by Teddy Wayne
“Hey,” said one of the boys, who had a haircut that was influenced by The Jonny, even if he didn’t know it, with an asymmetrical sweep down almost covering the eyes. Everyone wants to think their look is their own, but it’s always coming from someone way higher up on the style food chain. The boy brought his arm out. He was holding an open bottle of wine. “Want some?”
All the kids were staring at me like, Is he gonna drink with us or rat us out? “That’s okay,” I said. “But you guys can do it.”
He smiled, mostly to himself, and said, “Cool, thanks for giving us permission.” The others laughed, and he took a swig and passed it to one of the girls.
“I’m seeing your concert tomorrow with three friends,” one of the girls said.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll give you a shout-out.”
“Except it’ll be like a joke,” she said. “Like, pretending we’re the kind of girls who are excited about a Jonny Valentine concert. No offense. It’s just, we would never go to it, for real.”
“Oh.” There’s nothing else you can really say to that, unless I said something like, “It’s just, you’re an idiot, spending your parents’ money and putting it in my bank account for a joke. No offense.”
“Don’t be such a bitch, you’re hurting his feelings,” said the first boy. He grabbed the bottle back and held it up to me. “Sure you don’t want some?”
“I better not tonight,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “Save it for tomorrow, before your concert. Like a fucking rock star.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said. The boy smiled to himself again like he’d won. The air was a little chilly, but looking at that kid’s smile, this heat rose up in my body, and I felt like if I didn’t say something, I’d set myself on fire.
“Or like a fucking no-talent nobody whose father pays for him to go to private school,” I said.
I didn’t wait for him to answer, but when I got back around the corner I heard him call me a douche bag midget and they all laughed. I nearly yelled another insult back, but you can’t control other people, Walter says. You can only control yourself, so it’s not how they act that matters, it’s how you react. The most successful celebs never lose control.
I found Jane inside the party talking to a handsome guy in his early thirties. He had on a standard young-but-not-too-young-actor’s outfit, dark jeans with a slim gray blazer and a collared pink gingham shirt under. Jane introduced me and said he was a detective on some network crime show. He said, “But don’t hold it against me,” and Jane laughed and grabbed his arm at the elbow and said I should totally do a cameo on the show, and the actor was like, “That’s such a bad idea it might actually be good. Imagine the ratings: Jonny Valentine, murder victim.”
Jane stopped laughing and said, “I was picturing more like a witness or something.”
Matthew’s father came by, and Jane grabbed him by the elbow, too. She’s always grabbing people by the elbows at parties, like if she doesn’t, they’ll all float away. “When are you bringing out the birthday cake?” she asked, and he said in a few minutes, and Jane said, “I thought—never mind,” and he said, “No, what?” and she said, “Well, I was thinking Jonny could sing ‘Happy Birthday’ a cappella, but if it doesn’t make sense . . .”
Matthew’s father was like, “Seriously? That’d be amazing. Jonny, would you be up for that?” I couldn’t tell if his father had no idea Matthew hated my guts, or if he picked up on it but knew that if I sang at his son’s birthday party, all the kids at school would be talking about it and Matthew would seem cooler to them.
Jane was telling me with her eyes to do it. It was supposedly a birthday gift for Matthew, but it was really a gift to Jane, for business opportunities down the road.
“If you think he’d like it, then sure.”
He smiled and said he’d tell his wife, and I should come in the kitchen soon so I could walk out with the cake. When he left and the actor went to get a refill, Jane leaned down and whispered, “This will make a huge impression on all the brain-dead execs here.” Jane says an exec is a businessman who’s convinced he has the soul of an artist.
“Fine,” I said. “But I want to leave right after.”
“Deal.”
“Like, call the car service now.”
“Okay,” she said. “One more prosecco first before they run out.”
Her face looked dried out and red from the alcohol, but she joined the actor at the bar and I went into the kitchen, where Matthew’s dad supervised one of the waiters lighting the candles on the cake. Before we walked out, he said, “Thank you so much for doing this for Matthew, Jonny. He may not . . . he may not be able to express it, but I know this means a lot to him.”
