Daniel Price - Slick

“No fucking way!”

“It’s just the business.”

“Yeah, well the business is fucked up! I mean I thought the music industry was bad, but your business is straight from hell, man. Fucking flacks.”

“Hey, you know ‘flack’ and ‘rap’ are just two words for ‘blame.’”

The line was silent.

“You know, you catch the flack. You take the rap…”

“What the fuck you talking about?”

“Look, Hunta, the important thing is that the kids are still behind you. Your fans—”

“Bullshit.”

I opened the door. My client didn’t seem to have any direct concerns about Harmony, so I figured it was safe to include Madison. As I traipsed down the stairs, she watched me eagerly from the edge of the couch. She knew damn well who I was talking to.

“It’s not bullshit. My assistant—”

“You got an assistant?”

Madison beamed at a thousand watts. I sat down next to her, poking her thigh.

“I’ve got a teenage assistant,” I said. “A very good one. On her own initiative, she went around her school today, polling her classmates. They’re behind you in overwhelming numbers. They have absolute faith in your innocence.”

“You’re full of shit, man. You can’t even call me by my real name.”

“I’m not full of shit, Jeremy . She talked to over a hundred kids.”

“You full of shit. I bet you ain’t even got an assistant.”

“I do.”

“Yeah? She there now?”

Crap. “She’s around.”

“Then put her on.”

Crap. “You want me to put her on.”

Bug-eyed, Madison covered her mouth. I hadn’t prepared her for this. I wasn’t prepared for it myself. This wasn’t good. If I didn’t put her on, Hunta would never believe anything I said again. And if I did…

“All right. I’ll go get her. But just so you know, she believes you too. I mean she just took one look at Harmony Prince and…” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that. She could tell the woman was lying.”

“Yeah, of course she could. You told her, didn’t you?”

“No,” I replied, keeping a wary eye on Madison. “She’s thirteen.”

“So?”

“So be nice to her, okay? She’s my most valuable asset.”

“Why didn’t you give her the whole story, man?”

“Listen, I’m very protective of her and I’m not going to put her on until I know you’re going to be nice to her. You understand what I’m saying?”

Madison shot me a mortified glare. Jesus, Scott.

Fortunately, Hunta got it. “Fine. Whatever. I won’t tell her. Just put her on.”

“All right.” I handed the phone to Madison, then covered the receiver. “It’ll be fine. Just tell him like you told me.”

I leaned back and exhaled, right as Madison shot forward. She primped herself, cleared her throat, and then greeted Hunta in an absurdly professional voice.

“This is Madison.”

The façade was only verbal. You could see her glowing rapture from a mile away. She wasn’t even a fan of his but hey, you put a guy in the news long enough and he takes on a legend of his own. For Madison, this was the ultimate thrill. For me, it was a blowout waiting to happen.

“Hi.” Pause. “Madison McKnight. I’m a big—” Pause. “No, I really did. It all started when I asked a couple of friends what they thought about Harmony Prince. They were just as convinced as I was that she was lying through her teeth. So then I started asking other kids, and they felt exactly the same way. I have the responses of over ninety different—”

She opened her notebook to pages of scribbled data. It wasn’t the most objective or scientific of surveys, but certainly no worse than the half-baked pie charts they ran in the papers.

“Right. Exactly. We can tell the difference. Teenagers have a special nose for bullshit, because we’re exposed to so much marketing.”

I told her that, but it was mostly bullshit itself. Marketing didn’t make kids wiser, just more cynical. The biggest reason Hunta was so popular right now was because he was a public scourge, the bane of stodgy adults everywhere. In teenage eyes, that made him cooler than Jesus.

Madison, however, was abnormally sharp for her age. Right away she saw the puppet’s strings. She just didn’t see me pulling them. Please, Hunta. Jeremy. I know you don’t owe me anything but please don’t ruin the good thing I have with this girl. I’ve got a lot invested in her. Hell, she’s half my portfolio.

She nodded enthusiastically to Hunta. “Exactly. We are. But the important thing is that there are still a lot of people behind you, even if the media won’t show them. Your fans are totally with you.”

She beamed again, squeezing my arm. “Thank you. That’s very sweet. Everything I learned, I learned from Scott.” She cocked her head. “I’m sorry?” Pause. “No. I come here after school.” Pause. “No, his apartment.”

She glanced at me with a blush and a giggle. “No, no. We’re just…no.”

I rolled my eyes. I thought those jokes would go away when I stopped calling her my intern.

Hunta chatted her up some more. She listened, enrapt, for well over a minute. Suddenly a new oversight caught up with me and hit me like a seizure. Oh my God. I was so worried about him spilling the beans on Harmony that I forgot about the other secret. The other lie.

So what’s the deal with Slick’s woman? You know, the deaf woman.

There would be a mushroom cloud over Brentwood if Madison ever heard those words. God, what would I say? How could I explain that I lied about seeing her mother just so people wouldn’t think I was seeing Harmony? I’d have to explain Harmony.

“Uh-huh,” said Madison, still absorbed.

Expressionless, I sat and waited while my stomach acids churned. I should have never given so much weight to this skinny little girl. I should have never gotten hooked on her adulation.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s beautiful.”

After a little more small talk and a cordial farewell, Madison relinquished the cellular. She was on cloud nine. I was a stupid, lucky man.

“I like that girl,” Hunta told me.

I threw Madison a shaky smile. “So do I.”

“You should tell her the whole story, though.”

“I will. Someday. In the meantime, hang in there, okay?”

“Yeah, right. Say hi to your woman for me. I mean the one who ain’t deaf.”

“You know, believe it or not, she cares about what happens to you.”

“I’ll believe it when she clears me.”

“She will,” I promised. “It’s happening—”

He hung up before I could say “soon.” With a weary sigh, I dropped the phone.

“Oh my God,” said Madison, pressing her chest. “That was so intense. My heart’s going boom boom boom .”

So was mine.

“Why did you say that?” she asked.

“Say what?”

“That believe it or not, I cared about what happened to him.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

“Oh.”

“What was all that stuff he was saying to you?”

She shined me a coy grin. “It’s a secret.”

“That’s fine,” I replied, still waiting for my heart to slow down. “You’re entitled.”

________________

The news simmered down on Friday evenings. It was officially the weekend, and weekends were all about escape. On weekends, the Bitch usually went to the movies.

This weekend, however, reality caught up with the big screen. In every city, keyed-up parents formed vigils around theater ticket counters. The cause of their wrath was Hannibal , which had just opened today. They weren’t boycotting. They were simply ensuring that children under seventeen wouldn’t be allowed to watch Dr. Lecter sauté a piece of Ray Liotta’s brain. Sadly, it was children under seventeen who fueled the box office nowadays, especially for movies in which somebody sautéed somebody’s brain. Poor MGM. They needed a hit so badly. Poor Keith Ullman. As the marketing czar, he took the flack and the rap for all the studio’s lemons. How the hell could he have predicted the “Annabelle Shane reaction” (as punned by Entertainment Weekly )? Even Annabelle didn’t know what she was starting.