The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (3 page)

Finishing a level always helped me feel less wound up. I turned off the game and popped the zolpidem. I’d be able to conquer sleep now, and sleep was the Emperor’s minion. We had an early start and a big day tomorrow.

W
alter waited for the room service guy who’d delivered my breakfast to leave before tasting it first for me. He always makes some joke about how it’s not poisoned but it might as well be, because it’s a three-egg-white omelet with spinach, no hash browns or toast, which are straight carbs, and coffee, no dairy. Walter eats meat and fried food and ordered a salad like once in his life, since he’s from Nashville, where he has three daughters he’s on the child-support hook to his old lady for and where we’ll play later in the tour and which still has a strong country base that’s difficult for pure pop acts to penetrate. He’s about 250 pounds, which is half muscle from lifting four days a week, but half fat because he says walking from a hotel or venue to the car service counts as cardio. He says chasing around his daughters used to keep his weight down. Now he just has to walk briskly by my side, but I’m not supposed to run indoors because of injury risk and I definitely shouldn’t in public or it might spark crowd interest and trigger a stampede. I bet he was fun with his daughters, though.

I thought of asking him about the legal letter and telling him about the Internet fan-forum messages, but first of all, Walter never went on the Internet, and second, even though he wouldn’t tell Jane, I didn’t want to make it so he had to lie to her.

He left to eat in one of the hotel restaurants with the rest of the crew, and I sipped my drink and imagined the coffee beans were fighting the early onset dementia that Grandma Pat had maybe passed down to me and Jane, and they were using the paralyze spell from Zenon, which freezes your enemies for a few seconds. There should be an early onset dementia spell, too, which places your enemy in an old-age home.

After breakfast Walter came back to escort me down to the basement service exit, and I put on my sunglasses and a Detroit Tigers hat because I’d been wearing the Dodgers hat three days in a row. You never want to alienate fans in different markets, even though my following is all girls who think you score a touchdown in baseball. Jane is like, Let the paparazzi take your photo but make it look like you’re not letting them take it, so the baseball hat and sunglasses are perfect for that. And plus the baseball hat is my trademark now. Jane once showed me a big website that’s only candids of me in different hats.

In the bus parking lot, the star/talent bus was parked all the way past our five other buses and four eighteen-wheelers. Me and Walter boarded it and said hi to the driver, Kenny, and Jane weighed me on the scale near the front. Eighty-eight pounds. I’d started the tour eighteen days ago at eighty-six. You almost always
drop
weight when you’re performing, no matter how bad you’re eating, but I’d been raiding the minibars and gift-basket amenities more than normal, and now that I’d seen the number, I could tell I was getting beefier.

She didn’t say anything about it, but she didn’t have to. She just whipped out the hotel bill and said, “Three packages of candy. Thirty-two minutes on the bike, either now or later.”

“I sang and danced for two hours last night.”

“Are we going to argue about this every morning? That’s only six hundred calories, and it’s not sustained cardio that raises your metabolism,” she said. “You want your next publicity photos to show you with a gut, too?”

I chose the bike now, because it’s worse to have it waiting for you and I didn’t like seeing eighty-eight any more than she did. Before I left the driver’s section, Walter stepped on the scale. “I’ve gained six pounds,”
he said, and patted his belly. I wanted to laugh, but Jane was already in a bad mood.

I walked into the living room, over the wooden floors and past the tan leather couches and TV and kitchen and bar and the three rows of bucket seats, up to the door leading to me and Jane’s bedrooms and the additional bunk beds. In front of the door was the mounted stationary bike. I strapped the seat-belt harness over me and programmed the bike on medium-intensity intervals. What would Jane say if I asked her about the letter in her room about my father? She’d probably pretend it was nothing, like about an impostor or something. She’d go even crazier if she found out I’d gone down to the lobby by myself to get the key-card for her room.

I biked and listened on my iPod to an album by a new British singer Jane downloaded for me, who’s got decent phrasings but a flat upper range. When this one track had about a minute of white noise, I overheard Jane and Rog talking quietly two rows up in the bucket seats. “I can’t believe I’ll be forty in three weeks,” she said. “The number
sounds
wrinkled.”

“Nonsense,” Rog said. “You look early thirties. If I were straight, I’d do you in a second.”

