Daniel Price - Slick

“Then try it on me. What do you think I’m here for?”

She took a deep, halting breath. “Okay. When I got hit by that police car, it was a bad thing. But in some ways it was also a good thing. Getting my head knocked in like that. I know that sounds messed up but ever since the accident, because of my brain damage…I mean I still got all my memories and shit. But ever since the accident, they seem like they all outside me. It’s like none of that stuff ever happened to me personally, you understand what I’m saying? To me, it was all just like some movie I watched from the front row.”

“Wow.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I wish I had a stronger memory, especially of my mother. And then sometimes, when it comes to the bad stuff, just remembering the movie is enough to set me off. Like this morning. That’s rare though. At the end of the day…I don’t know. I don’t know how I’d be if I didn’t have that distance. Maybe I’d be just as messed up as you expected me to be. I can’t say. I just know that the police car hitting me turned out to be a good thing. Except for all the headaches.”

I sat in silence, parsing her circuitous new data. Ever since she flashed me her first loaded look, I’d known how perfect she was for the role I was casting. But now I felt a strange sense of artistic possessiveness. Suddenly I was afraid to share her with the world, for fear they wouldn’t get her right. I certainly had qualms about sharing her with the media, with their quick cuts and dynamic framing techniques. Damn those lazy fucks. Those lowbrows and philistines. They’d flatten her many layers. They’d take this lovely swan and cram her into a duck-shaped hole. Worse, they’d force me to help.

“So what do you think?” she asked. “Is that gonna play well on TV?”

“I think you’re going to play well on TV. But we’ll definitely have to work on trimming your answers.”

“You’re the boss.”

“I’m not the boss,” I stressed. “If anything, you and I are partners on this.”

Harmony shrugged before getting back to her fatty salad. “Boss. Partner. Whatever. You the one with the freaky super-brain.”

________________

On Tuesday, my freaky super-brain wondered if Lisa Glassman was abstinent.

________________

Excluding our lunch break at the airport, I had driven Harmony around for six hours and 149 miles. At 3:20 we made our final stop in Koreatown, just around the corner from Alonso’s building. I turned off the ignition and looked at my passenger.

“Well, good luck. Hope it all goes okay.”

She laughed. “Thanks.”

“Actually, if you reach under your seat, you’ll find a small cardboard box.”

She did, and she did. “What’s this? A parting gift?”

“Just something you’ll need.”

Inside the box, snuggled in its plastic tray, was a brick-red wireless phone, plus accessories. I had hidden a pressed stack of seventy-five twenties beneath the tray. That was the parting gift. She wouldn’t find it until she got home.

“This for me?”

“That’s for you. That thing cost me five C-notes, so treat it well.”

“Five hundred dollars?”

“It’s worth it. It’s got a special chip in it that…I don’t know how it works. All I know is that nobody will be able to pick up our conversations. But listen, it’s only going to work with me, because I’ve got the exact same kind of phone. The call has to be secure on both ends.”

She kept flipping it over in her hands. “I never had one of these before.”

“This is how we’re going to communicate from now on. So don’t lose it. Don’t lend it out. And always remember to keep the battery charged. That’s very important.”

She put the phone back in the box. “Shit, man. This is starting to feel real.”

“Hey. Look at me.”

She turned to me. She was back to being the quiet and awkward Harmony I had chatted up at the Flower Club. We’d come such a long way in just forty hours. And yet all I’d really done was bring her from one game of dirty pool to another.

“I’m going to be with you every step of the journey. I’ll be all around you, like a guardian angel, keeping you out of harm’s way. You won’t be able to see me, but you’ll hear me. You and I will talk a million times a day. You think you have brain damage now, just wait until you’re done with that thing. We’ll be lucky to have four neurons left between us.”

She wasn’t as amused by that as I was. “You gonna call me or can I also call you?”

“You better. If you have any concerns, I want to be the first and only person you talk to. You have any problems, you stub your toe, I want you to call me. Any time of the day or night, as often as you like. I’ll always be reachable.”

“What’s your number?”

“I already programmed it into memory. It’s under ‘Slick.’”

Now she laughed. “You’re too much.”

“Actually, I’m not enough. That’s why we’ll both appreciate Alonso. He’s a nice guy. And he’ll take care of everything I can’t.”

“If you say so.”

He better. “He will. And he’s waiting for you, so…”

“Yeah.”

Despite that, she didn’t budge. I wasn’t sure if she was scared to move forward or sad to leave me behind. I assumed it was both. I hoped it was just the latter. I think it’s time to admit that with Harmony, my foothold was weak. She could move me to good or bad places. But somehow I’d managed to tell myself that given the weight of this assignment, anyone in Harmony’s role would have the same emotional leverage over me. I reminded myself that for all the good things about her, she was still just a nineteen-year-old kid with a cracked skull.

“You know what I noticed about you, Scott?”

“What did you notice about me?”

“You never really touch anyone. I mean most people when they talk, they like hold an arm or pat a back. Hell, even Hunta did that shit with me yesterday and he knows what I’m about to do to him. And when I was crying today…I don’t know. I ain’t criticizing you. I think that’s just a part of being you. All I’m saying is I noticed. That’s all.”

I didn’t take it as criticism at all. I held my left hand up to her, as if I were making a pledge. Catching my drift, she pressed her right palm to mine and then closed her grip. Her hand was tiny, like a child’s. And dark. Never in my life had I seen such dark fingers contrasted against the back of my hand. It was fascinating to look at, like a complex variation of the yin-yang.

I tightened my grip. “This is your last day of being anonymous. Tomorrow there are going to be a lot of people whispering your name. By Thursday you’ll hear it from every direction. By Friday you’ll need a hat and glasses to go to the store. And by Monday you won’t be able to go to the store.”

Demurely, she looked down at her knees but squeezed my hand harder.

“You and I are going to conquer the world,” I said. “You better be ready.”

“You better be with me.”

“I won’t let you down.”

“You better not.”

It would be all too easy for the audience to make a big deal about the brief and feather-light kiss that Harmony and I shared. It would be all too convenient to pan the camera, add a soundtrack, and frame our exchange in some broad romantic context. It would also be a mistake. This wasn’t romance, despite the appearance. This wasn’t even attraction, in a physical sense. This was all energy. We were two ends of the same battery, positive and negative, bound together in a symbiotic quest for power and glory. When our hands clasped tight, we were simply sealing the casing. When our lips touched, we were only sharing the spark of ambition. It was electric, dynamic, and utterly fantastic. We might as well have been kissing the Bitch.