Pop Life

by Ryan Loveless

  Though I anticipated the answer, I was unprepared for my reaction to it. A wave of disappointment and jealousy slammed into me. At the same time, I felt a perverse pride—a vindication for disliking Jeff from the start.

  "I don't think Jeff likes me," I said when I could see clearly again. "So I don't think I have much to worry about."

  "He likes you fine. In fact, you impressed him this morning when you stood up to Paeder on Keelin's behalf. He told me so."

  "Oh," I said. I tried to picture Jamie and Jeff sitting around talking about me. I couldn't.

  "If he comes onto you, I want you to tell him that you're with me. Will you do that?"

  "Jamie…"

  "You don't have to mean it. Just tell him, all right?" He waved his hand, batting whatever concerns he might imagine I was having out of the air. I guessed that he thought I'd have a problem with people thinking I was with him. So, his skills of observation had limits after all. Severe ones.

  "I'll tell him," I said. "Although I'm not sure why you think it's necessary."

  "You have to be careful, Andrew. You're a lamb. See? That's another observation I've made. You're surrounded by wolves. Including me. Take care that you don't get eaten."

  "I don't believe that, Jamie. I mean, I don't believe you're like that." I wanted to tell him that I'd been around in the business. I wasn't an innocent, but it didn't seem like that would matter. The curtain rippled silently as someone walking past brushed against it.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to insult you."

  "You didn't." He reached for me with both hands. I put my hands in my lap. What the hell did he know?

  "Do you always turn red when you aren't insulted?"

  "Fine. I'm a lamb. Everyone else is a wolf. You're a predator; I'm lunch. I've got it. I'm sorry, all right? I'm sorry that I work in the music industry, and I don't have any sort of addiction. I'm sorry I still have a relatively positive outlook. And I'm sorry that the only person I've ever had actual sex with was my wife. I'm sorry I don't fit in with the rest of you. Is that what you want to hear?"

  He stared at me and I knew I'd ruined every chance I had with him, but then: "I'm going to show you a little party trick. I want you to be happy, Drew."

  "Jamie, I understand—"

  He pushed the menu towards me. "This is a good one. Open it to the page about chicken."

  I did.

  "Got it?"

  "Yeah."

  He started with the first dish and recited the entire page to me, including side dishes and ingredients for the sauces.

  "Wow." I was duly impressed and let it drag the word out and raise my voice's register.

  He smiled, obviously pleased with himself. "I got through my first five years of school by tricking my brother David into reading things to me. He thought I was the biggest idiot. But I just sat there and memorized every word. I finally had to give it up when the books got too thick."

  "Did David ever figure out you were using him?"

  "Nope. See? He was wrong. I wasn't the idiot brother."

  "David was."

  "Exactly."

  The curtain opened again, and two steaming plates were set in front of us.

  "Ah," Jamie said, "Finally. Food."

  When we returned to the hotel, I thought that Jamie might invite me to his room, but he didn't. Jamie and Bob went to seventeen, and I returned to my room alone. At one in the morning a knock sounded at my door. I answered it in my shorts.

  "Are you Andrew?" asked the Asian woman who was decidedly not Jamie. She spoke with a thick Yorkshire accent.

  "Er, yes," I said. I started to close the door so I could grab my robe, but she put a hand out to stop me.

  "I'm Audrey, Jamie Webster's personal assistant. He asked me to fetch you."

  "Audrey? Is this a booty call? Because it's more polite to make those personally." I teased her.

  "Oh, no!" she said. "It's not like that. Well, I don't know. I've only been working for him about three weeks, and I haven't really gotten the hang of things yet. I mean, obviously he's had those sorts of, um, 'calls', as you put it…" She stopped and looked at me in dismay. "Oh, I shouldn't have said any of that. You won't tell, will you? I'll be fired. I really need this job…"

  I waved my hand to stop her fretting. "Don't worry about it. Just tell me what he told you."

  She took a breath. "He said to get you. Are you coming?" Audrey hooked a strand of black hair behind her ear. "I think you'd better," she said.

  "Yeah. I'm coming." I yanked my pants back on, grabbed a T-shirt, and dashed down the hall. Audrey darted ahead. Her speed increased my worry. She opened the door to Jamie's suite and handed me the key.

