The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (25 page)

I’ve had to print Nadine’s homework instructions from hotel printers before, so I figured out how to print it. Except the printer got jammed, and I had to yank out the smeared page and reprint.

I heard different voices down the hall. The page started printing, and I signed out of email and closed the window and hoped the printer would work this time or else I was screwed.

The voices were coming closer. The page came out halfway and stopped for a second and I nearly punched the printer, because it was like it kept delivering a premature infant. But it restarted and got the rest out. I grabbed it and folded it into my pocket and sat in the guest chair and pretended to look bored while my blood drummed a hip-hop beat inside my head as Jane came in with the PR rep to get me. I couldn’t get out of that hospital soon enough, and neither could Jane. In the car service, she said, “I hope those vultures are satisfied.”

I didn’t get a chance to read the email since she took me straight to my room at the hotel and waited with me until Nadine showed up for
our session. The letter was like a heat source in Zenon burning up my pocket as Nadine chattered on about word problems and why water freezes and other stuff I couldn’t focus on. Finally we took a break and I went to the bathroom and read the email.

So it looks like you might really know Jonathan or maybe I am writing to Jonathan himself. Please forgive me for being suspicious. When I tried to reach out in the past I only heard from people who are pulling my leg. If you aren’t him, please pass this on to him:

You must be turning 12 pretty soon. I don’t remember much about being 12 except that was when I started thinking about girls. I’m sure you have a lot more options than I did! If I’m able to send you a birthday present, I’ll do it.

Did you know I played drums in high school? I was even in a band for a year. We called ourselves the Wrecking Balls. It was heavy metal. We were pretty bad, so I know you didn’t get your musical talent from me!

I couldn’t get in touch the last few years on account of being in Australia and I feel awful about it. Jane doesn’t want anything to do with me. It’s hard to make amends when you’re not allowed to make them. There are many things I would like to say to you but I don’t feel comfortable saying them over an email. But I do want to say one thing, better late than never. I’m sorry to you for not being there because there are some things in life you can’t replace, and one of them is a father’s love.

Al

P.S. When you have your concert in Cincinnati I might be there too.

I had a million questions. Did he mean he’d be
at
my concert, or he was only going to be
in
Cincinnati? And if I even wanted to meet him,
was it against the law because of the letter in Jane’s room? And when he tried to contact me before, did he go through the label and no one believed him or Jane stopped him like he made it sound and like I bet she did with Michael Carns because his image wasn’t cool enough, or did he just put it out on the Internet and I never saw it?

I pictured me and my father taking a plane to Sydney for the music festival there I almost played in and him inviting all the friends he’d made there to come hear me. He’d introduce me to the crowd, and he’d be as famous in Sydney as me, and he’d manage my Australia/New Zealand tour because he had so many connections there. He’d be like the Australian Jane. Except he’d also play drums to back me up, and for the drum solo in “RSVP (To My Heart),” when it’s supposed to sound like my heart beating faster and faster because the girl just sent her RSVP to be my girlfriend, I’d do my trademark spin move right next to my father while he played, and you wouldn’t be able to tell who the crowd was cheering for, him or me, because they all knew him and they didn’t really know me since I didn’t have a foothold in the Australian market yet. And at night we’d hang out with his Australian friends, who were normal guys who had no idea who I was. They just liked my father.

Then I figured out where I’d heard the words
better late than never
before. I’d been at this boy Richard Nester’s birthday party. It was a fancy white house, with a huge lawn we played Red Rover on. All the other parents picked up their kids at the end, and after a while it was just me and Richard and Richard’s parents. They kept calling Jane at Schnucks, but she wasn’t picking up or available, and when they asked me where my father worked, I said he didn’t work at a place, my mother did, and even at that age I could tell they were a little embarrassed for me. Finally he showed up in our crap Dodge, and he didn’t even come out to get me or apologize to them, he only honked a few times from the big circular driveway they had. When I got in the car, he said, “Well, better late than never, kid.” He must say that a lot. In the car he talked on his phone to Jane and got angry, and instead of going home he drove for a long time on the highway without talking. I didn’t know where we were going and knew
he
didn’t have a plan, either, but there was something cool about that. We ended up at a diner on the highway and
he said I could order whatever I wanted, he didn’t care, so I ate French toast for dinner, and by the time we got home it was dark. They got in one of their big fights, I remember. They must’ve broken up soon after, because that’s the last time I can remember him driving me anywhere.

