Too Weird for Ziggy Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re paralyzed and you’re watching it all going on and you know exactly what is going to happen to you but you can’t move, there’s not a fucking thing you can do.”
    The customs man rolls the numbers back around on the combination lock.
    â€œWell, there you go then. And give my best to your old man. Spike Mattock, would you believe it? One of us made it. Bloody fucking marvelous, isn’t it? It makes you feel proud. Dawn and the girls are going to get a real kick out of this when I tell them.” He lifts the case down onto the floor.
    â€œCould I have your autograph?”

A HAPPY ENDING

    â€œFamous for fifteen minutes?” The head of A&R was expounding into the speakerphone, something that he very much liked to do. “Fuck that, man. Everyone’s gonna have their own fucking
TV
channel.” Behind his back they called him BB, short for Buddha Boy, because he was young and soft and fat and had a sweet, sly smile on his baby face like he could bring you back in your next life as a prince or a peanut as soon as look at you. Which, musicbizly speaking, he could, that being the A&R man’s job. Smiling benignly at the present beneficiary of his divine intervention, the Comeback Artist du jour, who was sitting upright in his chair on the other side of the enormous desk, BB leaned back in his leather swivel chair, feet on the desk-edge, swaying his hips from side to side to some private rhythm, like a fat housewife at the gym.
    Cal West’s dark suit, pale face, hands folded precisely in his lap, made him look more like an undertaker than a rockstar poised for a second go. He was fifty years old and looked it, except for his anxious little small-child-dropped-off-at-the-school-gates eyes. His fingers were troubling him. They felt wet and sticky, like seawater. He watched BB’s hips swish forward and back like waves and a surge of seasickness rose in his throat.
    There he was again—his brother, in the corner of the room, slumped up against the life-sized Springsteen promo cardboard cutout with the stars-and-stripes bandanna in thejeans back pocket. He tried looking away, but he could still see him out of the corner of his eye—grotesquely swollen, the color of cold hamburger grease, sprinkled with sand, the top part of his torso leaning out of the black body bag at an unnatural angle. His brother winked and gave him the finger.
    Cal spun around, looking for his shrink, but of course he wasn’t there, this was a Cal Alone Day. He tightened his grip on his fingers, which were slithering about in his lap like squids, and focused for equilibrium on a platinum album on the wall. He tried to picture what David Letterman would do. David Letterman would tug on his cuffs, relax back in his chair, drape his arm across the armrest, and smile inanely. Which is what Cal did.
    He jumped as the door behind him opened. “Later, gotta go,” BB said to the speakerphone. “Joel. My man. Come in.” He gestured a man into his office. “We were just talking about you.” Joel was a record producer, trim, tanned, of indeterminate age, with an ’80s gold satin jacket and a ’90s shaved head and goatee. He strode up to BB, heartily swatted his legs off the desk, and bent down and gave him a bear hug. “Looking good, man. How ya doin’!”
    â€œI’m doin’. Joel, meet Cal. Cal, Joel. Like I’ve been explaining to Cal, I’m putting you guys together on this project.”
    Joel strode over, clasped Cal on the shoulder, and perched on the corner of the desk, blocking the cardboard Springsteen from view. Cal tried to peer around him but couldn’t see anything.
    â€œMan, I’m your biggest fan. Numero uno. I’ve listened to your tape, and there’s some wicked shit on there. ‘The Sea Sighs,’ ‘Dirty Orange Sky’—they’re fucking ace,man. And ‘The Old Man and the Sea’—that