She studied him for a second. “Does everybody call you Ricky?”
Rick crumpled the white burger paper into a ball and held out the bag of fries, which she didn’t argue with. “Everybody who known me since before I was twenty.” That wasn’t true, though. “Actually, only three people don’t call me that. My manager, Zeus and … you.”
Her fries stopped a few inches from her mouth. “I’m sorry. I assumed … ”
He shook his head and shrugged, because he didn’t know how to say ‘don’t switch now.’ Still that other question hung in the air, on the smell of burgers — but no chicken — frying. If he had to choose between saying, When you call me Rick, it makes me feel …
Christ, find another word besides ‘special,’ you idiot. “Why you want to know? About the money.”
“Are you asking if I’m a gold digger?”
That was funny. “Maybe you oughta be asking me. How many units you sold?”
Carolyn’s nose wrinkled as she reached for another fry. “Just over six hundred.”
He couldn’t hold back the shock. “Gee’s?”
She nodded.
Holy shit. “You get a Gold book for that?”
She laughed and shook her head. He tried to run the numbers in his head, but he didn’t know enough, whether it worked the same with buybacks and returns. Advances. No recording costs to pay back probably.
It was a lot of fucking money.
He wondered if she’d forgotten the question, until she started talking. Not what he’d been thinking at all. Psycho Pete had traded Polar bears for Prada, and even though Rick didn’t give a shit, it was obvious Carolyn did.
She thought Pete was selling out. That much cleared up when she looked at him, twisting the straw between her fingers. “What would you do? To up your sales?”
“You mean would I start writing jingles for McDonald’s? ’Cause they ain’t asking.”
She gave him a look. Right, facetious.
Rick shrugged. “Nothing I can do. My manager said maybe some kind of scandal — that’s what really gets your name out there … but shit. I been trying to fly under the radar my whole life and it’s hard to figure out how not to do that. I thought it would be different, but … ” That was loaded. Rick took the last fry. “I don’t know what else I can do.”
Carolyn frowned. He was about to tell her to just spill it, but she did first.
“Did you ever think about singing the hooks?”
The chewed up fry almost went down his windpipe.
“I mean the chorus,” she said.
“I know what a hook is.” What he was thinking wasn’t really possible, but he asked anyway. “Is that why you’re here?”
“What?”
“I mean the hotel down the street was his idea and now the hooks — ”
“Who?”
Rick crumpled up the fry bag. “Zeus.”
Her eyes went as wide as when she recognized the source of the beats in her ear yesterday. “He says that?”
“Christ, Carolyn. You want me to introduce you? He got divorced last year.”
“Oh, my God! No!” She gave him a look, like maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was, he sure felt a lot better. “I’m just astounded, that I had the same thought as Zeus about anything.”
Exactly the same thought. A constant battle. He wasn’t a damn singer.
“But why don’t you, I mean, if Zeus thinks that — ”
“Shit, Carolyn. He ain’t Batman.”
“Well, you’re no Robin, either.”
* * *
Carolyn clamped her mouth shut. Too late. If not for her college roommate’s Eminem obsession, she would have thought of comic books when Rick said Batman.
He stood and collected the trash from the table. Then he smirked. “That’s original.”
Carolyn exhaled slowly as he started for the trashcan. Her vision focused on the white brick wall at the back of the restaurant.
The name directly in her sight stopped her slide from the booth. “Missy Elliot was here.”
Rick turned to see the wall.
“Oh, my God — she produced the song that wakes me up every morning.”
“What’s that?”
“‘Lady Marmalade.’” Rick’s eyebrows shot up. The lyrics were in French, but it didn’t change the question: Would you like to go to bed with me? She shrugged. “It’s just a song.”
“I’d have thought you was more of a Lauryn Hill type,” he said. “‘Girls, you know you better — watch out. Some guys, some guys are only — about — ’”
“Oh, I do love that!”
He didn’t look surprised. As he dumped the trash in the can, she realized that he had sung the line from “Doo-Wop” and he really could sing.
Carolyn stood up, searching for more names. “This is wild.”
“What?” Rick asked. “Famous people eating hamburgers or you waking up to ‘Lady Marmalade’?”
Famous people. She turned away from the wall. “You ready?”
He nodded and Carolyn followed him back to the busy Manhattan street. She glanced around and realized she was lost. Rick’s hands were in his pockets as he walked. She’d asked him about money when he was looking for a five-dollar hamburger, ogled names on a wall, all on top of that smart ass comment.
“Sorry about the Batman thing,” she said. Maybe she could at least try not to be completely insensitive.
“Occupational hazard. Lot more obscure shit than that, too.” Rick shot her a grin that surprised her. “Don’t think I ever set myself up for it before.”
“You might not have, with me, if it wasn’t for my college roommate. I swear I had his first album memorized word-for-word in a week. Not by choice, by accident. My fault — damn. Now I have mushrooms running through my head. How many years ago was that?”
He grinned again.
“Nothing against him, but you know how it is when somebody’s so crazy for someone that you just rebel on principle?”
Rick just nodded, still looking amused.
