I can see Mark Sandman sitting at the bar, just like almost every other time I’ve come in here. He isn’t the most gorgeous guy, nor is he the best singer or songwriter or guitar player, so I can’t say exactly why he’s the coolest guy in the world, but he is. I stopped trying to chat him up a long time ago, figuring I’d rather he think of me as the most annoying chick who at least knew enough to stop bugging him instead of as the annoying chick who was bugging him all the time. I haven’t said more than an across-the-room “hey” to him in years. But tonight, I actually have something to talk about.

I get up. “So,” I say, when I’m right up next to him.

“So,” says Mark.

“I’ve been talking to your old manager,” I say, trying to speak slowly, like he does, but it’s coming out fast anyway.

“Really,” says Mark.

“Randy Sway,” I say.

Mark looks at me with his I’m-seeing-right-through-you eyes. “Ah, my good friend Mr. Sway,” he says and takes a drag from his cigarette.

“Yeah,” I say nonchalantly, as if Mark’s the one who brought it up. “I’m talking to a bunch of different people,” I can’t help but continue, just in case Mark doesn’t know about my newfound rock-star-to-be status. “So I was wondering what you think about him, you know, as a manager.”

Mark grins. “So you’re talkin’ to Randy,” he says, raising his eyebrows.

My heart is pounding. Finally.

“I have six words for you,” says Mark. He ticks them off on the fingers of his nonsmoking hand. “Hard. To. Get. On. The.” He puts the cigarette in his mouth and sticks out his thumb. “Phone,” he says. Then he takes the cigarette out of his mouth.

I return to my table and sit down, staring at Mark’s back.

...

“Jennifer Trynin,” says a man with 70s-style brown hair and a nice smile. He pulls a chair over from another table and sits down. “Your record is awesome.” He’s wearing an upscale army-type jacket, tan pants, and sneakers. He says he’s from Warner Bros.

“I hear everything’s all fucked up there,” I say.

He smiles. “Everything is not all fucked up, as you put it,” he says. “We’re just going through a little reorganization.”

From what Neil’s told me, the two guys who’ve been running Warner Bros. forever — Mo-and-Lenny, he calls them, like they’re one person — are being forced out. Neil’s told me how beloved they are in the industry, and how he wants to wait a few weeks before I go out to L.A. for a meeting there because he wants Danny Goldberg to be “in place.”

The Warner Bros. guy tells me how he used to be in marketing, but since joining up with The Bunny, he’s become the general manager in the new regime.

“So you’re like a head honcho?”

“Basically,” he says.

Head Honcho tells me I have two choices: I either sign to Warner Bros. as an artist, or he’s going to hire me in the marketing department because he thinks I’m a marketing genius. Then he laughs. Then he says how sorry Lola is that she couldn’t make it tonight, how he hopes he’ll do in her stead, and how he’s feeling a little whacked because he just flew in from L.A.

“And boy are your arms tired,” I say.

Head Honcho smiles at me. “I’ve heard about you,” he says, and excuses himself to make a call. He gets up and goes to the bar where he stops and claps some red-haired guy on the back. Then the red-haired guy turns toward me, waves, smiles his big smile, and begins walking over.

Well well well. If it isn’t my old pal, Howdy Doody.

“Jen!” he says when he gets to my table, bending down for a hug, or maybe a hug and a kiss, but I turn my head and end up with a peck on the neck.

We untangle.

Howdy Doody sits down across from me. “How wild is this? My favorite record of the year and you made it! Guy’s girlfriend!”

"I’m kinda trying to keep the 'Guy’s girlfriend' thing on the down low for right now, okay?” I say.

I’ve met Howdy Doody a number of times over the years because he used to manage Skivvy back when Guy was working with them. I remember sitting at this very table with Howdy Doody a couple years ago. Three times I asked him to pass me my beer, before I finally reached over and snagged it myself. But these days, as Howdy Doody explains, he’s at Warner Bros., working as a product manager — someone responsible for shepherding records through the production stage after they’ve been recorded.