  "I'll be in my room if you need me. The number is taped next to the phone in red."

  "Thank you." I nodded at her, but my eyes were already exploring the room. Jamie's suite had the same layout as Paeder's, but the similarity ended there. Whereas Paeder's was meticulously clean down to his toothbrush lying perpendicular to the sink, Jamie's looked like he had never had a mother. It was difficult to ignore the impression that he had unpacked by grasping his unzipped suitcase and spinning around. I plowed through the mess into the bedroom. The lights were off. The bed, empty. Nobody home. I backtracked, looked in the bathroom, threw open the shower curtain. Nothing. Not even a drop of water. Then back through the living room, behind the couch, under the table—I was desperate—I even checked the windows, which, thank God, were suicide proof.

  By the time I returned to the bedroom, I was ready to call Missing Persons. I went down on my hands and knees and then flattened myself on my stomach to look under the bed. It had a wooden base that went all the way to the floor. Then, I heard it. A soft whimpering like a wounded animal. I followed it to the closet. Opening the door, I found him cowering on the floor.

  "I can't be alone, Drew." Jamie said. He hugged his knees and spoke to the floor.

  "You're not." I pushed a hanging pair of slacks away from his head so I could crouch beside him.

  "Everyone is alone eventually," Jamie said. "I'm scared that I'm going crazy." He grabbed my hand. "Am I crazy?" he whispered.

  "You're all right, now," I said. I squeezed his hand.

  Jamie raised his head. "I'll never be all right. I've got a secret, Drew." Dried tears left dirty streaks of stage makeup down his face. He still wore his jacket and shirt, but the pants, tie, and socks were gone, tossed in a corner across the room. His shirttails didn't quite cover his white underwear.

  "You can tell me, Jamie. It's all right." I held his hand tighter so he wouldn't notice how much I was shaking.

  "No. I can't tell anyone. Can't ever tell anyone. He'd kill me." Jamie crossed his arms over his chest and tried to fold into himself.

  "Jamie? Is someone trying to hurt you?" Some instinct told me to keep saying his name, that doing this would keep him with me and not wherever his mind was trying to take him.

  He put his finger over his lips. "Shh. We've said too much. Just forget it, okay? Shh."

  "Listen to me, Jamie. You're going to be fine."

  "Will you stay with me?" Jamie asked. His fingers clawed my hands, but I held on tight.

  "I will." Getting him up with a firm tug, I pulled Jamie towards the bed and pushed him to the left side near the wall. Jamie lay on his back. I reached for the light.

  "Andrew, leave it on?"

  "All right."

  "Thank you," said Jamie. "I'm sorry about everything. I'm feeling better now." His voice sounded dull and practiced. I didn't fully believe that he knew what he was saying. It was more like he was saying what he thought he should, which didn't seem like Jamie at all.

  "Good," I said anyway.

  He stared at the light. I lay on my stomach. Jamie took my hand. His was warm.

  "Jamie?" I turned to him, trying to get a read on his face, but he wasn't looking at me.

  "I wanted to be sure."

  "Of what?"

  "That you're here."

&nbs
p; "I'm here." I held Jamie's hand against my chest and waited until his breathing evened out and he was asleep. After another half hour, I eased my way off the bed.

  While Jamie slept, I searched. I lifted piles of laundry and shook each item of clothing. I didn't know what I was looking for—in movies alcoholics and drug users always left tiny bottles or empty vials lying around. Half-eaten candy bars littered the base of the minibar. The bottles of alcohol clinked. I extracted a palm-sized vodka and stared at its cap. The seal was not broken, but that could be faked if one twisted carefully. I was not Jamie's keeper. That knowledge did not stop me from phoning the front desk and asking the concierge to send up an attendant. I directed the boy to replace the liquor in the minibar with bottled water. Maybe it wasn't my business to interfere so spectacularly, but Jamie had invited me into his life, and I didn't want to see a repeat of the last two nights. I promised him a large tip the next day for his help and his discretion. We worked quickly and quietly. The boy glanced at the bedroom door from time to time, probably wondering who was on the other side of it if he didn't know already.