Nadine called out that break was over. I folded the letter again. It would have been smarter to tear it up and flush it down the toilet, but I didn’t want to do it. I kind of liked having it inside my pocket, even though it would’ve done bad on one of Nadine’s composition tests since it didn’t use evocative language, which was actually what we did next.

I was writing the composition, on Nadine’s logic question:

The police are separately questioning you and your friend about a crime, and offer you both the same deal. You can either testify against your friend (say he is guilty) or claim he is innocent. (1) If only one of you testifies against the other, then the person who testified is freed, and his partner is put in jail for 12 months. (2) If you both claim the other is innocent, you are both put in jail for 1 month. (3) If you both testify against each other, you are both put in jail for 3 months. What should you do?

I couldn’t think straight, because the last few words from my father’s email kept playing on repeat in my head, and it was like I saw them written all over the walls in a jail cell:
a father’s love a father’s love a father’s love a father’s love a father’s love

I finally said, “You should say the other guy’s innocent and hope he says it, too, because then you both have just a month in jail.”

Nadine explained that you should actually say the other guy is guilty, because you can’t guarantee he’ll cooperate and say you’re innocent. So if he
does
say you’re innocent, you get freed, and if he says you’re guilty, it’s not as bad as if you said he was innocent, and the other guy is probably using the same strategy, so you have to plan for that. I bet Jane would’ve figured it out even if she hasn’t studied logic, because of her street smarts.

“That’s not very nice to do, if it’s your friend,” I said.

“Well, it’s the right answer for a logic problem, but I agree. In real
life I’d rather hang out with someone who says his friend is innocent,” she said. “Hey, you doing okay today?”

“I’m fine.”

“I forgive you for being somewhat distracted. You’ve had a lot of stressors recently.”

“I’m good at handling stressors.”

She smiled and said, “I apologize for the pop-psychology jargon.”

“I forgive you, too,” I said.

This time she laughed. She has a pretty laugh. I should tell my next producer to sample it and see if we could use it somehow. I bet she wouldn’t charge us, either.

“Maybe you’ll be okay after all,” she said, like she was watching me from very far away.

“I’ll be fine. This is a blip on the radar. The vultures will move onto the next thing in a minute.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “But, yes, that’s true.”

I didn’t ask what she meant. The last line of my father’s email was still bouncing around in my head as we drove to the venue and during sound check and in the star/talent room before the concert and while the Christian opener, which was called 3 Days Dead, played their fake alt-rock. They’d been drinking beer preshow, which if it wasn’t against Christian protocol, it still probably wasn’t the most religious thing to do and definitely not professional, and it got me pissed that the Latchkeys had to go home when these guys were way worse people and musicians. The concert finally snapped me out of it. You really do have to focus when you’re singing and dancing, and it ended up being a strong show, since the crowd was into it and I fed off their energy. There were all these signs up about the nightclub incident like
LET THE HATERS HATE, WE
♥
U JONNY
and
THIS
BIRD WILL ALWAYS BEE THERE FOR YOU
and
NO MATTER WHAT, YOU ARE THE ANGEL TO MY EYES
. I told my instrumentalists not to come out for the second encore, and did an a cappella version of “U R Kewt” instead because I liked how it sounded with the kids with leukemia even though it was an idiotic choice for them. At the end of the concert I stayed out extra-long when they were cheering and invited up
two
cute girls onstage, which I never do, since it looks like I’m not
a one-girl guy, which is the image we want to promote, and looped my arms around them and let them kiss me on each cheek at once.

