Nobody's Hero

by Melanie Harvey

  “But Walter’s my publicist.”

  “And he’s terrific, don’t get me wrong. A total prick, but that’s beside the point.” Ashley waved a hand. “This is what I do. And I’m damned good, which is the only reason Walter would tolerate my blatant refusal to kneel before his throne.”

  “That’s why Bella said it was all true. Isn’t that bad? You being with me confirmed — ”

  “Confirmed the truth,” Ashley said. “We do not lie. We confess, we take our licks, and we say we’re sorry. That’s the magic formula. It’s the only thing that works.”

  Apologize for loving him. Carolyn swallowed hard as Ashley shook her head, muttering again. Carolyn started to ask her what the problem was, but Ashley checked her watch — and turned toward the elevator.

  Carolyn grabbed her arm. “Wait.”

  Ashley raised her eyebrows. “Knowing that stripes vibrate on television doesn’t make you ready for this.”

  “Listen, I appreciate what you’re doing.”

  “Remember that when you get my bill.”

  “I will, but I need you to be straight with me. If you tip off a reporter, tell me. I can fake the surprise.” She was going to fake a lot, anyway. Starting upstairs.

  Ashley nodded slowly. “Full disclosure?”

  “Yes.”

  “That a two-way street?”

  She hesitated, but Ashley was a hired gun, and if she screwed over her clients, she’d be out of business. Carolyn nodded.

  “Then you tell me something.” She glanced to the waiting elevator operator before her sharp blue eyes met Carolyn’s. “Where’s your boyfriend at?”

  Carolyn sighed. “Upstairs.”

  “Did he eat crackers?” Ashley grinned quickly at her own joke, before her expression grew serious. “Are you sure he hasn’t left?”

  “I haven’t talked to him, but yes. He said he wasn’t until … ” Carolyn swallowed. “Until I asked him to.”

  “Are you sure, Carolyn? Because the fourth step of the formula is that we go forth and sin no more. I haven’t figured out everything, but there’s no way you can keep seeing him.”

  Hearing it spoken with such conviction tore her heart in half. “I’m sure.”

  Ashley nodded. She glanced to the front desk. “Will they remember him?”

  Carolyn sighed. “He’s fairly hard to forget.”

  “No doubt. Then let’s go ask.”

  She thought Ashley meant Daniel, but she started for the elevators. Carolyn grabbed her arm again. “I need to do this alone.”

  “We don’t have time for — ”

  “Ashley, you don’t have to tell me what to do with my hands or that my earrings can’t dangle. And whatever else you need me to do or say, I’ll do it, I promise. But I need twenty minutes. Alone.”

  She heard the desperation in her voice, and she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. She couldn’t do this with an audience.

  She didn’t know if she could do it at all.

  Ashley frowned at her watch, but she finally nodded. “I can take care of a few things from here. And make sure we’re clear with the staff,” she added, lowering her voice as she glanced around the lobby. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Discretion is the better part of valor, at least where the rooms cost six hundred a night.”

  Carolyn reached up with a trembling hand to wipe the tear released by her relief.

  “Carolyn,” Ashley said sharply. “If you don’t ace that interview, even I won’t be able to save you.”

  She wished that held even the slightest motivation.

  Ashley tilted her head. “And if we don’t make this happen, Walter will never make that phone call.”

  Her tears spilled over when Ashley’s hand touched her shoulder.

  “I’ll be up in twenty minutes,” she said softly.

  Carolyn started to thank her, but Ashley was already flashing a broad smile at the front desk. Carolyn took a deep breath and turned to the elevators. She could do this. She had to.

  It was everything he’d ever wanted.

  44: Hypothetically

  Rick gave up trying to figure out what was happening and lit up Louis’s number. Jackie put him straight through.

  “Rick, I was just about to — ”

  “Are you getting called on this?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been on the phone all damn — ”

  “What are you saying?”

  Louis sighed. Melodramatic, Rick thought.