“She was scary, though. She got obsessive about him. A lot. Like she had to know everything about him. I kept telling her, he’s just — ”
“You can say ‘Eminem,’ Carolyn. He ain’t Lord Voldemort.”
She burst out laughing, but she didn’t know whether it was the joke … or that Rick Ranière made it. “Harry Potter?”
He shrugged. “Jesse was in fifth grade when The Sorcerer’s Stone came out. He didn’t talk about nothing else. I didn’t have much choice.”
He said it casually, like of course he would read whatever his little brother was reading.
“How old were you then?”
“Eighteen? Yeah, he’d just turned ten.”
They crossed against the light where the traffic was jammed up. Rick didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. On the opposite corner, a man sat behind a fruit cart. She was struck by how bizarre that seemed, just a big cart full of fruit on the sidewalk.
Rick raised his eyebrows when she stopped, shook his head when she asked if he wanted anything. Carolyn paid fifty cents for an apple, rubbed it underneath the hem of her tank top.
The second before the apple touched her lips, he snatched it away.
“Hey!”
“Are you crazy?”
“No! Can I have my apple back?”
He took the bottom of his own t-shirt and rubbed it, a lot harder. “You shouldn’t even eat this.”
“Oh, come on.”
He handed the apple back to her. “Not without washing it.”
“Well, maybe he did. I could ask him.”
“Yeah, like he gonna say, ‘oh, no honey, that thing’s crawling with pesticides.’”
Carolyn grinned and took a bite while he watched. It was delicious.
“You better not get sick.”
She reached up to catch the juice on her chin; he didn’t have any napkins this time. “You’re paranoid.”
“You ain’t even supposed to
let kids under three drink apple juice. Poison.”
“Who said that?”
“Time magazine. Maybe Newsweek. One of those.”
She saw the slight set in his jaw, which told her exactly what was on her own face. Be careful with those assumptions, Carolyn Coffman. She cringed, hoping he’d take that as an apology, and his half-smile exposed the tilted top tooth that had never been straightened. She couldn’t help smiling back before she glanced up and saw that they were running out of sidewalk in the middle of the street.
She looked around at the crowds of people amid thousands of video screens. “We’re in Times Square.”
Rick lifted his eyebrows. Just like last night.
“Oh, don’t say it.”
He turned to head off the island they’d somehow been stranded on. She reached for his shirt, not wanting to get separated by tourists. He glanced back immediately, and she let go, raising her voice over the noise.
“This place could make you dizzy.”
Rick shrugged, but Carolyn felt like there was nowhere to rest her eyes. They managed to get back on the right side of the street, and she recognized more of the scenery from movies.
She pointed out a subway station to Rick, read off the letters and numbers of all the trains they could catch, but he wasn’t amused. She was about to ask if he wanted to go in the Virgin Megastore, until she saw the giant poster above it. From this distance, she didn’t recognize him, but she wasn’t aware of any black rock stars. And maybe she’d done enough rubbing it in.
Rick stopped to buy a can of root beer from a vendor, asked four times if she was sure she didn’t want a drink, swore he wasn’t sharing if she changed her mind. She drained a small bottle of water before he finished paying, just to shut him up.
Eventually they cleared the crowds, and the noise of Times Square faded behind them. She guessed from the enormous needle passing through a giant button across the street that they had entered the Garment District.
“I had money.”
She almost stopped, but managed to keep her feet moving.
“Not much. First album advance.” Rick shrugged. “I put a lot of it up my nose.”
Carolyn swallowed and wished she’d conserved her water.
He lifted the root beer to his mouth, and she saw the letters on his hand that she hardly noticed anymore. His pace had slowed; the sidewalk traffic was far thinner here.
“Started running low on paper,” he said. “Blow’s nice, but it’s expensive. I had to economize.”
Crack. He hadn’t made that up. She glanced at the ‘never’ etched in the hand holding the pop can, and the song passed through her head. “What made you quit?”
The tightening in his jaw made her regret the question. She started to apologize, but he was already talking.
“I was back from Miami in time for Jesse’s thirteenth birthday that August, but I missed it. He didn’t even call me until September. I hadn’t seen him at all. Hadn’t even realized it.”
Carolyn held her breath. This wasn’t part of the song.
“That went on for a couple of months. I think it was December, I stayed off the pipe for a day, maybe two. I called him, got through Beatrice — that’s his aunt he lives with — making sure I wasn’t high before she’d put him on the phone. Then after all that, he wouldn’t even talk to me.” He tipped the can up and swallowed. “I was pretty pissed off. It was two days, I’m sure of it. And he won’t even come to the phone?
“He was thirteen, wasn’t like he knew how hard those two days were. But I wasn’t feeling too rational, so I was like fuck it, what’s the point? Ten minutes later, I was getting a refill. When I was walking home, I got stopped by a cop.”
“For what?”
He gave her a funny look. “For walking home.”
“But why did he stop you?”
“After midnight. Neighborhood’s black. I’m white. What else would I be doing, ’cept buying drugs?”
“But you were buying drugs.”
If Webster’s needed an exact picture for ‘exasperation,’ Rick’s face defined it.
