by Teddy Wayne
“Copacetic,” I said, and I faked going back to sleep.
I did fall asleep soon. When you fake something, a lot of times you end up doing it for real. When I woke up, Jane was in the seat next to me and petting my hair lightly. “Did I oversleep?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve just been sitting here, watching you.”
“Why? Did I do something wrong?”
She smiled, but with her Botox it almost looked like she was close to crying sometimes. “Not at all, baby. It’s time for tutoring now.”
I went into my room where Nadine was waiting for me. Walter was in there, too. It looked like they’d just stopped talking once they’d heard me come in. He said he’d get out of our hair.
My corrected essay on Harriet Tubman was on Nadine’s lap. She cleans it up enough for me to learn from without changing it to her style. I like that about her, it’s like she wants to help you but is really doing it for you and not so she can feel better about herself, even though I know she gets paid well by Jane.
She said she read about my morning show performance on the Internet. “What about it?” I asked.
“I heard about the . . . incident.”
I was sure it hadn’t been picked up by the mikes or the cameras. “It was a hater. Whatever.”
“Yeah, but . . . a knife. It’s scary to think what might have happened.”
“What knife?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Jane didn’t say anything?”
“No.”
“Oh, Christ,” Nadine whispered to herself.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know much else about it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“All he said—” I could tell she didn’t know if she should keep going or stop. “It’s just that when they took him in they found a knife on him, and the police said he’d written all these . . .” She flattened out my essay. “You should talk to Jane. I’m being paid to tutor you.”
Nadine probably thought she was scaring me by talking about a crazy guy with a knife who was also a child predator. It’d be easier when I was an adult, because they aren’t interested in you anymore. It must have been strange for MJ to go from worrying about child predators to people saying he was a child predator. I don’t know if he did it or not, but if he went through half the stuff as a kid that I deal with, I can’t believe he’d ever do anything like it to someone else. Unless it’s done to you so then you feel like you’re allowed to do it to someone else, like how rookies have to carry the veterans’ bags, then when they’re veterans they make the rookies carry their bags.
I was getting pissed more than scared at the crazy guy, and at security for not doing their job, and at the TV show for not caring about my safety, just about ratings. I pictured the guy working his way up to the stage during “Guys vs. Girls,” all calm, then in the chorus jumping up and stabbing me through the heart a bunch of times with a huge knife. I’d die singing the song that made me famous, and I’d splatter the girls in the front rows with blood instead of rose petals, and this time they’d be screaming because they really were scared, and all of America would be watching it on live TV and it’d viralize. That was something people would spend $19.95 on for Internet live-stream.
We did our work, and she gave my essay an A-minus and said my vocab was improving. I said, “You mean it’s ameliorating,” and she laughed since it was the one word I’d gotten wrong on the vocab test two weeks ago, and she said that’s not quite the correct usage but close enough.
When she was packing up she said, “Jane told me you might tour again next fall.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know if Jane had told her the other option.
“Or that you might enroll in school.”
I nodded. Doing that was also being like, Uh, sorry, Nadine, you’re fired.
“I just want to tell you, if you want to go to school, you should do it.”
“I don’t want you to lose your job.”
“That’s really nice, Jonny, and you know I love doing this with you, but don’t worry about me. Besides, I can’t do this forever. I’m not building a real teaching career.”
“You’re teaching me.”
“I know, but it’s not the same as being in a classroom. And I turn twenty-seven in a few months, and I sometimes go weeks without seeing my boyfriend. Someday I’d like to start a family, and you’ll need a tutor for another four years at least, and I can’t do both.”
My chest felt like someone had pulled the lungs out of it. “So are you saying you want to quit?”
“No! I mean, not now, at least. But at some point I’d like to go back to teaching in a regular school. The point is, don’t factor me into your decision. In fact, don’t factor anyone else in. Even your mom.”
“Why shouldn’t I factor in Jane?”
