Page 33 of Your Rhythm
Shayla meets us outside the building with an expression like a storm cloud.
“Congratulations, boys,” she says caustically, as JP jogs up after parking The Chick Magnet. “You’ve made the news.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
She hands me her ever-present tablet and I look down to see it open to an article on a tabloid site. The headline reads, ‘Sherbrooke Station, Montreal Sensation: Are They Ready for Fame?’
Underneath there’s a picture of Ace outside the pub we were at last night, puking into a trash can.
“Shayla, come on,” I plead. I pass the tablet off to the guys. “This is some stupid gossip site nobody even reads. You know as well as I do we’re not big enough for shit like this to matter yet.”
“This only went up three hours ago, and your fans have already been tweeting it and posting it at all over your Facebook page,” she answers flatly. “And that’s just one article. The concert reviews weren’t great. I’ve had the Atlas PR team jumping down my throat, asking me to explain myself. They’re saying I don’t know how to manage you. This is getting bad, guys.”
“Jesus, Matt.” Cole looks up from the article. “You hired a hooker?”
“What?” I grab the tablet out of his hands and scroll down. There’s a photo of me and Kay in the lobby, her face obscured by her scarf as security guards swarm around her. I zoom in on the text:
Matthew Pearson, Sherbrooke Station’s charismatic drummer, was seen entering the hotel lobby with an unidentified woman shortly after 9AM. It appears the man fellow band member Jean-Paul Bouchard-Guindon has described as, “just a straight up, all around good guy,” might be anything but. Hotel security surrounded Pearson’s companion within seconds of her arrival in the lobby as she attempted to conceal herself. She was later seen being escorted from the building by a guard. An exclusive source within the hotel staff has suggested Pearson may have been engaged with an escort.
“The fuck?” I roar. “Security showed up because of thejournalists, and they’re saying Kay is ahooker?”
“I knew you were banging her!” JP crows.
“We arenotbanging, and this isnotthe time!”
Shayla stares us all down. “Agreed. Now is not the time for any of this. I don’t know what we’re walking into right now, but brace yourselves, because it isn’t going to be pretty.”
With that, she turns and pushes through the revolving glass doors, and we follow after her into the chrome and concrete lobby of Atlas Records. Weird, giant lights that look like UFOs are suspended over us, making everything blindingly bright as we cross over to the elevators.
Shayla leads us to a room filled with a few classy grey couches and steel tables, the floor to ceiling windows giving a view of the slush-filled streets in Montreal’s downtown core. None of us actually sit, choosing instead to lean against the couch arms or the walls.
A few tense minutes tick by before a guy in a button-down I recognize from a few of our other meetings shows up.
“Sherbrooke Station, Sherbrooke Station,” he chimes. “What are we you going to do with you boys?”
We all just shift on our feet, arms crossed.
“Well sit down, why don’t you?” He takes a seat on one of the couches and we grudgingly follow suit. “In case you don’t remember, I’m David Lee. I work with the in-house PR team here at Atlas. First off, I just want to say congratulations, guys. Well done!”
I do a double-take. David looks around at us with a huge smile on his face, and starts laughing so hard he actually slaps his knee when he sees how confused we all look.
“You’ve got your first scandal already!” he exclaims after getting himself under control. “It takes some peopleyearsto make the kind of waves you’re making. By all standards, no one should even care what you’re doing outside of your shows yet. That tabloid story just dropped today and they’re already talking about you on the radio. We couldn’t have done this better if we’d planned it.”
Shayla leans forward. “So you’re saying this is a...good thing?”
David squints at her like he’s just noticed she’s in the room. “I’m sorry, you are?”
“I’m their manager, Shayla McDougal. We’ve met. Several times.”
“Right,” he says breezily, “the manager. Anyways, yes, luckily for us all this turned out to be a good thing, but just because we couldn’t have done it better ourselves, doesn’t mean we wish we hadn’t. Things can get ugly quick in the PR world, and we really don’t want you guys facing the snake pit on your own.”
“Snake pit?” Shayla repeats.
“It’s what we call the press. They’re vipers, every single one of them.” The sudden hardness in his voice surprises me. “They’re going to take every chance they can get to tear you to pieces, which is why we’ll be scheduling all of your media engagements from now on. The transitional period mentioned in your contract is ending and we’ll be handling any new contact you have with the press. We’ve come up with a strategy to maximize on the momentum this tabloid story is building and we’d like you to stick to it.”
“What kind of strategy, exactly?” I ask him.
“Glad you asked, Pat. Our—”
