Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

I got nervous over how bad it’d be if Jane interrupted the show and how not only was my father watching me perform, but he was in the performance. I blocked it out the best I could and picked up the second verse of “Crushed” as if nothing major had happened and I hadn’t met my father for the first time in years and an entire stadium plus an Internet live-stream audience had watched it happen. It was almost like doing it in front of thousands of people was easier than if we’d met one-on-one in a room for face time by ourselves.

For a second, even with what had just gone down, I found myself wondering how many last-minute and in-progress Internet viewers we had. We needed about seventy-five thousand total to break even, after all the marketing and advertising expenses. Over ninety thousand would be considered a triumph.

And when I wrapped up the final chorus, I realized this would be the last song on the tour, and I wanted to draw it out. So I pulled out the melismatics on the words you’re crushing me so long, the audience kept cheering and clapping for me to go on, and my lungs felt like they were inhaling the applause and they could roll with it forever. Dr. Henson did a test on me once, and I have the lung capacity of a marathon runner. My father was smiling the same way he might if he was watching me sing in a concert at school, like those dads who used to videotape our crap chorus.

The set list called for one more encore, but I’d already switched it up, and if I did another it might give Jane the chance to interfere, so I told the crowd I loved them and would see them again soon, but didn’t say we hadn’t figured out when or where my next tour would be, or if I’d even still do one.

“This way,” I said away from the mike while the crowd cheered. My father followed me. He was still smiling.

I didn’t go to the main entrance, though. I went to the side one that I’d found with Walter earlier, on the opposite side of the stage. There was one security guard behind the door there now, and I walked fast in case Jane had told security to grab me before I went off. He didn’t stop us, probably since I looked like I knew what I was doing. Support staff is always afraid of losing their jobs.

We were back in the tunnels again. There were so many, it would be a long time until Jane could find us.

Then I got really scared, because what if after all this time he was a child predator who looked enough like what I remembered my father looked like and had made a fake driver’s license? Or what if he was my father and was also a child predator? I couldn’t straight up ask him if he was one. Not many would be like, Yeah, I’m glad you asked, I actually am a child predator. Instead I said, “So, you’re Al.”

“I am,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me. You were incredible.”

He put out his hand for a high five. It didn’t feel dorky the way it did with Dr. Henson. It felt like the way a baseball player congratulates his teammate at home plate on a homer, like, I’m not surprised you did this, but it’s still cool.

His voice was baritone and gravelly. It sounded like the narrator in Zenon if you lowered the treble and some of the frequencies. I thought he might have a Kansas or St. Louis or even an Australian accent, but he didn’t have much of one. He sounded like he was from nowhere, really. Maybe he spent a lot of time in tunnels, too. “Let’s keep walking,” I said, though I didn’t mention it was so Jane wouldn’t find us.

I stayed a few feet ahead of him as we turned through the tunnels. A few more Garden workers were moving around now, but I don’t think they knew who I was, because they were mostly Mexican guys. Mexican guys never know who I am. They’re too busy working to follow celebrities. And celebrities are too busy being celebrities to pay attention to Mexican guys. It’s like neither one knows the other exists.

“How did you get a ticket?” I asked.

“I bought one off the Internet,” he said. “They were hard to find. You’re a hot ticket.”

“I can pay you back.”

I pictured him going on the Internet and refreshing the site until a ticket was available and buying it right away. The tunnels were cold, but I felt warm inside, thinking of that.

“No way,” he said. “I would’ve paid a thousand bucks to see you. I bet scalpers can sell them for that much, too.”

The most I’d heard of anyone paying for a regular single ticket was around six hundred dollars, and there were some charity seats that went for more, but that didn’t count. “Not that much.”

“Well, they should. You’d be worth every penny.”

I wondered again if he had another family now, or at least a girlfriend. If he’d had a kid in Pittsburgh, maybe the kid and his mother moved to New York, which is why he came back. And I had the same thought about him playing catch with his kid, in Central Park, because you couldn’t do it anywhere else in New York. The strange thing is, I suddenly really hoped he did and that he brought them and I could meet them. I’d have a half-brother, or a half-sister. “Did you come with anyone?” I asked without looking back at him.

“Nope. Just me. Some of my friends wanted to come, but I didn’t want to ruin your concert with a group of rowdy construction workers.”

I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t meet this family I’d invented for him. Then I got happier that he might not have one, but I was even more disappointed he hadn’t brought his rowdy construction-worker friends. It would be much cooler to have them at my show than a crowd full of tween girls. “You want to play a video game?” I asked. “I have this game, The Secret Land of Zenon, and I’m close to finishing it. It’s in the star/talent room.”

He looked behind us and ahead of us, but there were only a few Mexican guys moving stuff around. “You sure that’s all right?”

“Yeah. They always put a game system in my room. It’s in my rider.”

I told him we had to use the wall maps. We studied the first one to figure out where we were, and I was about to head one way, but he said, “Hold on. It’s the other direction.” He walked ahead of me, and I followed behind. I liked how he figured it out so quickly and wasn’t like, “I think it’s the other direction,” but was just, “It’s the other direction.” Jane’s always getting lost, even in L.A. and with the GPS. Maybe I’d get his sense of direction. I don’t know how mine worked in cities yet, because when I was in St. Louis I was too young to go out on my own, and I can’t do it now.

“Do you have a good sense of direction?” I asked.

“Usually,” he said.

“When you went on that hiking trip, did you use a map?”

“Hiking trip?”

“In Australia. With your friend Dave.”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “You shouldn’t hike without a map.”

“When was that?”

“With Dave? I guess about a year ago. But I used to hike in Kansas growing up, and we never had maps.”

I imagined him hiking a year ago in Australia with the guy in that picture, being attacked by kangaroos and meeting a tribe of those Australian black guys who gave him and Dave food and water. A year ago, I was in L.A., gearing up to record Valentine Days , probably getting spray-tanned and drinking sugarless pink lemonade.

We turned into the next tunnel and looked at the new YOU ARE HERE sign on the map. We were going in the right direction, and I let him lead us.

“Is it true that toilets flush in the opposite direction there?” I asked in one of the tunnels.

“Where?” he asked as he checked out another map.

“In Australia. I read that they flush opposite how they flush here.”

“I never really noticed. But summer and winter are reversed. When it’s hot here, it’s cold there.”