Daniel Price - Slick

Harmony, hello. Before you react, I just want you to know that this isn’t an ambush, okay? I’m not calling to attack you. It’s just that you and I both have a lot invested in this, and I wanted to talk to you, straight up, woman to woman .

Harmony didn’t recognize the voice. She’d only heard it once before. Alonso had never heard it at all. I, however, pegged it immediately. That put my surprise about nine seconds ahead of everyone else’s.

“Oh goddamn it…”

Madison looked to me. “What? Who is it?”

Larry asked the caller to identify herself. Who is this?

“It’s his wife,” I said.

“Whose wife?”

I’m the wife of the man you’re accusing of rape. My name is Simba Shange .

A thousand alarms went off in my mind. A thousand dark angles were analyzed and explored. Behind each and every one of them, unfortunately, was Maxina.

“You didn’t know about this?”

I shook my head, wide-eyed. “Not one bit.”

Neither had Alonso. He’d done a marvelous job keeping quiet, but now it was time for the airbag to go off. He became quite vocal with his objections, drowning both Simba and Larry in chaotic crosstalk. Harmony merely gazed out at the cameras, at me, with a helpless expression. Scott, what do I do?

Listen, Harmony, you don’t have to say or do anything. I just need to you to hear me out, okay? This isn’t part of the game. I’m talking to you straight now.

Alonso continued to bury Simba in his own stir. Absolutely not! This is not appropriate! This is tantamount to harassment! I will not have my client harassed!

Madison shot forward. “God, shut the lawyer up!”

Harmony, you better tell your lawyer to shut up, or I won’t just talk, I’ll sing .

That shut him up. Her veiled threat made us both go slack. This couldn’t have been Maxina’s work. Maxina would have kept her a mile away from a very dangerous comment like that.

Look, Harmony, I know all the things you know. I know what you’re doing. I know why you’re doing it. And I don’t blame you one bit. You had all these smart, slick people telling you that everything’s gonna work out great for everyone, especially you. But they’re misleading you, Harmony. They’re using you for their own agendas, and none of them give a damn about you or my husband .

Madison held my arm. “What is she talking about?”

Larry asked the same question, but they were both ignored. The camera was fixed on a tight shot of Harmony. It was just her face reacting to Simba’s voice. Both were starting to crack.

It only took you a few days to become famous. It took Jeremy years. He had to work through years of setbacks and disappointments, but he made it past all of them. But now everything he’s ever worked for is being undone because everyone thinks he hurt you .

Harmony covered her mouth with a trembling hand. Now both women were crying.

You’re killing him, Harmony. Nobody told you, but I’m telling you now. You’re killing our whole family and I’m asking you to stop .

Harmony’s wet face was being beamed out through 21 satellites, to 212 countries, into Lord only knew how many television sets. There was no true way to measure the number of people watching her from their homes and dorms, from the bars and hotels, the hospitals, the airports. There was no way to measure how people watched her, whether their jaws hung slack or their hands touched their mouths. And there would never be a way to know what people were thinking as they saw Harmony’s tears fall live on global TV. I could only guess. I could only assume they were all watching, thinking, and talking just like Madison.

“Oh my God. She’s going to confess…”

The people in the loop — and there was no way of counting them anymore — were all dealing with heavier thoughts. What if she confesses everything? What if she sinks the whole ship? What if she tells the world that she was really working for Hunta, Mean World, Interscope, Universal, Vivendi, the RIAA, Maxina Howard and Scott Singer? Oh please, God. Please, Harmony. Don’t take us down with you.

That thought was running strong in my head, but I was also on the other side of the issue, with Harmony’s roommates and bodyguards, her admirers and well-wishers, rape victims and rap bashers alike. I was praying right along with them. Oh please, God. Please, Harmony. Don’t do it. Don’t go down at all. You keep going. You keep going.

I’m begging you to stop, Harmony .

At long last, Harmony uttered something, but it came out as wet air. She bowed her head, still choking back sobs. Whatever she said was so low that even her collar mike didn’t pick it up.

“What did she say?” Madison asked.

What’d you say?

“She said something. I couldn’t hear it.”

Larry leaned in closer. Harmony, what did you just say?

She lifted her head again. Despite her red and puffy eyes, there was a sharpness to her expression, a hard contempt I hadn’t seen since the ghost of her old self glared at me from a four-year-old documentary.

“I said no.”

The studio was silent. The camera remained fixed on Harmony. She wiped her eyes and saw the world dead on.

“I said no, and he didn’t listen…”

Madison and I both leaned back against the couch. In the reflection of the TV screen, I could see Jean behind us, still running her nimble fingers through Madison’s hair. She was watching with us, but she didn’t seem to be watching Harmony. Through the television, through the reflection in Harmony’s face, she was watching me.

On TV, the tears kept coming, stronger and stronger, as Harmony sealed tomorrow’s headline.

“I said no. And he didn’t listen.”

________________

That pretty much finished the show. Larry segued to a commercial. By the time he came back on, it was 6:59 and he was alone. He told us, in sympathetic fashion, that Harmony Prince and her attorney have left the studio. She’s okay. Boy, it’s never easy though, is it? She’s a brave woman. A brave woman. He then plugged tomorrow’s guests, a standby panel of experts who’ll talk and argue about — who else? — Harmony Prince. Hope you’ll join us.

By the end of the hour, I was already in my bedroom, Bat-Phone in hand. As I had made my way upstairs, Madison threw me a simple but poignant question: “Scott, what does this mean?” The subtext of her concern was obvious: Scott, what if she’s telling the truth?

She wasn’t, but the fact that Madison began to wonder meant big trouble for everyone. If Harmony could put doubt in the mind of Hunta’s most zealous defender…

Sorry, second -most zealous. Congratulations, Simba. You just made the biggest public fuck-up since dewey defeats truman. You just scored a place in the High Hall of Well-Intentioned Bunglers, right next to Ralph Nader. You just became our iceberg.

From her own lovely face, Jean had a different inquiry. What are you not telling us?

She had seen me in the reflection of the TV screen. Surely she suspected by now that my attitude toward Harmony was somewhat less than adversarial. But what does that mean, Scott?

She’d just have to wonder. For now, I had higher priorities. This was the part where the ship began to sink. This was the part where everybody got loud.