Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

Walter weighed about three times what Jane weighed, so it wasn’t exactly the same, but that made me feel a little better. I said, “And maybe the stomach pump will even make her a little skinnier, because she’s been worried about her love handles lately.”

He looked down at the men’s glossy on the table, which was open to my spread, and at me for a couple seconds. “Hey, you know you can walk away from all this, right?”

“We’re using the car service to get home, aren’t we?”

“No,” he said. “This whole thing. You don’t have to sing if you don’t want. You’ve made enough money to live on the rest of your life. You can walk away from it if you don’t like it anymore.”

This was like what Nadine had told me, except Walter never came close to saying anything like this before.

“Why are you telling me that?” I asked. “Do you want to quit or something, right after I got your job back for you?”

“That’s not it,” he said. “There’s a lot of other things in life, and maybe love handles shouldn’t be the most important to you.”

“It’s not my love handles. It’s Jane’s.” Except I did worry about growing my own, sometimes.

He closed up the men’s glossy and looked at me for a few seconds. “Sure. Forget what I said, okay?”

It wasn’t so easy to forget something like that, but I told him I had to use the bathroom before we left. He walked me to one down the hall, cleared the area inside, and stood guard outside. As I went in, he said, “I’m gonna find some coffee. Don’t come out till I’m back, okay?”

I went inside a stall and peed and waited inside for Walter while holding my breath because it smelled like crap and piss. The room’s door swung open, and before I called out Walter’s name I heard Rog’s voice. He was talking on his phone at the urinal.

“I know,” he was saying. “It’s awful timing. Except the Super Bowl’s tomorrow, right? So that’ll take away some of the attention.” He uh-huh ed a few times while he zipped up. “Yeah, I’m handling the press on this, I don’t trust anyone at the label.” He washed his hands and left. In another minute or so Walter came in and called for me.

“Let’s find Rog,” he said, and we saw him still on the phone in the conference room.

Rog covered his phone for a second. “I’m staying here tonight.” He looked right at me. “Hey. You doing okay?” I was doing okay before he asked, but now with Rog being so concerned about how I was, too, I didn’t feel so hot.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Call me at the hotel if anything changes.”

He told me he would. I was a little more relaxed knowing Rog was handling it. He knew how to do this stuff. Walter wasn’t media-savvy.

I watched TV as I ate breakfast and Walter waited in his room. Some morning show was running down entertainment news, and the host said, “We have word that Jane Valentine, the mother and manager of pop star Jonny Valentine, was hospitalized last night in Cleveland after suffering an anaphylactic reaction related to a severe peanut allergy. We’ll let you know more when we do. In the meantime, our thoughts are with the Valentines.”

Yeah, sure, I almost said out loud. Last week your thoughts were a character assassination slamming Jane for being a bad mother. Your thoughts are whatever boosts your ratings, you vultures.

Jane probably would get rushed to the emergency room if she ate peanuts, but she’s super-careful about making sure anything she orders doesn’t have it as an ingredient. It was a good story, whoever came up with it, because if we needed to, we could get a doctor in L.A. to confirm she’s allergic, and if the venue staff leaked to the press, we now had a reason for why she collapsed. People believe anything once it’s in the media as long as it’s the first story.

Nadine came by a little later to give me my final. “You feeling okay?” she asked.

“Jane’s the one who ate peanuts and got sick.”

Nadine looked at me like she wasn’t sure if she knew I knew that was a lie. I don’t know if she knew, either. But neither of us could say anything about it. We were sort of like the criminals in the logic question, guessing what was going on in the other guy’s head.

“Well,” she said, “given the circumstances, I’ve decided we should delay your final exam. I’ll give you the question, but you don’t have to finish it until my vacation ends next week and you’re back in L.A. You can just play video games now if you like.” She handed me a piece of paper.

Final Exam: History and Language/Reading

Write an essay of approximately 1,000 words in response to this prompt: What does it mean to be the property of another person, and what does it mean to be free? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each position? Make sure you have a beginning, middle, and end, and cite at least three primary sources.

Nadine always asked strange questions like this. They were never simple, like, “Why did America start the Revolutionary War?” She’d be like, “How might a Loyalist in America feel during the Revolutionary War?” and since I never have any clue, I’m always saying, “He’d feel ambivalent.” Ambivalent was Nadine’s favorite word to describe anyone in history’s feelings, like, “Abraham Lincoln felt ambivalent about freeing the slaves,” or her other favorite word was complex, like, “The causes of any historical event are always complex and cannot be reduced to a single explanation.” But by now it had become a joke between us, so I couldn’t use either one anymore.

Unless the answer was the obvious one, that when you’re a slave you don’t get to do what you want but everything’s taken care of for you, and when you’re free you get to do what you want but that means finding your own food and shelter and clothes, I didn’t know what Nadine wanted. It was a good thing she’d given me the extra week, or else I probably would have gotten a C or a D. I’m crap at history.

Someone knocked at the door, and it wasn’t Jane’s knock or Walter’s. “That must be Jason,” Nadine said as she got up. “He’s meeting me here.”

“Who’s Jason?” I asked.

“My boyfriend,” she said. “I’ve mentioned him, haven’t I?”

She had, though I doubted she’d ever told me his name, because I always pay attention to Jason since it’s one of my fake IDs for hotels, but she already had the door open. This young guy in a suit stood there with a goofy grin and his luggage. He pulled a bouquet of flowers out from behind his back.

“Happy anniversary,” he said, and Nadine hugged him and kissed him on the lips. After they, like, rubbed each other’s backs, she said, “Jason, you’ve never met Jonny before, have you?”

“Nope.” He barged right into my room to shake my hand. “Jason McKnight.”

His hand felt sweaty and cold at the same time. “Hi,” I said.

We all stood there. I didn’t know if this guy thought he was going to move his stuff into my room or something, but Nadine said, “I’ll be done in five minutes. Here’s my card, 1933.”

He took the card and said, “Nineteen thirty-three, good year,” and she said, “Except for the Depression,” and he said, “And the rise of the Third Reich,” and they laughed and kissed again and he left.

“Sorry for the interruption. Where were we?” Nadine said.

“Why is he here?” I asked.

“Jason? He had to go to Cleveland for business, so we planned to meet up while I was in town, then we’re going to Paris.”

“I thought you were going back to L.A. for our break.”