Sometimes parents know their kids better than anyone, and sometimes they don’t have a clue, even if they’re the kind of parents who throw their kids fancy birthday parties. Maybe my father would understand me because he hasn’t been around.
Matthew’s father turned off the lights in the living room and asked everyone to stay quiet for a special guest performance. He opened the door and the waiter carried out the cake, with me right behind, singing. Matthew stood by himself in the middle of the room, and the other kids were all taking my picture, because once I was performing the regular protocol didn’t apply.
When I got to “Happy birthday, dear Matthew,” I stared right at him again. He seemed like he was sort of pissed I was hogging the attention but also happy for the reason his father might have wanted, that it made his party the juicy gossip item at school. And even though he hated me for no good reason, I still felt sorry for him. He’d probably get even funnier-looking as he got older, and these kids might not really be his friends, maybe they only liked coming to his house for his pool and all the other cool amenities he had and because his father controls the purse strings, and not because they like him.
He blew out the candles and the adults applauded, but it was like they were mostly clapping for me, and I found Jane standing next to the actor and told her I wanted to leave, now, and she said, “I’ll call the car service.”
“You said you’d call it before,” I said.
“They were busy.”
The actor asked where we lived and Jane told him off Laurel Canyon, and he said, “Awesome, I’m in Los Feliz, I’ll give you a lift.”
I could see where this was going. Jane would invite him in for a nightcap and send me to bed. In the morning, I might see him on his way out, and he’d nod at me or act like he’d come back to take a business meeting at our house, which I’m not that stupid. And that’d almost definitely be the last time he came over.
We could all see where it was going, but no one could say anything, just like you can’t say anything besides “Big fan” when you meet a celeb.
Jane said, “Let me finish this drink and we’ll go. And that was nice of you to sing for Matthew.”
She still had most of her prosecco to go, but it was better not to argue now. Jane and the actor were flirting and he was teasing her about how high her heels were to make up for her being so short, so I slipped away to get some more of the mac-and-cheese cupcakes from the kitchen. But on the way over, Matthew’s father’s study was still open with his laptop on. No one was around. I closed the door behind me.
I was going to use a totally made-up name for a new email address, but then it might look like I was someone else. So I came up with [email protected], since a lot of times celebs use an email that’s just a little different from their real name. It took a couple minutes, and I had to keep glancing up to make sure no one was coming. Once I heard a loud creak on the floor right outside and got on my hands and knees and hid under the desk. When it didn’t sound like anyone was there, I got up again, but I was still nervous. In the movies, when the star hides and the enemy leaves, they come out of hiding and don’t worry about them ever coming back, like that was the only chance to get caught, but in real life, people can surprise you and come back again.
/> I took the paper with his email address out of my jeans and wrote
Can you prove you are really Jonny’s father? If you can, I can find a way to get you in touch with him.
I sent it and sat there for a minute in case he answered right away, but then I remembered where I was and closed the browser and snuck out. I made it seem like I was waiting for the bathroom, and went in and flushed Albert’s email address down the toilet.
I found Jane with the actor. She said she had to say good-bye to Matthew’s parents and go to the bathroom before we left.
When she was gone, the actor turned to me. “I’ve got an eight-year-old daughter,” he said. “She loves your music.”
I figured doing my “If it wasn’t for my fans I wouldn’t be here” line wouldn’t work on this guy, so I just said, “That’s cool. Is she here?”
“Yeah, I’m just gonna leave her here by herself, she can find her own ride home,” he said, and I thought he was serious, but then he went, “No, she’s with her mother this week.”
He kept going. “Actually, my band has this one song, ‘Xanax is a Deified Palindrome,’ that some people say sounds a little like you. We’re called the Band-Its, but with a hyphen between ‘Band’ and ‘Its.’ ” Before I could say something pretending to know the song, he said, “You wouldn’t have heard of us. Our first album was on a no-name label, but it was before I was cast. We’re gonna shop our next one around soon to the majors, now that I’m better known. And the show plays a new song every week over the credits, so I’m working to get us some airplay.”
