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“Great,” Quentin said, his eyes snapping past each of their faces. “I think we have a good interview here.”
“We really need good sales for this new record,” Mark, the lead singer, began. “People don’t buy CDs like they used to, when you were in the business. It’s fucking tough to get by.”
“I’ve seen the sales,” Quentin said, his voice booming. “But you’re making it up in concert tickets, aren’t you? That Brooklyn crowd is probably as hot as ever, these days.”
“These fucking girls, man,” Connor, the guitarist, said. “Dude, you remember, what was it, ten years ago? When we were playing that show in Queens and you were on MDMA? You grabbed that girl in the front row, lifted her onto the stage, and just started making out with her in the middle of the song. You missed the second and third verses, and the chorus. But the band had your back, just improvising until you let her go.”
A mad smile stretched over Quentin’s face in memory. He remembered the stink of that girl, how she’d pressed her lips onto his and lifted her legs around his waist. That had been before so many things had changed in his life. That had been before he’d gotten “serious.”
“That was around when you got that tat. Of your girlfriend at the time, that model from Paris,” Connor said, leaning closer. As he did, Quentin could see how rough the years on the road had been to him, aging him horribly, and causing tight lines to form between his eyebrows. The Morning Stars hadn’t had to give up on the party. They hadn’t had to go home. And they were destroying themselves, becoming assholes in their mid-thirties who still did lines of coke before shows and hooked up with girls in their late teens.
“I still have it, of course,” Quentin said gruffly, lifting his bicep. He swept his suit jacket from his shoulders and rolled up his white button-up, revealing several black inks on his forearm, all the way up to the big-titted woman on his upper bicep. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t remember her name, now.”
“She probably doesn’t have those tits anymore, that’s for sure,” Mark said, laughing. “Good thing you got them inked to you forever. For the memories.”
“For the memories. That’s all I live for now, boys,” Quentin said, tipping back in his chair.
“Right. You’ve got that kid, now,” their drummer, Will, scoffed. “Cute little thing.”
“Yeah. Yeah, she definitely changed my life more than the others. That’s for sure,” Quentin said, snapping out of his reverie. He rolled his sleeve back down and slid his arms into his suit jacket, ready to send the boys home. “Well, thanks for this interview. Sure is nice to see you guys.”
He didn’t sound the least bit sincere, and he knew it. He swept his hand out and shook theirs, making momentary eye contact with each of the men before him. The men of his past; the men who’d picked him up from bathroom floors, coated in cocaine and other, unknown drugs, and plugged him up with alcohol and watched him make drunken mistake after drunken mistake.
“And that little intern we saw out in the main office—“ Connor said then, making deep eye contact with Quentin before snapping his eye in a wink. “Don’t suppose you have big plans for her?”
“Oh. Charlotte?” Quentin said, sounding blasé. “She’s a kid. You saw her.”
“I did,” Connor said, his words filled with meaning. “And I know exactly what the old Quentin would have done with her.”
The Morning Stars left, then, leaving Quentin to brood, with the blinds closing him off from the rest of the office. He sat back in his chair, knocking his feet up onto the desk and pressing the back of a pen against his lips. His mind raced back to an image of Charlotte, bending down to retrieve her notebook. His member pressed against his pant leg, becoming insistent.
God, that ass. The curvature of it, dipping out from beneath her little business dress. Her thin, stick-like legs had been reminiscent of any groupie from his former band days, ones that had wrapped around his waist countless times as he’d fucked them from above—almost never remembering their faces, nor their names. Seeing Charlotte out there had forced him through countless memories, gorgeous ones.
But no. God, no. He wasn’t that person anymore. He’d stopped with the drugs. He’d stopped with the sex addiction. He’d gotten married, briefly, and they’d had his daughter, Morgan, seven years before—when he’d been twenty-nine years old. Sure, he hadn’t been ready to have a kid back then. Half-drugged, out of his mind, he’d blasted into the hospital room to find his large-breasted model wife stretched out on the bed, holding onto that tiny infant. Her eyes had bled red with anger. “You missed the birth of your daughter,” she’d hissed, no longer seeing him as the amazing rock star on stage, the lead singer of Orpheus Arise. In that moment, he was just a small, bruised little man who wasn’t there when his wife and daughter needed him most.
