Brando 2 (9 page)

“Haley!”

“Haley!”

“Haley!”

The
paparazzi are on us in seconds, like jackals with SLRs. Yapping and
filling the night sky with flashes from their peeping-tom lenses.
There are more than a dozen of them, bombarding Haley with random
shouts and questions. One of the bodyguards moves toward the street,
pushing several of them with him, while the other two form a barrier
between the photographers and us.

We
shove through, guided by the bodyguards like the world’s
clumsiest football play. I cover Haley with my coat like a smuggled
package, ruining multiple gossip editors’
morning
stories in the process. We make it to the side of the road, where a
yellow cab is already waiting for us.

I’m
about to shove Haley into the cab, dive in after her, and start
thinking about food, when she stops and pulls away from me. That’s
how quickly it happens. That’s
how fast my happiness disappears. A new record.

“What
did you say?”
Haley
shouts, as she squeezes between the bodyguards to get a full view of
the reporters.

“Rex
Bentley!”
comes
the reply from multiple scumbags at once. “Are
you really Rex Bentley’s
daughter?”

“Haley!”
I
shout, grabbing her arm and holding the cab door open with the other.
“Come
on!”

Haley
freezes, brings a hand to her head, and looks down wildly, trying to
find a straight thought in the maelstrom of noise and attention. The
bodyguards go full linebacker, sweeping the reporters away with giant
arms in order to buy us some space.

“You’re
Rex Bentley’s
daughter! What’s
your real name? Why did you keep this a secret? Haley!”

When
Haley raises her head again she looks at me. She doesn’t
need to say a word. Her tight lips, her cold eyes, her clenched jaw
says it all.

“Haley,
wait,” I
say, sounding more desperate than the reporters, “No.
Don’t…I
didn’t
do this. This isn’t
me. I swear.”

She
shoves me aside and slides into the taxi, her hand on the door. When
she speaks it’s
a low hiss, a coiled ball of disappointment and resentment that she
seems to pull from the pit of her stomach.

“You
were the only one I told. The only one I trusted.”

“Haley,
wait! Please! I didn’t—”

“Fuck
you, Brando,” she
sneers through the streak of tears, as she slams the door of the cab
closed. It speeds away with the reporters following desperately
behind for a while.

“Do
you need a cab, boss?”
one
of the bodyguards asks.

“Yeah.
Find one that’ll
run me over.”

Haley

I
cried all the way through the six hour flight to San Francisco. I
cried when I spoke to the lady at the car rental agency. I cried for
most of the 35. By the time I pull up to my mother’s
sloped, brick house on a hill in Santa Cruz, I think I’m
all cried out. But when she comes out the door and screams “Sweetie!”
I
start bawling harder than I have since I lost my first talent show at
eleven years old.

She
carries me inside, through the seventies décor
and the antique furniture she never gave away, past the stacks of
records and the acoustic guitars she hardly uses anymore but still
loves, into the living room with the thick carpet and the smell of
oak that I never notice until I’ve
been away a while. She places me on the velour couch, drapes a
hand-crocheted afghan around my shoulders, and sits beside me.

“Haley?”
she
says in a voice as light as a summer breeze. “What’s
the matter, sweetie?”

I
look at her through the wetness of my eyes. Without the crows feet
and the wrinkles around her jaw, she’d
still look just like the photo on the TV. She’s
still got the long, straight hippie-hair, still wears long, flowing,
patterned dresses, and still has the eyes that seem too pure for
anyone but her.

“You
don’t
know?” I
say, through sobs.

“Know
what?”

“What
happened on the tour.”

“I
know everything that happened on the tour!”
she
smiles, nodding toward the stack of newspapers and magazines on the
coffee table, the scissors and glue she uses to cut and paste
clippings set neatly beside them. That’s
when I realize she wouldn’t
know about the Rex Bentley leak anyway –
she
doesn’t
use the internet, barely turns the TV on –
and
when I think about having to tell her everything that happened, I
break down again, folding into my lap.

“Haley,
shhh. Come on now,”
she
says, pulling me to her and stroking my back. “You’re
gonna have to tell me what it is if you want me to help, baby.”

