Best Friend for Hire

by Mary Mary Carlomagno

  The event had gotten a considerable amount of media attention, thanks to my efforts. The celebrity event has a strange effect on the people in my world, as if my proximity to the celebrities made me more important somehow. If I hadn’t been such a basket case about recent events, I might have let all this attention give me power, but I had so little confidence in my abilities that people demanding things from me made me feel even worse, even less important. It was like suddenly having more people to prove myself to.

  If the fundraiser went well, I might have a chance at regaining my career footing, but my focus was Dave, whose attention and gratitude I craved more than anything else. Saving the bar meant saving Dave. In a traditional role reversal, I was the princess on the white horse sweeping in to rescue Dave, the unskilled laborer, from an uncertain fate in corporate America. After I delivered him to his apartment after his hopeless ramble that night, I felt like not only was he not interested in me romantically, but also that if I didn’t make this fundraiser work he would never talk to me again. So far, my career had a short list of people who were not talking to me, starting with Emily, who, since her return from her honeymoon in Hawaii, had texted to tell me that she would never text me again. Now would not be a good time for me to ask for a customer testimonial from her, I figured. I wanted desperately to turn this sad state of affairs around, but I was still shell-shocked from the debacle of the wedding, Emily’s rejection and Dave’s disinterest. This was not an overwhelming amount of support, to say the least.

  I gained new supporters in Derek and Allison, who were obsessed with the event. After the unsettling news of their status change, I had not been anxious to spend time with them, either individually or together as a couple. I had avoided every possible opportunity to mend fences, which was not easy since Allison lived in my building. But when you spend virtually no time at your apartment and all your time at your new office, that can be easy. Nonetheless, Allison cornered me long enough to secure a job at the event. Derek had the ulterior motive of talking up his screenplay to anyone remotely connected with the entertainment industry, and Allison, like every other girl who grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, wanted to meet The Boss himself. Since I needed all the help I could get, I put aside any personal feelings I had about either of them and put them to work. They followed Bertram’s orders to bus tables and help manage the line outside. They were utility players, out of their element but happy to pitch in. Every once in a while, I looked over at them as they danced or posed for selfies. At least they were happy.

  The media, which I had relied on to make this event, turned out to be the catalyst for ruining this evening. And it all began to come apart like a pulled thread on a crocheted sweater that you simply watch unravel as the yarn is stretched further and further. Media professionals know that anything you say to a reporter is on the record. The concept of “off the record” is pure myth. I knew this better than anybody, but I made that rookie mistake, and it ended up costing me.

  Journalists and celebrities share the same bloodthirst for publicity, any publicity, and both are about as predictable as toddlers. When I had mentioned (off the record) to Chris Knoll, the reporter from nj.com, that there was an outside chance that Bruce could show up, I knew it was dangerous, but I never thought that he would print it. I never actually said he was coming. But then again, I never said he wouldn’t. Maybe it was because I had just met Bruce and I thought there was a chance. Bruce is not your typical celebrity. He was known for showing up at these kinds of events unannounced. And maybe he might surprise us. My first surprise of the day came via text message from Bertram, which I picked up as I headed to the bar. “Want to see The Boss? Head over to The Garage finale in Hoboken before the doors close for good.”

  The tweet had been from nj.com, one of the feeds that Bertram followed. He quickly followed up with another text that was simply, “trouble ahead, trouble behind.” Bertram even texted in Grateful Dead speak.

  This veiled message from nj.com was as unpredictable as the final, stomach-lurching backwards loop on Lightning Loops at Great Adventure. But just like my decision to go on that ride when I was 12 years old, I was damned if I wasn’t going to ride this roller coaster to its uncertain end. I could only hope that, at the end of the ride, I would get off unscathed. That seemed unlikely once those 140 characters hit the twittersphere. I was completely out of control and no one could hear my screams.

  #Nightmare.

  “I never said that he would come to the event, I said he was invited,” I reasoned with the reporter.

  “Neither did I. But he might show up and that’s good enough for me.”

  Even though I secretly shared Chris’ optimism for a good outcome, I knew it would be irresponsible to keep up with this charade that was only going to disappoint a ton of people and perhaps put the final nail in the coffin of The Garage.

  James and Tara arrived just as I hung up with the reporter. James had volunteered to use his musician expertise to wrangle the talent, namely local artists who had appeared at the club, Marshall Crenshaw, Mike Peters of the Alarm, and a few others that only James, as a musician, would recognize. When I told him about what had happened on nj.com, he immediately had an idea of how to fix the problem.

  “Well, if you can’t get The Boss, maybe a substitute will do,” he suggested.

  “Like who?” I asked, as I looked outside at the gathering crowd.

  “There are 254 Bruce cover bands in New Jersey alone, but only two in this zip code,” James explained.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Steve Hartman.”

  “And who, may I ask, is Steve Hartman.”

  And just as I said his name, Steve Hartman appeared at my side, a fifty-something slender man wearing black denims and a Born in the USA T-shirt.