Airplay means radio rotation, not TV. Every celeb thinks he has a cross-promotional platform just because he’s famous. Being an all right actor playing a detective on some crap TV show might mean you can launch a career in crap movies. It doesn’t mean you can launch a music career. Acting is a talent that you’re born with or not. You can improve a little with practice, but there are some eight-year-olds who are better than sixty-year-olds who’ve been doing it their whole lives. Music is a talent that requires cultivation. This guy didn’t look like someone who’d put ten thousand hours into it.
“I’ll be sure to give it a listen when it comes out,” I said.
“Here, I’ll give you our demo, if you want to give your label a sneak peek,” he said, and he pulled a CD out from his inner jacket pocket. “Or do people do that constantly to you, so it’s really annoying?”
People hardly ever did it to me, since Walter or Jane was always providing buffer, but they pushed demos on Jane all the time.
“It’s not annoying,” I said. “I’ll show it to them.”
“Seriously? That’s really cool of you.”
I stuffed the CD in my track sweater’s pocket before Jane came back. “Ready, boys?” she asked, a little slurry.
“I’m so sorry to do this,” the actor said, “but I just found out I have to take care of my daughter tonight, and she’s up in Encino.” He looked at me real quick.
“Oh,” Jane said.
“I mean, I could drop you off after I get her, if you want.” So he’d gone after Jane at first, but once he realized he had me, he didn’t need her anymore. Or maybe he thought this was part of the deal, that he didn’t go home with her if I told the label about him.
“No, that’s fine,” Jane said, with a strong voice like everything was all right and she was totally sober, but I knew better. “We’ll be in touch, and have a good night.”
They kissed on the cheek, he left, and she called the car service and guzzled one more prosecco while we waited, but I didn’t say anything this time. She conked out pretty quick in the backseat on the ride home, so I played the actor’s CD on low volume. He was the lead singer, and had limited range and a reedy texture that he compensated for with some yells and a put-on scratchy growl. The only way that’s real is if you’ve been singing and smoking cigarettes for like thirty years, which this guy definitely hadn’t done. The musicianship was medium-caliber, nothing special. Bland arrangement. Sloppy production. No real hook. Zero nuance to the vocal/lyrical relationship. My lyrics may be simple, but Rog says I’m the most subtle pop vocalist around. You need to exert control over the lyrics, not the other way around.
Plus he’d have to be the next MJ for me to help him now.
Sharon goes to sleep at like nine o’clock unless I’m coming home from a show, so no one was up. Jane headed to the stairs, because she forgot they were being renovated. I steered her to the elevator. She leaned against the wall inside and didn’t budge when the door opened. I put her arm around my shoulder and escorted her to her bedroom.
She collapsed on the bed and I took off her heels. Then I got a plastic cup from my bathroom so she wouldn’t chip her teeth and filled it with water and dumped out two Tylenol PMs. I brought them back to her and made her sit up to swallow them, and while she was up I pushed her under the sheets. Before I left the room, she said, “You wanna sleep here tonight?”
I really needed a good night’s sleep, and Jane tosses and turns even when she’s on zolpidem or an over-the-counter pill. But I said, “Okay,” and stripped down to my underwear and sponsored energy-drink T-shirt. I closed the shades all the way so the sun wouldn’t wake her early and climbed in next to her, and she sort of murmured to herself, “You’re really a good kid.”
She started snoring soon and moved around a lot and took up more than half the bed, but I put up with it and eventually fell asleep.
CHAPTER 3
Los Angeles (Second Day)
I let Jane sleep it off in the morning. In the kitchen, Walter sat at the table and nodded at me over his copy of the L.A. Times.
Peter put down his own copy of the Times and poured me a cup of coffee and separated three eggs for my omelet and got out the spinach. He’s got muscular forearms with blue veins popping out like worms under his skin, but he’s delicate when he cooks, and even though he used to work at a restaurant with buzz in L.A. until Jane poached him and now he makes food that’s beneath his talent level, he cares about every meal. That’s what professionals do.
“Morning, little sensei,” he said. I told him I liked karate movies one time.
“Morning, Peter.”
“How’s the cuisine been on the road?”
“Not like yours.”
He flipped the omelet and said, “Nothing like a home-cooked meal, eh, little sensei?”