The
crying subsides, more from the fact that I have no more energy to cry
than that I’m
over it, and I sit back up and stare blankly at the switched-off TV.

“They
know about…about
Rex Bentley,”
I
say, sniffing.

“Who
knows?”

I
grit my teeth and force the ugly answer out. “Everyone.”

Her
brow furrows in concern. “How?
Did you tell them?”

“I
told…someone.
Someone I thought I could trust.”

There’s
a pause so silent I feel like I can hear the dust moving in the
sunlight.

“Brando?”
my
mom says, and even from her, even in that gentle, sing-song voice, it
makes my stomach feel acidic.

“What?”
I
say, jumping up from the couch. “When
did you—
wait.
Wait. Who—
when—”

“He
called me.”
The
look on her face is pure confusion, pure innocence. And I’m
livid.

“Oh
my God! Oh my God! No!”
I
shout, ignoring the dull ache that still lingers in my throat. I pace
up and down the living room, my fingers furiously rubbing my frown.
Infinite sadness turning into blinding rage in seconds. “No!
This is …
whoa! That is too far. That is
way
too far. First he violates my life. Then he sells me out. Now he’s
trying to turn
you
against me?! This is…oh
my God! I’m
so
pissed
right now!”

“Haley!
Calm down, it was just—”

“Who
does he think he is? I mean, who
does
that? My own
mother!?
It’s
one thing to mess with me, but this is over the line.”
I
clench my fist and jab it into my palm as I continue to pace even
faster. “He’s
going to pay for this, I swear. I don’t
know how, I don’t
know…
He’s
going to pay! Ragh! I could strangle him!”

“Haley!
Listen to me!”
I
glance over at my mom. “And
stop pacing!”
I
stop and stand there, chest heaving, fists clenched, my blood
boiling. “He
called me weeks ago. He just wanted to offer me tickets to the first
show on the tour. He said if I wanted to come he would make sure I
had the best seats in the house.”

I
stand there, still furious, but my anger a little less focused.

“What?
That’s
all?”

“Well,”
Mom
says with a strange, sly grin, “we
did talk a little bit.”

“About
…
what?” I
say, putting a huge pause in the middle of the words. I sit on the
lounge chair beside the couch and lean forward to express my deep
interest in whatever the fuck happened between Brando and my mother.

“Nothing
important. Don’t
worry,” she
says, way too casually. “I
asked him about you. He told me you were doing just great. That your
music was really striking a chord with people. He seems to be a very
competent manager. Very invested in you. And…”

“
And?
”

My
mom smiles warmly as she relives the conversation. “And
he mentioned that you told him about my own music. The album I
recorded in seventy-eight. He said he’d
love to hear it. I told him if he ever found a copy to be sure to
make me a copy, since they only printed five hundred of them.”

“Mom!”
I
say, when I notice how happy she looks. “Don’t
look so pleased when you’re
talking about him! He’s
a
…
he’s
an
asshole.
”

“He
can’t
be that bad,”
she
says. “He
promised to find that record and let me know as soon as he did.”

I
groan with every fiber of my being.

“Wait,”
I
say, holding a palm up. “I
don’t
understand. How did you get from that conversation that he was the
one I told about…the
secret.”

“Sweetie,”
my
mom says in a way that makes me feel thirteen again, “I
might be old but some things don’t
change. The sound of a man’s
voice when he’s
talking about a girl he’s
infatuated with is one of them.”

“Mom!
He’s
just my manager!”
But
the lie comes out sounding defensive and weak, and I know I’m
not convincing her.

She
smiles gently. “I’m
not judging.”

“Fine.
But still…”

“Listen,
Haley, the kind of man who would look for a rare, limited edition
record for a girl’s
mother is also the kind of guy who would go to the ends of the earth
for that girl –
young
woman, I mean –
and
her secrets.”

“And
is apparently also the kind of man who would
spill
those secrets to the whole world?”
I
say, slumping back against the chair in exhausted defeat.

“Are
you sure about that?”
my mom
asks.

