by Teddy Wayne
I took the elevator downstairs and asked Sharon to make me a cup of coffee. She always makes the same joke: “Black, like your women, Mr. Jonny,” and I don’t take it with milk but I say, “Ebony and ivory, Sharon,” because everyone makes fun of that song, but Rog told me it was Paul McCartney’s longest number-one Billboard hit after “Hey Jude,” so the joke’s on them.
I asked how Gerald was doing. She hasn’t seen him in four years. They got engaged over Skype. She smiled super-wide and whispered, “I’ve saved enough that I think I can go back this summer.”
“For a vacation?”
“No, for good.”
“Like, to live there?”
“Yes. But don’t tell your mother yet, okay?”
“What about your job here?” I asked.
“I know.” She made this clucking sound. “I’ll miss you a lot.”
“Are you gonna work in someone else’s house there?”
“Maybe,” she said. “They have a lot of hotels I can work in, too. Right on the beach.”
I remembered a line from a crap romantic comedy I’d seen on pay-per-view in New Orleans, and said, “So, you’re gonna leave me for him? Just like that, after two years together?” except I did it with a smile to show I was joking, and then I fake-cried and improvised some new lines like, “You’re gonna leave me, I always knew it, you never loved me, I can’t believe you’re gonna leave me all alone.”
She knew I was messing around, but she got kind of serious with a gentle smile now and said, “You can always visit me, Mr. Jonny. Gerald’s got a couch you can stay on.”
I stopped fake-crying and said, “That’s okay, I can just stay at one of the hotels you’ll work at.”
Her smile went away a little and she said I could and my coffee was ready and she had to finish up some cleaning upstairs.
Jane was ending her exercise in our gym. She probably did a light routine on the elliptical, because our trainer wasn’t there today, and when she’s on her own she wimps out and does like fifteen minutes at low intensity, not enough for cardio benefits and way below what you need for serious fat burning.
She came in with a water bottle and in her sweaty workout clothes and told me our food was waiting for us in the living room. Our chef, Peter, was also off today, so Jane had ordered in salads. When we sat on the couch, she said, “There’ll be a lot of tempting junk food at the party tonight. What do we say to temptation?”
I said, “Temptation is for the weak,” and she gave me a high five and turned on the TV and we watched celeb news on E! and the networks while we ate. Jane flipped through the folder Stacy gave her. In the middle she said, “These idiots in creative are all the same. They’re only looking out for their own careers, not yours. Never forget that. No one else cares as much about your career as I do. If your sales tank, they can move on and get another client. I won’t get another son.”
She kept reading until one of the shows said that Tyler Beats was announcing his Asian tour for next fall. Her head popped up from the folder when the woman said the words Tyler Beats. “That’s what we have to do next,” Jane said. “The real money is in Asia.”
“I thought that’s why we’re doing the Internet live-stream concert, to grab Asian viewers,” I said.
“Yes, so we can get enough of a critical mass there to justify a tour. Once you do that, you’re set. They have stronger brand loyalty.”
A car commercial came on, and Jane’s eyes stayed on the screen, but I could tell her mind was somewhere else. She said, “You have more natural talent than Tyler Beats. But he works harder than anyone else.”
“I work hard, too.” Jane doesn’t watch most of my sessions with Rog, when I sing myself hoarse or dance till I get blisters or analyze songs for hours.
“Not like Tyler,” she said. “The top person is never simply the most talented, or the smartest, or the best looking. They sacrifice anything in their lives that might hold them back.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant anything in particular, and if I brought up Zenon as an example, she might say, Yeah, you have to cut that out. So I shut up while we finished the show and our salads. Jane said she was showering and the car service was picking us up in an hour to take us to the party. I asked why we had to take the car service, since they always make us wait when we want to leave, and she said, “You know I hate driving at night.” It’s true that Jane’s a safe driver and she doesn’t like driving at night and I wasn’t even allowed in the front seat until this year, but I knew it was so she could drink, and she never drives with me in the car when she’s had any alcohol.
“Can Walter come and drive us?”
“It sends the wrong message.” She sighed like she was tired of talking about it and tired in general. I moved behind the couch and gave her a neck rub. She closed her eyes and made a few mmm sounds, and after a minute said, “You’re the best at that, baby,” and stood and kissed the top of my head and ran her hands through my hair. “I’m so happy when we get to hang out like this, just you and me. I miss this on tour, when we’re running around in a million directions with a million people around us.”
“Maybe we could find time to do it more on tour,” I said as she walked away. We hung out together a lot more on our first national tour. Jane’s been busier this one.
She paused, but her pauses are like pausing the game in Zenon, where the music keeps playing. Jane’s never not thinking. “Sure, that’d be nice,” she said and smiled at me. She left to shower and I watched TV on the couch but I really thought about Tyler. Like, did he work twice as hard as me, and is that what it took to get where he was, and would I want to do that? What if it meant sleeping two less hours a night and not playing Zenon but only practicing and extending my tours and reducing gaps between shows and never eating anything bad for me?
