This Is How It Really Sounds

by Stuart Archer Cohen

  “Uncle Pete!”

  “’Ssup, Dylan!”

  The boy reached up and they bumped knuckles. Dylan took after his mother: he was small by nature, like her, and along with that he hadn’t hit puberty yet. He looked like a twelve-year-old, though he was nearly fifteen. His voice hadn’t changed and his face was still smooth and childish. Pete had known him since he was a baby.

  Pete put his hands on both of the skinny shoulders and squeezed him. “When are you coming over to hang out, my man? I got the new City of the Dead and I dominate!”

  “What’s your favorite weapon?” the boy asked.

  “Shottie, hands down.”

  Dylan shook his head. “Meat cleaver: you never have to reload.”

  “Seriously?”

  The boy pointed to himself. “Level eighteen!”

  “Fuck!” the musician said in admiration, then put his hand over his mouth and looked to the sides to see if anyone had heard. “I mean, impressive! I keep getting swarmed in the hallway at level six.”

  “You need to go to the garage and get the can of gasoline.” The boy was about to tell him how to incinerate the swarm of zombies on level 6 when his mother appeared. “Pete! Welcome!”

  “Hey, Beth.” He bent down and pecked her cheek. He remembered he was supposed to be angry, but he couldn’t get it straight with Dylan standing there.

  “Hey,” Dylan piped up. “I saw you in that video. You fucked that guy up!”

  “Dylan!” Beth said sharply. “Is that language really necessary?”

  “You know what’s necessary, Mom? Oxygen.”

  Beth rolled her eyes at Pete, and he remembered her mentioning they’d been having trouble with him lately.

  “Your mom’s right, Dylan. Language.”

  “You soooo smoked that guy!”

  Beth was watching him, which meant he’d better wheel out some boilerplate role-model shit. “Well … I did smoke his silly ass. But, you know, violence isn’t really the way to solve problems.”

  “Who cares about solving problems? That was awesome! And he deserved it, didn’t he?”

  “He did, but, uh…”—he pulled another one off the message boards—“a person shouldn’t take it on themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner. Society can’t work like that.”

  The boy was at a loss, and Beth picked it up. “Dylan, I have to talk with Uncle Pete about some things in the den.”

  “Text me when you’re done,” her son told him. “I’ll show you how to deal with the swarm on level six.”

  “It’s on!”

  He followed Beth down the long hallway. “I’m really pissed at you, Beth, but how’s Dylan doing?”

  She sighed. “His grades are cratering and he’s got some new friends that I do not like at all. I just wish he’d hit puberty already. He’s very depressed about his size. The kids at school call him ‘shrimpie.’”

  Pete felt a flash of anger. “Punks! I’m sorry to hear that.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe he could come over and hang out at my house once in a while, sit in on rehearsals and stuff. You know, the rock star thing. It might give his ego a boost. We can play some video games. Have a boys’ night out.”

  They’d reached the den, and she opened the doors. It was a big, low, dim room with dark furniture and a soft carpet. Bobby was sitting in an armchair and Ira was perched on the couch with a manuscript next to him. He looked up.

  “Pete!”

  “Hey, Ira.” Had Ira been in on this, too? He clenched up inside at the thought, then he remembered his resolve: No prisoners. No bullshit.

  Pete took a leather armchair, and Beth sat down next to her husband. There was a little pause as they waited for someone to start talking.

  “We might as well get right into this, Pete,” Beth started. “Bobby and I arranged for videos to be taken in Shanghai and for them to be leaked onto the Internet.”

  Shit. So it was true. It was true! “Both videos? The one with the Chinese subtitles, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He nodded. “What about the music video that mixes clips from the fight with performance footage and advertising stuff? The supposed Fan video.”

  “That was us, too.”

  “Then…” He threw his hands into the air. “This whole thing was fake!”

  “Millions of views isn’t fake,” Bobby said. “That’s real. All we did was get it started.”

  “No! All you did was take my life and turn it into a giant lie. Thanks!”