But the minute I got back into the star/talent room, I reread my father’s email and still couldn’t figure out if he meant he was coming to my Cincinnati concert. I was hoping for more clues to his life, like what sports he liked, or what he thought of my music. I’d want him to like it, but the idea of some guy in his forties listening to my music was weird, too. Except he wasn’t just some guy, he was my father, so maybe it was okay.

Jane came in but I’d put the letter away and was unwinding with Zenon, and she told me she was going out for a late dinner with a promoter, and Walter would take me home and she’d see me in the morning before our ride to Nashville. “You sure that’s a good idea?” I asked.

“I’m having dinner with another adult in a restaurant, Jonathan,” she said. “I think that’s allowed.”

I was going to tell her about the
New York Times
article, but I kept quiet because this meant she’d be gone from her room and I had a chance to get inside it and write back.

Me and Walter took the car service back to the hotel, and because it was our first real face time since the scandal broke, he told me not to give a shit about it, it was just tight-asses who had nothing else to do and they’d quickly move on to the next thing because they love getting worked up over bullshit so they don’t have to think about things like wars and people starving and bankers stealing from everyone, and anyway part of being a rock star is acting wild, and I reminded him, “I’m not a rock star, I’m a pop star,” since the difference is that rock stars might seem bigger to people like him but they also drive off a lot of listeners with either their sound or their image, so most only secure a niche audience, but pop stars have a chance at dominating the entire market because there’s fewer offensive elements. To be a rock star, you basically
have
to push your freakiness, but pop stars in my mold have to be more relatable and push their normalness, which is not the regular normal, it’s like a super-normal, so all I’m supposed to talk about in interviews is sports and girls and spending time with my family and friends even though the only family I see is Jane and now I’ll probably
never talk to Michael Carns again, but if fans don’t love you as a person, they won’t love your music.

He took me to my room and made sure everything was secure before going to his room. I waited until I heard his door click shut to make sure he hadn’t gone down to the hotel bar, and waited another twenty minutes to be safe. Then I pulled my Florida Marlins cap down and wore sunglasses and went down to the lobby. If I got busted by Jane, I’d say it was her job to be watching me, not going out at night. Anyway, I wasn’t nearly as scared this time, now that I’d done it by myself in Vegas and with Zack in Memphis. Jonny Tubman.

I found a woman with a helmet of dyed blond hair at a desk who looked young enough to recognize me, and went up when no one else was around and took my hat and sunglasses off and said, “Hi, I’m Jonny Valentine, and I’m a guest in your hotel.”

“Oh, hi!” she said in this super-friendly Southern accent. “I heard you were—how may I help you, Mr. Valentine?”

“I need to get into my mother’s room, but she’s out. It’s under Jane Valentino, room 1722. I’m 1723.”

She typed on her computer. It always sounds the same when workers like her type on a computer, like a million little clicks in a row. It’s got to be depressing spending ten thousand hours to be that good at a job like that.

“I see something was messengered here for you today,” she said.

I wasn’t expecting anything, and when we got sent print clips, they usually went to Jane. I gave her my label’s name and asked if it was from them.

“Bergman Ellis Jacobson and Walsh,” she read off the screen. “It sounds like a law firm.”

“And it’s for me?” I asked, which was stupid, because then she read more closely and said, “Oh, my mistake. It’s for Jane Valentino. They mixed up the room numbers.”

That was really dumb of me. I could’ve read it without Jane knowing, then returned it. It wasn’t worth trying to get it from the woman now, when I was already hoping to get access to Jane’s room. She typed some more.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Valentine, but I’m not authorized to let anyone but Ms. Valentino into the room,” she said.

“But I’m her son. That’s the name she uses for hotels. We’ve both been all over the news.”

“I know, but we’d need her to list you, and she hasn’t done that. I could call her on the number listed here, if you want?”

“No,” I said, probably too quickly. I slowed down. “She’s at a big business meeting with a promoter and she told me not to interrupt her. This is important. My leukemia medication is in her room and I need to take it.”