Slick (56 page)

I slowed down my pace, sighing. “You are indeed in a foul mood.”

“Actually, I’m not. That’s the weird thing. This was still the best night of my life. You were right. When those camera lights came on, something snapped into place inside me. I felt like I was moving faster than everyone else. Nothing could hit me. Nothing could hurt me.”

“I thought you were absolutely—”

“Except the phone calls,” she interjected deliberately. “That little thing they put in my ear really messed me up. I could only hear half the words the callers were saying, and the other half gave me a headache.”

“That’s normal. I had—”

“I guess it worked out okay, though. If I had heard everything that motherfucking bitch was telling me, I probably would have given it all up.”

I closed my eyes. “Harmony...”

“I would have given you up, too.”

Shit. Shit. Shit. I spun around and started back for the car. “Okay. That’s it. If you’re not dressed, get dressed.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m picking you up,” I said. “You and I are going out for a drive.”

She thought about it. “No.”

“I thought you wanted me to come over.”

“Not anymore,” she said. “You’re just gonna tell me the same shit Maxina told me. Except I know you. Once you get me alone, you gonna lay all your words on me. You’re gonna talk me into doing something I don’t want to do. And I don’t want you doing that.”

“Harmony, you knew this part was coming—”

“You never said it’d be so hard! You never told me it’d be so hard! You tease me with all this fame, all this respect, all these money offers, and then you just pull it all away from me right when I’m starting to like it! Like it was all some fucking joke!”

“None of that stuff has to end.”

“Oh, no, I’ll still be famous,” she fired back. “I’ll be famous for being the bitch who let everybody down. The bitch who lied!”

“You’ll win them back.”

She laughed. “Yeah. In other words, things are gonna be okay. Sure, Scott. Sounds good to me.”

I walked faster. “Look, let me come pick you up. We’ll go for a drive and we’ll—”

“No!”

“I won’t even talk! I won’t even open my mouth! You can sit there and yell at me the whole time! You can yell at me all night! I don’t care! I just want to be with you, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because tonight you were the most magnificent goddamn thing I have ever seen in my goddamn life! And I only caught half the show.”

That stumped her. “You didn’t watch the whole thing?”

“No. I had people over.”

She paused in amazement. “You’re shitting me.”

“It’s all right. I taped it.”

“Is this another one of your tricks?”

Grimacing, I swung a tight fist through the air. “Goddamn it! This is not a trick! I am not lying! Tomorrow morning, you and I are going to have that conversation.
That
conversation. But tonight I just want to see you, live and in person. Can I? Please?”

I was so flustered, I forgot where I parked my car. I couldn’t even remember what kind of car I’d rented. I twirled around, scanning the street. Shit. Now what the hell do I do?

“No.”

“Harmony—”

“No, Scott. You go home. You watch the rest of that show. And you save your strength for tomorrow. I already know what you’re gonna ask. And you already know my answer.”

“Harmony, wait!”

With a click, the line went dead. I stopped looking for the car. It was a lost cause. And to think that three and a half hours ago, I was Superman. Now I was just helpless. Three and a half hours ago, I was the benevolent author of other people’s fates. Now I was just another hopeless, hapless character, getting swept along with the plot.

All I could do was pray for a decent ending, but it wasn’t so easy to stay sunny when I could hear those dark whispers out there in the cineplex. This was the part they’d all been waiting for. This was the part where things got ugly.

The strife got off to an early start on Tuesday. As dawn crawled over the west, a sheet of paper dribbled out of the fax machine in the management office of the L’Ermitage hotel. The text was hand-drawn and sloppy, but it didn’t take a scholar to interpret the message.
bitch fiend: ka-boom!

Within minutes everyone inside the hotel was evacuated onto the street, including poor Hunta. Given the hour, there were only two bodyguards on hand to protect him from the camping flock of reporters, photographers, and protesters. Hunta had to be held back when one of the journalists asked him if he had ever raped his own daughter. It was simply a setup for the cameras (as was the bomb threat, one might argue), and it worked beautifully. Shots of the rapper in all his savage fury would be online and on-air in a matter of minutes.

At 6:45, Big Bank and the rest of the reinforcements arrived, but by then the scare was already over. The police questioned Hunta in his suite.
Do you recognize this handwriting?
“No.”
Has anyone threatened you recently?
“Yeah, man, everyone’s threatened me recently!”
Where are your wife and daughter?
“Fuck you.”

Ten minutes later, Doug was on the scene, ripping into both the police and hotel management. The cops suggested that Mr. Sharpe leave the premises immediately. Management insisted on it. By 8
a.m.
the crew had checked out and was en route to the rapper’s next roost. Only a handful of people were trusted with the secret of Hunta’s new location. I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t even know how to reach him anymore.

It was just as well, I suppose. All I would have done was offer more assurances and more help. He’d already had enough of my assurances. By Tuesday morning, he’d suffered quite enough of my help.

 

 

I woke up at 7:56, four minutes ahead of my alarm radio. I took that as an encouraging sign. Beating the clock, keeping a quick step ahead of the world’s noise, was a good note to start the day. I hopped out of bed. I stretched. I pulled Jean’s momentous sticky (
we moved out
) off the floor, crumpled it, and threw it in the wastebasket. All the loose files in my head were organized into neat little folders, and the folders were put away. I was a lean, sleek vessel, optimized for maximum performance.

I took a deep breath and then called Harmony. She sounded awake and alert. She was apparently ready for me.

“So did you watch the rest of the show?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Wasn’t I good?”

“You were better than good,” I told her. “You were entrancing.”

“Always the sweet-talker.”

“You asked me a question. I gave you an honest answer.”

“Scott, are you in love with me?”