“Because it’s about you. What you want to do with your life. You don’t have to do something just because other people say you should.”
When the conversation started, I was scared Nadine would think we were firing her. Now it sounded like she was firing us.
“When you’re a celebrity, it’s not just about you,” I said. “When I give a concert, the jobs of a hundred and thirty-six people on this tour are standing on my shoulders, plus hundreds of people in that city.”
“You don’t have to be defensive,” Nadine said. “I’m just trying to let you know that I’ll respect whatever decision you make.”
I didn’t say anything, and two of her books fell out of her bag when she stood up so it took her longer to get out. It felt quiet in there. That was the first time we’d had a real fight, because the other fights were about stuff like me forgetting to do an assignment.
I avoided Nadine the rest of the drive to Memphis, which wasn’t hard since she was usually reading a book with her iPod on but the music off, which only I knew about, so no one would bother her. She didn’t bring her laptop on the bus because she says we’re becoming increasingly dependent on the sensory stimuli of technology to fill our interior lives. Jane’s the opposite, she usually has her computer and her iPhone and if we’re at home the TV on. She doesn’t listen to music besides for work, though.
A few hours in, I was in my room and heard her and Jane talking. They don’t discuss much except about scheduling and other business, but I could tell from their voices that it wasn’t about that. I wasn’t playing Zenon, but I turned it on for the background music and opened my door a crack to listen.
I heard Nadine go, “I believe he has a right to know,” and Jane went, “Frankly, I don’t think any eleven-year-old needs to know about something like this, let alone the one it’s happening to,” and Nadine said, “If you’re putting him in that position, and everyone else in the world knows, then he does have a right,” and Jane said, “Nadine, you’re an excellent tutor and Jonny likes you, so I’m not going to say any more except that you haven’t raised a child.” Nadine said, “Well, I’ve said my piece, and I hope you’re putting Jonny first here,” and went back to her seat.
“Rog, Walter, I suppose you have something to add, too, or are you just watching the show?” Jane asked, and Rog said, “I’m just the voice coach,” and Walter said, “Bodyguard.” I closed the door quietly.
I wondered what the guy wrote. It couldn’t be much worse than some of the things I’d seen on the Internet. People write whatever on the Internet and don’t even remember anything, but if you write it on paper, you really mean it.
When we got to Memphis, Jane made me rest at the hotel until dinner because she’s been on my case about that ever since I fainted. I had Zenon to keep me company, so I didn’t mind. When Jane came to my room, I asked if we were ordering room service or going out. “Actually, it turns out I have to go to dinner with a regional promoter,” she said.
I got that weird feeling in my stomach that came when Jane said she had to go after she’d made it sound like we’d be hanging out.
It wasn’t like preshow nervousness. I never vomited, but it was almost like I was losing part of my guts.
“I could come along.”
“You’d be bored. All shop talk. So you should order room service.”
At least I’d get to play Zenon all night long without her around, plus I didn’t know when Zack was getting me so this made it easier. “Can I order whatever I want?” I asked as she was leaving.
I could see she wanted to say no, but I also knew what she’d answer now that she’d blown me off. “Go easy on the barbecue,” she said. “That’s why everyone here’s a tub of chub.”
She stopped again before leaving, and looked at me, and scampered back in, even in her heels, and I knew what was coming. She tickled me on the couch and squeezed my stomach, and I squealed, and she sang our song and I joined in on the second verse through my squealing:
Oh, we don’t like our chub
We put it in a little jar
We hide it very, very far
No, we don’t like our chub
She kissed my forehead and said, “Don’t play games all night long, baby.” After she closed the door I heard her check it was locked a couple times.
I was more interested in the corn bread Walter had been talking about anyway since my stomach prioritizes carbs over meat even though they’re the enemy, so after she left I ordered three pieces of it and some fried chicken and mashed potatoes. If I lived here full-time I’d gain twenty pounds of chub.