  “Hold it,” Beth said in her handling-it voice. “Before we go there, let’s look at where you were when all this started. Okay? Your career was at a standstill and you hadn’t written a new song in years. You had no tour, no band, and you’d lost pretty much all your money in the Crossroads scheme. Do you remember that? Because I remember it well.”

  He looked at the ceiling. Fucking Beth! “Conceded.”

  She continued. “Okay, so three months ago, I was sitting with my family eating dinner, and Bobby called me. He told me you’d lost all your money and you were in a very bad way and he didn’t know how to handle it. He was afraid something awful was going to happen. Right, Bobby?”

  “Right.”

  “Naturally, I dropped everything and rushed over to your house. And from my point of view, Pete, this is where the story really begins. Because the one thing that you articulated in those very confused hours, which included screaming ‘fuck you!’ at me and firing me as your ex-wife, was that you were going to find this Peter Harrington, punch him in the face, and write a song about it. Would you say that’s an accurate rendition of events?”

  He spread his arms to the sides. “Conceded!” He felt like he was being set up again, that Beth was putting everything in place just the way she wanted it and he’d have no alternative but to admit that she was right. “But—”

  “Hold on! Let me just tell my side; then I’ll listen patiently to your side. You said you wanted to touch the untouchable, and that that was what you needed to do to save yourself. Right?”

  “To get justice, yes. Not to turn it into a public-relations event.”

  “I know that. Bobby knew it, too. But what does ‘saving yourself’ mean, Pete? I mean, really? Because you can touch the untouchable, or get justice, or payback or whatever you want to call it, but eventually you’re going to get back home. And if you’re still broke and your career is still going nowhere, have you really saved yourself?”

  Bobby leaned forward. “It’s like they say, Pete: if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it…” Bobby shrugged, as if he’d just laid down some ancient wisdom without even remembering the rest of the saying.

  “I hear it. That’s what matters.”

  “You hear it.” Beth went on. “But how well are you going to hear it six months later, when you’ve got six new songs and nobody could care less.”

  Bobby picked it up again. “Pete, we did some great stuff and had some big wins, but the last five years, frankly, sucked. I’d make calls for Pete Harrington and nobody would call me back. I’d try to book dates, and the only places interested were crap venues that paid bullshit. Which didn’t matter, because, to be brutally honest, I was afraid to book them for a client that hadn’t written a song in five years and was too wasted to put together a band. I didn’t want to end up with a bunch of nonperformance lawsuits like we did four years ago. Now, managers are kissing my ass to try to get their bands a gig opening for you. And that’s all because of Beth.”

  What could he answer to that? Bobby was telling it true. “Conceded,” he said softly.

  “Pete,” Beth continued, “there’s a certain kind of rock star you don’t want to be, and I see them all the time: guys trying to reboot their careers from nothing, or living on the vapors, looking over their shoulder hoping somebody will recognize them. They die a little every time some up-and-coming artist gets a paragraph in Rolling Stone because it used to be them, and it never will be again. They’re bitter, sad, lost alcoholics. I
didn’t want to see you become one of them. That’s why Bobby and I stepped in. Now you’ve got six new songs and your first hit in fifteen years. Millions of people want to know about you and your music: all kinds of people, not just your old demographic.”

  He hated seeing himself painted that way, like everything he did depended on them. “Yeah, but I wrote those six songs before I went to Shanghai. When I was still nothing, by your standards.”

  “Not nothing, Pete. You were still you. You were the guy that was willing to fly to Shanghai and punch that asshole in the face, which he richly deserved. That stands on its own.”

  “But you were manipulating me the whole time!”

  “No!” Beth answered. “We were facilitating you. It was your idea and your determination that made it all happen.”

  He was confused. He’d come here tonight to get something straight, but he wasn’t sure what it was anymore. “What about Charlie? Did he know?”

  Bobby spoke. “Charlie knew everything, Pete. He arranged the videos. He got them shot and posted in China through his contacts there. He set it all up.”