And though I wouldn’t say it to Jane, in my mind I was like, No, don’t make me. I don’t even know how I could do that. I’m already working the hardest I can without departing the realm.
Jane always takes a year getting ready. I knocked on her door and told her the car service was waiting outside, and she opened it and said, “They get paid for their time.” She was in her lingerie and had two dresses on her bed, a red one and a blue one, and asked me which I liked more, and I said the blue one, so she put it on and asked me to zip her up. “Do you think my stomach’s getting fat?” she asked.
It was a little fatter than pretour, with some wobbly jelly chub over her gut. We went through a women’s glossy a few months ago that ID’d problem zones. I didn’t say anything, but Jane’s were Belly Bulge, Bat Wings, and Muffin Top. She didn’t have Turkey Neck, Armpit Fat, Thighscrapers, Cankles, or Back Fat. She thought she had Mom Butt, but she doesn’t.
I went, “No, not at all.”
In the ride over she told me who she thought was going to be at the party. I didn’t know their names, but I knew who they worked for, and most of them were at top-shelf movie and TV companies and agencies. For a second I wondered if maybe my father had been waiting for me to return to L.A. and he might show up, but that was stupid for a million reasons.
Jane hadn’t stopped talking. “We still have to find the right vehicle for you,” she said.
“How about a Ferrari?” I said.
She smiled and pinched my cheek and said, “Maybe you could do comedy.” That kind of joke was like my Victor joke to Nadine, though. You smile, but you don’t laugh. Like a song you hum along with but don’t tap your feet to.
The party was in Calabasas, and we got lucky with traffic, so it took about forty-five minutes. The house was behind a security gate like ours, and when Jane had trouble with the guard and her name on the guest list, she pressed down the window all the way, and he let us in.
We drove around the half-circle driveway past all the parked cars of the guests and up to a typical Calabasas mansion, with stone columns in the front and a huge set of double doors like a castle, and the house was white and light pink the way Jane likes her salmo
n cooked. There were torches along the walkway to the door and balloons and banners saying HAPPY 12TH BIRTHDAY MATTHEW! Jane checked her makeup once more in her compact mirror and knocked.
A woman with the kind of long skinny arms Jane is always trying to get—she calls them flamingo arms even though they’re really like flamingo legs—and who didn’t spray-tan and had straightened black hair that was a definite dye job answered it with a glass of wine in her hand. She smiled at Jane and said, “Hello!” and then saw me and her smile became real. “Hi, welcome! I’m Matthew’s mother, Linda.”
People who know better never say my name when they first meet me, but they try not to act like they don’t know me, either. It’s the fans who slobber all over you, and sometimes other celebs pretend they don’t recognize you. It’s always the male movie stars or rock stars who act like they’re too cool, but I can tell when they’re faking it and are secretly excited to meet me, since they’re pretending not to be impressed. When someone actually doesn’t care, like politicians who meet me for photo ops and don’t hardly know who I am, they have to pretend to be impressed. That’s how you know who’s more famous, whichever one of you is more excited to meet the other. It helps that I don’t really know a lot of older actors, but they all know me, besides the ones who are seriously old and culturally irrelevant. Jane says most male movie stars have career peaks from about twenty-five to forty-five, but a male pop star can start earlier and also probably ends quicker unless he’s really savvy. Women’s careers in both are over by the time they’re thirty, which is why they all suddenly get interested in having kids then. Once you have a kid, you’re basically saying, Fuck you, career, except if you’re the type of parent who doesn’t really care about his kid anyway.
Jane introduced us and handed Linda a wrapped gift, which I’m sure was my debut album and a concert DVD. Our basement has a room that’s filled with like a thousand of each.
About eighty adults and kids were standing around eating hors d’oeuvres from waiters in the main living room after the entrance. I recognized a few of the adults from the glossies, but no one was nearly as famous as me, which sometimes is a rush and sometimes you want someone else to take the attention off you, since everyone either looked at me or pretended not to when me and Jane walked to the bar. Except when there is a bigger celeb, after you relax, you get pissed, like, Why is this guy more famous than me?
Jane whispered that Linda got small roles on a few TV shows but her career would be in the toilet without her husband. After she got her prosecco, Matthew’s father came over and kissed Jane on the cheek and thanked us for coming and shook my hand and said, “Big fan,” and I said, “Love your work.” You’re not supposed to say anything else except “Big fan” or “Love your work.” He wanted me to meet his son, so he called Matthew over.
Matthew was wearing a button-down and nice pants. His father said, “Matthew, thank Jonny for coming to your party. I’m sure he’s very busy.”
He stared down at his loafers and mumbled, “Thanks for coming.” For having such good-looking parents, Matthew was pretty funny-looking. He had buck teeth and he already had acne and his stomach was a little chubby. I felt bad for him. I wondered if my father was good-looking, and if he was, why him and Jane made a good-looking kid, but Matthew’s parents didn’t.
His father said, “Make eye contact when you’re speaking to someone, Matthew.”
Matthew made eye contact, and this time, when he said, “Thanks for coming,” his eyes turned into tiny hard stones and I could tell he hated me. I didn’t know if it was because I was famous or cuter or more talented, which are the usual reasons, or because his father was embarrassing him, but I can always tell when someone hates me right away. A lot of times it’s easier to tell than when someone loves you.
