The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

by Teddy Wayne

  For a second, even with what had just gone down, I found myself wondering how many last-minute and in-progress Internet viewers we had. We needed about seventy-five thousand total to break even, after all the marketing and advertising expenses. Over ninety thousand would be considered a triumph.

  And when I wrapped up the final chorus, I realized this would be the last song on the tour, and I wanted to draw it out. So I pulled out the melismatics on the words you’re crushing me so long, the audience kept cheering and clapping for me to go on, and my lungs felt like they were inhaling the applause and they could roll with it forever. Dr. Henson did a test on me once, and I have the lung capacity of a marathon runner. My father was smiling the same way he might if he was watching me sing in a concert at school, like those dads who used to videotape our crap chorus.

  The set list called for one more encore, but I’d already switched it up, and if I did another it might give Jane the chance to interfere, so I told the crowd I loved them and would see them again soon, but didn’t say we hadn’t figured out when or where my next tour would be, or if I’d even still do one.

  “This way,” I said away from the mike while the crowd cheered. My father followed me. He was still smiling.

  I didn’t go to the main entrance, though. I went to the side one that I’d found with Walter earlier, on the opposite side of the stage. There was one security guard behind the door there now, and I walked fast in case Jane had told security to grab me before I went off. He didn’t stop us, probably since I looked like I knew what I was doing. Support staff is always afraid of losing their jobs.

  We were back in the tunnels again. There were so many, it would be a long time until Jane could find us.

  Then I got really scared, because what if after all this time he was a child predator who looked enough like what I remembered my father looked like and had made a fake driver’s license? Or what if he was my father and was also a child predator? I couldn’t straight up ask him if he was one. Not many would be like, Yeah, I’m glad you asked, I actually am a child predator. Instead I said, “So, you’re Al.”

  “I am,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me. You were incredible.”

  He put out his hand for a high five. It didn’t feel dorky the way it did with Dr. Henson. It felt like the way a baseball player congratulates his teammate at home plate on a homer, like, I’m not surprised you did this, but it’s still cool.

  His voice was baritone and gravelly. It sounded like the narrator in Zenon if you lowered the treble and some of the frequencies. I thought he might have a Kansas or St. Louis or even an Australian accent, but he didn’t have much of one. He sounded like he was from nowhere, really. Maybe he spent a lot of time in tunnels, too. “Let’s keep walking,” I said, though I didn’t mention it was so Jane wouldn’t find us.

  I stayed a few feet ahead of him as we turned through the tunnels. A few more Garden workers were moving around now, but I don’t think they knew who I was, because they were mostly Mexican guys. Mexican guys never know who I am. They’re too busy working to follow celebrities. And celebrities are too busy being celebrities to pay attention to Mexican guys. It’s like neither one knows the other exists.

  “How did you get a ticket?” I asked.

  “I bought one off the Internet,” he said. “They were hard to find. You’re a hot ticket.”

  “I can pay you back.”

  I pictured him going on the Internet and refreshing the site until a ticket was available and buying it right away. The tunnels were cold, but I felt warm inside, thinking of that.

  “No way,” he said. “I would’ve paid a thousand bucks to see you. I bet scalpers can sell them for that much, too.”

  The most I’d heard of anyone paying for a regular single ticket was around six hundred dollars, and there were some charity seats that went for more, but that didn’t count. “Not that much.”

  “Well, they should. You’d be worth every penny.”

  I wondered again if he had another family now, or at least a girlfriend. If he’d had a kid in Pittsburgh, maybe the kid and his mother moved to New York, which is why he came back. And I had the same thought about him playing catch with his kid, in Central Park, because you couldn’t do it anywhere else in New York. The strange thing is, I suddenly really hoped he did and that he brought them and I could meet them. I’d have a half-brother, or a half-sister. “Did you come with anyone?” I asked without looking back at him.

  “Nope. Just me. Some of my friends wanted to come, but I didn’t want to ruin your concert with a group of rowdy construction workers.”

  I was a little disappointed I wouldn’t meet this family I’d invented for him. Then I got happier that he might not have one, but I was even more disappointed he hadn’t brought his rowdy construction-worker friends. It would be much cooler to have them at my show than a crowd full of tween girls. “You want to play a video game?” I asked. “I have this game, The Secret Land of Zenon, and I’m close to finishing it. It’s in the star/talent room.”

  He looked behind us and ahead of us, but there were only a few Mexican guys moving stuff around. “You sure that’s all right?”

  “Yeah. They always put a game system in my room. It’s in my rider.”

  I told him we had to use the wall maps. We studied the first one to figure out where we were, and I was about to head one way, but he said, “Hold on. It’s the other direction.” He walked ahead of me, and I followed behind. I liked how he figured it out so quickly and wasn’t like, “I think it’s the other direction,” but was just, “It’s the other direction.” Jane’s always getting lost, even in L.A. and with the GPS. Maybe I’d get his sense of direction. I don’t know how mine worked in cities yet, because when I was in St. Louis I was too young to go out on my own, and I can’t do it now.