  “I’m saying yes, you introduced Guillotine to Zeus. Yes, you’re my client. Shall I send you a press pack with a five-year-old picture? Beyond that, I don’t know anything. Because I don’t.”

  Rick sat slowly on the coffee table. “I got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Now I know you’re kidding. This is the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  How long ago had she left? He checked the clock — almost two hours. The website had played around with that Fairy Tale shit, because it made for a good joke. On him, he’d been thinking, nice contrast with the stadium photograph.

  But ‘Fairy Tale’ wasn’t climbing up the iTunes ladder. “Zeus said that ‘Payback’ was — ”

  “Yeah, yeah. Something to do with her book, I think … ”

  The front door opened, and Rick didn’t hear the rest, he heard Carolyn’s heels stutter on the tiles in the entrance. He stood too fast and his head rushed.

  She looked shaky and not quite put together somehow, but it didn’t matter, she was still …

  The best thing that ever happened to me.

  She glanced at the phone in his hand, which he’d forgotten. Not a problem for Louis who was still yammering.

  “ … book about relationships, and they’re quoting that song because … ” Louis gave a short laugh. “I guess you might not be the best thing that happened to her.”

  Rick swallowed. “Louis — ”

  “But you’re hot now, and we can — ”

  “I gotta go.”

  “Rick, we need to — ”

  “Later.” He closed the phone and turned to Carolyn. “What happened?”

  She smirked. “Well, you were right. Do you like hearing that?”

  “Usually.”

  She rolled her eyes, kicked off her shoes and collapsed into the couch.

  “Hard day at the office?”

  She nodded.

  “You want a seventeen-dollar Budweiser out the mini-bar?”

  “God, you crack me up.” She didn’t sound amused. “I’ll take a water. If you’re offering.”

  He brought it over and sat on the coffee table in front of her. “Tell me what they said.”

  Carolyn uncapped the bottle. “Well, Kijana — ”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My publicist’s protégé. He said he thinks he knows why they called you controversial.” She studied him for a second. “Did somebody really ask you why they don’t just give their kids normal names?”

  “Yeah,” Rick said. “Dude named Kijana axed me that.” She almost smiled, but it frustrated him. “What, that’s it? Because they talk like the problem is the damn name on a resume and not the person who’s reading it? How is it controversial to tell the truth?”

  “You’re offending the white people.”

  “Only the ones that won’t admit it.”

  Her mouth twisted, and she looked away. He couldn’t tell if she was trying not to laugh or cry; all he knew was that he felt like he was getting led off track.

  “You about to say anything relevant soon?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Do you want me to say what it looks like when they pull a line from ‘Payback’ and print it under my picture in the — ”

  “Is that what they goin’ do?”

  “Yes, Rick. That’s what they goin’ do.”

  He clamped his mouth shut, just in time, and she buried her face in her free hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and he heard it in her voice. No sorrier than he wa
s. “But they don’t know anything except what’s in the song. And that’s the way it looks.”

  He turned to the window and wondered what number that goddamn song had climbed to now. How was it possible that the same words that had driven her to the store four years ago were going to drive her career into the damn ground?

  Payback. But for what?

  “Ashley’s a crisis consultant,” Carolyn said. “Walter hates her so much that he must believe she’s excellent at what she does.”

  He waited through a long stretch of silence.

  “She thinks she can save me.”

  “How’s she plan on doing that?”

  “I’m not sure. There’s a small measure of deception involved.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “You ain’t a good liar.”

  “I guess I’ll get better.”

  Because she would have to. He didn’t like any of this.

  She peeled a strip of blue plastic from the bottle. “I told Ashley I had to see you first.”

  It sounded like she’d swallowed the last few words.

  “See me for what?” he asked.

  Carolyn didn’t answer. When he looked at her, she was examining the bottle. She finally lifted her head, and even from across the room he could see the tears clinging to her eyelashes.

  “If I stay with you, and I can’t explain the song … ”

  “They’ll tear you apart.”

