1Way Back WhenJune 7, 1997Jace Randolph had to figure out what she was going to do before the crowd at the Artemis Club started lobbing beer bottles at one another. At 12:48 a.m. on a balmy Detroit summer night, it was like a boiler room inside the club, and the musicians, staff, and standing-room-only ticketholders had been waiting way too long for headliner Paloma Doralle to get her ass onstage and start her set. As music booker for the venue, it was Jace’s responsibility to know where Paloma was, and, unfortunately, she had no f***ing idea.
Jace collared Jerome, Paloma’s bassist, in the wings. “When’s the last time you heard from her?” she yelled over the throb of the music coming from the PA system.
“This afternoon,” Jerome yelled back.
“This afternoon,” Jace repeated as calmly as she could. “And at that time, she knew she was booked for midnight. Tonight.”
Jerome nodded. “She said she’d meet us here. She wanted to go record shopping first.”
Jace’s stomach dropped. No record stores would be open at this hour. Had something happened to her—a car accident, or worse? “She had the map I gave you, right? She knew how to get here?”
The bassist shot her a sardonic smirk. “As far as I know.” He pointed to Richie, the drummer, who was staring at a point on the floor backstage and twirling his sticks over and over through his fingers. “I mean,
we got here, so . . .” As Jace turned to leave the stage, Jerome caught her arm. “Hey, if she doesn’t show up, me and Richie can still do the gig. I’ll take over lead vocals.”
“And who’ll play guitar?” Jace said. “Richie? While he’s playing snare with his feet?”
Jerome had no answer for that.
Swearing under her breath, Jace skirted the crowd and entered the club’s business office, which was shoehorned into the former coat check room at the front of the venue. Using the desk phone, she rang Paloma’s listed home number, knowing full well she wouldn’t be there to pick up. The call went to her answering machine, playing a greeting that Jace had suggested she make more professional:
“You have a mouth, so use it to leave me a message, cutie pie!”Jace hung up, frustrated. Was Paloma the type of musician who thought she could drop by whenever she felt like it instead of honoring her call time? Granted, Jace had almost no leverage over her. The Artemis Club paid a minimal appearance fee instead of a cut of ticket sales, and after a couple of failed experiments with an open bar, band members and their entourages could no longer drink for free. But Paloma Doralle had signed a binding contract, and if she didn’t follow through, Jace could theoretically sue her in small claims court. Not that she would.
Folding her arms tightly, Jace perched on the corner of the desk and fumed. A faded, framed newspaper photo of the Artemis Club’s founder, Stavros Galanis, stared at her from the opposite wall. Had he been alive to see what the club had devolved into seventy years after he’d opened it, he would have dropped dead from disgust. Mr. Galanis had been a civic-minded Greek immigrant driven by his conviction that the city needed a lecture hall dedicated to the appreciation of high culture, which he’d built here on Cass Avenue back in 1927. Now, Detroit was far from being the glittering Paris of the Midwest it had been at the dawn of the auto industry. After decades of flight and blight, it was more like Rome in ruins, with the Artemis being a battered beacon for the survivors and artists who wouldn’t or couldn’t leave. These days, the concrete statue of Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt, that greeted patrons at the front entrance had been chipped, graffitied, pissed and shit on by dog and man, and occasionally outfitted with a red lace bra and matching panties on Valentine’s Day. The performance space, which had boasted velvet flocked wallpaper and pastoral landscapes in its heyday, had been stripped down and plastered over with decades of posters from local rock bands and nationally known acts that passed through the Motor City on their way to LA or New York or London. The brass-and-glass chandeliers had been ripped out to make way for strips of stage lights; the porticos that had held replicas of Hellenic pottery were jammed with stacks of speakers. The stage was besmirched by duct tape residue and dents from mishaps with heavy equipment, and the floor where the general admission patrons stood had been stained over the years by puddles of beer and bodily fluids. The aroma of burnt popcorn, cigarette smoke, and BO was permanently singed into the air. The bathrooms ranged from tolerable to unspeakable.
This was Jace’s place of business, and it was da bomb.
The Detroit punk and garage rock scene had blasted out of the exhaust pipes of the 1960s and fallen in and out of fashion ever since. These days, it was on the upswing once more, with another generation of Michiganders channeling their creative rage through secondhand guitars and dented drum kits, playing at venues that were scattered across the city like crumpled empty cigarette packs.
Jace had first entered the club as a Wayne State University freshman with her roommates, a blue Esprit jacket, and a fake ID to follow up on a rumor that Sammy Sinister would be doing a surprise appearance. Sabine Galanis, the Artemis Club’s late-twenty-something owner—and great-niece of Stavros himself—was working the box office that night. Seeing Jace’s disappointment when she learned that Mr. Sinister had already left town, Sabine comped Jace and her friends to stay and hear a local band, Tiny Teacups, instead. As her roommates pressed toward the stage, Jace stayed near the back to take it all in: the décor, the crowd, the staff, and the band. The total chaos left her flushed with excitement. Tiny Teacups took the stage around one in the morning, and they were awful in the best way possible: bold in their ineptitude, ambitious in their mediocrity, and thrilling in their sheer nerve. They gave not one flying f*** what other people thought of them: the exact opposite of Jace’s entire adolescence. She was mesmerized.
Her roommates had been ready to bail after one number, but Jace begged them to stay until closing time. Once the lights went on, while the other girls chatted up the lead guitarist, Jace was deep in conversation with Sabine about what she did for a living. Their flirting for naught, her roommates eventually pushed Jace toward the exit doors. She spotted Sabine in the lobby as she was waving the weary patrons on their way, and before she could be yanked out of the club, Jace asked her for a job.
Since graduating in 1992, Jace had grown out her dark brown hair into a Gina Gershon–inspired shag and become a bona fide indie music aficionado. She had heard a lot of bands since she started working for Sabine, and she had trained her ear to identify the ones she believed fit the Artemis Club vibe: formidable melodies, powerful lyrics, supreme showmanship, and, ideally, the ability to stay in tune. Jace scouted acts in college town clubs in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and sorted through piles of cassette tapes and CDs that eager musicians pressed into her hands. Sabine was relieved to have Jace handle the talent decisions as she aimed to raise the Artemis Club’s profile as the premier place to play in the city. Before long, they’d gained a reputation for featuring musicians who were on their way to bigger things.
Musicians like Paloma Doralle, the twenty-seven-year-old singer-guitarist born and raised in Taylor, downriver from Detroit, who was making her debut at the club tonight. Paloma Doralle, whose physical presence aligned perfectly with the voice on the audition tape Jace had played on repeat for weeks: sultry, suggestive, and borderline dangerous.
Paloma Doralle, the flake who hadn’t shown up for her set yet.
The door swung open, and Sabine entered the office, wearing a lace-trimmed black dress, ornate purple tights, and Doc Martens. With her overdyed black locks and large brown eyes, she looked like a petite background actor in a Tim Burton movie. After closing the door against the din of the concert hall, Sabine crossed her arms and looked at Jace with a bemused expression. “What do you propose we do?”
Jace ran her fingers through her wavy hair. “We have a few options. The guys from Cold-n-Flu are still here. We could bring them back on for another set.”
“They don’t have more than five songs, and none of them are more than two minutes long,” Sabine said, perching on a corner of the Army surplus steel desk. “Once the ten minutes are up, then what?”
Jace was not willing to admit defeat. “I saw Manny Manto near the sound board. Maybe invite him to do a set?”
“He tripped over his girlfriend’s cat and broke both wrists,” Sabine said. “Between the plaster casts and the Percocet, he’s in no shape to play.”
Copyright © 2026 by Lisa Peers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
