Daniel Price - Slick

Inevitably, I had to hit her where she worked. I had to rely on the hunch that she wanted to get out of that awful place as much as I did. And worse, I had to prey on that one sliver of hope left inside of her: that God would balance her uncommonly dark past with an uncommonly bright future.

She took a long, shaky drag off the cigarette. “How do I know if you for real or not?”

“Are you questioning my existence or my credibility?”

“I’m questioning you.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “All I know is that I’ve got a plan. Yeah, it carries risk. For you, me, and a lot of people. But I did manage to talk Hunta into it, if that says anything.”

“See, how do I even know that? For all I know, you never even met the man.”

“I met him twice. He likes me. He even calls me Slick.”

“Prove it.”

“Tomorrow.”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s the day I take you to see him. If you’re up for it.”

That didn’t help her state of mind, either. She was clearly looking for an out, some irrefutable sign that this was all bullshit. Then she could go on her way without ever having to wonder if she missed her one true shot at something better.

“Listen, Harmony, you’re scared to trust me and I don’t blame you. You want my advice? Don’t.”

“Don’t trust you.”

“Not until you’re ready. I don’t need your absolute confidence yet. All I need to know is whether or not you’ll meet me again tomorrow. And you don’t even have to decide that until I get you home. So just take a deep breath. Think about it. Do you want to keep going, or do you want to stay here a little while longer?”

Whether she knew it or not, she was beginning to believe in me. And whether she wanted to or not, she was beginning to like me. As for me, I was way beyond sold. I was ready to shout her name from the rooftops.

She took one last smoky breath and then stomped her cigarette. “Let’s keep going.”

________________

The rest of the ride was dead silent. At 1:15, I reached her apartment complex, a seedy-looking building that made me think of the pool table at the Flower Club.

I stopped the car, but she didn’t get out. She looked like she was about to ask me something, then let out a nervous laugh.

“What?”

“I forgot your name,” she admitted. “I know you told it to me, back at the club. But I don’t remember it.”

“It’s Scott.”

“Okay. Scott. Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Why’d you pick me? Out of all the women out there you could’ve used for this thing, why me? Is it ‘cause I’m easy to feel bad for?”

“No. I picked your photo before I knew a single thing about you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. There was just something about your face. It sang to me.”

After a long pause, she tittered again. “You sure you ain’t some guy trying to fuck me?”

I smiled along. “If I am, I really need to work on my foreplay.”

She covered her grin with her hand, then turned somber again.

“I never asked anyone to feel sorry for me, you know.”

“I know.”

“I mean I’m not the kind of person who asks for stuff just because, you know, I been through shit.”

“I get that sense,” I told her.

“But that doesn’t mean I want more bad things happening to me, you understand what I’m sayin’?”

“This will only lead to good things. That’s what I’m saying.”

She glanced at her front door. “Yeah, that’s just what Jay and Sheila said, too. And that didn’t lead to anything.”

I sighed. “Harmony, I wish I could say just the right thing to put your mind at ease. I really do. But it’s late. You’re tired. And I’m officially out of new things to tell you.”

“Just promise me.”

I waited for a rider to that, but it didn’t seem like one was coming.

“Promise you what?”

She was still working out the verbiage, as if I were one of those cruel genies who always granted wishes in the most literal, ironic sense.

“Promise me that when this is all over, that when everything’s said and done, I won’t hate you.”

Although awkwardly phrased, her request was almost brilliant in its wide-ranging simplicity. It pretty much covered all bases.

“Harmony, I can’t control whether or not you hate me. All I can promise is that I’ll never give you a reason. You’re going to have to accept that, plus my heartfelt conviction that when this is all over, when everything’s said and done, you’ll be glad you met me.”

That was it. There was nothing left to add. Her hard disk was full. She spent her last few watts on a skeptical smirk.

“I see why they call you Slick.”

She grabbed her purse, opened the door, and then stared ahead for several seconds. “I got to get my braces tightened tomorrow. At ten.”

“Okay.”

“After that, I’m free.”

I smiled. “Okay.”

________________

I kept smiling all the way home. I couldn’t stop. A wide, shit-eating grin usually reserved for lovelorn schoolboys. This wasn’t love, despite what “Dave” may have thought. This wasn’t even infatuation, despite my urge to sing Harmony’s name. Although I’d meant every word of what I said, and would fight to the end to protect her, the ugly truth was that she was still just a vehicle to me. She was just a potent way for me to get to her . The Bitch. That fickle and elusive model/goddess who stretched and writhed atop an entire nation and beyond, endlessly bored with our petty little offerings. Annabelle had managed to get her to look this way, and then conveniently left the scene. Now it was my turn. No cheesy love notes this time. This was a full-blown serenade. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait.

Upon returning home, my phone emitted a series of beeps. The LED informed me that I had one new text message. It seemed the curious Jean Spelling was something of a night owl. I scrolled through her words.

Scott. Got your note. Madison’s coming tomorrow at 3. Get a good night’s sleep, my friend. Then buckle up. You’re in for a hell of a ride.

Yeah. Weren’t we all?

I’m a shameless man living in shameless times, but the blood of my vocational ancestors runs through me. The seeds of my profession were planted centuries ago by men with the ingenuity and nerve to manipulate thousands. In fact, it was Benjamin Franklin, the father of electricity, who secretly discovered a different source of power: the media hoax.

In 1732, at age twenty-seven, Franklin published his maiden edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac . In order to generate buzz for his new endeavor, he used astrological hooey to predict the exact date and time that Mr. Titan Leeds — Franklin’s number one competitor in the almanac market — would die of natural causes. Naturally Mr. Leeds was quite smug, ten months later, when his prescribed expiration date came and went without so much as a headache. Like Franklin cared. The next edition of Poor Richard’s included a heartfelt obituary for the dear Titan Leeds, plus a warning to readers that any future written statements from the deceased, re: his not being deceased, were purely the work of profit-seeking forgers. Franklin’s head game was unprecedented for its time, and quite successful. Despite Leeds’s repeated and furious insistence that he was still alive, sales of his almanac dropped consistently each year, all the way to his actual death in 1739. Once the final edition of Leeds’s work was published, Franklin openly thanked the forgers for giving up the ghost.