I said, “Jane, can we get Matthew and his parents VIP seats to the concert tomorrow night? If they’re available and want to come, I mean.”
Jane seemed surprised but said we could probably do that, and asked Matthew’s father if that was okay. He said they had plans but they could easily cancel them, and I looked at Matthew sort of like, Fuck you, Matthew, now you’ll have to make eye contact with me for a whole night and sit through an entire concert and your parents are gonna love me even more, and I don’t even care that when you open Jane’s gift you’ll probably try to break the discs with your friends from school.
Jane saw someone else she knew and introduced me, and we spent the next hour schmoozing different adults in the movie and TV entertainment industry. A few mentioned they had a project in mind that I was perfect for and we should call their offices to take a meeting, and Jane said we’d be making the rounds when the tour was over. I was still tired and wanted to go home, so instead of talking shop, I ate every spinach-and-cheese-pie triangle and mac-and-cheese cupcake and all the other weird hors d’oeuvres from the waiters, most of which had dairy. Each time I did, Jane shot me a look like, Enjoy it, kid, because that’s your last one, but I knew she wouldn’t say anything in front of the others, so I kept pigging out. She owed me for making me take basically two different meetings in one day.
The kids were hanging out together on the other side of the room, playing with their iPhones and eating from the table that had Doritos and soda and gourmet caramel popcorn and sometimes glancing over at me. Most were around me and Matthew’s age, but some were younger or older. They all dressed about the same, in expensive jeans and T-shirts that were the in-store versions of what designers send me. When you squinted your eyes, it almost looked like a team uniform. But if I stood next to them, you could tell there was something just a little bit different, like the stitching and buttons on mine are higher quality and tailored with new measurements every two months even though I haven’t hit my growth spurt yet.
I was a few feet behind Jane and this woman who was a network exec, but they didn’t know I was there. After Jane listed the highlights on the tour, the exec said, “It must be tough on Jonny.”
Jane asked what was tough, and the woman was like, “You know. Not having a normal childhood.”
Jane said, “What’s abnormal about it?”
The woman said, “Sorry, poor choice of words. I just mean I . . . I wouldn’t put my son through it, that’s all.”
Jane was like, “Not everyone could handle it.”
“You’re right, he probably couldn’t,” she said. “I apologize if I misspoke.”
Jane’s voice iced over and she said, “Well, it was really nice meeting you.” She excused herself to the bathroom and wobbled off in her high heels, and the woman noticed me and fake-smiled and said she had to say hi to a friend, and I grabbed four more pigs in a blanket and stuffed them down while Jane was away. I didn’t know who the woman’s son was, but I looked around for the most normal-looking, average kid in the room. I found a boy with short brown hair, in a group of kids near the popcorn bowl. I tried to picture him growing up and staying normal-looking and average, going off to college, getting a job in an office, marrying a normal-looking woman, having a bunch of normal-looking kids who later went off to college and got office jobs, working another forty years, then departing the realm and having a funeral with just his family crying there because the public didn’t know who he was and everyone else forgot about him since he was so normal.
I went to the bathroom near the kitchen, but Jane was still inside. There was another room with the door open, a study, to one side, and Matthew’s father was inside at a desk with his back to me, on his laptop and making a phone call. I pushed the kitchen door a crack, and no one was there, so I walked inside to hide out.
All the extra food and drinks were on the tables, but I wasn’t even hungry anymore, I was eating out of boredom, and Jane always says that’s who the real chubs are, people who fill up their guts with food because they’re missing something else. I sat on a chair and listened to the voices muffled by the door. You could separate different voices out if you strained hard enough, like isolating music tracks. Everyon
e was trying to be the one who was heard, making their voices louder or saying the funniest or smartest line they could think of. The stupid thing is that people always listen to me, even though I’m just a kid and I wasn’t even that good in school when I went and the only people I make jokes to are Jane and our staff, and my jokes suck.
Then I heard some voices outside, in the back of the house. There was a door in the kitchen to the backyard. It was unlocked and I opened it to a big fenced backyard with patio chairs and tables and trimmed grass and a small pool without water. The noises were coming from right around the side of the house. It was numbskull of me to be out there in the first place, and even more numbskull to go see what the sounds were with Walter grabbing shut-eye forty-five minutes away in his bungalow. But Jane was getting drunk, so it’s not like she was doing an A-plus job of watching me.
I walked to the side of the house and knocked into a recycling can filled with glass. Nothing broke, but it made a rattling sound, and I could hear whoever was around the corner going, “Shit, shit.”
It was the older kids who’d snuck out. The two boys’ hands were behind their backs, and the two girls had guilty looks. They were around fifteen or sixteen. That was about the oldest my fan base got, and they were always harder to talk to. Tweens were easy, since they only squealed and didn’t have any real opinions, and adults try to be polite, but it’s hard to know what to say to the teen demo, who do have opinions but don’t feel like they have to act nice. “Hey,” I said.
