Slick (43 page)

“Hey, you know ‘flack’ and ‘rap’ are just two words for ‘blame.’”

The line was silent.

“You know, you
catch
the flack. You
take
the rap...”

“What the
fuck
you talking about?”

“Look, Hunta, the important thing is that the kids are still behind you. Your fans—”

“Bullshit.”

I opened the door. My client didn’t seem to have any direct concerns about Harmony, so I figured it was safe to include Madison. As I traipsed down the stairs, she watched me eagerly from the edge of the couch. She knew damn well who I was talking to.

“It’s not bullshit. My assistant—”

“You got an assistant?”

Madison beamed at a thousand watts. I sat down next to her, poking her thigh.

“I’ve got a teenage assistant,” I said. “A very good one. On her own initiative, she went around her school today, polling her classmates. They’re behind you in overwhelming numbers. They have absolute faith in your innocence.”

“You’re full of shit, man. You can’t even call me by my real name.”

“I’m not full of shit,
Jeremy
. She talked to over a hundred kids.”

“You full of shit. I bet you ain’t even got an assistant.”

“I do.”

“Yeah? She there now?”

Crap. “She’s around.”

“Then put her on.”

Crap. “You want me to put her on.”

Bug-eyed, Madison covered her mouth. I hadn’t prepared her for this. I wasn’t prepared for it myself. This wasn’t good. If I didn’t put her on, Hunta would never believe anything I said again. And if I did...

“All right. I’ll go get her. But just so you know, she believes you too. I mean she just took one look at Harmony Prince and...” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that. She could tell the woman was lying.”

“Yeah, of course she could. You told her, didn’t you?”

“No,” I replied, keeping a wary eye on Madison. “She’s thirteen.”

“So?”

“So be nice to her, okay? She’s my most valuable asset.”

“Why didn’t you give her the whole story, man?”

“Listen, I’m very protective of her and I’m not going to put her on until I know you’re going to be nice to her. You understand what I’m saying?”

Madison shot me a mortified glare.
Jesus, Scott.

Fortunately, Hunta got it. “Fine. Whatever. I won’t tell her. Just put her on.”

“All right.” I handed the phone to Madison, then covered the receiver. “It’ll be fine. Just tell him like you told me.”

I leaned back and exhaled, right as Madison shot forward. She primped herself, cleared her throat, and then greeted Hunta in an absurdly professional voice.

“This is Madison.”

The façade was only verbal. You could see her glowing rapture from a mile away. She wasn’t even a fan of his but hey, you put a guy in the news long enough and he takes on a legend of his own. For Madison, this was the ultimate thrill. For me, it was a blowout waiting to happen.

“Hi.” Pause. “Madison McKnight. I’m a big—” Pause. “No, I really did. It all started when I asked a couple of friends what they thought about Harmony Prince. They were just as convinced as I was that she was lying through her teeth. So then I started asking other kids, and they felt exactly the same way. I have the responses of over ninety different—”

She opened her notebook to pages of scribbled data. It wasn’t the most objective or scientific of surveys, but certainly no worse than the half-baked pie charts they ran in the papers.

“Right. Exactly. We can tell the difference. Teenagers have a special nose for bullshit, because we’re exposed to so much marketing.”

I told her that, but it was mostly bullshit itself. Marketing didn’t make kids wiser, just more cynical. The biggest reason Hunta was so popular right now was because he was a public scourge, the bane of stodgy adults everywhere. In teenage eyes, that made him cooler than Jesus.

Madison, however, was abnormally sharp for her age. Right away she saw the puppet’s strings. She just didn’t see me pulling them. Please, Hunta. Jeremy. I know you don’t owe me anything but please don’t ruin the good thing I have with this girl. I’ve got a lot invested in her. Hell, she’s half my portfolio.

She nodded enthusiastically to Hunta. “Exactly. We are. But the important thing is that there are still a lot of people behind you, even if the media won’t show them. Your fans are totally with you.”

She beamed again, squeezing my arm. “Thank you. That’s very sweet. Everything I learned, I learned from Scott.” She cocked her head. “I’m sorry?” Pause. “No. I come here after school.” Pause. “No, his apartment.”

She glanced at me with a blush and a giggle. “No, no. We’re just...no.”

I rolled my eyes. I thought those jokes would go away when I stopped calling her my intern.

Hunta chatted her up some more. She listened, enrapt, for well over a minute. Suddenly a new oversight caught up with me and hit me like a seizure. Oh my God. I was so worried about him spilling the beans on Harmony that I forgot about the other secret. The other lie.

There would be a mushroom cloud over Brentwood if Madison ever heard those words. God, what would I say? How could I explain that I lied about seeing her mother just so people wouldn’t think I was seeing Harmony? I’d have to explain Harmony.

“Uh-huh,” said Madison, still absorbed.

Expressionless, I sat and waited while my stomach acids churned. I should have never given so much weight to this skinny little girl. I should have never gotten hooked on her adulation.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s beautiful.”

After a little more small talk and a cordial farewell, Madison relinquished the cellular. She was on cloud nine. I was a stupid, lucky man.

“I like that girl,” Hunta told me.

I threw Madison a shaky smile. “So do I.”

“You should tell her the whole story, though.”

“I will. Someday. In the meantime, hang in there, okay?”

“Yeah, right. Say hi to your woman for me. I mean the one who ain’t deaf.”

“You know, believe it or not, she cares about what happens to you.”

“I’ll believe it when she clears me.”