  “Do you have a good sense of direction?” I asked.

  “Usually,” he said.

  “When you went on that hiking trip, did you use a map?”

  “Hiking trip?”

  “In Australia. With your friend Dave.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “You shouldn’t hike without a map.”

  “When was that?”

  “With Dave? I guess about a year ago. But I used to hike in Kansas growing up, and we never had maps.”

  I imagined him hiking a year ago in Australia with the guy in that picture, being attacked by kangaroos and meeting a tribe of those Australian black guys who gave him and Dave food and water. A year ago, I was in L.A., gearing up to record Valentine Days, probably getting spray-tanned and drinking sugarless pink lemonade.

  We turned into the next tunnel and looked at the new YOU ARE HERE sign on the map. We were going in the right direction, and I let him lead us.

  “Is it true that toilets flush in the opposite direction there?” I asked in one of the tunnels.

  “Where?” he asked as he checked out another map.

  “In Australia. I read that they flush opposite how they flush here.”

  “I never really noticed. But summer and winter are reversed. When it’s hot here, it’s cold there.”

  “That’s like in Zenon,” I said. “A lot of times, the opposite of what you think you should do works best.”

  He asked me more about the game, and I told him how to play and what it was like as we got closer to the star/talent room. It felt like when you’re in a party of adventurers in Zenon, which happens a couple times on certain levels, and you each have a specific skill. My father would be the cartographer, even though he didn’t bring maps when he hiked in Kansas. I’d be the bard, I guess, which wasn’t really a skill, but sometimes you did meet bards in Zenon, only I didn’t play any instruments. It reminded me of that time we were in the car after Richard’s birthday party, when we drove on the highway, except this time we knew where we were going. And it also was like when me and Zack ran through the hallways in the Memphis hotel. But Zack was only using me to get into the nightclub, just like he used my Walmart fans to broaden
his base. Me and my father were on a real adventure together. And hiding from Jane and venue security in the Garden tunnels was way more like the Underground Railroad than the Memphis hotel was.

  “Maybe we could go there someday,” I said. “I don’t have a foothold in the Australian market yet, but we’d probably still bring along my bodyguard, Walter, for security. You’d like him.”

  “That would be nice,” he said.

  When we got close to the star/talent room, I realized that Jane might be waiting outside for me. So I told my father that we had to go around to the rear. I don’t think he knew why I said that. We found our way to it, and the hallway was empty. I listened in at the door for a second, since I didn’t want him noticing it and asking me why I was being so careful.

  I didn’t hear anything, so I turned the knob and cracked it open. Me and Walter had forgotten to lock it, which was stupid because anyone could’ve come in when I was playing Zenon and kidnapped or killed or molested me. It was empty and the front door was closed. “Stay here a second,” I said.

  I went inside and ran to the front door and locked it, and opened the back door for my father. “Are you inviting me in?” he asked.

  I didn’t know why he was asking such an obvious question, and why he kept using the word inviting, like I was going to say, No, I’m just opening the door to show you how cool the star/talent room is and then I’m closing it on you. But I said yes, and after he did, I locked the back door.

  Man, if he was a child predator, this was like hitting the jackpot: Jonny Valentine locking himself in a room with you without a security presence.

  He looked awkward in the star/talent room, sizing up the buffet table and beanbag chairs and flat-screen like he’d never seen anything like it before. I went over to the buffet and grabbed a plate. “You want some food?”

  “Are you having any?”

  I wasn’t even hungry, but I could tell he’d feel weird about eating if I didn’t, so I piled some pasta on my plate. It didn’t matter anymore now that the tour was over. I could gain ten pounds of chub and then me and Jane would go on a maple-syrup-and-cayenne master cleanse for two weeks. “Yeah. They’ll throw it out if I don’t.”

  “Then I’ll have a little.”

  He started with a small serving of the pasta, but then, just like Tyler, he took some of just about everything, the steak and salmon and quiche and all the rest. Even Walter didn’t eat this much at my concerts, and that includes days he’d lifted when he needed to replenish with carbs and protein. My father didn’t look like he lifted, but like he had lean muscle from his construction work, which probably toned specific zones, like how Peter’s forearms were so defined from cooking. Maybe me and him and Walter could squeeze in a session at the hotel gym together.

  He looked around the room again. “I used to think you were special, the way you’d sing around the house,” he said. “But I figured all fathers think that about their kids. I had no idea how right I was.”

  In some ways that was better than hearing we’d broken ninety thousand in Internet sales.

  We were chewing while standing, so I booted up Zenon and plopped down on one of the two beanbags in front of the TV, and he sat on the other. I explained how I was finally at the Emperor but I couldn’t beat him. I put the TV on mute so no one would hear me playing.

  The same thing as before happened when I went into the Emperor’s lair. I attacked, he deflected, and he fully damaged me with one cut from his halberd. My father kept saying things, like “Whoa!” and “Watch out!” and “Nice try!” Before my fourth try he suggested, “How about letting him attack you first and wear himself out?” which was a smart idea, but I still got damaged with the first hit. I kept trying and getting damaged to zero percent and restarting from my saved game.

