“True,” I say, starting to see the pieces of Brando come together. “You can’t.”
He shrugs. “I started hanging out in places I could hear music. Snuck into clubs, sat outside bars. Sometimes I’d just stop outside someone’s house if they had the radio on loud enough.”
Brando laughs at the recollection.
“Then something clicked. I realized that these songs weren’t just some alien thing that came from another planet, but that you could actually make music. Kids rapping on street corners, dreadlocked guys on the subway banging on drums. It was expressive, moving, powerful. And it made me feel powerful.”
Brando looks at me, a little embarrassed.
“I loved music, but I knew I couldn’t make it. That wasn’t where my strengths were. I was a smart-talker, a connection-maker – a hustler. I could see things. Make things happen. That’s what I was good at. I put on some showcases, networked like hell, and then started a small label, got a few local acts together. Persuaded people to give us some studio time, brought people together I thought would work. It was good. Underground, nothing major – but good.”
He drops his gaze to the alleyway a hundred feet below us.
“Then I met Lexi, and I knew it could be something huge. She used to make these tapes of her just humming melodies, and you’d have sworn they were classics. She wrote songs like that, just singing them into a cheap tape deck. And her voice was…mind-blowing. She was working in a fast food joint at the time, just doing the music for fun, for the love of it. It was me who convinced her it could be something more.
“I dropped everything. Gave the label over to some associates to handle, forgot all about the hustling, and from then on, it was all Lexi. I did everything for her.”
“You fell in love with her?” I ask, gently.
Brando nods. “How could I not? She was amazing. We moved into some shitty apartment in the Bronx. I started doing everything I could to get her demos together, get her in front of the people who mattered. But I was jealous, possessive, a control freak. Lexi, on the other hand, liked to party. We argued about everything, money, the music, us. But we knew we needed each other.
“Things started moving, and we both came to LA. I didn’t know anybody here, but I knew how to make friends fast, how to move in the right circles. It was coming together. I had the songs, had the connections. I got a job at Majestic Records. Everything was lined up.”
Brando smiles widely, but it’s a macabre smile, a smile that he’s putting on to stop the other emotions from coming out.
“And just when we were about to do it, about to make it big, the labels already making offers, the studio time already starting, the songs already there - Lexi left.”
He turns to me and stares, as if I might have an answer, might be able to explain why, or how. I shake my head slowly, in disbelief and sympathy.
“How? Why?”
“I asked myself that same question every day for the past three years,” he says. “Maybe I’d been so focused on her career, I forgot about her. Maybe I underestimated how much I hurt her; how much she hated me. Maybe we never had the same ambition all along. She disappeared for a week. I found out through somebody at the label that she’d signed with Davis. He’d promised her a number one record, mega-star status. She even cheated on me just to make sure I got the message – some pretty-boy from Davis’ label who I know she never even liked.”
“Brando…”
“It’s alright. I fucked the pain away, pretty much. Went out every night, making up for lost time. Became somebody else, in order to survive. Still a hustler, but even more so. If I stopped to think it would only hurt, so I kept moving – only faster. I started to treat women the way I treated my acts. I cared for them, had fun with them, gave them what they wanted, and took my share of that. But I didn’t get attached. Didn’t get emotionally involved. In that sense, I moved on. Or at least, I thought I had, until she showed up again.”
It takes a second for me to piece it all together.
“So that’s what you guys were doing at the open mic I played?”
“Yeah.”
We turn toward LA, the city that gave us our dreams, and then took them away.
I start laughing. It’s slow at first, but it gets crazier and crazier. I try to stop, covering my mouth, but the more I do, the more maniacal it gets. Brando watches me with confusion, until he starts breaking out himself. For a full minute, we howl like schoolkids, doubled over and clutching our stomachs.
“We are quite a pair!” I say, laughing harder.
“Two abandoned strays!” Brando shouts into the night. “Coming for revenge!”
“You hear that, LA?!”
“We’re coming!”
Chapter 13
Brando