Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

But it would be stupid. She’d get upset and say no and have her lawyers make him stop. I couldn’t risk it.

We watched the entertainment show on mute. I think Jane didn’t want to unmute it, since we’d be admitting we didn’t know what to say to each other. It didn’t really matter. You could sort of guess at what they were saying without hearing them.

When it cut to commercial, she said, “Will you sing me a song, baby?”

I couldn’t always talk, but I could always sing. But it was the same problem with the children’s hospital. None of my songs would fit here.

“Please, Jonathan?” she asked again. “It’s all I’ve wanted the whole day.”

I still didn’t do anything for a few seconds, but I’d figured out what I was going to do. After I’d made her wait long enough, I sang

Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry

Go to sleepy, little baby

Go to sleepy, little baby

When you wake, you shall have

All the pretty little horses

All the pretty little horses

I ended after the first verse. “I have to go,” I said. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

She looked more beat-up than she did at the start, with bags under her eyes and her skin pasty and uneven without any makeup. I got this image in my head of Jane in a hospital bed, like she was now, only she was holding a baby to her chest. And the baby’s face was mine. Probably from that stupid drawing in the New York Times, or maybe I’d seen her in the hospital when she’d had the other baby, after all, and that was why I felt like I’d been in the room with the premature babies before. If she didn’t look like such crap right then, maybe I even would’ve asked her about it.

Before I could open the door, she said, “I’m sorry,” quieter than before.

I didn’t ask what she was sorry about. I didn’t answer or nod or turn or anything. I just stopped, to let her know I’d heard it, and said, “How are presales?”

“They’re… good,” she said. That pause meant they weren’t. “Better than before.”

I left. Walter dropped me off at my hotel room and made plans for when to wake me up the next day. He said me and him and Rog would get Jane at the hospital in the morning. I figured they wanted me there in case any paparazzi were around when she got out.

I turned on the second half of the Super Bowl. It was a blowout, and I didn’t care about the teams, but I kept it on anyway. My hotel room felt huge, like a football stadium, with me the only fan inside it that no one could see.

Tyler Beats starred in a big soda commercial. It was a sixty-second spot, and it was funny, and he even got to promote his new single during it. My commercials so far have all had crap production values for crap products.

I double-locked the door and dug out the glossy I’d packed in L.A. from the bottom of a suitcase. That seemed like forever ago. I turned up the volume of the game and found the FIT AND OVER 40! spread. My hand rubbed over my jeans, and I unzipped them and reached inside my underwear, and once I was hard I slid out of my jeans completely. I was still wearing my black track sweater, but I didn’t want to take it off and lose my boner. It felt like a strong one. Except I didn’t have any sunscreen on me to use.

I opened up the minibar. The mayo jar was still there. I unscrewed it and scooped out a big glob and spread it over me. It felt slick and like the inside of Dana’s mouth, but cool instead of warm. I kept the jar open in case I needed more, but I stored it in the minibar, with the door open so I could get to it easily, since you’re not supposed to ever leave mayo out.

I went back to get the glossy and put it next to the minibar and stood there, with the cold air washing over me and the pictures of all the actresses, and I kept pumping harder and slathering on more mayo, and it felt like I was disappearing inside the mayo, surrounding myself in all this greasy whiteness.

I shut my eyes and imagined Lisa Pinto coming to my hotel room, hanging a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob and closing the door behind herself and locking it with those swinging hotel-door locks, and I opened my eyes again at the actress doing yoga in the glossy and I said out loud, “You like being my little slut, don’t you?” and there was this tingly click inside my penis, and I knew it was happening for real this time, and the middle of my body felt like the most super-intense massage ever, like someone had punched me except the punch made you feel amazing, and there was a huge buildup like the silence in the middle of the third verse of “Breathtaking” before I belt out the words, “Yeah, take away my breath,” and I comed.

It shot up and all over my black track sweater in a splattery line, but I didn’t care, and each spurt was like a small electric shock that felt almost as good as the last one. I breathed heavy and leaned on the minibar for a minute like I’d just done an hour of cardio.

If I could do this each time I tried, I don’t know why I’d ever do anything else.

I screwed the mayo lid back on and closed up the minibar and ran my sweater under the faucet, in case a hotel employee saw it, before I tossed it in the garbage. I nearly forgot to clean myself off, which would’ve been dumb in case the mayo spoiled on me, too.

Some of the come was between my fingers. It was sticky but also slippery. I could make a baby now. I could find a groupie by myself and nine months later be someone’s father.

You had to be careful with that, though. Mi$ter $mith had two different women who said he’d gotten them pregnant, and he said it wasn’t true but they made him take medical tests, and it turned out they were his kids. All the glossy headlines were like MI$TER $MITH LO$E$ PATERNITY $UIT.

If I had a baby with Lisa Pinto, it’d be cute and talented, but I bet she wasn’t on her period yet. The only other girl I could think of was Dana. We’d end up having a chubby baby, but not cute-chubby, and I’d have to visit it every few months, and each time Dana would have some new local band she was going on about with her gimlet eye for spotting Cincinnati talent. I could sort of see why Mi$ter $mith pretended he wasn’t the father.

A knock at my door woke me up, but it wasn’t Walter’s. Through the peephole I saw Rog pacing around. Before I could say anything to him when I opened up, Rog was like, “We have to go to the hospital immediately. Get changed.” He looked serious. I was afraid to ask why we were in such a rush, but I did.

“She’s fine,” he said. “Just get moving.”

He left so I could change, but I got my answer when I turned on E! A reporter said that an anonymous tipster had let the media know that Jane’s hospitalization hadn’t been from a peanut allergy, but allegedly from a cocaine overdose. I called Rog’s cell and told him about it.

“I know,” he said.

“It wasn’t that, right? It was alcohol, wasn’t it?”

He took a long time to answer, and the longer he took, the more sure I became that it wasn’t actually alcohol. “I don’t know. That’s why we have to talk to her at the hospital.”

He got Walter and we headed over there again. “This is the last time I’m going to a hospital for a long time unless I get sick myself,” I told Walter.

“I’m with you, brother,” he said. Rog wasn’t talking, though. He was emailing like he’d had eight cups of coffee.

The hospital rep met us again but we knew the way. Walter waited outside and me and Rog went into Jane’s room. She looked a little stronger and had her phone out and was typing on it when we came in.

“Jane—” Rog started, but she put up her finger and he shut up.