Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

Zack looked good in photos, but he was more handsome in person, even at nine in the morning. His hair was a little spiky but soft and long, like black ferns, and he hadn’t shaved yet so he had stubble on his face like the rough top of a mike. “How was the prodigal son’s return?” he asked. I took a few seconds trying to figure out what prodigal meant from the context, like Nadine tells me, so he said, “How was it playing your hometown?”

If he hadn’t heard about the crazy guy, which it sounded like he hadn’t, I didn’t really feel like telling him there was a child predator who nearly got onstage and kept shouting that he was going to fuck me in my ass. “It was okay. I’m glad we’re leaving.”

“Tell me about it. Thank God Memphis is next. Before this we were touring the sticks.” He turned to his bandmates and said, “We’ve got to do Europe next time. I’m through with this Walmart bullshit. No offense to your fans, Jonny.”

“I might tour Europe next time,” I said.

“That right?”

“And Asia. Maybe you guys could come along.” I was going to add, “To tap their markets,” but that wasn’t how Zack and the Latchkeys spoke.

He put the cigarette in his mouth and held it there while he clapped my shoulders with both hands and said out of the corner of his mouth, “That’s why I like this man right here. Spreads the wealth through globalization. Like a young Bill Clinton.” I wasn’t sure what any of that meant except for “That’s why I like this man right here,” but I tried to play it cool and not smile too big. Zack added, “We’re partying tonight in Memphis. You in?”

I looked behind me. Jane was still on the bus. “I’m kind of supposed to stay in the hotel at night.”

“We can party in the hotel, too. I’ll come get you late, okay?”

I didn’t exactly know what Zack meant by partying in the hotel, or what late was to him, but it would be lame to ask. “Okay,” I said.

The driver of his bus said they were ready. “Looks like this bus is bound for glory. See you tonight, Jonny,” Zack said. He ground his cigarette beneath his boot and shook my hand again, and him and the other guys piled into the bus and I went back to mine and sat behind Jane near the back.

She was on the phone. I could hear the voice a little on the other end, because Jane’s hearing isn’t great and she has to turn the volume way up. It sounded like Stacy. “I simply want your assurance that this won’t happen again,” Jane said. I thought she was talking about the security breach, but she continued. “I didn’t want to do this in the first place — he’s just a kid. And we certainly didn’t sign on for tabloid coverage.”

I knew what Jane meant, we always want to have as much control as possible over my image, but the Lisa Pinto exposure made sense from a packaging-strategy perspective, since even if it was driving off some of the fat girls, it would bring in more of the pretty girls, and if they liked me then the fat girls would like me more to try to be like the pretty girls, plus the pretty girls would bring their boyfriends to my concerts, which effectively doubled gate receipts and they also had to buy them crap merch to make them happy, but the fat girls didn’t have boyfriends. They had to buy the crap merch for themselves to feel happier. But Jane says we’re in the business of making fat girls feel like they’re pretty for a few hours and that most pretty girls are afraid other people think they’re fat anyway, so maybe it’s all the same.

If the media kept covering me and Lisa, I wondered if we’d get a combo name like Jonnisa, and I imagined the tour bus was the school bus on her album cover, and put an issue of Rolling Stone from the back of Jane’s seat over my lap to hide my boner, and since no one was behind me and Jane was in front of me, I rubbed myself under the magazine but over my jeans.

Stacy talked but I couldn’t hear, and in my mind me and Lisa were wrestling in the back of the school bus, with me pinning her down so she couldn’t get up, and then Jane said loudly, “With Tyler ?”

I popped open my eyes and stopped rubbing and leaned forward to listen. “A joint appearance on the show, February 13,” I heard Stacy say. “Terrific exposure for Jonny’s concert.”

“And his people suggested this?” Jane asked.

“No, I did, but they were on board from the start.”

I couldn’t see Jane’s face, but I could tell from the way she paused that she was pissed she hadn’t come up with the idea. “All right,” she said. “That’s a scheduled free day, so we can do it, as long as our crew doesn’t have to work.”

Stacy said something about the house band backing us and they hung up. I pretended to be trying to sleep when Jane turned around and told me what I already knew, that I’d be meeting Tyler Beats for the first time and performing with him the night before my Valentine’s Day concert on one of the big late-night shows.

A week ago I would’ve been super-excited and nervous to be bundled with Tyler Beats. But I didn’t think he was all that cool anymore. The Latchkeys were cooler.

“Copacetic,” I said, and I faked going back to sleep.

I did fall asleep soon. When you fake something, a lot of times you end up doing it for real. When I woke up, Jane was in the seat next to me and petting my hair lightly. “Did I oversleep?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ve just been sitting here, watching you.”

“Why? Did I do something wrong?”

She smiled, but with her Botox it almost looked like she was close to crying sometimes. “Not at all, baby. It’s time for tutoring now.”

I went into my room where Nadine was waiting for me. Walter was in there, too. It looked like they’d just stopped talking once they’d heard me come in. He said he’d get out of our hair.

My corrected essay on Harriet Tubman was on Nadine’s lap. She cleans it up enough for me to learn from without changing it to her style. I like that about her, it’s like she wants to help you but is really doing it for you and not so she can feel better about herself, even though I know she gets paid well by Jane.

She said she read about my morning show performance on the Internet. “What about it?” I asked.

“I heard about the… incident.”

I was sure it hadn’t been picked up by the mikes or the cameras. “It was a hater. Whatever.”

“Yeah, but… a knife. It’s scary to think what might have happened.”

“What knife?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Jane didn’t say anything?”

“No.”

“Oh, Christ,” Nadine whispered to herself.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know much else about it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“All he said—” I could tell she didn’t know if she should keep going or stop. “It’s just that when they took him in they found a knife on him, and the police said he’d written all these…” She flattened out my essay. “You should talk to Jane. I’m being paid to tutor you.”

Nadine probably thought she was scaring me by talking about a crazy guy with a knife who was also a child predator. It’d be easier when I was an adult, because they aren’t interested in you anymore. It must have been strange for MJ to go from worrying about child predators to people saying he was a child predator. I don’t know if he did it or not, but if he went through half the stuff as a kid that I deal with, I can’t believe he’d ever do anything like it to someone else. Unless it’s done to you so then you feel like you’re allowed to do it to someone else, like how rookies have to carry the veterans’ bags, then when they’re veterans they make the rookies carry their bags.