  “They’ve already started.” She peeled another strip of label. “I don’t know what to do.”

  His stomach twisted. How did she not know? You tell them to go fuck themselves. Tell them you don’t give a shit about any of this.

  But she did. He’d read it. The black and white pages shimmered with the same passion he’d heard on the street when she carried on about invading the private lives of public people.

  The irony wasn’t even faintly amusing. “You asking my opinion?”

  Carolyn flinched at the unintended harshness in his question, but she nodded. “Yes, I’m asking you. If someone said … ” She took a deep breath. “If someone said Interscope would sign you if you just didn’t see me anymore.”

  Rick snorted. “Hypothetically.”

  She looked at the stripped bottle in her hands. Then she nodded. “Hypothetically.”

  Interscope. To be backed by enough money and pull to get his songs on the radio, put him on MTV, co-op advertising, all supported by a distribution machine that could drop his album on end-cap displays in Best Buy instead of buried in the racks of independents.

  A tour that might play in an arena where the floor seats were right on the ice.

  His eyes skimmed her cheek outlined by curls escaping from her thick braid. She didn’t look up when she asked again. “What would you do?”

  He swallowed hard at the strain in her voice, remembered what Terrance had said. She’s kind of famous. Big ass display in the store.

  He was hypothetical. But she was already signed.

  Already signed. Make a choice. Rick swallowed, and forced himself to cross the room even though it felt like wading through two feet of lake-effect snow. He sat on the coffee table and eased the empty bottle from her hand. He couldn’t look her in the eye, so he looked at her hands, tried not to hold them too tight.

  “I can’t tell you what to do, Carolyn. It ain’t my life.”

  Her hands trembled, and he knew if he looked her shoulders would be shaking. So he didn’t, he ran a palm up to her elbow. The second he pulled her into his arms he knew he shouldn’t have. When he kissed her, he tasted salt.

  She kissed him back with a ferocity that left him speechless, and when she shoved her hands under his shirt, then his shorts, he was angry. He started to pull away, but her grip on him was so tight extracting himself would mean hurting her. He didn’t know why he was angry until she pulled him across the space between the table and the couch.

  Hypothetically, I’d choose you. Because when you make a choice, you really ought to make the right goddamn one.

  But she wasn’t going to. She was giving him one last time what she’d assumed was all he’d wanted in the first place. He didn’t know if the anger was at himself or at her, he just knew it tried to push its way out of him and into her, so powerful he was afraid he would hurt her.

  With his chin on her bare shoulder and her breath rasping in his ear, he clenched his teeth before the words came out. What will I do tomorrow?

  When Carolyn climbed off him and snatched up her clothes, it seemed like slow motion. She didn’t look at him while they dressed, then Ashley came in and filled the room with her clipped-off New York accent. He nodded at her instructions, called Terrance to come help him get out a back exit, and it all started feeling like maybe it never happened at all.

  Carolyn didn’t speak to him again until she slipped her arms around his neck in the doorway and whispered in his ear. “Just ask why he came to Cleveland. Maybe it’s not so bad.”

  He hardly heard her, and it didn’t make sense anyway.

  She kissed him good-bye, and he barely felt it. It wasn’t until hours later, after leaving Louis’s office, after arranging another airline ticket, after fighting the traffic to LaGuardia, after his ears popped on the take-off, that every moment with her came rushing back to him, only to be followed by a shocking coldness that pierced every breath he tried to draw in the pressurized air.

  Nothing he could do about it. Except reach for his notebook.

  45: Sound Bites

  As Carolyn changed and did her hair, Ashley commanded her boot camp from the suite’s dining room table. The hotel fax machine distracted her, and when it did, Carolyn cursed the interruptions. She didn’t want any downtime to think. To remember.

  She’d started to cry, her face buried into his neck, his pulse beating against her lips. When his grip finally loosened, she’d almost demanded that he tell her. What would you do?

