Authors: Daniel Price
Slick (23 page)
That led me to think about Jean and Madison.
Already I saw a bad pattern in the making. I couldn’t keep running to them for free karma refills every time I crossed the moral comfort barrier. Then again, on closer inspection, it seemed they were the ones who kept bringing the refills to me.
________________
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“You got my mother’s approval like six hours ago. So am I working for you or not?”
Madison had called me right before I’d left for the Flower Club. I could just picture the dramatic debates that had gone on in the Spelling/McKnight household over the last twenty-four hours. First Madison does her umpteenth disappearing act, and now she has a standing job offer from a strange man who by all rights should be subjecting Jean to the full fury of Allstate instead of making standing job offers.
Indeed, six hours before, Jean had sent me a heartfelt e-mail. Although it was nice to see her with her all-caps off, I was daunted by the sheer amount of text she’d thrown my way. I was used to taking her in palm-sized doses.
Scott,
I know I already thanked you a million times for everything but please accept thanks number million and one. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little hesitant about your taking on my daughter. My first concern is whether or not Madison’s responsible enough to handle a job. My second concern is whether or not you’re tough enough to handle Madison! As you know by now, the kid’s a handful.
On the other hand, I can’t remember her being so excited about anything. You wouldn’t believe the promises I got her to make in exchange for letting her work for you. As soon as my husband and I left the bargaining table, we high-fived each other like crazy. When it comes to Madison, we don’t get leverage very often. It was awesome.
So if you’re still cool with bringing her in, I’m ready to give the green light. But I do have a few provisions:
1) she only works after school on weekdays, until I pick her up at six
2) any bad behavior on her part (equal but not limited to acts of tantrum, insubordination and /or sass mouth) gets reported to me posthaste for immediate parenting, and finally,
3) this is an UNPAID internship. I mean it, mister. If anything, I should be paying you (see: your mechanic).
Oh, and you may want to anticipate her occasional absence due to grounding.
That’s about it. I have the urge to add some mushy sentiment about what an uncommonly kind person you are, but you strike me as a man with a low-mush threshold. So just accept thanks #1,000,002 and let me know when you’d like Madison to start.
Best regards,
Jean
PS — Kudos on not being a registered sex offender.
The only time I laughed was at the very end. The rest of her message was the clear reflection of a woman who got off on being cute. But I admired her for having the smarts to run a check on me, plus the honesty to admit it.
Now I just had to decide whether or not I was really going through with this.
“It’s not a matter of
if
you’re going to work for me,” I assured Madison. “It’s a matter of when.”
if
you’re going to work for me,” I assured Madison. “It’s a matter of when.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.”
“Oh,” she dryly replied. “I can see why you wouldn’t want help then.”
“Sarcastic little thing, aren’t you?”
“Let me help!”
“I will. I promise. I just need to get organized. As soon as I’m ready—”
“How soon?”
“Very soon.”
“I’m available tomorrow.”
“I might not be.”
Madison heaved a loud sigh. “Are you sure this isn’t some extended blowoff?”
That was quite possible. “It’s not. I promise.”
“Because if it is—”
“It’s not. I’ll let you know when I’m ready. I mean it.”
That seemed to sate her. “Okay. Sorry I got pushy.”
“Don’t be. In my line of work, that’s the only way to get things done.”
“Good,” she said with a charm well beyond her years. “In that case I’ll call you tomorrow.”
________________
The twenty-five minutes I waited for Harmony were hands down the most stressful part of the job yet. What if she’s not coming? Did I put enough bait on the hook? Too much? Would I have to start from scratch with one of the two inferior backup candidates? What if I couldn’t get them?
I parked across the street from the building and then turned off the ignition. Working under the lampposts, I loaded a new seventy minute sound chip into my Palm Pilot audio recorder and tested it out. It was in fine working order. One less thing to worry about.
After doing some fidgety cleanup work inside the car, I discovered Jean’s business card, the one she handed me right after the accident. Just for a diversion, I embarked upon the quest to send her a text message from my cell phone. It was easy enough to locate the function under all the sub-menus. The challenge was typing with a numeric keypad. With all the gaffes and misstrokes, it took me fifteen minutes to key in the following:
Received your e-mail. Your provisions are fine. Tell Madison she can start tomorrow if she wants.
And off it went. I wasn’t going to question my decision. For now and the foreseeable future, I’d reserve all my jitters for Harmony.
Soon after midnight, she exited the building. She had changed out of her little black dress and into a casual denim jacket and jeans. Her short hair, which had been moussed into a large and unwieldy construct, was now clean and slicked back. She looked totally different. With her makeup gone, I could see the kindness in her pretty young features. She had the type of face that TV producers craved, especially when they were looking to add a little nonthreatening color to an otherwise homogenous show. How the hell could someone go through everything she’d been through and still manage to look so wholesome?
She spotted me and started across the street. As I unlocked the door, I activated the Palm Pilot recorder and placed it atop the loose pens and nickels in the center storage well. I may have been floating on excitement and good-natured optimism, Harmony-wise, but I was still a realist. I knew how crucial it was to capture her voice. It was the only insurance we’d have if she ever went rogue on us.
Harmony entered and, after a brief hesitation, closed the door.
“Thanks for coming,” I said.
“No problem,” she replied in a timid half-whisper.
“Look, before I start the car, I just want to reiterate that I’m taking you straight home. And all we’re doing between now and then is having a conversation. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good.” I turned the key. “But just to prepare you, you should know that the whole thing will end with a job offer.”