  Pete didn’t say anything. Charlie, too. He’d probably had people in the crowd of fans, or standing around on the Bund like tourists. Maybe that Chinese girl he’d met, too. Maybe it was all Charlie, even the part when he wanted to back out but went through with it anyway, for Charlie’s sake. Maybe that was just Charlie playing him, again. He shook his head and let out a long breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Well, you got me on that one,” he said quietly. “You got me.“

  Ira cleared his throat. Even though he’d been in Hollywood for a long time, he was still a book dude from New York, which set him apart. “Pete, I just heard about this a couple of hours ago, so I’m looking at it from the outside.”

  That was a relief. “Well, I’m glad there’s at least one person who wasn’t in on the joke.”

  “I admit: it’s not a perfect way for things to happen. In fact, it’s pretty damned weird. But I think Beth and Bobby were just trying to help you in the only way they could.”

  “Ira, they lied to me! I mean, you’re a moral person: don’t you see that’s wrong?”

  “Yes, it’s wrong. They weren’t honest. But they couldn’t be. If they had been, then millions of people who’ve gotten a little bit of joy or a little feeling of justice from what you did never would have heard anything about it. There was nothing phony about what happened in Shanghai.”

  “I know that, Ira! I was proud of what I did! I thought I did something good. Something pure. For myself. Now all I think is, I got played! Again! Like I always do! And I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life lying about it! All these people are accusing me of a publicity stunt—I just want to say, Yeah, you’re right! You’re fucking right! It was all a publicity stunt! That’s what I want to tell them.”

  Bobby actually came to his feet. “Pete, hold on! Just hold on! You need to get this straight! You’re going on tour in one week. It’s fully booked; we’re adding extra dates. You’re making six thousand dollars a day just in downloads. You can’t fuck yourself over like that! You’re mad at me? Fire me! But for God’s sake, Pete, please don’t piss this all away. You did something for people that they could never do for themselves, and they love you for it. They love you like a hero! But they love you because you’re real, and they will hate you even harder if they think you’re fake. They will turn on you like piranhas. Take a minute and imagine what that’s going to feel like!”

  Beth took up where Bobby left off. “You have all the power here, Pete. All you have to do is say one word in one interview, and it will all come crashing down. Within days. And all your effort to find that prick and strike a blow for the little guy will be completely undone. Your career will be over, and that will be permanent. That will be the rest of your life.” Her voice caught. “Everybody in this room loves you, Pete. You’re the only one we know who’s crazy enough and brave enough and just … completely unreasonable enough to do what you did. You touched the untouchable. You really did. Please don’t make it all look like a sham. Because it wasn’t one.”

  He sat there hunched over and staring at his shoes. There was nothing he could say that they wouldn’t have a perfectly good answer for. “You all see me as just a silly guy who sings okay and who’ll act crazy enough to sell a few tickets. And you know something? Finally, I see myself that way, too. Thanks for making it all clear.” He stood up to go. “Ask Charlie to call me, please.”

  “I’ll do that tonight.” Beth stood up. “Pete—”

  He held up his hand. “Forget it, Beth. I can find my way out. I’d rather go out alone, if that’s okay. Just respect me in that, at least.”

  “We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said.

  “Sure, whatever. I’m still in. I’ll shut up like a good boy.” He opened the door of the den and hesitated. “You know the most demoralizing thing about all this, Beth? The most depressing thing? It’s that I know you’re right. Without you and Bobby, I’m just another over-the-hill rock star with a bunch of new songs that nobody wants to hear. I’m a nobody.”

  He went out and closed the door behind him. When he turned, Dylan was sitting there, watching, listening. He’d been waiting to show him how to advance in City of the Dead.

  “Hey, Dylan.”

  The boy got up from the chair and stood in front of him. “What’s wrong?”