  If I thought that finding evidence of substance abuse would ease my mind, finding nothing antagonized me. With nothing illicit around, I was forced to consider the state of Jamie's sanity. When I returned to bed, Jamie's face was without expression. His heart beat languidly, forcing blood through his chilled body. I pulled the blankets over him. Jamie shivered. Scooting next to him, I slid my arm under Jamie's and held his hand again. After a moment, I put my other hand on Jamie's shoulder. Jamie's breathing came sporadically, as if he were weeping in his sleep. I could only watch.

  If this was a wolf, someone needed to read his National Geographic again.

  Chapter Seven

  "Paeder…" I pulled off my headphones. "…I'm starting to wonder just what you want Michael and me to do." I swung my legs off Paeder's couch to sit up. Paeder stopped scribbling notes for his autobiography and rolled his eyes so irritably that I feared they would pop out of his head and attack.

  "I want you to give me a hit," Paeder said. "The biggest I've ever had."

  "Icon has had simultaneous number ones in twenty-three countries." He expected me to top that?

  "I know what Icon has done. We're going to make it twenty-four. I know you enjoy a challenge, Andrew. I've got full faith in you, mate." It was the nicest he'd been to me, so I closed my mouth and let the oddity of being in his favor sink in.

  A burst of laughter cascaded in from the bedroom where Russell, Keelin, Jamie and the twins were sprawled on the bed watching cartoons. Through the open door, I saw Jamie and Russell roll onto Keelin, whose face was contorted into a silent giggle. Arlo and Graham were spread out at the foot of the bed.

  "Will you lads shut up?" Paeder asked, barely raising his voice. The noise died down… then Jamie launched himself onto Russell. Paeder stalked over and firmly closed the door, imprisoning the fun on the other side.

  Earlier, Jamie had gotten himself banished when he burst into the room and licked Paeder good morning like a giant Labrador. After Paeder had untangled himself, he'd shoved Jamie into the bedroom with Russell and Keelin. The twins had been exiled before they'd even opened their mouths.

  "I don't know how I put up with them," Paeder said, probably meaning his own band mates. I bit my tongue against asking how he thought they put up with him. He slid into his chair. I put my headphones back on. I had spent most of the morning listening to rough cuts from Truly, Paeder and making up chapter titles for Paeder's autobiography. (Chapter Five: Mousse and Me)

  Truly, Paeder lived up to its name. Seven tracks were tributes to his rarely seen wife, Dianne, including the phonetically-sung Spanglish "Mi Esposa." Four concerned "going it alone", which could be interpreted either as anti-relationship or anti-Icon. Two euphemistically recounted Catholic Paeder's first sexual experience with a Protestant girl in a pasture. The first, "Touch," did the storytelling, and the second, "Irish Times," assigned a political statement, as though two pale teens screwing under the gaze of cattle could end the Troubles. All the tracks were self-affirming. The album was in every way the opposite of Jamie's last release, which stopped just short of subliminally encoding "I suck" into every track.

  I pulled the headphones away from my ears. "Paeder, how many of these songs are going on the album?"

  "Six or seven, depending on what you and Michael give me," Paeder said. His head snapped around as the bedroom door opened and Keelin slipped through. "What?"

  Keelin closed the door. His bare foot traveled up his leg and scratched his knee. "It's nearly noon. Andrew needs to go soon." He moved into the room and sat down on the other end of the couch, leveling an expression at Paeder that indicated he had no intention of moving.

  I rocketed to my feet. "Absolutely right. Give me ten minutes to get the rest of my tux on, and I'll be set." Catching Paeder's look, I stopped myself from racing out the door. "We're done for now, right?"

  "Yeah," Paeder said. He stood, raised his arms over his head and bent to the side. "Guess I should start getting ready, myself." He walked over to the bedroom and opened the door. "Keelin tell your lads it's about time to go?"

  Russell hopped off the bed. "We're just on our way." He prodded Jamie. Jamie batted his hand away.

  "I'm going. God." Jamie leaned on Russell and staggered to the doorway. His hair stuck up in all directions, highlighting his slowly blinking eyes and making him look like a child startled out of a deep slumber. I was starting to wonder if he owned a comb. "So, Drew and Keelin are going now, and the rest of us will follow, I take it?"

