Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

“I’m so sorry to do this,” the actor said, “but I just found out I have to take care of my daughter tonight, and she’s up in Encino.” He looked at me real quick.

“Oh,” Jane said.

“I mean, I could drop you off after I get her, if you want.” So he’d gone after Jane at first, but once he realized he had me, he didn’t need her anymore. Or maybe he thought this was part of the deal, that he didn’t go home with her if I told the label about him.

“No, that’s fine,” Jane said, with a strong voice like everything was all right and she was totally sober, but I knew better. “We’ll be in touch, and have a good night.”

They kissed on the cheek, he left, and she called the car service and guzzled one more prosecco while we waited, but I didn’t say anything this time. She conked out pretty quick in the backseat on the ride home, so I played the actor’s CD on low volume. He was the lead singer, and had limited range and a reedy texture that he compensated for with some yells and a put-on scratchy growl. The only way that’s real is if you’ve been singing and smoking cigarettes for like thirty years, which this guy definitely hadn’t done. The musicianship was medium-caliber, nothing special. Bland arrangement. Sloppy production. No real hook. Zero nuance to the vocal/lyrical relationship. My lyrics may be simple, but Rog says I’m the most subtle pop vocalist around. You need to exert control over the lyrics, not the other way around.

Plus he’d have to be the next MJ for me to help him now.

Sharon goes to sleep at like nine o’clock unless I’m coming home from a show, so no one was up. Jane headed to the stairs, because she forgot they were being renovated. I steered her to the elevator. She leaned against the wall inside and didn’t budge when the door opened. I put her arm around my shoulder and escorted her to her bedroom.

She collapsed on the bed and I took off her heels. Then I got a plastic cup from my bathroom so she wouldn’t chip her teeth and filled it with water and dumped out two Tylenol PMs. I brought them back to her and made her sit up to swallow them, and while she was up I pushed her under the sheets. Before I left the room, she said, “You wanna sleep here tonight?”

I really needed a good night’s sleep, and Jane tosses and turns even when she’s on zolpidem or an over-the-counter pill. But I said, “Okay,” and stripped down to my underwear and sponsored energy-drink T-shirt. I closed the shades all the way so the sun wouldn’t wake her early and climbed in next to her, and she sort of murmured to herself, “You’re really a good kid.”

She started snoring soon and moved around a lot and took up more than half the bed, but I put up with it and eventually fell asleep.

I let Jane sleep it off in the morning. In the kitchen, Walter sat at the table and nodded at me over his copy of the L.A. Times .

Peter put down his own copy of the Times and poured me a cup of coffee and separated three eggs for my omelet and got out the spinach. He’s got muscular forearms with blue veins popping out like worms under his skin, but he’s delicate when he cooks, and even though he used to work at a restaurant with buzz in L.A. until Jane poached him and now he makes food that’s beneath his talent level, he cares about every meal. That’s what professionals do.

“Morning, little sensei,” he said. I told him I liked karate movies one time.

“Morning, Peter.”

“How’s the cuisine been on the road?”

“Not like yours.”

He flipped the omelet and said, “Nothing like a home-cooked meal, eh, little sensei?”

“Nope.” I looked at the front page of Variety and took the sports section of the Times .

“Your Cardinals doing all right?” he asked.

Peter doesn’t follow sports and didn’t know the baseball season ended almost three months ago, which anyone who put a second of thought into it would realize they don’t play baseball in the middle of January. He thinks he has to make conversation with me as part of his job, but I’m happy just to eat and read the paper. Walter gets it. “They’ll be better next year.”

He served my omelet and went back to reading the living section. There wasn’t any sports news I cared about, so I looked at “Today’s Top Albums” in Variety . Tyler Beats still had his last two albums, Tylernol and Beats Me, in the top five for Amazon, and Tylernol was number two on iTunes. I knew I’d see them there, but I couldn’t help looking. It’s like picking a scab when you know it might leave a scar.

Jane came downstairs looking much better than last night. She rebounds quickly.

“Sound check time,” she said, all business, except it wasn’t because first we had to get my highlights touched up for the rest of the tour and maybe even a full dye job since my roots were showing and a touch-up trim now that my hair was dangling in my eyes, which my fans like, especially when I have to flip it away, but it screws with me when I’m dancing. Jane’s always like, The hierarchy is your voice, your eyes, and your hair. And when it gets long, it grows all curly at the ends, and that looks too ethnic. Jane also needed a trim, and she doesn’t trust anyone besides Christian.

Walter fist-bumped me and said, “Ready to kick some tail and take names tonight, brother?” and I never really know if he wants me to answer or if the question is what Nadine calls rhetorical and also what taking names actually means, like if you’d kick someone’s tail and ask them their name after to put on a list to help you remember whose tail you don’t have to kick anymore, plus I don’t think kicking tail and taking names includes getting a ride from your mother over to a gay guy’s hair salon on Beverly Drive to have your hair dyed blond, so I just said, “Yep.” Maybe it’s Southern-demo slang.

After the appointment, Jane drove the three of us to Staples Center, which is always exciting to play, even if L.A. isn’t my hometown. The main thing we had to make sure was fully operational was the metal swing in the shape of a heart that carried me around for the finale of “U R Kewt” and “Roses for Rosie” and the encore of “Guys vs. Girls.” We’d done rehearsals on it but we were waiting until L.A. to debut it in the show. It lifted me about fifty feet high over the crowd and projected a million stars on the roof, including a heart-shaped constellation. Jane didn’t want me to do it, and told Rog it was an unnecessary risk for a young boy to assume, but he convinced her it would make a huge impression on the crowd and I could throw rose petals on them during “Roses for Rosie” and it would really provide a midtour bump in Web chatter about the stagecraft. You have to come up with reasons why someone should pay to see you live instead of watching you on You-Tube, even if that’s how I got discovered in the first place. Everything went right in rehearsals, but I was still nervous about it.

Musicians are supposed to be bored during sound checks, except I like rehearsing with the band and the dancers and the tech guys checking sound levels and Rog making sure the choreography fits the stage and Jane organizing everyone. Sometimes it’s better than the actual show, because you’re not doing it for the audience, you’re only doing it for yourselves. It’s like you’re practicing on a team during sound check. When you perform, though, you’re the star and you’re on your own.

This was our last show with Mi$ter $mith as our opener before we got that rock band the rest of the tour. He was a nice enough guy backstage, and did his own thing when we were on tour, but he has middling talent. His repertoire is standard slow jams mixed with a little rap that he cleaned up for my audience. I overheard him one time in his dressing room complaining to his entourage how he couldn’t believe he was opening for an eleven-year-old white boy. I’m like, Go triple platinum with your debut, and I’ll open for you. His real name is Marvin Hilliard. Pop stars don’t like people knowing who they were before they were famous, since part of their appeal is that they are famous. Rock and rap stars can get away with it more, because if you came from the streets, it gives you more cred, but only rock stars usually go by their real names. All we had to do was change my name from Jonathan to Jonny, and me and Jane both changed Valentino to Valentine. He calls me Jonny-Jon, but I don’t know if I should call him Mi$ter $mith or Marvin or M.S., the way his entourage calls him. It’s like with Michael Carns’s parents. I just said hi and never used their names.