Kings County - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

David Goodwillie is the author of the novels Kings County, American Subversive, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the memoir Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. Goodwillie has written for the New York Times, New York magazine, and Newsweek, among other publications. He has also been drafted to play professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and was an expert at Sotheby’s auction house. A graduate of Kenyon College, he lives in Brooklyn. 

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

Chapter One

They came in hot, the band and Audrey Benton, a raucous cocoon of color and sweat. Security up front, cutting into the crowd, splitting it, radios squawking, someone saying, “Just stay close.” But they couldn’t be closer. They were the Stones entering Studio 54. They were the Beatles on the Shea Stadium infield. They were four nervous kids from the Catskills, sticking tight to the girl who’d gotten them there. The club thrummed and pulsed. The band kept moving. Heads down, hair down, don’t let them really see you—just like Audrey had taught them.

Currents emanate outward, ripples become waves. In a room full of people looking for other people to look at, it was only natural to turn toward the commotion, the rock stars—for what else could they be, dressed like that? Audrey could hear the talking, people wondering who they were, who she was, all ink and tights and heels. Not model hot, so probably the real deal. They surged past the dance floor, past the DJ booth. Whistles and shouts, security throwing a shoulder, and then the crowd ebbed and they found themselves in a cordoned-off VIP area along a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. The space was divided into three raised seating platforms, each surrounded by linked velvet ropes. They were led to the one in the middle, where a man sat, elevated and alone, typing into a phone. He stood up when he saw them, pocketing the device. His name was Lucas Duff and he was the band’s new manager. This after-party had been his idea.

He greeted them in turn, Ben and Arthur, Easter and Gatesy. Audrey stepped up last and Lucas held his arms out wide. She submitted to the fleshy hug.

“Drinks!” Lucas declared. “They’re sending someone over.”

The four members of the Westfield Brothers peered around, a bit lost. If the theory behind roped-off seating areas was to promote privacy, it wasn’t working. People were looking over, still trying to place them.

“Check out the view,” Audrey said, pointing east across Manhattan, and for a moment everyone did. But their eyes were drawn to the lights beyond the lights, the city beyond the city, the borough where they lived.

“Looks small from up here,” Arthur Westfield said to Ben.

“I know.” The brothers collapsed onto a leather couch; Easter and Gatesy hovered behind them. Just like onstage, Audrey thought, eyeing a nearby chair.

“Come sit with us,” Ben said, moving to make room for her. And so she did, flopping down between the two brothers. There was safety in numbers.

The problem was Lucas. He’d been jittery at the show but now was seriously high—a fact so evident no one bothered to acknowledge it. He sat down and took his phone back out. What was so important that it couldn’t wait? It was almost one a.m.

The band members surveyed their new surroundings. It was the last place they wanted to be, this Manhattan club, fifteen years removed from the last time those two words, strung together, had held sway with the city’s creative class. But there’d been no question of not coming. Lucas had said it was important—the image and exposure. The relevance of the right place. He was, and had been for years, Columbia Records’ East Coast VP of A & R, and if he wanted to make a splash by having the after-party here, then Ben and Arthur weren’t about to say no. Besides, the Westfield Brothers deserved it. They’d just played Terminal 5, a bellwether venue for a band on the rise, and the sold-out show had come off without a hitch. Even Audrey thought so. Especially Audrey. Because she understood what could have gone wrong.

Audrey Benton had been the Westfield Brothers’ label rep—as well as their publicist, booker, manager, and greatest cheerleader—until two months prior, when Ben and Arthur had made the difficult decision to leave Whale Creek Records, the small, if influential, Brooklyn-based label where Audrey worked, for the (potentially) greener pastures of Columbia Records. The brothers had made the move with Audrey’s blessing, if not quite her full-throated enthusiasm. She had discovered the four of them (or three of them: Gatesy had come later) years before, playing an open mic in Gowanus, and they’d been central to one another’s lives ever since. So much so that after intense lobbying from Ben and Arthur, Audrey had promised to join them tonight—however bittersweet it might be. Even Lucas had approved. “I guess chicks never hurt at a club,” he’d said after Ben and Arthur added her name to the guest list. It was his eloquent way of saying he understood. Everyone respected Audrey Benton—even the competition.

Now the brothers slumped, exhausted, into the cushions on either side of her. No one knew what would happen next. Lucas would put his phone down or a waitress would arrive. It didn’t matter. Everything was a novelty, so nothing was. A Top 40 song came on and Ben wondered aloud who sang it.

“Katy Perry,” Audrey said.

“How do you know that?”

“How do you not?”

Audrey enjoyed playing the generalist in a world of connoisseurs, but not being a snob was different from not knowing music, and her true tastes were redoubtable—the Westfield Brothers being Exhibit A. At least the other clubgoers had stopped staring. These were people for whom recognition was an ethic, and a careful study of the band had revealed no familiar faces. It was true that the Westfield Brothers had never had a radio hit. Certainly, most people in this room had never heard of them. But most people in this room weren’t from Brooklyn, where the band was indie royalty—the kings of Kings County. Walking through South Williamsburg with Ben or Arthur (or Audrey, for that matter) was like walking through the Mojave with extra water; everyone was suddenly a friend. Except it was more genuine than that.

The noise was grating. Ben, the older, stockier Westfield, searched his pockets for the earplugs he’d worn onstage, while his whippet-thin brother stared quizzically at Lucas. “So where’s Theo?” Ben asked Audrey.

“He really wanted to come, but his boss is in from LA and he has to prepare for their meeting tomorrow,” Audrey said. “I left his name downstairs but I doubt he’ll make it.”

The brothers nodded. Though they’d played there twice now, Los Angeles remained a mystical place. They probed no further.

“It’s too bad,” she continued. “He’d have loved the show.”

“Well, he’d hate it here,” Arthur said, nodding at Lucas. “What the fuck is he—”

“Easy,” Ben warned.

“No, seriously. This is bullshit. Hey, Lucas!”

“Hold on,” the label man said, his thumbs jabbing at his phone. “Bit of a crisis. One of our employees has gone missing.”

Arthur shook his head. Ben rubbed his. This was the music business. People went missing all the time. Audrey had warned them about Lucas. He was abrupt and abrasive and full of contradictions—he didn’t, for instance, drink alcohol—but Audrey believed his bombast cloaked great talent and a large heart. She didn’t know him well—they swam at different ends of the same pool—but she knew he’d earned his...