Daniel Price - Slick

“You regret it?”

“Well, that’s the thing. Right before I agreed, I asked him to promise me something. I asked him to promise me that when this was all over, when everything was said and done, that I wouldn’t hate him.”

I gripped the steering wheel. “Do you?”

“It don’t matter. He didn’t promise that. He just promised that when this was all over, when everything was said and done, I’d be glad I met him.”

“And are you?”

“That don’t matter either,” she replied thoughtfully. “Turns out it ain’t over.”

We were both silent again. I stared at the empty passenger seat. It was hard to believe that our relationship had begun only ten and a half days ago, when she dropped my ticket into the punch clock at the Flower Club. The meter had been running ever since. At forty hours, we shared a kiss, and then forever disappeared inside each other’s red phones. At eighty hours, she became famous, and then suddenly turned me on. At two hundred and thirty hours, I called her a bitch, and then slowly began to crumble. And just fifteen minutes ago, at the two hundred and fifty-hour mark, I made plans to immolate myself. For her well-being. For her forgiveness. For my own peace of mind. I was ready to break her fall with my very own body. That was a pretty dramatic affair for a man like me. It was a pretty remarkable run for a courtship that — at Flower Club rates — would cost a mere six thousand dollars before tip.

“I don’t love you, Scott,” she said, finally abandoning the façade. “But I don’t hate you, either. I could have easily hated you for what you said to me yesterday. But we been through too much together. And given everything that’s happened, given everything that’s changed and everything I learned, I have to say I’m glad I met you.”

I leaned my head back, smiling, squeezing out tears.

“But you’re a stranger to me now. That’s the way it has to be. You understand?”

Wiping my eyes, I nodded.

“You there?”

“I’m here,” I said. “I hear you.”

And she could hear me. It wasn’t the most theatrical of breakdowns, especially when parsed through a cellular link, but she could hear my choked-up voice. It was the closest I’d ever come to standing naked in front of her. I was glad it was Harmony. I was glad she was the ear witness to such a rare emotional event.

“You know, I’ve been waiting for this one guy to call,” she said facetiously, “but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. So you know what? I think I’m gonna get rid of this phone. I think I’ll drop it right off the balcony.”

“Just be careful,” I said. “You could hurt someone.”

“Yeah, well, if I do, I’ll just have to live with it.”

“Just live well, all right?”

“You take care of yourself now, stranger.”

“You too.”

“I’m dropping the phone now.”

“Do it.”

She did it. I could hear the wind whistle through the receiver as Harmony let me go. When the phone hit the pavement, the resulting noise was so loud, I had to turn my head away. Ka-CHINK! It was like an aluminum bat hitting a stack of quarters right behind a megaphone. I couldn’t even imagine the number of high-tech fragments spread out on the sidewalk. I wished I could have dropped my phone with her. They could have died thematically together, bleeding circuitry so far and so wide that people wouldn’t be able to tell where one device began and the other one ended.

It wasn’t meant to be, I suppose. But I couldn’t complain. This was a fine way to end our arrangement. As for my own red phone, it would have to die elsewhere. Symbolically, there was no better place than the ocean. It was in for a cold, dark swim. Not now, but soon.

There was no hurry. I wasn’t going anywhere.

________________

By a quarter after three, my mind and body had both collapsed to mush. I’d spent the last five hours laid out on my sofa, wallowing beneath my blanket as the television infused me with a running drip of zeitgeist. The current distraction was Babes in Arms , a 1939 Busby Berkeley number with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. I knew I was in trouble when I started laughing at the jokes.

Madison came back from the kitchen with a hot cup of lemon tea and placed it on the coffee table. Funny that she came to work in a turtleneck sweater. So did I. My brain wasn’t entirely dead. I still had a nice big hickey to hide.

“Thank you,” I creaked. “You know, you really don’t have to take care of me.”

She sat down on the floor. “Oh, shut up. What else am I going to do here?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“I still can’t believe they fired you.”

I sniffed. “Yeah, well, that’s the way it works sometimes.”

Harmony’s plan had reached fruition sometime around noon. Much ado was made about the fake recording, the evil attempt to frame her. I didn’t watch a moment of it. All I knew I heard from Madison. I assured her the tape wasn’t made by anyone from the Hunta camp. In fact, they fired me simply because they thought I was the one behind it. That was sort of true.

“Will this be bad for your freelance business?”

I sighed. “Yeah. Things are going to be real quiet for a while.”

“That’s not fair.”

I wriggled my way down to the floor, between the couch and the coffee table. I took the mug in my hands.

“It’s all right,” I told her. “We’ll manage.”

“But what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to finish this nice cup of tea you made me. I’m going to lie back down on the sofa. And then I figure I’ll either get better or die. I haven’t decided which.”

Madison smirked. “Don’t die.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d miss you.”

After a few long moments, I put the tea back down and muted the television. Despite my minor release in the car, there was still a tempest brewing inside of me. I was filled with emotions that were constructive and otherwise, positive and otherwise. I would not expose my cherished assistant to such untested energies. Otherwise…

“I’d miss you, too,” I said.

“God, Scott. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

“I’m all right,” I assured her, unconvincingly. “I’ll be all right.”

I tried to meet her gaze, but she stared me down in three seconds.

“Can I please give you a hug?”

“That’s sweet of you, Madison. But I don’t want to get you sick.”

“It’s all right. My mom’s already coming down with something. If I don’t get it from you, I’ll get it from her.”

I let out a weak laugh. Doesn’t that figure?

“Still, I don’t know if she’d want us crossing certain professional boundaries…”

“Scott…”

Madison crawled her way over to me, curling up against my side. She threw her arms around me, then rested her head on my shoulder.

“It’s a hug,” she said. “There’s no crime. No scandal. It’s just a hug. You need it.”

After a few awkward beats, I put my hand on her back. Damned if she wasn’t right. Damned if this wasn’t all the medicine I needed right now.

“I warned you I was a business jinx,” she quipped. “You should have listened.”

“Madison, hiring you is one of the few things I don’t regret.”

“You make it sound like this whole thing’s your fault.”