He nods. “We were all in the same dorm freshman year. I started hanging with Kenny, then met Tarak and Hannah—sorry, Ripper and Hannah. Even when they were just messing around, I knew they had something special. I had a front-row seat to them coming up.”
“That kind of loyalty is rare these days.”
Bowie looks across the stage. “Sometimes life just puts you where you’re meant to be, you know? It was never a question, following them on the road. Those were wild times in the beginning. Just the five of us, figuring shit out.”
The five of them . . . “You mean the four of you and their old manager?”
He gives me a sad smile. “Ginny. She was the glue. She knew how to handle each of them.”
I let the words sink in for a minute, then ask, “And she went to the same college?”
Bowie nods. “Ginny followed Hannah everywhere. They were only a year apart. I’ve never met two closer people.” He lifts his chin at Hannah, who’s busy demonstrating something to Ripper. “Right after Ginny died, she disappeared. We found her a couple days later on the beach where they used to surf. Didn’t look like she’d slept. Said she was waiting for Ginny to come home.”
I clear my throat. “Do you mind telling me what happened to her? Ginny, I mean.” It was strange how little I’d found about her on the internet.
“She drowned,” Bowie says, so matter-of-factly I can tell it takes effort. “One of those freak things. It was right after we started touring, about ten months ago. We got a weekend off and Ginny went home to visit her parents. Went out in the morning to surf. They think she hit her head on her board, then got caught in a rip current, because they found her pretty far down the shore.”
“Shit. Her poor parents.”
Bowie gives me a strange look. “Uh, yeah.” Onstage, the band is starting to put the pieces together on “Family Fruit,” Hannah’s voice carrying, Kenny and Ripper layering in.
“It’s been bad around here since she died,” Bowie admits. “It was almost a relief when Hannah quit. Like, the shoe had finally dropped, you know?” He shoots me a smile. “But then ‘Six Feet Under’ went viral. What’s the count now?”
“We’re at twenty-two million views.”
He nods at the stage. “It’s a good song. But she sells it.”
I watch Hannah sing a line, then sing it again, testing a cadence shift. “I know.”
He turns to me. “Hey, between us, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about—”
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket. I pull it out, then slap Bowie on the shoulder. “Sorry, man, I have to take this. It’s Roger.”
As I walk swiftly away from the stage, into the bowels of the venue, he calls out, “Tell him you met a great tour manager named Bowman Jericho who he should hire for other gigs!”
I wave, kick open the door to the greenroom, and find it empty. Only then do I answer. “Roger, hi.”
“Theodore.” Roger’s voice is booming, like always. “My favorite viral sensation. Congrats on blowing our view predictions out of the water.”
I duck my head around the corner to make sure I’m truly alone. “Sir, I can’t take credit. It was all the Saints.”
“Pshh.” I can picture Roger shaking his head. He’s in his fifties, but looks eternally thirty-eight. If you can imagine theideaof Hollywood manifesting into a living, breathing person, that’s him: his suits are so slick, his shoes so shiny, his hair so perfectly coiffed that the first time I met him, it took me a while to register he was real and not a walking caricature. He’s the undisputed king of the music industry, at least on the label side. A living legend, a wheeler and dealer of the highest order. When I started at Manifest right after college, my shiny Dartmouth degree wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on to the guys with decades of road-tested experience. After the requisite mailroom stint, I was given the crappiest assignments no one else wanted, the bands we were planning to cut loose. But one by one, I sorted their issues, squeezed records out of them, and sent them off with happy memories. A few of those records had even been damn good and sold well. When I started to get a reputation as a problem solver, I’d also gotten Roger’s attention.
“Always take credit,” he tells me now. “That’s rule number one. Hey, I’m calling with more good news. We’re still gettingflooded with calls to book the Saints—they’re a trending sound on TikTok now, whatever the fuck that means.”
I glance at the dressing room mirror. I’m glowing.
“I’m adding more shows,” Roger says. “We’re going to make this minitour a midi.”
In the mirror, my smile drops. “But they need time to record, Roger. We’re trying to get them to deliver their last album, remember?”
“The Saints are hot right now, so people will shell out to see them. Those same people might not care in however many months it takes them to record. Hell, they might not care in the next twenty minutes. Speaking of which,” he says suddenly. “You gotten Hannah under control yet?”
My first thought isHave youmetHannah?but instead I say, “Roger, you could’ve warned me the dead manager I was replacing was her best friend from college.”
“Eh. It’s hard to keep track of who likes who and who’s sleeping with who and whatever else.”
“Well,” I say carefully, “Hannah’s probably one of the most troubled musicians I’ve ever worked with.”
