Daniel Price - Slick

Within minutes everyone inside the hotel was evacuated onto the street, including poor Hunta. Given the hour, there were only two bodyguards on hand to protect him from the camping flock of reporters, photographers, and protesters. Hunta had to be held back when one of the journalists asked him if he had ever raped his own daughter. It was simply a setup for the cameras (as was the bomb threat, one might argue), and it worked beautifully. Shots of the rapper in all his savage fury would be online and on-air in a matter of minutes.

At 6:45, Big Bank and the rest of the reinforcements arrived, but by then the scare was already over. The police questioned Hunta in his suite. Do you recognize this handwriting? “No.” Has anyone threatened you recently? “Yeah, man, everyone’s threatened me recently!” Where are your wife and daughter? “Fuck you.”

Ten minutes later, Doug was on the scene, ripping into both the police and hotel management. The cops suggested that Mr. Sharpe leave the premises immediately. Management insisted on it. By 8 a.m. the crew had checked out and was en route to the rapper’s next roost. Only a handful of people were trusted with the secret of Hunta’s new location. I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t even know how to reach him anymore.

It was just as well, I suppose. All I would have done was offer more assurances and more help. He’d already had enough of my assurances. By Tuesday morning, he’d suffered quite enough of my help.

________________

I woke up at 7:56, four minutes ahead of my alarm radio. I took that as an encouraging sign. Beating the clock, keeping a quick step ahead of the world’s noise, was a good note to start the day. I hopped out of bed. I stretched. I pulled Jean’s momentous sticky (we moved out) off the floor, crumpled it, and threw it in the wastebasket. All the loose files in my head were organized into neat little folders, and the folders were put away. I was a lean, sleek vessel, optimized for maximum performance.

I took a deep breath and then called Harmony. She sounded awake and alert. She was apparently ready for me.

“So did you watch the rest of the show?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Wasn’t I good?”

“You were better than good,” I told her. “You were entrancing.”

“Always the sweet-talker.”

“You asked me a question. I gave you an honest answer.”

“Scott, are you in love with me?”

Jesus. She was jumping right in, wasn’t she? I refused to be thrown.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know I’m infatuated with you.”

“Yeah? You ever have fantasies about me?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “Damn. You’re surprisingly direct this morning.”

Glad she noticed. For this conversation, I was determined to stick to raw sincerity. No rhetoric. No mincing. No witty evasions.

Harmony, by contrast, seemed more polished than ever. Every word out of her mouth sounded like a sixth draft.

“I had a dirty dream about you last night,” she revealed. “We were sitting on someone’s couch, watching TV. And it was me on TV and you were talking all through it. You were telling me how I was so good about saying this, and why the press would love me for saying that. And as you were talking, you started touching me. It was all casual at first but then before I knew it, you had my shirt undone. You’re even sneaky in my dreams.”

“Harmony—”

“There’s more. Don’t you want to hear it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this smells a lot like strategy to me.”

“Yeah,” she replied in a hard tone. “Now you know how I feel.”

I stood up from the couch and wandered. I wasn’t quite comfortable, in places.

“Harmony, I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve patronized you. I’ve underestimated you. But at no time did I ever manipulate you through some emotional charade.”

“You kissed me.”

“We kissed each other. If you think that was strategy on my part, then you’re overestimating me.”

She didn’t believe I was genuinely affected by her. And yet here I was, walking off the proof. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

I opened my balcony doors. “This is my idea of the future. I hope you’ll hear me out on this, Harmony, because it’s very important. At one o’clock there’ll be a press conference in the garden room of your hotel, just like Thursday. Just like Thursday, you won’t be there. Only Alonso. Once again he’ll read a written statement, which you and I will compose together.”

“No.”

“Later this afternoon, I’ll come by your hotel with a small production crew. We’ll shoot a forty-four-minute interview that will be peddled to the networks, just like Maxina did with Jeremy last week. We’ll hire Kathy Oh to be your new official representative, replacing Alonso. She’ll make sure that whoever gets the interview airs it in full.”

“It won’t do any—”

“It’ll just be you, on tape, explaining the circumstances. You made a bad pact with some bad people. You regret it. You just couldn’t live with the lie any longer.”

“After the way I cried—”

“You could not bear the fact that you were ruining the life of an innocent man.”

“How do you know he’s innocent?” Harmony asked.

“Of raping you?”

“Of raping Lisa Glassman!”

“He didn’t rape her.”

“How do you know?”

I sighed. “Because his wife knows.”

“That bitch? You believe anything that bitch says?”

“She has no reason to lie.”

“Of course she does! Hunta’s got another album coming out. That album means money. She only puts up with his shit for the money. Everyone knows that.”

I shook my head. “There are so many things wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know what he was like at the Christmas party. He was out of control. I saw him grabbing women by the ass, calling them bitches. I saw him on the couch with his hands all over that woman. I saw them leave together. And I saw her come back crying.”

“Well, then I guess she was raped. Did you report it?”

“Don’t put this shit on me like I’m acting all crazy. They called you in just to stop her. Why would they pay you a hundred and sixty thousand dollars to stop this woman if there was nothing to her story?”

“The story was enough,” I said. “In case you haven’t noticed, a little nothing can go a long way.”

“Yeah? Well, if it was no big deal, then how come you kept it from me?”

“Because of this! Because I didn’t want you to justify screwing over an innocent man!”

“You took that woman’s story and you put it on me!”

“I took her lie and I made it yours. And I did it so you could kill it once and for all. That’s the whole point.”

“The key is saving him by making everyone mad at me!”

I took a deep, calming breath, then pressed my hands together.

“Look, I’ve told you time and time again that you will not be the villain.”

“You keep saying I’ll be okay—”

“I know you’ll be okay. I know that nobody would ever dare attack a contrite and telegenic young black woman. That’s just suicide. These venues are all ad-supported, and advertisers always—”