I played Zenon the rest of the night as I got more excited to hang out with Zack, plus this would be my one chance to check my email, since there hadn’t been any computer terminals around at any of our venues and the ones in our hotels you either had to pay for with a credit card or get someone over eighteen to authorize you. I could email asking if he saw me mention Pittsburgh and Australia and peanut butter on the morning show for him and if he heard about the child predator, and maybe he’d be like, Yeah, I wanted to fly to St. Louis right away and kill that guy when I heard about it.
By nine o’clock he hadn’t come, and I was supposed to go to bed by 9:30 the night before a concert if I didn’t have a show that night, and maybe he didn’t know which room I was in or he’d forgotten or he’d changed his mind or the other guys vetoed me.
I didn’t want to get in my pajamas in case he did come, and I definitely didn’t want to take a zolpidem, but I was getting tired, so what I did was, at 9:30 I stayed in my regular clothes and got in bed and left the bedroom door open so if he came I could pretend I was still up.
For a little while I stayed up since I thought every sound outside was Zack knocking on my door, but I must have fallen asleep because then I heard this loud banging from out of nowhere. I scrambled out of bed dizzily and turned on the light in the living room and opened the door, and there was Zack.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Were you asleep? It’s only, like, ten-fifteen. I figured you’d still be awake.”
Maybe he thought I was older than eleven. “No, I was up.” I could feel my hair going all directions like I’d been electrocuted. That’s the main problem with The Jonny, it looks messed up when you wake up. Plus after rides in convertibles. Ronald has one.
“Can I see your room?” he asked, and he came inside before I could say anything. He smelled like alcohol and cigarettes more than his cologne. “Goddamn. So this is the real rock star room. We should be partying in here instead of our hovel.”
I got nervous that he was going to move the party here and Jane would catch us, so I said, “It’s all right. Usually they’re nicer than this.”
He smiled. “Tough crowd, little man. You want to come over?”
“Yeah. Except I’m not really supposed to be out now.” That was lame, so I added, “On a night before a concert. The doctor said I had too many late nights.”
“Then we’ll have to evade the authorities,” he said. “Come on.”
I got my sneakers on and took my key-card, and he turned off the lights and cracked the door a few inches and poked his head out in the hall both directions and whispered, “Let’s go!” and walked-ran out and I did the same behind him down the hall, and my body felt tingly and light all over, because I was afraid Jane might catch me or a fan would see me but also because it was the most fun I’d had not in Zenon since probably Phoenix, when they’d opened an amusement park at night just for me and Walter and we go-karted and played laser tag. Zack probably weighed about half what Walter did, but I felt safe with him, too, in a different way, like he could talk us out of any trouble we got into.
At the end of the hall Zack opened the door to a stairwell, and he raced and jumped down three flights of stairs before stopping at another stairwell door. Two escaped slaves in the Underground Railroad, hiding at safe houses until we reached freedom.
Zack crouched down, breathing all heavy like he’d finished a marathon, and put his arm around my shoulders and said, “We got one more sprint and we’re safe. Ready?”
I said ready, and wasn’t hardly breathing, because I was in better shape from being a dancer and all-around entertainer, and rock stars smoke cigarettes and stand in one place all night besides the ones like Mick Jagger who add a few dance moves to their stage repertoire, but my heart was still beating like the drum and bass in a techno song, and we dashed through the door and down another hallway and he put his key-card in a door and it made that click sound and he pushed it open and got us inside to the free states. It’s funny how in real life, though, we were still in Tennessee.