Jesus. She was jumping right in, wasn’t she? I refused to be thrown.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I know I’m infatuated with you.”

“Yeah? You ever have fantasies about me?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “Damn. You’re surprisingly direct this morning.”

Glad she noticed. For this conversation, I was determined to stick to raw sincerity. No rhetoric. No mincing. No witty evasions.

Harmony, by contrast, seemed more polished than ever. Every word out of her mouth sounded like a sixth draft.

“I had a dirty dream about you last night,” she revealed. “We were sitting on someone’s couch, watching TV. And it was me on TV and you were talking all through it. You were telling me how I was so good about saying this, and why the press would love me for saying that. And as you were talking, you started touching me. It was all casual at first but then before I knew it, you had my shirt undone. You’re even sneaky in my dreams.”

“Harmony—”

“There’s more. Don’t you want to hear it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this smells a lot like strategy to me.”

“Yeah,” she replied in a hard tone. “Now you know how I feel.”

I stood up from the couch and wandered. I wasn’t quite comfortable, in places.

“Harmony, I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve patronized you. I’ve underestimated you. But at no time did I ever manipulate you through some emotional charade.”

“You kissed me.”

“We kissed each other. If you think that was strategy on my part, then you’re overestimating me.”

She didn’t believe I was genuinely affected by her. And yet here I was, walking off the proof. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

I opened my balcony doors. “This is my idea of the future. I hope you’ll hear me out on this, Harmony, because it’s very important. At one o’clock there’ll be a press conference in the garden room of your hotel, just like Thursday. Just like Thursday, you won’t be there. Only Alonso. Once again he’ll read a written statement, which you and I will compose together.”

“No.”

“Later this afternoon, I’ll come by your hotel with a small production crew. We’ll shoot a forty-four-minute interview that will be peddled to the networks, just like Maxina did with Jeremy last week. We’ll hire Kathy Oh to be your new official representative, replacing Alonso. She’ll make sure that whoever gets the interview airs it in full.”

“It won’t do any—”

“It’ll just be you, on tape, explaining the circumstances. You made a bad pact with some bad people. You regret it. You just couldn’t live with the lie any longer.”

“After the way I cried—”

“You
could not
bear the fact that you were ruining the life of an innocent man.”

“How do you know he’s innocent?” Harmony asked.

“Of raping you?”

“Of raping Lisa Glassman!”

“He didn’t rape her.”

“How do you know?”

I sighed. “Because his wife knows.”

“That bitch? You believe anything that bitch says?”

“She has no reason to lie.”

“Of course she does! Hunta’s got another album coming out. That album means money. She only puts up with his shit for the money. Everyone knows that.”

I shook my head. “There are so many things wrong with that, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know what he was like at the Christmas party. He was out of control. I saw him grabbing women by the ass, calling them bitches. I saw him on the couch with his hands all over that woman. I saw them leave together. And I saw her come back crying.”

“Well, then I guess she was raped. Did you report it?”

“Don’t put this shit on me like I’m acting all crazy. They called you in just to stop her. Why would they pay you a hundred and sixty thousand dollars to stop this woman if there was nothing to her story?”

“The story was enough,” I said. “In case you haven’t noticed, a little nothing can go a long way.”

“Yeah? Well, if it was no big deal, then how come you kept it from me?”

“Because of this! Because I didn’t want you to justify screwing over an innocent man!”

“You took that woman’s story and you put it on me!”

“I took her lie and I made it yours. And I did it so you could kill it once and for all. That’s the whole point.”

“The key is saving him by making everyone mad at me!”

I took a deep, calming breath, then pressed my hands together.

“Look, I’ve told you time and time again that you will not be the villain.”

“You keep
saying
I’ll be okay—”

“I
know
you’ll be okay. I know that nobody would ever dare attack a contrite and telegenic young black woman. That’s just suicide. These venues are all ad-supported, and advertisers always—”

“I’m not talking about the goddamn media, Scott. I’m talking about people. If I do what you want me to do, I’ll be a bad memory forever. Every time some woman’s raped now, people will say ‘Oh, that bitch is probably lying. Remember Harmony Prince?’ Every time a black woman accuses anyone of anything, people will say ‘Oh, that bitch is probably lying. Remember Harmony Prince?’ Wherever I go the rest of my life, I’m gonna be the bitch who lied! Who’s gonna trust anything I say? Who’s gonna read my books to their kids?”

Some neighbors began squabbling on the street. I closed the balcony doors.

“Harmony, I know it’s hard to get perspective when you’re inside the fishbowl, but take my word for it. You are just a tiny blip on the world’s radar. Out of the six and a half billion people out there, there are only a few thousand who actively give a shit about the things you say or do, and most of them are in the media. To them, you’re revenue. To everyone else, you’re entertainment. A fun distraction. A cheap way to avoid thinking. That’s why stories like this are so popular: because they require no thought. People aren’t thinking about you, they’re reacting. And they’re reacting the way the television tells them to.”

“And what if the television tells them to hate me?”

“It won’t. The television loves you. You’re still sympathetic. You’re still great to look at. And you still keep getting more and more interesting. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. This isn’t an ending. It’s a beginning. Once you clear Jeremy’s name, we’re going to rebuild you. And this time we’re going to get you right.”

She was silent, but I could feel her distance. I was holding out my hand, and she clearly wasn’t taking it.

“They’re just words, Scott. You’re just giving me words.”

I sat down on the stairwell, lowering my head. That was it. We were officially jammed. She didn’t want to see me. She didn’t want to hear me. She didn’t even want to smell me. To her I reeked of strategy. She could feel me coming from every direction, even though I was simply standing right in front of her, as honest as I’ve ever been.