She looks early thirties from a distance because she’s short and how she dresses, and sometimes if she’s turned around and I don’t realize it’s her, I think she’s in her twenties. But when you have face time with her, if I had to play the age game, I’d guess forty-two or even -three.

“As if I’d
let
you, with your gray-haired balls,” Jane said, and they laughed. Jane’s going gray and is naturally mousy brown but dyes it blond, and Rog would be salt-and-pepper but he dyes it black. He says none of the queers in L.A. would even think about going for him if he didn’t, even though he’s a super-successful choreographer and voice coach who used to sing and dance on Broadway. He won’t say his age but I saw on our payroll that he’s fifty-three and makes $315,000 a year with bonuses for tours.

“Listen.” Jane twisted the thick silver ring she wears on her right hand’s middle finger. “When we go to Salt Lake City, the Mormons are gonna freak the fuck out if they see a gay working with Jonny.”

“I can’t wait,” Rog said.

“I know, but this time, it might be best if you lay low at the hotel and don’t come to the arena.”

The white-noise track on my iPod started up with music, but I pressed pause. Jane had never told Rog not to come to the arena before. If it was cover for a business decision, it didn’t make sense, because it was our album sales that were flat, not our ticket sales, which were still okay even if we weren’t selling out every single show within three minutes like last time.

Rog said, “Jane, we’re going to Salt Lake City
next week,
not in 1897.”

“Still, I don’t want to take the risk.”

“Who’s going to help him with his preshow tune-up?”

“I booked a woman for the night.” She twisted her ring some more.

I couldn’t see Rog’s face, but I knew he wasn’t happy. “I don’t like the idea of someone else messing with his routine.”

Jane got into her business-negotiations voice, which is like half an octave lower and she enunciates more clearly and with her diaphragm. “Rog, it’s one night. Please don’t make this difficult.”

Rog’s always asking Jane for salary advances, so he got quiet and said, “All right, I’ll lay low.”

I finished my workout and sang “Breathtaking” on the final stretch to simulate singing while I’m out of breath at the end of a concert and showered in me and Jane’s bathroom and went into my bedroom for tutoring with Nadine. She asked what I wanted to start with, and I said language/reading, which I’m best at even though I don’t do any pleasure reading, then science and history and math for last, which I used to be a numbskull at but I’ve gotten better from studying revenues and market breakdowns with Jane, and when it’s a subject that affects you, you care about it more, and Nadine tells me I have to work hard at math since I don’t want people cheating me out of my money when I’m older, except Jane shows me exactly how it’s getting diversified and invested in our portfolio. We don’t do Spanish till next year, so I can use it in interviews and maybe even sing a song in it to boost my Latin-market presence, but she teaches me a new word each session.
Yo soy un cantante de música pop.

We finished our work early, so we did freewriting time at the end with a prompt from Nadine. Sometimes it’s song ideas, only I’m not allowed to write my own songs until I’m older and until then we have to go through the normal process, where the label rents studios for two weeks and invites all these professional songwriters and producers to collaborate on an album. Each song costs about eighty thousand dollars to produce from songwriting to mixing and mastering, not including marketing, so we figured out that a twelve-song album costs almost a million. Marketing is where the money really goes. It’s better to have a poorly produced album with a robust marketing budget than a top-shelf producer but weak marketing muscle.

Today, though, she said, “Jonny, write down all the feelings you had today.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“Tell me a feeling you had.”

If I told her about the legal letter and the Internet message, she’d want to talk more about it and would probably mention it to Jane since she’s as scared as anyone about child predators. So I decided I wouldn’t tell anyone about it.

Finally I said, “When I heard the wake-up call, I was mad.”

“Why were you mad?”

“Because I hate being woken up.”

The bedroom door was open a few inches, and she got up and closed it. Her shirt rode up her back a few inches when she did it, and it showed her pale skin. She’s five-three and won’t tell me how many pounds but I’d guess 110 because she’s not fat and is only twenty-six and a half, but she also never goes to the gym so it’s not a toned 110. It’s better to be a toned 120 than a flabby 110. Muscular marketing for mediocre content. “Why do you hate it?”

“I want to sleep.”

“Why else, though?”

“Beats me.” The name of Tyler’s smash hit and album, but I bet Nadine didn’t even know that. I’ve never heard of the bands she likes.

“I want you to think about this, Jonny.” She squinted as the sun bounced through my window onto her eyes and turned them from blue
to green. “The only way to understand yourself is by articulating your thoughts.”