“I know,” she said. “That’s not the point. You were profiled, the neighborhood was profiled.”
“I think my sweatshirt even had a hood on it.”
“Okay. You’re right. What happened?”
“Nothing. He was a rookie. I wasn’t. I had aspirin from the convenience store, my girlfriend had a headache, she was waiting for me. I didn’t actually know where she was, but yes sir, no sir. Thanks for trying to violate my Fourth Amendment rights, see you around. I got home, emptied my pockets myself.” He pitched the root beer into a trashcan six feet away. “That’s when it hit me. That I’d come within an inch of looking at Jesse through glass until he graduated from high school.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Not real sure I could count on him to visit either, since he wasn’t even taking my damn phone calls.” He shrugged again. “Scared me so bad, I was glad I hadn’t just bought a nickel’s worth, ’cause that wouldn’t have lasted long enough to forget how close that call was.”
He took another breath. Or maybe that was her.
“I’d been searched before, same reason. It pissed me off, but they never found nothing, because I didn’t go near that shit. Seen too many people hooked. Down to the last rock, maybe two days later, and I was either gonna kill myself or quit. Wasn’t sure which one would really end it, and you can’t try both those things in that order.”
Her throat tightened. “That’s not funny.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“Because — ” I would never have met you. She swallowed. “Well, then, I’m glad quitting worked.”
“Me too. Some days more than others.”
How did he do that? Tell her something she was sure few people knew, and still make her feel like she was exposed by it?
Carolyn swallowed again. “How old is he now?”
“Graduated last Thursday. I got to see that.”
“Do you see him a lot?”
“Depends on the tour schedule, some. More now than I used to be able to.”
She heard something that sounded like an echo on his last words.
Don’t you take him away because he’s four and I’m thirteen / he’s my baby and he’s happy plus he can fucking read / I taught him that I taught him every fucking thing / and now you take him away so he’ll forget about me?
Rick raised his eyebrows when she glanced up, and her question tumbled out.
“It really happened like that, didn’t it?”
25: Choices
Rick stared at her. Hadn’t he covered that for the past three blocks?
“It’s really none of my business.”
“Well, I guess it is now, since I just told you.” Shit. He had, hadn’t he?
Her eyes widened. “I meant with Jesse. Like you said in the song, did it really happen like that?”
That made more sense. Or it would, if he hadn’t answered that question so many times. “They always ask me about that. They talk to Scorpion the most, but usually I get a paragraph or two in … ”
She looked confused. “‘They’ who?”
“Reporters. Just college papers mostly, but they put them on the web … sites … ” He snorted and Carolyn laughed. “I guess some people got nothing better to do.”
“Well I do.”
Rick gave her a look to match her attitude on that tone.
She grinned. “I’m signed up on Carnage’s website. They send me e-mails when you put an album out. And I checked Guillotine’s to see if you were on his new one.”
“Oh, well, that’s something.”
“What else matters? I’m not going to start Googling, I think it’s insane. Oh, no! Brad and Jennifer got a divorce? And now he’s banging Angelina —oh God, is it true? You got a picture of the baby? Show me! Now!”
She slapped her hand over her heart, and he knew he’d see that next time he was in the checkout line.
“If that was me?” She sighed. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want my business plastered everywhere I looked.”
Rick shrugged. “They say you can’t complain. You wanted to be famous, right?”
“No. It’s wrong. It killed Princess Diana, like she didn’t have enough trouble before that, everybody in the world knowing her husband’s cheating on her, it’s bullshit, and — ”
And Carolyn felt strongly about it. Rick hadn’t meant to laugh, not at what she was saying, mostly her saying ‘bullshit.’
She smirked. “Pardon my French.”
He laughed again, so loud that a couple of people on the street actually looked at him. Must have been tourists. New Yorkers ignored you, unless you stopped walking fast enough.
“I’m serious, though,” Carolyn said.
“No doubt.”
“I mean it.”
He would have reassured her that he knew it, but she kept going.
“Take you, for instance. So you write this song, and I’m listening to it — not too often, it’s pretty harsh to handle in large doses — and I’m thinking, my God. Why? It must have been something. Unless he’s actually, you know … psychotic.”
Nah, just regular crazy. More than some. Less than a lot.
“But I don’t know that either,” she said. “Mostly, I don’t think so, he doesn’t sound like that usually, so whatever it was … but he never says. Is it any of my business? I mean, for all I know, you made it up, right? But no matter what I think — and I do wonder — does that give me the right to go digging around to find out? You said what you wanted to say, and just because you went that far … ”
Carolyn ran out of breath, inhaled to replenish it, then blew it out in a big disgusted phhht.
She’d changed songs, from “Don’t Forget” back to “Payback,” the one she’d brought up in the street outside Letterman, the very first night.
“I don’t care how famous you are,” she said. “Or if you wanted it. You should be able to limit what’s public to what you want to be public, and nobody else gets to decide that for you.”
He’d never thought about publicity going too far, only about how far it wasn’t going. He didn’t know — how could he? — what it would feel like if the curtain never closed.
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