Excerpt from The Road Taken

“Welcome.”

The man’s handshake was warm, his smile affable. Signals of good-natured professionalism, a necessity in the cut-throat record company business. But when his eyes raked down Jamie’s body, it made him feel like an amphibian to be dissected – or perhaps as an unruly child to be kept in line. A child who makes money for you, he pointed out silently as the man took Michael’s hand and held it a moment too long.

Jamie’s nostrils twitched. He felt nauseous. The not-quite-rendez-vous at the hotel had reached the ears of the higher-ups and this was the result. Paul had gone whingeing and whining to Patrick about how the axman of Pax was still banging the bassist, and now here they were: in an audience with the grand high ruler of everything.

Feeling rebellious and yet strangely cowed, Jamie sat in the chair indicated by the ring-laden hand of the boss man. He was probably insane to think it, but that man – what was it? Mr…? He couldn’t remember and didn’t really care, except what if he was asked by the police later when Michael was found with his throat cut in a dumpster? Anyway, that man was suppressing some serious urges. Urges to rip the head off his enemies, to divide and conquer. To destroy. Jamie could feel his fingertips going numb, cold. His joints stiffening uselessly. If it came to violence, he would never be able to protect Michael with hands like this.

Breathing deeply, he shook his head at the thought. Violence? Why would a record company meeting escalate into a fistfight? He swallowed down bile. This is just a routine meeting! But something about it didn’t feel routine at all. Not even when the dragon in the suit started listing the things the company had done by way of damage control could Jamie relax. Something about it sounded so fake, like a serial killer reading from a phone book at a poetry slam.

“Look, you don’t even have to bother with all this,” the dragon man said and patted Michael’s hand in a poor imitation of fatherliness. “We’re handing out fact sheets, recalling a few pictures, and as for the music, well, just keep it short and snappy next time, okay?”

“Sh… short and snappy?” Cal was instantly wary.

“Yes.” The dragon pursed his lips, rested his fingertips in a concerned pyramid against his chin. “Anything that might be construed as… different. We don’t want that, you see?”

Cal’s lips pulled apart in a genuine grin. “It’s a bit late for such qualms, Mr O’Dell.”

“Is it?” Blank eyes turned on him. “Is it really.” O’Dell hitched up his lips a little, as if trying for a smile, and then he turned again to Jamie and Michael. “Look, we’ve put up with your shenanigans long enough. Dave leaving, those poncy clothes of yours, bloody eight minute songs… You need to get some radio play, okay? You need to reach the football crowd. Write a fucking chorus, why don’t you?”

The swear word was jarring in the austere setting, as if a priest had suddenly conjured a demon. Jamie almost scoffed to himself. O’Dell! O’Devil, more like.

“We’re a progressive band,” Michael mumbled, but his subdued voice was hardly convincing.

“Oh, is that right?” O’Devil laughed heartily. “Well, how’s that working out for you?”

“Quite well, actually,” Cal said, chin out in childish pride.

O’Devil rolled his eyes. “Patrick’s been filling your heads with cotton candy, right? Well, yes, you may have attracted a few nutters, I’ll give you that – a few potheads and flower power hobos – but I’m talking mainstream money here, boys. The big bucks. The girls. Girls don’t listen to prog-whatever. You need a haircut and a gym, that’s what you need.” He flashed Michael a pointed look, and Jamie’s hands curled into fists at his sides. O’Devil seemed to see it, and immediately cranked up the charm a little. “We need to work together, boys, don’t you see? And I’ve been in this business forever and a day. I’ve got the statistics of everything that’s selling right now. I’ve got next week’s frigging top ten in my little black book, okay? You want to be a part of this world, don’t you? You want to tour, to get fans, to be written about in more than just a few local rags? Well, then you’d better do what I tell you to.”

Cal gazed at him through narrowed, thoughtful eyes. “Are you like… taking over from Patrick?”

O’Devil shook his head impatiently. “No, I’m just filling in the blanks. Doing what he can’t, bless his sentimental little soul. He has a soft spot for you guys, so he can’t be frank like I can. Sugar-coating, all that. I don’t sugar-coat. I chisel you down to size and make you marketable. Because that’s what you really want.” He paused a beat. “Don’t you?”

Jamie held his breath. He wanted to say no. Instead he asked, “Why did you pick us up if you didn’t like our music?”

“I didn’t. My predecessor did. And he got the sack, so I think that says something.” O’Devil sighed impatiently, waved his hands in the air. “Besides, it’s not about what I like. Look. I realise that you’ve got all this… ah, artistic integrity and all. I get that. I do. But this is the real world, boys, and this is the second album. Botch this one and you’re out. One hit wonder kind of thing. You need to get it out there, and you need to get it out there fast.”

“But our first album–” Jamie stopped, tried to find the words to make a man without a soul understand. “Mr O’Dell, no offence, but that was years of work. Michael had been writing on those lyrics for ages, and making the songs took a whole summer and… well, the autumn…” Jamie’s voice trailed away at the painful memory. Michael didn’t look at him, but he felt him tense. Those months of isolation, that was when the songs had come to be. Not with the two of them together, but as far apart as they could be. Jamie had meant to leave Michael behind then. He had done his best to make it real. And then in one instant it had all crumbled: all his resolve, his simple future of success and groupies. Just because Michael had turned up at Dave’s garage with those lion tawny eyes of his.

But the songs had already been finished then.

“So who’s the brains in the group?” O’Devil was asking. “It’s you, right?” He looked at Michael, who glanced at Jamie and Cal and coloured.

“No, we’re all… I mean, like he said. We make the songs together.”

Jamie winced at the lie, and of course O’Devil noticed. “I think you’ve got someone of a different opinion here,” he said, chuckling mirthlessly. “The thwarted guitarist, am I right? Handsome, but not just a pretty face?”

“Michael writes the lyrics,” Jamie declared with some vehemence. “But we make the music together.” As if saying it again and again could make it true.

“Sure you do,” O’Devil grinned. “I know about your history, you know. Your manager isn’t exactly a clam. So young Mr Vaughan here pens the lyrics, and Gardiner and McKenzie, you make the music. That’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. No, no, don’t object. Let’s just keep it that way. No need for the ex-turtle doves to spend any time together.” He laughed loudly against the wall of silence that was Pax. “But from now on you’ll have to convince me that you’re not up to anything naughty. No hanky-panky on stage, no going knocking on each other’s rooms in the middle of the night, no bloody make up. Okay?”

Not waiting for their meek nods, O’Devil stood and moved across the room. Three pairs of eyes followed him as he pressed a button on a VCR and sauntered back to his chair, pretending to adjust his suit while really glancing at Jamie and Michael, checking for reactions.

It was the promo video from the first leg of the tour. Tangled in sweaty sheets back at the apartment Jamie had once shared with his sister, Michael had told him how Cal had shown it to him in an effort to convince him of Jamie’s feelings. Now that Jamie watched their interplay in rising mortification, he could see how it would do the trick. In fact, he could see how Patrick had become suspicious in the first place.

God.

Seriously, God.

On-screen Jamie was flirting shamelessly with Michael at every turn. Each chord fired off towards stage left was accompanied by a come-hither look, a twist of the hips as if to mime another kind of thrust. The smiles, the coquettish shoulder-rolls, the tossing hair and batting lashes… It was a miracle they hadn’t been called out before. That the disgruntled thug in Leeds hadn’t bunched the two of them together and tossed them in the nearest trash can.

Find out more in The Road Taken, part 2 in the Pax Cymrica series!