Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

She asked how I’m so natural onstage, and I said I always felt at home performing, which is bullshit and it took me a long time to fake being comfortable and if I told her I usually vomit before shows she’d cut to commercial. She used it as a segue to the music, and I sang “Crushed” and “Chica” and ended with “Guys vs. Girls.”

When I got on “Guys vs. Girls,” though, I heard the same guy again. The music was too loud for the audio to pick him up, but he kept saying things like, “Fag! Sing your faggy love song, faggot!”

My first thought was, Wait, what if this is my father? Like, what if he’s out to get me, or is crazy, and the emails were just a decoy?

And my second thought was, Or one of the Latchkeys? Which didn’t make sense, because the label would drop them in a second for a prank like this, plus Zack wouldn’t let them.

I scanned the crowd, which I shouldn’t have, but I had to see who it was. It wasn’t my father, unless he’d gotten really fat since his driver’s license and had grown stringy hair like sound equipment cables all twisted up backstage. And now he was right next to the stage, and the only people around him were all these little girls and their mothers who were clearing away from him so they were actually making it easier for him, and security wasn’t nearby since the stage was high enough to prevent any girls from rushing it, like five feet tall, but if an adult really wanted, he could find a way to jump it.

We locked eyes for a second behind his thick glasses and sweaty face even though it was February. He smiled this gross smile, like he knew he’d gotten my attention, and he shouted, “You want me to fuck you in your little faggot ass?”

I knew the mikes wouldn’t pick it up because the music was so loud, but security was taking a decade to break through the crowd. If there ever was a time to stampede a bunch of tween girls, this was it, when the talent’s safety is compromised, which is the result of amateur event planning and operations.

He put both hands on top of the stage, like he was maybe going to climb it, and I’d been worried before, but now I was seriously scared, even if he was fat enough that he might not be able to get up. I turned away from the guy and danced quickly to the other side of the stage, to move away from him but also to make sure the camera didn’t catch him at all, and finally I heard some commotion, and when I had the guts to turn around, Walter was a few feet away from the stage, on top of the guy and wailing at him like it was a bare-fisted battle in Zenon, punching his face with a right-left-right combo. It would’ve been fun to jump in as Walter held him down and be like, “You think I like performing in front of child predators who want to fuck me in my ass? How about I kick you in the teeth first?” and bash away until he didn’t have any left. I wish I’d seen how Walter tackled the guy. He played defensive end in high school.

Then security peeled Walter off and led the guy away, but he kept trying to yell the whole time they dragged him away. It wasn’t the first time some asshole had yelled at me during a show or on the street, but usually it was a young guy who was doing it to impress his friends, not some scary-looking child predator. And plus this time it threw me off and I accidentally switched the second and third verses, which I hadn’t done since my first tour and probably no one noticed, but it got me pissed.

When we wrapped up I was supposed to do autographs, but Jane grabbed and hugged me and said, “Are you okay, baby?” I said yes, and she said, “You’re not doing autographs. They’re supposed to screen the crowd. You don’t let in a fifty-year-old man who looks like a crazy. And you always have security at the perimeter of the stage.”

I let her bitch Kevin out and went with Walter and additional security into the car service in a restricted area behind a building. I guess I was playing around with the buttons inside more than normal, because Walter asked, “Everything cool?”

“Yeah,” I said. “And thanks, for before.”

“It’s my job, brother,” he said. “Just wish you hadn’t been in that situation in the first place.”

“Unprofessional performance protocol,” I said. “But what do you expect, with a morning show plus a public event in a third-tier city?”

“I guess.” He scoped out the windows, in case any more crazies were thinking about breaking into the car. “Hey, when we get to Nashville, I saw we’ve got the night blocked off. You feel like visiting my daughters with me? If Jane clears it?”

“Like, at your house?”

“My ex-wife’s house.”

Some bodyguards might have been like, I just saved you from getting attacked or molested by a child predator, the least you could do is give my kids a story to tell their friends, but that wasn’t what Walter was about. Plus I was curious to see what his old house was like and to meet his daughters. “That’d be fun. I’ll ask Jane.”

“They’d like that,” Walter said. “Thank you.”

We were quiet for a minute or two while we heard Jane still yelling at Kevin outside. It was pretty loud and she was cursing a ton. Walter said, “Your mom doesn’t take shit from no one, huh?”

“She’s good at business.”

“There are always gonna be people who don’t like you just because, you know?” he said.

“The haters, who are insecure so they have to tear someone down to feel better themselves.”

“And there are gonna be people who love you.”

I’d gotten this speech from the label and Jane about fifty times before. “And those are the ones who count.”

But he shook his head. “They do, but that doesn’t matter.”

“I know. You have to love yourself and everything.”

“Nah,” he said. “That’s the kind of bullshit they say on TV shows like this. There’s a saying, ‘What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.’ ”

In Zenon, you can sometimes drink an invincibility potion that makes it so the world can’t hurt you, but it lasts just a minute, and after that you can get damaged like normal. It’s a little different from Walter’s saying, which would be like if your damage percentage got lowered, you somehow became healthier. The only way that was kind of true in Zenon is that when you’re at a hundred percent health, you’re always worried someone’s going to damage you and make it so you’re not perfect. When you’re already pretty damaged, you stop caring as much.

“Except when child predators are at my show,” I said.

He smiled. “That’s why you’ve got me around.”

Maybe having Walter nearby didn’t make me feel like I had an invincibility potion, but it was at least like being inside the fort me and Michael Carns used to make from his couch cushions, and he was the cushions providing buffer.

Jane finished up outside and got in the car and snapped at the driver to go and not let any fans stop the car if they spotted us. She typed angrily on her phone, and me and Walter were both afraid to make any sounds. When we arrived at the buses, though, she seemed calmer.

“Jane,” I said, “I don’t think I want to come back to St. Louis on my next tour.” Even if it meant never seeing our old apartment again. Or Michael.

She gave a tired smile, where you could see all the cracks and wrinkles around her mouth and eyes that the makeup couldn’t cover, and pulled her sunglasses off the top of her head and over her eyes. “Me neither, baby,” she said.

We had to wait for some bus maintenance before we could take off for Memphis, so I stretched in the cold air. The Latchkeys were outside their bus, smoking and talking with each other. Zack waved at me to come over. “Sir,” he said, and he shook my hand. He always did when he saw me.