided they were standing in that hallway too.”
“The label’s made the call. They want a holiday album.” Jo says.
“But we’re a rock band.” Sandy says.
“Our roots are whatever keeps us signed. They want something wholesome enough to bury your scandal under a foot of tinsel, they want it before Christmas, and our real record gets pushed to next year.”
Ana frowns. “I turned down a session gig for this,” she says, quiet. “A real one. I’m three payments from clear on my loans. If the label walks, I go back to bar sets, and I’m too old to load my own amp at two a.m. for forty bucks.” She doesn’t look at Sandy when she says it. She doesn’t have to.
Sandy frowns and looks down. “I’ll fix it.”
“You’ll come record a Christmas album and be kind to every person in the room while you do it,” I say. “That’s how you fix it.”
“There’s one more thing.” Jo says. “Conor’s out.”
The room goes still. Conor’s been our manager for five years and produced the last two records off the side of the same desk, which made him cheap and made him ours and makes this hurt in two places at once.
“He can’t just leave,” Rebecca says. “You’ve got contracts.”
“He found the clause. Moral turpitude, public image. His lawyers were very sorry about it, in eleven-point font.” I keep my voice flat.
“So as of this morning we have no manager, no producer, half a record, a deadline the label just moved up, and a guitarist four million views deep in the worst week of her life.”
“So here’s what we do.” Because somebody has to, and it’s always me.
“We get out of the city. Two weeks somewhere quiet—a cottage, no cameras, no comment sections. We make the label their Christmas record, we let the internet forget Sandy’s face for a fortnight, and she comes back a musician instead of a meme. ”
“And a producer?” Jeremy asks.
Jo already has her laptop open. She spins it toward us—Erica Thomas, caught mid-session in some press shot.
I know the face before Jo says the name. And then Sandy makes a small, strangled sound.
"That's my neighbour," she says. "That's her. She was there—the night with Olivia, in the hallway."
The room swings toward Sandy all at once.
The plan has just built its own door: the best producer I know, already tangled in this mess, living next to from the guitarist I need her to save. I pull out my phone, the statement half-drafting itself before my thumbs catch up, and head out to go make it real.
There’s one producer I’d trust to walk into a mess like this and not run. Erica Thomas. A few years back their regular bassist broke his hand two days before a session and I filled in, and I spent five days watching her turn songs into something that put the hair up on my arms.
She’s the best there is, which is exactly the problem. Johnny Sugar’s Nerve Endings, Cherry Hall’s acoustic record, Melanie Court’s whole album—three of the biggest indie records of last year came out of her room. She’s expensive, and if we land her the label will stop talking about dropping us.
I take the phone out and I call her.
“Hi Rhonda Mars. It’s been a while.”
“It has. I’ll get straight to it, our producer just dropped us. We need someone for a holiday album, you’ll have full creative control, and a very nice budget, and just need two weeks of your time.”
“I’m flattered. I’m also booked solid.”
“Your reputation precedes you—which is how I know you were the one in that hallway. Sandy’s neighbour, front-row seat to the whole mess.” Her silence changes shape, goes careful, and I don’t push it. “—so, name your price,” I say, letting her off the hook.
“It’s not the money. It’s capacity. I’m producing three albums.”
“I know. I wouldn’t ask if I had another option. But you’re already tangled in this whether you like it or not—might as well get paid for it, and get out of the city while you’re at it.”
“That is not a compelling pitch, Rhonda.”
I tell her about the retreat—two weeks somewhere quiet, a real budget, nobody watching—and let it sound like what it could actually be for a woman running on fumes: a chance to slow down and make one good thing with her hands.
“—It might be exactly what you need,” I cross my fingers.
She goes quiet and I know that I’ve got her. She lets me know she’ll think about it, and I hang up feeling a lot better about the day.
I try not to think too hard about the fact that I’m about to shut a houseful of volatile people in together and call it healing. Because that’s the thing I do. I move the people I love around and tell myself it’s for their own good.
All of the Belladonnas come with me to the industry event—damage control is a group sport now. It’s a rooftop bar downtown: label people, managers, artists.
A woman approaches me at the bar. Tall, long black hair, confident smile. She's a booking agent—I recognize her from a festival panel.
“Rhonda Mars.” She says it like she’s tasting it. “Do you remember me? It’s Suzanna.” She holds my arms a beat too long. “I adore your bass work. That part on ‘Nightwork’ you were amazing. Do you use a pick or you use your fingers?”
“Fingers.” I scoff. “Picks are for people who don’t trust their hands.”
“Mm.” She steps closer, close enough that I can smell her perfume. “I’d have guessed you had the delicate fingers for a pick.”
“I go for feel.”
“I can hear that.” Her hand lands light on my forearm and stays. “I like a woman who trusts her hands. Maybe you could show me your process sometime. Over something that isn’t warm gin in a plastic cup.”
"Sure."
I don't encourage her, after all I'm performing single.
I watch Jo across the room. She's with Rebecca, and Rebecca's leaning into her shoulder. Jo's arm is around Rebecca's waist. They're laughing at something, stealing chips from each other's plates. They look happy.
The booking agent's hand touches the small of my back. She's positioning herself for a photo. Someone will take it.
I excuse myself and go to the bathroom. I pull out my phone. I type: I wish you were here.
I stare at it.
I delete it and type: What did you eat for dinner?
She replies: A burger from the place on the corner. What about you?
I had tiny ones. I've had like ten but I'm still hungry.
Tiny food is a scam, they just make you want more.
Like everything in this industry.
I come back out to the event. The booking agent is still there. She smiles at me and I look away.
By the end of the night, I've had too much to drink.
Not enough alcohol to have an excuse for the weight I'm carrying.
I take an Uber home and sit in the back seat watching the city move past the window in neon fragments, thinking about Jo, who was brave enough to call me a manipulator to my face.
Jo, who kept showing up early to sessions anyway.
Jo, who is standing at a rooftop bar with her girlfriend in public and the world is not ending.
At home, I stand in my dark apartment and text Lena: I miss you.
She responds: Really?
Yes, I really do.
There's a long pause. I watch the three typing dots appear and disappear and appear again, like she's typing and deleting, trying to find the right words.
Rhonda. We need to talk.