“Articulating is when you separate out the notes you’re singing,” I said. “You want me to sing my thoughts?”

“It also means figuring out what you want to say, and saying it. Using language to describe what you mean.”

I articulated, “I get tired.”

“You get tired in the mornings?”

“No, I mean I get tired of waking up early every day.”

“When you’re on tour, you mean?”

“No. Every day.”

She wedged her pen behind her ear so it got lost in her black hair. “You’ve never said this before.”

I shrugged, and she asked why I was saying this for the first time. I was about to say, “Because you asked,” but Bill, the head crew guy, who was riding on our bus today because he had to confab with Jane and the label over crew changes when we got to L.A., knocked on the door and stuck his head in. He has a big beard he’s always scratching and muscles on his arms like little rocks are poking out under his skin with tattoo sleeves on both of them. In a few years I can lift with Walter but not now because we want to keep me slim and boyish. I wonder if Albert Derrick Valentino lifts.

Bill said, “Three hours, guys, and the driver needs a break so we’re stopping for grub.”

So Nadine reminded me the next unit was on slavery and we were going to read some autobiographies of slaves, and she showed me a few and I said, “Nadine, can we get the kid versions of these?” and she said no, they cut out all the sad stuff and whitewashed what it really meant to be a slave, and it’s important to hear from the victims of exploitation themselves since history is always written by the victors. I asked, “Why are all the guys who write history named Victor?” and she was like, “Ha-ha, very cute, Jonny,” and messed up my hair, which Jane doesn’t like people to do but I didn’t have a show that night, and I don’t mind when Nadine does it.

I asked Jane could I please get a vanilla shake, and she sized me up and pinched the side of my waist and got about half an inch of chub. It stung but she said yes, so long as I did seven additional minutes of cardio before we got to L.A., and I said, “I’ll do a million minutes of high-intensity intervals.” She let me get a small, and I drank it without stopping except when we passed a cemetery on the highway and I held my breath. Jane taught me that game on our first tour, but she doesn’t play it herself.

Me and Rog went into my room for voice lessons. He recorded the start time and told me we’d logged 2,568 hours of practice together and had 7,432 to go. Jane read in a book you need to practice ten thousand hours at anything to become the best at it. Me and Nadine figured out last week when we were on fractions that at this rate I’ll reach ten thousand hours in about eight and two-thirds years, so when I’m twenty and one-half years old, which is around the peak age for global presence in the music industry for girls because they get cellulite and wrinkles after that, but guys peak a little older. I asked Jane if I’ll be as good as MJ after ten thousand hours, and she said, “No, you’ll be
better
than MJ.” Ronald says a more attainable goal is becoming the next Tyler Beats, and he’s the head of the label so he knows. Jane spends a lot of time studying his career, and if she isn’t sure about something, she asks people what Tyler would do. He started off in the teen demo, but evolved into broad-spectrum appeal.

First Rog was pissed that Jane let me have a shake since dairy is crap for the vocal cords. Then when I reminded him I’m allowed one dairy per day for the calcium and my voice sounded off on the word
calcium,
he was like, “Did your voice just crack?” and I had to say for the millionth time, “No, I’ll let you know when I hit puberty,” and I rolled up the sleeves of my T-shirt and said, “See, no hair?”

We did octaves warm-ups like we always do on “Oh, say can you see,” since the first time I ever did octaves was when the music teacher Mrs. Vincent had all the second-graders sing that line the lowest we could and the highest, and now it’s like my superstitious ritual. She’d gone through each of us in class and most of the kids didn’t have hardly
any range. Then she got to me. I hit my lowest octave and her face changed like,
What?
because it’s way lower than my speaking voice, and she said, “Can you do that again?” and I did it again no problem. She asked me to do the highest I could, and I did it probably 2.5 octaves higher. I didn’t have the 3.4 range I have now, which Rog thinks I’ll get a clean four octaves eventually because I have a lean muscle aperture. Mrs. Vincent asked me to repeat both, so I did, and she told me to sing the whole song, which I knew from baseball games and was the main way I’d practiced singing before. I added some vibrato for the last line even though I didn’t know the name of it then but I’d seen singers do it on reality shows. When I was finished she was very still and quiet and just said, “That’s very nice, Jonathan, very nice.”