  Pete looked down at him. Dylan’s eyes were at the level of his chest, gazing upward to his own. He wanted to get on his knees and talk to him, the way he’d used to, but Dylan was too old for that now. He patted his shoulder awkwardly instead. “Sometimes, my man…” He trailed off. He couldn’t think of anything to say, didn’t have some stale bromide he’d pulled down off an Internet commentary board. He looked down at the little person wanting so badly to grow, to be taken seriously, to be in control. All that impatience and unhappiness swirling there in that little face. “I’m really sad right now, Dylan. I’m forty-five years old and I don’t understand life at all.”

  “Neither do I,” the boy said, and he gave a beleaguered little smile. “But at least I can get you past level six.”

  Pete started laughing; then he felt his vision blurring. “Level six, eh? That’s a start.” He wanted to reach down and hug that last vestige of childhood but he knew it would make Dylan feel awkward, so he just stood there beaming at him for a few moments. At last he clapped his hand on the boy’s upper arm. “Do your homework, man. ’Cause this weekend, you and me, we’re fuckin’ some zombies up!” He walked down the hallway, threw back, “I’ll have my people set it up with your people.”

  “Got it!”

  “That’s your mom and dad, in case you were wondering.”

  “I know that!”

  “Tell your sister I said hello.”

  “Okay!”

  He unlatched the door and stepped outside, then put his face to the opening. “I love you, Dylan.”

  The voice came back to him. “I love you, too, Pete!”

  He closed the door and started along the footlights that led to the driveway. The lawn was green in the little pools of footlight and black beyond that, and he walked along from pool to pool listening to his soles scuff on the brick pathway. He was going to be asked about Shanghai in e-mails and in interviews, forever. His mother was going to ask about it, and so would his sisters. Even Dylan would ask him one day if it was real, and he’d have to go on lying. He felt a mixture of sadness and confusion and grief and, somewhere in there, the warmth of Dylan’s consolation. And maybe it was supposed to be like that, that mix of all those opposite things at once, that you were supposed to just let wash over you without trying to identify and name each one. He gave up trying to figure any of it out and just let it play across his mind. His phone buzzed, but he ignored it.

  When he got home, he checked his voice mail on the call he hadn’t answered. Charlie had left a message, and, as pissed as he was at him, he couldn’t help feeling a flush of af
fection when he heard the old man’s voice. “Pete! If you’re not sore, I’d like you to meet someone.”

  10

  Super-Hot Mystery Babe

  Pete guessed the heat was off. Beth’s lawyer had already said there was no real legal threat, and whatever other revenge Peter Harrington might be planning didn’t seem to be happening. No nasty letters. No smear campaign. It seemed like the guy had just decided to drop it. Charlie named a coffee shop up on Melrose and said twelve noon would be the best time. It surprised Pete that he didn’t specify Canter’s Deli, their usual place. When he got there, Charlie was sitting in a booth at the back of the room, facing the door. He pulled himself carefully to his feet as Pete came in and watched the singer cross the restaurant, a serious look on his face. He put his hand out to shake, then motioned toward the booth. “Your ex called. I figured it was time we talked.”

  “Thanks.” Pete slid onto the plastic cushion, acutely aware that his back was to the door. Charlie could have somebody slip in with a silenced .25 and put a slug into his skull. The old man seemed a little sinister now, and, at the same time, there was a crap-load of stuff he was itching to talk over with him. They’d never done the kind of postgame commentary where you talk shit about the touchdowns you scored and all the mistakes the boneheads on the other side made. He wasn’t sure where to start. There were three menus on the table, and he picked one up and looked it over without saying anything. Let Charlie make the first move.

  “Are you sore at me?” Charlie finally asked.

  “Why would I be sore at you?”

  “C’mon, Pete! We went over there and we got the job done. That’s something to be happy about.”

  “You lied to me, Charlie.”

  He gave a soft sigh. “I did what I was hired to do—”

  “Yeah, I understand that. Your job was to lie to me. That whole time, when I thought I was doing some hero shit and striking a blow for the good guys, that whole time I was just somebody being managed.”