  Maybe he’d been right from the beginning. Maybe she was just another woman who didn’t want to hear the answer.

  Tell me. Would you trade everything you’ve dreamed of your entire life … for me?

  When she saw his eyes, her selfishness sank to depths lower than she would have believed possible, fighting back the gripping desire to explain everything. His pride would give her the Yes she wanted. He’d be furious if he ever found out it came through her.

  Ashley’s phone chirped, and Carolyn forced herself to tune in.

  “No, I was just hoping,” Ashley said. “You like doing this to me, don’t you? I will fire you, Dwayne.” She closed the phone on that threat and glanced at her watch. “Ten minutes. Okay, last order of business. Ready?”

  Carolyn nodded.

  “Now that you’ve heard some of Ricky Rain’s ‘music’ — don’t react,” she ordered when Carolyn flinched at her tone. “They’ll make the word sound like ‘garbage’ and they’ll want that defensive look you just gave me.”

  Carolyn composed herself as Ashley reached for the papers Dwayne had faxed over.

  “According to my underpaid assistant, polling of your target demographic indicates that the overwhelming feeling about the song ‘Payback’ — which we can’t pretend you’ve never heard — ”

  “Because we don’t lie.”

  Ashley made a face. “I’m trying to think of it as a cover-up tattoo. The original’s under there somewhere. Either way, you’ve heard it now.”

  She hadn’t anticipated having to speak on it. Ashley, on the other hand, had commissioned polls. “So what do you want me to say?”

  Ashley glanced at the pages on the table. “We’re running 81 percent either ‘offended’ or ‘very offended.’ We didn’t ask why, because who the hell cares?” She scribbled on her steno pad. “Let’s keep it simple. Try this: ‘Of course, I’m appalled.’”

  She looked up, waiting for Carolyn to repeat it back.

  Her throat closed up and the words wouldn’t come.

  Ashley’s eyebrows lifted. Carolyn apologized, but she wasn�
�t acquiescing and she looked away from Ashley’s surprise over her first insubordination.

  The hand on her knee surprised Carolyn. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Carolyn said. “It’s a good cover up, meeting him by chance, being from the same corner of the state, and having that connection. It’s not even untrue, really, about him. He can be charming, if he wants to be.”

  Ashley smiled, even though Carolyn knew she would have to take her word on that. Rick’s blank expression hadn’t shifted when Ashley told him that she thought he was damn good and she wished him the best.

  “But he wasn’t charming me,” Carolyn added. “That part of your tattoo is total bullshit. I knew exactly what was happening.”

  Ashley nodded, but she’d already explained that Carolyn couldn’t say she’d walked into the flames with her eyes wide open and no protective gear. They were going for sympathetic victim, not ignorant fool.

  “He wasn’t even trying, but for some reason, and I still don’t know why, after a minute, he was just … there. This is me.” Carolyn held her palms up. “And all I said was the truth. I didn’t want anything to do with him personally. But I still thought he was incredible.”

  She almost lost her battle to keep her mascara on when Ashley smiled.

  “Have you ever been at exactly the right place,” Carolyn asked her, “at exactly the right time, and somehow managed to say exactly the right thing? To a total stranger? And it turned out to be what he needed to hear the most?”

  Ashley’s face softened, and Carolyn paced away, wrapping her arms around herself.

  “I can’t say he’s awful. I couldn’t bear it if he ever heard me.”

  Behind her, Ashley sighed. “He said he wouldn’t.”

  The only thing Rick had said to Ashley, when she’d apologized in advance for all the things she’d be making Carolyn say. I ain’t gonna be listening. Carolyn had no doubt he meant it.

  “But I will. I can’t say that. Please, Ashley. Think of something else.”

  * * *

  Bella’s photographer had taken over the cozy bookstore; thick wires threatened Carolyn’s steps across the carpeting. No one seemed to mind the interference on a Friday afternoon except a resident cat, which gave Carolyn an accusatory look before it skulked away.