“She will,” I promised. “It’s happening—”

He hung up before I could say “soon.” With a weary sigh, I dropped the phone.

“Oh my God,” said Madison, pressing her chest. “That was so intense. My heart’s going
boom boom boom
.”

So was mine.

“Why did you say that?” she asked.

“Say what?”

“That believe it or not, I cared about what happened to him.”

“I wasn’t talking about you.”

“Oh.”

“What was all that stuff he was saying to you?”

She shined me a coy grin. “It’s a secret.”

“That’s fine,” I replied, still waiting for my heart to slow down. “You’re entitled.”

 

 

The news simmered down on Friday evenings. It was officially the weekend, and weekends were all about escape. On weekends, the Bitch usually went to the movies.

This weekend, however, reality caught up with the big screen. In every city, keyed-up parents formed vigils around theater ticket counters. The cause of their wrath was
Hannibal
, which had just opened today. They weren’t boycotting. They were simply ensuring that children under seventeen wouldn’t be allowed to watch Dr. Lecter sauté a piece of Ray Liotta’s brain. Sadly, it was children under seventeen who fueled the box office nowadays, especially for movies in which somebody sautéed somebody’s brain. Poor MGM. They needed a hit so badly. Poor Keith Ullman. As the marketing czar, he took the flack and the rap for all the studio’s lemons. How the hell could he have predicted the “Annabelle Shane reaction” (as punned by
Entertainment Weekly
)? Even Annabelle didn’t know what she was starting.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Hollywood, the publicity team at Paramount Pictures invited Alonso to Monday’s star-studded premiere of
Down to Earth
, the new Chris Rock reincarnation comedy that was opening next week. Alonso was naturally encouraged to bring Harmony and all her free media attention. Wisely, he declined. His only mistake was telling Harmony about it.

“But I
love
Chris Rock,” she whimpered to me. “I want to meet him.”

“I’m sure you will someday.”

“So when do I finally get to do the celebrity thing?”

“Monday,” I promised. “That’s when you mix it up with Larry King.”

“I’d rather mix it up with Chris Rock.”

Ironically, Chris Rock was originally scheduled to mix it up with Larry King on Monday, until they bumped him for Harmony. Little did she know she was dissing him twice.

“Be patient, honey. If we get you out there too soon—”

“I know. I know. Credibility. You want me to play hard to get.”

I grinned. “Just think of it as abstinence on a wider scale.”

Harmony wasn’t amused. She wasn’t in good humor at all.

“All right. Something’s up. Talk to me,” I said.

“I’m just starting to feel a little cooped up in here,” she admitted. “I’m even getting sick of looking at the ocean.”

“You want to change hotels?”

“No. The hotel’s fine. I guess it’s just... I don’t know. I’m kind of feeling isolated.”

“Tell me what I can do to help.”

“Well, for starters, you could come visit me.”

She knew it was a long shot. That didn’t make me feel better. I would have loved to see her again. My new fantasy—my
chaste
fantasy—was to smuggle her out of the hotel and take her on a nice long drive. Anywhere. It didn’t matter.

There were, of course, logistical problems.

“Honey, you know I would, but the press is all around your hotel. It’s like the Oscar preshow out there.”

“Chuck said he could sneak you in.”

“Uh, what are you telling those guys about me?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I never even gave them your last name. What’s the big deal?”

“No. It’s fine. Just…be careful what you say around them. About everything.”

Christ, that was dumb of me, not to mention cruel. Here she was complaining of isolation, and I’d just put a wall between her and the few people she could see.

“I just thought you might like to see the new drawings I made,” she replied dejectedly. “I can’t show you over the phone.”

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. “Is this for your book?”

“No. That’s still all in my head. I was just doing landscapes and stuff. I’m practicing for the book.”

“I still think it’s a great idea. I can’t wait to see it.”

“Yeah.”

Our conversation hit a sudden patch of dead air. This new awkwardness was driving me crazy. A few more seconds of silence and I would have grabbed my car keys. I would have told her to order up dinner for two.

“Scott, when this is all over, are you still gonna have to hide from me?”

“I’m not hiding from you. I’m hiding from them.”

“Yeah, but how long are you gonna have to hide from ‘them’?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. It’ll be a while before you and I can go out for Chinese food.”

“It’s not that. I was just hoping you could be my official publicist or something. I mean when this is all over.”

As much as I liked the notion, and as much as I loved that she asked, I knew it could never happen. Even if the Judge paid me under the table, there were still several dotted lines connecting me to Mean World. Officially attaching myself to Harmony would only invite suspicion, most likely investigation.

“I’m more of a crisis manager than a celebrity rep. I wouldn’t be the best person for you. We’ll set you up with someone good.”

“Okay.”

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

I was hoping she’d be touched by that. Instead, she fell into an odd fit of giggles.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, still snickering. “I want to be friends. I mean we are friends. I just got a picture of you chilling at my place, kicking back with a 40 and listening to Wu-Tang.”

I smiled along. “That’s more than I can picture.”

Of course, I didn’t tell her what I
could
see. My newest fantasy was to fly her around the world in a two-seater plane. We’d land at exotic ports, stay at exotic hotels, and at each scenic vista, I’d stimulate her with fascinating bits of local history. It wasn’t an entirely chaste vision. I couldn’t seem to get us out of the exotic hotels.

But my media high was finally beginning to subside. I could feel my galvanized id slowly settling back to normal. What a relief, too. It was getting a little too raucous over here in my psyche. All in all, I preferred the quiet.