That raised her interest, but didn’t lower her guard. She still couldn’t get her suspicions out of the gutter.
“What kind of job?”
“Acting.”
“What kind of acting?”
“Don’t worry. It’s for a network show.”
“Which network?”
I smiled at her. “All of them. Buckle up.”
And off we went.
________________
“Okay, let me give you the big picture for a moment. It’s no secret that all the media in this country are controlled by corporations. Big corporations. In fact it’s six giant multinationals that pretty much run the show. They don’t advertise that because they don’t want us making a big deal out of it. You know how we get when big business starts to look a little too big, like Microsoft. Who needs that kind of hassle? Still, you have your typical reactionaries who freak out and say that by controlling the airwaves, these few conglomerates are controlling us, the little people.
“I, for one, can tell you that’s bullshit. All of these companies News Corp, Viacom, Disney—they lose money on ninety percent of the things they push on us. For every hit there are nine misses. And why? Because we do have free will. Not only that, but we’re pretty goddamn fickle about where we put our valuable attention. So what you have in each of these six companies are thousands of executives and specialists and analysts scrambling to get a better understanding of the mass American psyche. I give them credit for trying but let’s face it. It’s like washing cars on the freeway.”
Harmony watched me the whole time, nodding, listening, and most likely wondering when the hell I’d get to the part that involved her. My fault for trying to impress her.
“So once in a while,” I continued, “a public drama comes along that causes everyone to stop and look. It fixates us, for whatever reasons. O.J. Simpson. Jon Benet Ramsey. Elián González. Columbine. The networks didn’t engineer these events. They just happened. And when they do, holy shit, are they lucrative. I mean for everyone. Viewer and subscription ratings go up, which means ad sales go up. Experts and pundits get to speak their minds and plug their books. Even the nonprofits profit. Every time a relevant activist group puts their two cents in, they get thousands back in donations. It’s all part of the fun and games of a modern free market. Are you still with me?”
She nodded.
“All right. So here we are again with Melrose. It’s a lot like Columbine, except this time the shooter was cuter.”
“And white,” Harmony groused.
“Actually, the Columbine shooters were white. And Annabelle Shane wasn’t. But the important thing is that the Melrose tragedy is a gold mine of human interest. Mostly because it’s rap-related.”
“They haven’t proved that for sure.”
“They will. Very soon. Trust me. This one is going to progress to a full-fledged indictment of the music and entertainment industry. As far as the media folks are concerned, it’s the perfect storm. Black versus white. Parents versus kids. Washington versus Hollywood. Nobody’s going to let this one go. And everyone with an agenda, noble or otherwise, is going to throw their hat in the ring. In fact, there’s only one guy who
doesn’t
want be a part of this mess, and he’s trapped right in the middle of it.”
doesn’t
want be a part of this mess, and he’s trapped right in the middle of it.”
“Hunta.”
“That’s right. That’s why they hired me. My job is to get him out of that ring alive. Now I can’t kill this story. Nobody can. But what I can try to do is steer it in a different direction, toward a much more favorable outcome. It’s kind of like one of those old Looney Tunes, where the Road Runner paints a fake curve in the road and leads the Coyote into a brick wall.”
At last I got her to chuckle. Too bad she wouldn’t be doing much of that for the cameras. She had a gorgeous laugh.
“There’s only one way for me to accomplish my goal,” I said. “I have to give the people something even more exotic than what’s been going on already. If they’ve got a horse, I’ve got to give them a zebra. If they’ve got a twelve-car pileup, I’ve got to give them a plane crash. Now I think I’ve got the story to top all stories, but what I don’t have is a compelling lead.”
Finally I connected the big picture to her. She stopped smiling.
“Wait. Me?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re perfect for the part.”
“That’s crazy. I ain’t...I don’t do that acting stuff.”
“That’ll only help your credibility.”
“But I don’t get it. What am I supposed to do?”
All at once, a series of glaring doubts caught up to me with a vengeance. This was too much to spring on her, too soon. I’d assumed my enthusiasm for the plan would be infectious. I’d assumed Harmony would jump at any opportunity to escape her current hapless existence. Even worse, I’d assumed she’d take my crash course in media literacy as a sign of good faith instead of the mark of a soulless prick. But what if I was wrong on all counts? Suddenly I felt like a student who crammed for the wrong test.
“Do me a favor,” I said, with considerably less aplomb. “Open the glove compartment.”
She did, and immediately gawked at the standout item: a fat stack of bills.
“That’s your thousand,” I told her. “Your listening fee.”
“Why you giving it to me now?”
I took an extended breath. “Because this is the part where you earn it.”
________________
Sometime during the next twenty minutes, the sound chip in my recorder became a dangerous and valuable item. It was both a weapon and a shield. There were a good two minutes of dialogue that, when properly isolated, would provide us with one hell of a net should Harmony ever betray us.
Getting that was the easy part. Getting Harmony in tune with my grand design was the more difficult and pressing concern.
She rested against the passenger side of my car, smoking a cigarette under the pitch black sky. The car itself rested in a parking lot off Lincoln Boulevard, right in front of a sleeping strip mall. Hunta’s brother, Ray, had died somewhere in this vicinity. For all I knew, it was right where we were standing.
It was my idea to pull over. I wanted to give Harmony time to regroup and weigh the issues. She pulled a generic pill bottle from her purse and poured herself three chalky-white tablets. This was the second time I watched her dry-gulp a trio of painkillers.
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