  “Did you do construction in St. Louis, too?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Most of the time. Don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  “And your mother never told you?” I shook my head. “Did you tell her I was coming tonight?”

  “Do you remember that time I went to this kid Richard’s birthday party?” I asked. “You picked me up and drove on the highway for a few hours and we went to a diner?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “But did you tell Jane I was coming?”

  I didn’t answer his question again. “They lived in this super-nice house with a huge lawn. I was the last one at the party. You let me order French toast for dinner.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t remember from those years,” he said. “It’s nothing personal. I’m sure we had a good time.” He watched me get damaged again by the Emperor. “Aw, I thought you had him!”

  As my character was departing the realm for like the seventh time in a row and my ghost slipped up into the air, I said, “Why’d you have to go.”

  I didn’t say it like a question. I just said it like it was too bad we couldn’t restart our life from then, from that time at the diner, and he could know I’d become famous and rich later on, and he’d stick around. I didn’t turn to watch his reaction, but I could tell he didn’t know how to respond, even though he’d probably practiced answering it. He didn’t say anything while my saved game restarted.

  Finally he said, “It’s very complicated, Jonathan.”

  It was the first time he’d said my name. Plus Jonathan sounded super-strange out of his mouth and not Jane’s, even if he’d called me it in emails and probably called me it when I was little. “Why?”

  We both watched my character run into the dungeon and get damaged again. I didn’t know how I was ever going to beat this Emperor. “We had problems.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like money problems, for instance.”

  “I thought you said you had a job.”

  “You can have money problems even when you have a job.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. It was a long time ago.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m very sorry. You deserved better. Every day I’ve been gone I’ve thought that.” He pulled an envelope out of his jacket. “I brought you something. I know it’s not your birthday for about a month, but in case I don’t see you then.”

  He took out a four-by-six photo of me as a little kid in front of the Cardinals’ old stadium, wearing a Cardinals hat way too big for my head, sitting on top of his shoulders like I was at the riverfront concert. Maybe he always did that after the concert so I couldn’t get lost in crowds. “Remember this? The first game I took you to?”

  “No. I only remember watching a game once on TV with you while it was raining.” I didn’t ask if he remembered the riverfront concert.

  “Well, we went. A couple times, even.” I couldn’t remember going with him the other times, either, probably because I went with Michael Carns’s family on their season tickets all the time after he left.

  He handed it to me. I had a big smile in the picture, and he did, too, like he was excited to show his son a real baseball game for the first time. “If I get to see you again for your birthday, I’ll buy you something nicer.”

  I wanted to tell him to visit for my birthday, that I could take him to the fanciest restaurants in L.A. and get him brand-new clothes and we could drive around in whatever car he wanted. But I couldn’t say it. I guess it was like what asking a normal girl out might be like. Even if you know she’s going to say yes, there’s a part of you that’s probably afraid she’ll turn you down.

  I put the picture down next to the beanbag chair and returned to Zenon. Right as I opened the door to the Emperor’s lair, I looked at it again. It was the only picture I had of him except for his old driver’s license. Maybe he was right. People make mistakes. In life, you can’t restart from a saved game to undo them.

  I dropped the controller in my lap and threw my arms around my father’s body and buried my head in his chest. His leather jacket smelled like Zack’s, without the cigarettes. He didn’t react for a second. Then he curled one arm around my back and
the other over my head. His heart thumped lightly against my forehead in a one-two-one-two rhythm and his chest moved in and out from his breathing like a metronome.

  But because I’d already opened the door to the Emperor’s lair, he’d run up to the edge of the room and attacked me, and my ghost departed the realm for like the twelfth time. I squirmed out of my father’s arms and yelled, “Fuck you, you fucking Emperor!”

  That was a mistake. A few seconds later the front doorknob tried to turn but couldn’t and there was loud banging and Jane’s voice was all high-pitched shouting, “Jonathan? Jonathan, are you in there?”

  My father stood up. “Don’t let her in,” I said.

  “I have to.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “If I don’t, it’s considered—” He took a step toward the door. “I just do.”

  “She’ll make you go away,” I said. “I saw the letter from her lawyers.”

  He seemed kind of surprised. “I know. But it’s worse if I don’t talk to her now.” He unlocked the door while the knob was jittering from the outside. When he opened it she looked at him like she was about to smack him.

  “Get out,” she said, calm and low.

  “Jane,” my father said, “let me explain—”

  “Let’s not make this ugly. I can have security here in two seconds.” I could tell part of the reason she didn’t want to make it ugly was she didn’t need another tabloid story.

  His body shifted. It looked like he might leave. If he did, I didn’t know how I’d ever see him again. “Let him stay,” I said. “He’s not doing anything bad.”

  Jane stepped out into the hall and swiveled her head in both directions. She came back in and closed the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you both,” he said. “This was the only way.”

  “How’d he know you were here?”

  I answered before he could. “I emailed him,” I said. “I found him on the Internet and emailed him, and I told him to come to the show.”