  "Jamie, you don't have to go. It's not like you know the guy," I said. "And you can't really crash a wedding."

  "Jamie can do whatever he wants. He's Jamie. He's not like us mortals," said Russell. "While we let silly things like invitations hold us back, our Jamie simply goes."

  "Do you really want to go?" I asked.

  "I like weddings. They're so… happy. Right, Keelin?" Keelin's smile transformed into a grimace as Jamie showed his enthusiasm by bending down and dragging his tongue up Keelin's cheek. Paeder grabbed the back of Jamie's shirt and hauled him off.

  "Why don't you go take a nap, Jamie? You look like you didn't get enough sleep last night. We'll leave from here in ninety minutes."

  "Got plenty of sleep last night," Jamie said. "Bet I got more than you, Paeder." He weaved his way around the couch to me. "Isn't that right, Drew?" He patted my stomach.

  "I'll just make sure he gets back to his room," I said to whoever was listening. Paeder was looking at us oddly, but Jamie's band mates hadn't even left the bedroom. Arlo was turning the volume up on the television. I turned Jamie around and steered him towards the door. Jamie grinned at me. "Are you on something?" I asked once we were in the hall. I tried to remember a pile of clothes or clutter in Jamie's suite that I had missed.

  "Nope. I'm just really, really tired."

  "You just told Paeder…"

  "Get with the program, mate. It's no fun when Paeder gets to be right. Surely you know that by now."

  I had to laugh. "I'm picking up on it."

  "Besides, it's good to get out of here. Stay here too long and these walls start to close in on you."

  "Yeah," I said. "I could see that."

  * * * *

  While the soloist sang about the joy of man's desiring, I scanned the sanctuary. Bob stood—as unobtrusively as possible for a three hundred fifty pound man—near the rear annex. I did not think any of my relatives would mob Jamie, though Great Aunt Irma was something of a worry. She had a 1920's jeweled flask constantly at her lips and a taste for younger men. Jamie sat between Russell and Jeff with his arms behind them resting on the back of the pew. His fingers touched their shoulders. Jeff's hand rested on Jamie's leg. I wanted to run down and tell him to knock it off. Paeder sat at the end of the row between Jeff and Keelin. He folded his hands in his lap, personal space preserved. The man on my left—Alfred's accountant cousin who smelled of lilac cologne
and whispered the tallies of the wedding party in my ear: dress, fifteen hundred dollars; flowers, four thousand dollars; cake, nine hundred dollars—nudged me and winked like we were sharing a secret.

  The reception was in the banquet hall of the hotel where I was booked before Paeder changed my plans. There were about three hundred people there sitting around circular tables with white floral centerpieces. A disc jockey playing the hits of the sixties and seventies was set up in one corner. I sat at a dais with the wedding party until the cake cutting ceremony. When bright flashes of light from guests using the disposable party-favor cameras weren't blinding me, I caught glimpses of Icon, Jamie, Bob, and Jeff.

  Bob was hovering a few yards from Jamie, ready to swoop in if he decided to try out the bar, but Jamie was occupied walking around with Russell. A few people stopped them, and I saw autographs being signed and hugs given.

  Keelin spent most of his time with Paeder. Sometimes Keelin wandered over to Russell, and it was never long before Paeder went to get him as if Keelin were an errant pet.

  When Jeff was introduced to Alfred and Rachel at the church, he offered to take pictures as his gift to them, so he was running around with his camera as well. I saw him shooting the flower child, signaling the little girl to throw her petals in the air with a raised arm. He took candid photos of people laughing, dancing, and eating. Based on Jeff's previous work, I hadn't known that he was capable of photographing someone fully clothed. The children seemed to love him, though, and soon he had a trail of children following him like the Pied Piper. Most of them were little girls. It just figured that girls went for the bad boy even before they were old enough to be interested in boys. I'd never stood a chance in school.

  I grabbed Nicole as I came off the platform. The accountant was making his way towards me. We darted across the dance floor. "I think we lost him," I said. I pulled a chair out for her then sat down beside her.

  "You're hilarious," she said. "He's not that bad."

  I just looked at her. Jamie came around and sat down next to me. I introduced Nicole. He held her hand too long when he shook it.