Killing the Angel in the House

“You’re going to fire me?” Tony pretends to be shocked.

“Yeah, you’re fired! You’re fucking fired!

“Or maybe we’ll get you up there singing, so I can just lay back and play guitar. He’s a good screamer,” she says, looking at Bevilacqua. “I’d like to get him up in front. Then you can be the gold digger, too. You can be sucking on gold.”

Before I leave, Armstrong shows me Tim Presley’s artwork for the album — several illustrations based on the twin motifs of dismembered women and razorblades. In one drawing, a tree bears leaves of razorblades; in another, a woman’s torso is hanging bloody from a tree’s limbs. “I gave him a lyric about a woman who was murdered in a park in Melbourne,” she says. “It was so horrible. And he came up with this. Isn’t it totally tits?

“Art isn’t dangerous anymore,” Armstrong declares. “I hardly ever see art that makes me go, ‘Holy shit!’ I want art to be dangerous again.”

On my way out the door, while I’m scarfing down a shrimp salad and avocado sandwich left over from the band’s lunch, Armstrong stops me. “Wait,” she demands. “One more thing. You’ve got to try this. We had butterscotch pudding last night, and it’s so fucking good.” She pulls a dish out of the refrigerator and hands me a spoon. I do what she says — I dig down for the crunchy pieces of butterscotch that have settled toward the bottom. She’s right; it’s excellent butterscotch pudding. I figure I haven’t eaten it since I was 12 or so, and the taste of home-cooked, lumpy butterscotch brings back a torrent of adolescent memories. As Armstrong insists I have a second, I marvel over the disorienting sensation of a woman two decades my junior pulling me into her confidence, involving me in one of those conspiracies girls have: shoes, boyfriends, butterscotch pudding. There’s still an angel in Brody Armstrong’s house.