“Yes!
It’s
exactly the kind of thing he’d
do. Probably for publicity or something.”

Mom’s
expression remains skeptical. “Did
he tell you that?”

“Of
course not. He said he didn’t
tell anyone.”

“So
why do you think it was him?”

“Because…he
was the only one who knew! And he’s
lied to me before.”

My
mom gives me the same sigh-and-critical-look combination that she
gives her music students who skip their homework.

“Haley…”

“Mom…”
I
say, in the same voice I used when I wanted to skip school. “The
whole music thing…it
just sucks. Someone messed up my guitar before a gig. And way before
that, Brando made a bet with some douche bag that he would make my
song a hit. One minute the label won’t
give us a video budget, the next they send me on tour with Lexi. They
basically forced me to sign with Majestic by throwing a bunch of
lawyers at us saying I’d
have to repay the studio time back myself if I didn’t.
This business is just full of snakes and lies and people playing
fucked up games. It’s
not as simple as it looks. You don’t
understand.”

“Don’t
I?”

I
look at her soft face, barely able to conceal the hurt she feels.

“I’m
sorry. I didn’t
mean that.”

She
shrugs it off and smiles. “It
sounds to me like the music industry hasn’t
changed one bit, honestly.”

I
let out a little laugh, but the smile disappears quickly when I
remember. “The
point is, Brando probably did this. And he probably thought he was
doing me a favor, that it would help my career.”

“Haley,”
my
mom says with an air of finality, “the
- ‘secret’
– as
you call it, was never going to stay secret for long once you got
your name out there. Do you know how many people found out about me
and Rex at the time? How many of his biographers I’ve
had to fend off insinuating questions from? What about the strange
letters I get from his insane fans that think they’ve
made some connection between us? You’re
right. I don’t
know this Brando, but I do know people. And it’s
worth giving them the benefit of the doubt every once in a while.”

I
nod slowly, taking in her words, wishing I believed them. “I’d
like to say thanks for the support, Mom. But the truth is that I’m
more confused than ever right now.”

“So
listen to your heart instead of your head,”
she
says simply. As if it’s
that easy. “Now
sit tight and let me make you some tea.”

Brando

Her
house is exactly how I imagined it would look. On the outskirts of a
quiet hippie town near the beach, at the end of a quiet road that
winds slowly up a hill, surrounded by a few quiet clusters of shady
trees. It’s
no wonder she enjoys making noise.

I
step through the worn, wooden gate and knock on the door, shaking my
arms and stretching my neck like I’m
bracing for a fight. The door opens slowly, but the person who opens
it is anything but confrontational.

“So
you must be Brando,”
says
the striking woman in the doorframe.

She’s
tall and slim, a flowing dress hanging from softly-curved shoulders.
Her angular bone structure seems to catch and hold the light like a
supermodel. Though she’s
got the comfortable smile and glinting eyes of someone in their
fifties, something about her makes everything else seem a little less
physical.

“Ms.
Cooke,” I
say, quickly suppressing the guilty pang of finding Haley’s
mom kinda hot.

She
smiles, and it’s
like the sun is shining directly at me. “Call
me Wanda. Come on in,”
she
says, standing aside. I step through the doorway, looking around the
room like a detective scanning for clues. “She’s
not here,”
Wanda
says, noticing my tensed muscles. “She’s
out in the shed.”

“The
shed?”

“It’s
where she likes to record and play. Me too, sometimes,”
she
says, as she leads me through the house toward the back door. “It’s
a kind of studio. And a guest room.”

She
pushes open the kitchen door to the long lawn of neatly-cut
bright-green grass, colored blooms and bushes lining it all the way
to the end, where a ramshackle wooden structure sits amid the
greenery like some miniature English cottage that time forgot.

“Look.
Wanda,” I
say, turning back after she holds the door open once again for me to
step past. “Thanks
for telling me she was here. I know she probably told you not to.”

“You’d
have found her here eventually. Better sooner rather than later.”
Wanda
looks down sadly. “Haley’s
like a wild flame: Quick to start, and quick to calm. But if you
leave her to herself, she can burn everything around her.”