How to Kill a Rock Star by Tiffanie Debartolo Read Free Book Online Page A

twenty.
    I didn’t know what to say to that. “Mr. North, I real y want to thank—”
    “Cal me Terry. And don’t thank me. I didn’t hire you because Doug said you know your stuff, I hired you because your piece was smashing. I’ve known that guy since 1970 and I’ve never been able to get him to talk like that.” Terry was as an amiable but blunt man, mid-fifties, tal , with a head of bristly dark and tan hair like an Airedale.
    From behind me, I heard a woman’s voice, replete with sharp, hypercritical insinuation. “So, you’re Doug Blackman’s little friend .”
    Terry introduced me to Lucy Enfield. “If you want the good assignments you’l have to be nice to her,” he said, “even if she isn’t always nice to you.” Lucy Enfield was the creative director of the magazine.
    She had a reputation for being tough, and her obvious hau-teur, combined with her sharp, uptown style, told me she How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 4:59 PM Page 42
    4thought she was better than al the music geeks who worked beneath her.
    Lucy had long legs, tiny slits for eyes, and an ambushing smile. She made it a point to tel me she was the authority on the New York music scene and said, “If I don’t know who they are, they’re not worth listening to.”
    “Have you heard of Bananafish?” I asked, hoping my job would present me with an opportunity to help Michael.
    “No,” Lucy said. “But that’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard for a band. Who do they sound like?” I found it revealing that Lucy said who instead of what .
    Furthermore, Bananafish was not a dumb name for a band.
    And even if it was, the greatest bands in the world have the dumbest names.
    One glitch: I had no idea what Bananafish sounded like.
    I hadn’t heard them yet.
    “Radiohead,” I told Lucy. To my knowledge, Bananafish sounded nothing like Radiohead, but this seemed to be the thing to say if you wanted to impress a critic.
    Lucy looked momentarily intrigued. “Where do they play?”
    “A place cal ed Rings of Saturn, mostly.” As fast as I’d grabbed her, I lost her. “Eliza, Rings of Saturn is where bands go to die.”
    Terry told me to come back and see him at the end of the day, and from there I fol owed Lucy on a tour of the office, which could have been the headquarters of any gener-ic business and wasn’t nearly as hip as I had imagined.
    Further dampening my mood, Lucy repeated her earlier dig, presenting me to one of the senior editors as “Doug Blackman’s friend .”
    No matter that I’d only known the woman for fifteen minutes, I hated Lucy Enfield.
    “I hope you weren’t expecting a corner office with a view
of the park,” she said, coming to a stop at a partitioned cubicle to the left of a large room.
    My cubicle was identical to the ten or so other associate editors’ cubicles surrounding it. It contained a desk and chair, a computer, and one encouraging sign—a coffee mug with a photo of U2 circa The Joshua Tree that the last occupant must’ve left behind—only there was a cautionary chip in the mug, right in the middle of the Edge’s hat, like someone had pul ed a Wil iam Tel on him.
    Lucy pointed to a large stack of papers and two FOR
    PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY CDs on the desk. “Letters to the editor,” she said. “Weed through them, see if there’s anything worth printing. And the CDs need to be reviewed for the next issue.”
    I waited until Lucy walked away and then I sat down. It occurred to me that I might be in over my head, but I had to bury that, otherwise I would’ve started to cry. Or worse, run to Port Authority and hopped a bus back to deathland.
    With nothing to put away, I opened and closed al the drawers in the desk, booted up the computer, and spent the rest of the day listening to one of the CDs I’d been given to review. The disc was cal ed Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog-Flavored Water . In my humble opinion, it was crap, but I had to figure out how to say that using five hundred wel