The Dodge pulled off the highway into a roadside restaurant, and Daniel Glass announced he needed the bathroom — which was a polite way of giving Alex and Hayden a few minutes alone.
He was a specimen of the standard white elite: suit, leather shoes, a bronze tan that came off a beach rather than a job site, a build kept in careful proportion, an unhurried manner, and eyes that read a room before he opened his mouth.
All the way from school Alex had answered him in hums and pleasantries and said essentially nothing.
“What is wrong with you?”
The two of them slid into a booth and Hayden jabbed a thumb toward the bathroom door.
“Last year SBK got bought by EMI. You know the number? Three hundred million dollars. Three hundred million. That man is somebody, and you don’t even understand what kind of door just opened for you. Don’t sulk at me.”
“Fuck you.”
Alex almost never swore.
This time it came out before he could stop it.
“You heard something through that door last week, didn’t you? Don’t tell me you didn’t. Because otherwise it would never have occurred to you to go fetch a major label and bring it to me.”
“Yeah. All right. I heard most of it through the door.”
Hayden confessed cheerfully.
“And Pablo’s position is the correct one. We have to bring in a big company to handle distribution or Joe is going to run the whole thing into a ditch. He doesn’t understand the modern record business.”
“I don’t care what he understands. No — wait. I think I need to make something clear to you.”
Alex laid it out flat and serious.
“You’re my agent. I’m your employer. There are certain things you don’t get to decide by yourself. The very least you could do is pick up a phone and ask me before you put a man in a car and drive him to my school. Think about what HE sees when he looks at me now. He sees a kid selling out his own side. And this isn’t about money, it’s about staying alive. You saw the people standing around outside Old Joe’s office. You saw what they were.”
Hayden went pale.
He had genuinely not thought about it from that direction.
“I’m sorry. I apologize, I do.”
He put his palms together.
“I still underestimate how dangerous the South Side is. But you have to understand my position too — it’s very hard for me to say no to Mr. Glass. You’re not my only artist. And if I’d called you first and you’d said no, what was I supposed to tell him?”
“Forget it.”
In truth Alex had laid the gravity on thicker than he felt it, purely to put a scare into the man; otherwise the agent would be making decisions for him for the rest of their working life and calling it initiative afterward.
“Your job right now is to get my copyright registration and my BMI membership finished, fast. Everything else—”
He saw Daniel coming back from the bathroom and dropped his voice.
“Everything else, later.”
“Is something wrong? Can I help?”
Daniel sat down across from Alex.
“I came to APLUS in good faith. Forget the album for a moment. I can sign you as an artist right now — a two- or three-year term, and whether you ever put out a record is entirely up to you. All you have to do is sign, and we pay you. It isn’t a fortune, understand. Thirty, forty thousand a year.”
Alex looked back at him sideways.
“Uh. That is, Mr. Glass—”
“Daniel is fine.”
“Daniel. My client doesn’t want to consider any business matters at the moment. Not until—” Hayden checked with Alex.
“May I?”
Alex nodded.
“Not until his BMI membership comes through.” Hayden turned back to Alex to add, “And the copyright will land any day now. That part I’ve already handled.”
“BMI?” Daniel looked mildly surprised.
He waved the waiter over and gestured for the other two to order first.
“Their pace has always been their pace.
Once it’s in the pipeline it takes two, three months.” Then, to Alex: “And on the strength of the thrift-shop song, you can’t seriously be worried about getting in?”
“He isn’t worried,” Hayden said, answering for him.
“My client is impatient.”
“Impatient. Ha.”
When the two of them had ordered, Daniel asked for something simple, then laid a ten-dollar bill on the table and asked the waiter to bring it back in coins.
“A Plus. You came up in a slum, correct? And forty thousand a year doesn’t move you a muscle — but a membership card can’t come fast enough. That tells me something. You don’t have a lot of faith in Lori’s album. That’s what the impatience is. And you’re right not to: if that record stalls out at a hundred thousand copies, your royalty comes to about five thousand dollars.”
“I’m used to being poor. And poor folks on the South Side have a natural mistrust of people like—” Alex pointed at him.
“—you.”
“I know. I know.”
Daniel smiled.
He collected the food and the coins from the waiter, carried the coins to the jukebox in the corner, fed them in, made his selections, and came back to his seat.
“Our time is extremely valuable. So I’m going to try to convince you as quickly as I can.”
Inside the jukebox a mechanical arm crawled out, selected a record, and lowered it with great ceremony.
It was an antique.
Out of it came a white voice hollering a greeting, a bass line that half of America could already hum, and a hook that was nothing but the title said over and over.
“A Plus, do you know why I didn’t take you to a nice restaurant and buy you a big meal? Why I picked a place like this? Because there’s a jukebox in it. Vanilla Ice. A white man. Our artist. His album won’t be in stores until the end of the year, but that single is already moving, and you can order it in any shop on any street in Chicago.”
Daniel talked while he ate.
“Do you know what your boss got wrong — Old Joe? He put everything he had on Lil Lori’s useless album. I made myself sit down and listen to every track on it, and I’m sorry, but apart from your thrift-shop song I couldn’t finish the other twelve. And do you know what Lori’s agent got wrong? He ran off to cut a deal with Warner. My God. Warner Records has a roster full of stars — how much of anything do you imagine they’re going to spend on a middling Black kid out of Chicago?”
“Recognize this one?
That is going to be a number-one single on the Hot 100.
The Wilson sisters and Chynna Phillips — three white girls, also ours.
Their album comes out in June.
Do you see the pattern?
SBK’s whole strategy has always been singles first, album second, once you’ve built momentum.
Which happens to line up exactly with your interests, A Plus.
On an album you take one percent.
On a single you take a tenth.
Give my company the release of Lori’s second record and I promise you, I will throw those other twelve songs in the garbage and press every chip I have onto the thrift-shop song.
I like the thrift shop.
The thrift shop is all I want.”
Alex listened and discovered, somewhere in the middle of it, that he had been almost entirely talked around.
Is this hypnosis?
Are the genuine article this strong?
“I’ll even sign a wager with you.”
Daniel struck while the iron was hot.
“You help me get to Old Joe and get a deal done, and on the first million singles, on top of the royalties you’re already owed, I’ll pay you an additional three percent.”
“At five dollars a single, three percent of a million copies is—” Hayden did the arithmetic in his head and swallowed.
“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars?”
“Correct. And if it never sells a million, I’ll pay you the hundred and fifty thousand anyway. You put in nothing. You just help me get the business done.” Daniel took out a checkbook, wrote in ten thousand dollars, and pushed it across the table under Alex’s nose.
“That’s my personal finder’s fee to you. All I need is a meeting with Old Joe arranged. The ten thousand is yours.”
Under the table, Alex’s fingers moved on their own.
“I have no way to make BMI do anything faster. But I can teach you to recognize the advantages you already have. I can even teach you how this country actually works. Because the truth is you can lean on BMI all by yourself, get them moving, and have that membership in your hand.”
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Five minutes later Alex borrowed Daniel’s brick of a phone and dialed his lawyer.
“Hey, Chuck. You got time? Come do me a favor — yes, now. The address is—” He gave it.
“Don’t worry about that part. You won’t be paid a dollar less than you’re worth.”