  “I am your savior to rise from these streets.”

  “Oh, boy,” I sighed.

  “It’s perfect,” said James. “If you can’t have Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, than you can have Steve Hartman and the F Street Band.”

  “We are actually called Badlands,” Steven corrected.

  How I would explain to the crowd that the F Street Band would be performing in place of the E Street Band was not going to be easy news to break. But it was something. Before I could come up with that awkward introduction, another issue was taking place outside the bar. Police cars had blocked off Washington Street, and Hoboken’s finest mounted on horseback had isolated the crowd to the sidewalk. The group was being rounded up as if they were protesters at a New Jersey toxic dump site rather than happy concertgoers. Instead of a call and response protest, the jovial mob was singing “Glory Days” over and over. I thought about grabbing one of the megaphones from the person leading the choir to tell them that Bruce might not come at all, until I noticed that the song leader was Allison. I knew she couldn’t be trusted.

  As the policeman set up the wooden sawhorses around the singing mob, another emergency erupted, and this time it was an emergency vehicle. Two of the early bird drinkers who had been downing shots of absinthe before Bertram cut them off had left the bar in dramatic fashion. They were on their way out to a “real bar,” when the first girl tripped on one of her platform heels and fell face first on the sidewalk in front of the bar. The girl screamed as blood ran down her face and all over her gunmetal gray sequined tank top. The ambulance parted the crowd and loaded the girl, who wasn’t too hurt to scream out threats of lawsuits, onto a stretcher and off to the hospital. I hoped that she would be the only casualty of the day, but that was wishful thinking.

  I made my way back inside the bar to find Maggie, who had the CBS reporter by the collar. She yanked him from the media pit where she had an obedient group of media professionals in check, save one. As I walked through the door, she almost knocked me off balance as she picked him up by his collar and the waistband of his pants and tossed him out onto the sidewalk.


  “And stay out,” she yelled after him.

  The media pit grew quiet, even the “stringer” photographers who never settle down. The stringer photographer is an unusual breed, perhaps considered to be the bottom rung on the media hierarchy. They are rarely on assignment, rarely credentialed, but show up to snap photos of whomever they can, wherever they can. As soon as they get the photo, they shop it around to the highest bidder. This is how they make their living; they are the plankton of the media pit. Usually the most rowdy, they grew surprisingly quiet after Maggie’s act of aggression toward one of their kind.

  “Who wants to be next?” she shouted at the sheepish crowd. They all avoided eye contact as if they were the sane ones dealing with a crazy person.

  “Do I want to know what happened there?” I asked.

  “The less you know the better,” she answered back.

  So wrapped up in the emergency vehicles, the police lines and the raucous media was I that I was paying little attention to Dave, who had been treating me with a cool, businesslike demeanor all day. It was as though I had learned too much about him on our pseudo-date and now he had to put distance between us. When I finally located him at the end of the bar, he was leaning against it with a beer in his hand as Lively Schmidt leaned in to talk to him.

  How she could show her face here when her father had bought the place for her I could not understand. In essence her future depended on the demise of Dave’s bar. This was odd. But jealousy aside, I needed to put on my big girl pants and greet the mayor. Where was she, I wondered? That was about a nanosecond of doubt, because when I returned to the door to check and see if she had checked in, I noticed that the mayor was being turned away at the door.

  She may have been led right in if she had been wearing her usual business attire, but instead she wore a pair of outdated jeans and a double-breasted blazer that made her look even more out of place. Daniel, confused by her look, thought that she might be looking for Tot Land, which would be open next month if tonight’s efforts were a bust. He whispered that she should come back later when the daycare was fully operational. I looked at him in disbelief, not only because he seemed to think we were doomed to fail, but also because he was about to boot our town’s mayor out into the street.

  “Oh, Mrs. Gallagher, Mrs. Mayor, come right this way,” I interjected and led her by the arm into the foyer.

  “That man was very rude,” she noted as she puller her blouse collar outside of her stiff blazer.

  “Yeah, it’s part of his charm. He’s from New York, you know.”

  She nodded in agreement, as if being from New York explained his rude behavior, like it was a psychological malady rather than a geographic custom.

  The mayor wanted to greet some of the younger residents in town. She was a big music fan, too, and told me about her heyday standing in line to see Barry Manilow.

  “I get it,” she told me with a knowing wink.

  Linda Gallagher had been in office for the past four years and was the mother of three Ivy League daughters and a former Wall Street banker who took on the civic duty of reforming Hoboken, kind of like Bloomberg had in New York City. She was pretty effective at balancing the budget and ridding city hall of high-salaried workers, but she was low on compassion and was often criticized for being out of touch with the young residents in town. This appearance was an attempt to bridge that gap, to become more “relatable.”

