She-Rox: A Rock & Roll Novel Read Free Page A

asked.
    “Five-nine-ish” Eddie said.
    “Good, good, and your exercise regime?”
    “Nonexistent.”
    “Well, that’s going to change.”
    After weigh in, Daphne walked Eddie downstairs to give her “the talk.” Eddie expected Daphne to walk her back to her room, but instead she turned the opposite direction at the bottom of the stairs and opened another door. Eddie was met with a small but complete home gym.
    After a ten-minute rundown on the apparatus, Daphne dove in. “My dear,” she said, “you are a beautiful and, no doubt, talented girl. That is why you made it here. There will be times when you may want to overeat due to stress, frustration, anger or boredom. You will have pressures from rude people, pushy fans, photographers, industry heads, travel, late nights, rehearsal, stress of live performing, interviews and little sleep.
    “There will be a smorgasbord of drugs offered to you at industry parties. These parties are considered business and need to be treated as such. Your behavior will be watched.”
    Eddie nodded.
    “Now, the house rules,” Daphne said. She took a deep breath, and began, “The only people allowed to stay overnight in this house are you four girls. This means no boyfriends, no one-night stands, no brothers from out of town. No stray dogs or cats, or musician friends who haven’t paid their rent and want to sack out on the couch. Do drugs of any kind and you are immediately out of the band. You come around here looking like a crack-head—you’re gone. Your image is everything to the Astral Agency.”
    Eddie let her hands slap onto her thighs and said, “Okay.”
    “The girls are all heading to band rehearsal after this. You might want to get a ride with Raven. She will show you where the band room is and can be very instrumental, shall we say, not only on the bass, but in helping you navigate the waters that are all things G-Force.”

    Getting into Raven’s Honda Element, she asked, “How’d it go with Daphne?”
    “I’m not sure,” Eddie said. “Was she a parole officer in her previous life?”
    “Astral Agency keeps her hangin’ around so she can see who we’re screwin’, if we’re boozin’, chowin’ down or gettin’ high. I don’t know about you, but I left my mother back in Mount Revelstoke.”
    “ Where? ”
    “It’s in Canada, about four hours west of Calgary,” Raven explained, watching the afternoon traffic.
    “Is that where you’re from, Canada? What brought you to Los Angeles?”
    “The sun for starters” she stated. “I had to get the hell out of the cold. I used to play in a band with my brother and his friends. We’d get booked all winter long at the ski resorts and I hated it.”
    “Why?”
    “Are you kidding? I was hauling my bass amp through blizzards in six feet of snow to play in some nasty bar. Sometimes the storms would get so bad that by the time we would get up on stage to play it was “ashtray night.”
    “Ashtray night?”
    “That’s when there is more ashtrays than people. The heavy snowfall would keep the skiers from drinking at the clubs, and Eddie, that’s a lot of snow. I would go into the bathroom to change from a puffer coat, flannel shirt, and heavy hiking boots into spiked heels, a skirt and freeze my sweet ass off.”
    “Why didn’t you just wear warmer clothes?”
    “Because the bar owner booked us by our band photo. They’d say ‘You can play here, but cha’ gotta bring her and she better look like that.’ Of course, I’d done my best Tina Turner impression at the shoot. I’d be setting up my bass amp all bundled up, and there’d be some wrinkly-faced bar owner, circling the stage, asking, ‘ Where’s the dress? I paid for a dress .’ Those clubs were full of nothing but unemployed hot-doggers still in their ski clothes.”
    “Raven L’Amour?” Eddie asked.
    “When I auditioned for the Katz, one of their conditions was that I couldn’t go by my real name.”
    “It goes well with the whole Kat