“Nope.” I looked at the front page of Variety and took the sports section of the Times.
“Your Cardinals doing all right?” he asked.
Peter doesn’t follow sports and didn’t know the baseball season ended almost three months ago, which anyone who put a second of thought into it would realize they don’t play baseball in the middle of January. He thinks he has to make conversation with me as part of his job, but I’m happy just to eat and read the paper. Walter gets it. “They’ll be better next year.”
He served my omelet and went back to reading the living section. There wasn’t any sports news I cared about, so I looked at “Today’s Top Albums” in Variety. Tyler Beats still had his last two albums, Tylernol and Beats Me, in the top five for Amazon, and Tylernol was number two on iTunes. I knew I’d see them there, but I couldn’t help looking. It’s like picking a scab when you know it might leave a scar.
Jane came downstairs looking much better than last night. She rebounds quickly.
“Sound check time,” she said, all business, except it wasn’t because first we had to get my highlights touched up for the rest of the tour and maybe even a full dye job since my roots were showing and a touch-up trim now that my hair was dangling in my eyes, which my fans like, especially when I have to flip it away, but it screws with me when I’m dancing. Jane’s always like, The hierarchy is your voice, your eyes, and your hair. And when it gets long, it grows all curly at the ends, and that looks too ethnic. Jane also needed a trim, and she doesn’t trust anyone besides Christian.
Walter fist-bumped me and said, “Ready to kick some tail and take
names tonight, brother?” and I never really know if he wants me to answer or if the question is what Nadine calls rhetorical and also what taking names actually means, like if you’d kick someone’s tail and ask them their name after to put on a list to help you remember whose tail you don’t have to kick anymore, plus I don’t think kicking tail and taking names includes getting a ride from your mother over to a gay guy’s hair salon on Beverly Drive to have your hair dyed blond, so I just said, “Yep.” Maybe it’s Southern-demo slang.
After the appointment, Jane drove the three of us to Staples Center, which is always exciting to play, even if L.A. isn’t my hometown. The main thing we had to make sure was fully operational was the metal swing in the shape of a heart that carried me around for the finale of “U R Kewt” and “Roses for Rosie” and the encore of “Guys vs. Girls.” We’d done rehearsals on it but we were waiting until L.A. to debut it in the show. It lifted me about fifty feet high over the crowd and projected a million stars on the roof, including a heart-shaped constellation. Jane didn’t want me to do it, and told Rog it was an unnecessary risk for a young boy to assume, but he convinced her it would make a huge impression on the crowd and I could throw rose petals on them during “Roses for Rosie” and it would really provide a midtour bump in Web chatter about the stagecraft. You have to come up with reasons why someone should pay to see you live instead of watching you on You-Tube, even if that’s how I got discovered in the first place. Everything went right in rehearsals, but I was still nervous about it.
Musicians are supposed to be bored during sound checks, except I like rehearsing with the band and the dancers and the tech guys checking sound levels and Rog making sure the choreography fits the stage and Jane organizing everyone. Sometimes it’s better than the actual show, because you’re not doing it for the audience, you’re only doing it for yourselves. It’s like you’re practicing on a team during sound check. When you perform, though, you’re the star and you’re on your own.
This was our last show with Mi$ter $mith as our opener before we got that rock band the rest of the tour. He was a nice enough guy backstage, and did his own thing when we were on tour, but he has middling talent. His repertoire is standard slow jams mixed with a little rap that he cleaned up for my audience. I overheard him one time in his dressing room complaining to his entourage how he couldn’t believe he was opening for an eleven-year-old white boy. I’m like, Go triple platinum with your debut, and I’ll open for you. His real name is Marvin Hilliard. Pop stars don’t like people knowing who they were before they were famous, since part of their appeal is that they are famous. Rock and rap stars can get away with it more, because if you came from the streets, it gives you more cred, but only rock stars usually go by their real names. All we had to do was change my name from Jonathan to Jonny, and me and Jane both changed Valentino to Valentine. He calls me Jonny-Jon, but I don’t know if I should call him Mi$ter $mith or Marvin or M.S., the way his entourage calls him. It’s like with Michael Carns’s parents. I just said hi and never used their names.