  Her assistant now strong-armed me into letting the mayor give a small speech to make up for the “disaster” at the door. I knew this was a minor thing; besides, the crowd would probably not even notice her between set breaks. She would be slotted in to go before The Presidents of the United States of America, which would have an apt political tie-in. Her challenger, Robb Robinson, was already in the bar; he was an obese man who showed up in a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt under his portly custom-made suit. Despite his very right wing conservative stance, he was a longtime Bruce fan. I’m not sure that I think there is a less conflicted person than the Republican Bruce fan. Did they ever really listen to his lyrics, and what the heck did they do at concerts when Bruce makes a political statement? It just made no sense. Regardless of his political affiliations, he had made himself right at home at the bar, deciding not to make a political statement but to accost every rock star-looking person for a photo opportunity. When I looked over, he was posing for a shot with my brother and Tara. On second glance, he had cornered the guitarist from Badlands, who was dressed up to look exactly like Steve Van Zandt, bandana and all.

  Meanwhile, the mayor took the podium and made an effort to quiet the crowd, but no one was listening. She became upset and began to use tactics a sixth grade teacher might employ to hush up a classroom full of disobedient children.

  “Settle down for a few announcements, guys,” she pleaded.

  “Mommy, isn’t it time to put your kiddies to bed?” someone yelled from the back of the crowd.

  She stopped for a moment, reconsidered getting back to the podium before she thought better of it, then cut her losses and left the stage. But not before she gave me a good dressing down.

  “I shut down Fake St Patrick’s Day, so closing this place will be child’s play for me, missy,” she warned.

  “All it takes is one call to the Fire Chief and you are over.…Don’t try me, I will do it,” she continued.

  Needless to say, she did not win over any votes that day, mine included.

  The mayor had a precedent for curtailing public spectacles. She had recently shut down the Fake St Patrick’s Day Parade, a must go-to event for young drinkers across the tri-state area. Every year, the town throws a St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which is never actually held on St. Patrick’s Day. Due to the demand of marching bands, each New Jersey town (Newark, Belmar, Kearney) rotates a Saturday in March to host St. Patrick’s Day. In Hoboken, this is enough reason to pack the bars early and carry on like the world is ending. It’s a boon for local businesses, but comes with a price for public safety, and stretches the resources of the order keepers in the city. But fake Bruce Springsteen day was turning out to be even more raucous and costly. Business may have looked good, but crowd management had proven to be difficult, despite the fact that the summons for drinking an open container in public might have made some extra money for the town. But the mayor’s threat weighed heavily on me: what if I had destroyed the last chance to save this New Jersey institution? I prayed that she would not close us down.

  Before I could ponder this further, I was given false hope when screams from the crowd erupted outside. A limousine had pulled up slowly and parked. After about five minutes, the door opened, only to reveal—to everyone’s colossal disappointment—the emergence of the unattractive Mark Feist. I, like the crowd, would have been happy to have never seen this poser again, but there he was. He waved to the crowd, assuming that they were gathered to see him and his companion, a leggy supermodel type. He spotted me and planted his customary three kisses on my cheeks and then said, “Jen, can you show us our table and get us some Cristal?”

  “You got it, Mark. Let me get someone right on that.” I quickly motioned to Tara to come over and help me with these VIPs. As Mark walked away, I heard his companion say, “So is Bruce here yet?” She was not the only one who’d be in for a surprise.

  There was, however, one bright spot. After weeks of convincing, the Hoboken Historical Society had finally agreed to make a special decree for The Garage, making it a memorable landmark of the town, not exactly a historic landmark but a memorable one nonetheless. They had even created a plaque to present to Dave. This took place right after Mike Peters of The Alarm gave a stunning rendition of “The Stand,” which got the crowd happy again after the mayor’s brief reprimand. The lead singer, Mike Peters, a longtime friend of Dave’s, was the perfect person to introduce him. He hollered to the crowd.

  “I think with a little encouragement we can get Dave Germain
up here. Dave, where are ya, man?”

  Dave was still in the corner with Lively, but managed to escape from where she had him sequestered to get on stage for his shining moment. He jumped on stage with his hands raised like David Lee Roth, full of arrogance and bravado. He hugged Mike and then was introduced to the very stately, grey-haired, navy blazer-wearing Corbin Pennington.

  “Let me introduce you to this cool dude, Corbin Pennington, who has a special award for The Garage,” Dave announced to the crowd gathered in the tightly packed bar.

  “By special circumstances, we deem The Garage a place of memorable location in Hoboken.” Pennington, who spoke with the New Jersey version of Larchmont lockjaw, announced this grandly as if he were presenting something much more formal.

  The crowd cheered. Corbin extended his hand graciously and was greeted by a bear hug from Dave, which he extricated himself from awkwardly. Dave stepped back, realizing that his affection was not quite as rock and roll as he would have liked, backed up and extended a formal handshake and then accepted the plaque. He then held it over his head as if he had just been awarded the Silver Plate at Wimbledon. He looked over at me, over at Lively, and then over at me again. He winked at Bertram, who gave him a thumbs up.

  “Speech, speech, speech,” the crowd yelled.