Stone: I’ll repeat: I like her, and not just because I saw near-naked pictures of her when I was sixteen. She’s ballsy.
Axel: She’s Miller’s daughter, and he was a good dude.
Neal: The only drawback is that she doesn’t know the music business.
Axel: I think she really wants to be our agent? I don’t know why? We’re terrible.
Denver: She doesn’t know the business, but we do. And she seems willing to learn.
Neal: She’s going to have a hard time being taken seriously. This business is a boys’ club.
Stone: Screw that, now I really want to hire her.
Axel: Agree. I’m always down to fuck up the status quo a bit.
Denver: I mean, we’re a rock band. We’re supposed to find some banker type? Forget it.
Neal: She already got glitter bombed on our behalf, and she didn’t quit. I say she’s in.
Denver: Fine. We have a new agent. Let’s try not to fuck this up.
* * *
Axel
William Hale wasn’tmuch like I’d thought he would be. The few photos of him online showed a guy wearing a custom suit, like a millionaire should. His hair was a little long in the pictures, worn tied back. But in the photos he looked exactly like his bio said he was: a middle-class kid who got rich starting companies and selling them, who now worked for a venture capital company in New York. I assumed he’d be a corporate type, cocky, soft, and kind of an asshole.
He wasn’t wearing a suit in this meeting. He was wearing jeans, a hoodie with a jean jacket over it, and Chucks. He’d cut his hair shorter and was clean-shaven. Sienna said he was in his thirties, but today he looked more like a college kid. He even had his phone sitting in front of him on the table, as if he wished he could pick it up.
He’d come to the meeting alone, no lawyers or managers in sight, which was weird. We’d brought Angie, who had tried to drill into our stupid brains on the way over that she should do all the talking.
“This meeting is somewhat overdue,” Angie was saying. We’d met with her a few times by now, and we’d filled her in on everything she needed to know. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Hale, but we’re all unsure of why there had to be so much secrecy until today.”
Hale looked surprised, then uncomfortable. “Call me Will,” he said. “As for the secrecy, I don’t know. I didn’t want you guys to say no to the tour if you knew who I was.” He shrugged. “It just seemed like the best idea.”
My bandmates and I shared a bemused look. “Why would they say no if they knew who you were?” Angie asked.
“Why?” Hale frowned, rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not really a music guy. Not usually. I’m not a big name in the business. I guess I figured you wouldn’t trust me.”
“You’re right,” Stone said. “We don’t trust you.”
Hale glanced at Stone, then looked away again. “Yeah, I know.”
“You brought in a journalist, then tried to get rid of her,” Stone said. He was pissed off about Sienna.
“I thought you all hated her!” Hale lifted his hands in exasperation. “I thought she was a good idea in the beginning, but you all wanted her gone. I couldn’t fire her because I’d made an agreement with the magazine, but I thought she would quit.” He looked around at us. “That’s what you all wanted, wasn’t it?”
We glanced at each other again. Hale wasn’t wrong—we allhadwanted Sienna gone in the beginning. We just hadn’t known that anyone cared what we wanted, least of all Hale.
We’d expected someone sinister, a cold manipulator type. This guy, with his jean jacket and his lost expression? This guy was not that.
“We changed our minds,” I explained to him. “Musicians do that a lot.”
“Well, she found out who I was anyway,” Hale said, “so I guess you got something you wanted.”
“Mr. Hale,” Angie cut in. “The band is really grateful for everything you’ve done. They feel—”
“Let’s cut the shit,” Denver said. He ignored Angie’s incensed look. “What’s the deal with you, man? Why would you want to finance our tour? You can’t have made money at it.”