Eric was a sincere man.
It never occurred to him to hold anything back.
He taught it the way a master teaches an apprentice, from the very beginning.
“Say you’ve picked your target. You walk straight over and you go straight at her. You don’t pay much attention to the people standing around her.”
“What if she’s tucked under her boyfriend’s arm?” Old Joe’s boasting had made a deep impression on Alex.
Eric smiled.
“You weren’t planning to walk up and tell her you want a one-night thing, were you? That’s much too direct. Here’s how you do it. You act like you’re looking for her. Like: ‘You’re — uh — ‘” He knew the girl he had in mind but couldn’t produce her name, no matter how hard he dug for it.
“And right about there, she’ll introduce herself. ‘I’m so-and-so.’ Right?”
“Right.” Alex ran the scene in his head.
Nothing wrong with it so far.
“Yes, yes, yes! I know you! Carl told me about you,” Eric said.
“Carl works. Al works. Point is, just drop a name the two of you might both know. If the boyfriend’s standing right there, drop a girl’s name instead, something generic — Jenny, Mary.”
“Mm. And then.”
“Then you say: Carl says you’ve got real artistic talent. Or that you sing well.” Eric produced a business card.
“And that’s when you introduce yourself. You point across the street at the Old Joe Music sign and you say, I’m with the label over there, you want to come cut a test vocal? And if she doesn’t believe you, you hand her the card.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Then you wait. About a third of them come with me right then. Another third come within a few minutes to half an hour. And the last third take the card and call me in a couple of days.”
“So that’s a hundred percent success rate!”
“About. The ones who call don’t always show, so call it eighty, ninety percent.”
“Don’t the boyfriends and the friends try to talk them out of it?”
“Idiot. The average girl can’t say no to that. It’s only a test vocal, it’s nothing. And what if it’s a real chance? You wouldn’t grab it? If a girlfriend argues against it, she reads it as jealousy. If the boyfriend argues, she reads it as a man being possessive. So even the ones who won’t come with me right then will find a way to get around the boyfriend and the friends and call me later.”
“But what if the friends and the boyfriend insist on coming up to the studio with her?”
“Then Carl earns his keep. He shuts the hangers-on out at the door. Which is why you make sure to stay on Carl’s good side. Everybody else here is easy to talk to.”
“Mm.” Alex thought back to the first time he’d met Carl.
The tattoos covering the man’s face were, admittedly, a powerful deterrent.
“And then?”
“Hah.” Eric grinned nastily.
“Once she’s up here, it gets easier.” He sat down on the table across from Alex.
“First move.
Get her sitting down and talking.
Say she’s sitting where you’re sitting.
I sit up on the table like this, and I make small talk, and I let this—” he pointed to his inner thigh, “—sit right in her line of sight.”
“Mm.” Alex observed that Eric’s crotch was in fact directly in his line of sight, and that the man had deliberately let his knees fall open.
“That’s the oldest suggestion in the trade. White guys have been running it for a few hundred years. Simple and it works.” Eric passed the blame along cheerfully.
“Meanwhile, you talk yourself up. Tell her what you can do for her, how you’ll take her from here to famous, how you’ll cut her a single, an album. Whatever. With a girl and her star dream, you can’t dangle too much.”
“Do they bite?”
“Some of them. Some of them will put a hand on my leg all on their own, heh heh heh.” Eric stroked his own thigh and his smile got worse.
“And her boyfriend might still be waiting downstairs while she does it. But the ones who come at you like that generally aren’t much. The hard ones are the ones who genuinely don’t catch a hint, or who pretend they don’t.”
“Go on. Focus on the hard part.”
“Next step is you record the song. You’ve got to give a person a little sugar. Get her in the booth, let her sing one all the way through, and let it be good.” Eric got up and walked over to the mixing board.
“Then, after she’s done, you play her the raw vocal and the mixed version back to back. It’s like plastic surgery for a girl. You’re showing her you have the power to make her voice beautiful, and the feeling that gives her is about the same as if you’d made her face beautiful. Trust me. A lot of girls get wet standing right there.”
“It works that well? Maybe I need to learn more about mixing,” Alex thought.
“And then I put her in front of the board and let her try it herself. Hands-on instruction. And while she’s playing with the faders like it’s a video game, I can come up behind her, put my arms around her, gentle, breathe in her ear, say a few things designed to get her going, and then you’re off—” Eric embraced a volume of empty air and performed it in complete earnest. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“And if she still says no?”
“Then out comes the standing weapon.” Eric fetched the Chivas Regal out of the liquor cabinet — old Morgan’s favorite.
“Want something to drink after you sing? Want a glass to celebrate now that it’s on tape? I fill this with cheap brandy and vodka. Goes to the head fast! Of course, I’m a man with limits. I don’t drug anybody.”
Standing weapon.
Poor old Morgan.
“Naturally I can’t pour too much either. Things get sloppy when she’s spinning.” Eric put the bottle back.
“And if you still can’t get there?”
“Then there’s nothing to be done. Half-resisting, half-going-along, fine. A clear no, and I have to let her walk. I’m—”
“A man with limits.”
“That’s right, hold the line. Otherwise things go wrong in a hurry.”
“But—” something still bothered Alex.
“If you never make good on any of it afterward, doesn’t that come back on you? A lot of girls aren’t going to just let it go, are they? Especially when you’ve promised them a single and a career.”
“Please. I’m a little mixing engineer. What are they going to do to me?” Eric went abruptly slack and let himself fall back onto the couch.
“Don’t worry about it. Most girls are practical people too. Once she works out that I’m actually a nobody, she’s not going to waste much more of her time on me.”
“So a nobody doesn’t get hounded. What about a somebody? Lil Lori, for instance,” Alex said.
“Completely different animal. With Lori, the girls will never let go. A while after his album drops, he’s going to have to start defending himself against the ones who are a little too enthusiastic and have a plan. And the same goes for you, by the way. That thrift store song you wrote is really good. Once those girls figure out you’re the guy who can write words and music, believe me, you’ll have a hell of a time getting rid of them.”
“You’ve been talking for an hour, and the punchline is that none of it applies to me?” Alex said, irritated, and put his pen and paper back in his briefcase.
Eric didn’t answer this time.
A few seconds later, a high, ragged snore rose from the couch.