His bandmates were on the sectional couch in the living room, which was smaller than mine but not at all a crap room, with an iPod stereo on the coffee table playing a gritty-textured punk-rock song with a British singer, and they were all drinking either bottles of beer or whiskey in the bathroom cups. There were four girls with them. The girls weren’t that hot, really. They were wearing tights and two of them had bangs and one even had glasses and was a little chubby. Maybe it’s because the guys in the band except for Zack weren’t that good-looking, but whenever Mi$ter $mith was with a girl, she always looked like a model or an actress, and they definitely never wore glasses. In a way I respected the Latchkeys more for not having model groupies. These girls probably had better personalities. Unless they wanted the model groupies but they couldn’t get them, since that was the whole point of becoming a rock star for a lot of guys. I didn’t know that when I started out, but once you see seriously ugly bassists backstage with models, you figure it out. For a normal guy, becoming a rock star is like Luann Phelps getting contacts and losing her lisp.
Mi$ter $mith had an entourage, too, like most black pop and rap stars, and they probably helped him get models. The Latchkeys didn’t have any friends with them on tour, but that was smart financial strategy. It’s hard to have career longevity when you’re controlling the purse strings for twenty people everywhere you go.
One of the girls looked better than the others, though. She was sitting by herself in the center, and was tall and thin, and her nose was long but it still fit her face good. But it was the way she sat, with the posture Jane wants me to have, that you knew she was their leader. Zack sat next to her and put his arm around her, and told me to sit next to him. He said, “Jonny, this is Vanessa, and these are Clara and Samantha and Jane.”
I almost said that that was my mother’s name but I stopped myself in time, and I also knew that if I asked to check email one of the Latchkeys might tell them that Jane doesn’t let me go on the Internet. Zack wouldn’t do it, but I didn’t trust the other guys not to.
The singer on the stereo kept singing “1977” at the start of each verse, and the bassist of the Latchkeys was like, “If we wrote a song named after this year, and someone was listening to it in three or four decades, what would it be about?” and the drummer said, “Like, fucking Facebook,” and the lead guitarist said, “No, articles about Facebook,” and Zack picked up an acoustic guitar from the floor and paused the music and played a pretty riff that was like the textura
l opposite of the song we’d been listening to, and one of the Latchkeys cupped his hands over his mouth and said, “He’s playing acoustic! Judas!” and Zack said, “Except for acoustic it would be, ‘Jesus!’ and he’d whisper to his band of disciples, ‘Play fuckin’ quiet!’ ” Then he cleared his throat and said the name of the year all serious in a way that made everyone laugh, and made up these lyrics on the spot and sang them soprano:
Status updates and Internet dates
I’d rather eat out a Middle East date
Get your filthy minds outta the gutter
I’m referring to consuming the biblical delicacy
Not cunnilingus on a woman
From a historically war-torn and oil-rich region
Whom I’ve been set up with by our mutual friend, John
Who thinks we have a lot in common
Everyone laughed throughout the song and especially at the end, and so did I to play along but I didn’t get most of the jokes. Zack turned the music back on to a new song and said, “You like the Clash, Jonny?”
I didn’t want to admit I’d heard of them but didn’t know their music. Punk was a genre Rog and Jane didn’t allow on my iPod since the singers were almost all low-caliber, but I’d seen on the iPod that they were the band playing, so I said I liked that song before, and he said, “This song is criminally underrated.”
“Oh, God, not ‘Complete Control,’ ” said the bassist. “You worship that song. It’s so banal.”
“It’s the greatest meta-critique of the music industry in a rock song,” Zack said.
I tried to listen to the lyrics, which were hard to make out, but I liked how it was part singing, part shouting. Normally this music, it’s all shouting because the singer’s got zero vocal chops. I could tell it was about how bad their label was, which is a major no-no. When singers play antimedia songs, they think they’re getting the fans on their side, but the fans don’t actually care and all you’re doing is alienating your ally and mouthpiece. But the fans really don’t care about a song slamming your label, even if most people hate their boss. They don’t even understand what the label does. They just know what’s put out in front of them, like a roast beef sandwich on an airplane, and have no idea anyone else had to feed and kill and cook and package the cow before serving it on their tray. And the funny thing is, they all wish they could be the packaged cow.