The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (34 page)

This was already going to be a subpar concert because of the audio system and the pizza and everything else going on with Jane and Rog. I got jittery about my performance, then I got angry that
I
was the only one who got nervous before concerts, and
I
was the only one who looked bad if the concert was subpar, and everyone else could relax backstage even if they were part of the reason it didn’t go good, and no one was reviewing
them
in the
L.A. Times
or making fun of
them
in
The New Yorker
.

So screw them. If this is what they were giving me, I wasn’t just going to do a bad job. I was going to make it my worst show ever.

I started feeling a little bad about my plan and was afraid to go through with it, but once I got ready, with no one except Bill prepping me backstage, I knew I wanted to go all out. I began with “Guys vs. Girls” like I always did on this tour, but I didn’t want to mess up too bad at the beginning. I sang a little flat, enough so that what Rog calls the lay listener could pick up that something was off. Or what Rog
called
the lay listener. Not that he’d departed the realm or anything, but in a way, he did. When someone is out of your life and you’ll never see or talk to them again, it’s sort of like they’re dead.

On “RSVP (To My Heart),” I flattened it out more, and I moved slower than my dancers so it looked all out of rhythm and it might make them go off pace. I basically spoke the words to “This Bird Will Always Bee There for You” and didn’t even move. By then the crowd could probably tell I was tanking it, even the seven-year-olds. On “You Hurt Me,” I made it seem like I forgot the words and stopped singing halfway through, and came in late on purpose to the third verse.

Eventually the boos began. I’d never been booed at a concert before, only a couple times at other events where there are haters, because if someone pays seventy-five dollars or whatever to see me, they probably love me, especially girls. And once there were a few boos, from the older girls and their parents, more came in. If I’d been giving a concert to ten people and one booed me, no one else would follow. When you get people in a big crowd, they’re sheep, like Internet commenters.

I waved my hands like, Bring it on, and the boos got louder until it seemed like the whole audience was yelling, and even though it was what I’d wanted, once I actually heard it, it was the worst feeling in the world. I couldn’t tell what was worse: no one paying attention to you, or everyone hating you. I felt
ambivalent
about it. I didn’t even know if I could recover now or if I should just give up and end the show, and so what if it meant we had to issue refunds.

I looked at my dancers and singers and instrumentalists, who were all staring at me like, You’re screwing us, too. When I turned back, I saw a person in a wheelchair on the wings of the stage, hidden from the crowd.

Jane.

Walter was standing behind her, and she was still looking pale and weak, but she was there. She looked confused, I guess because of the audience reaction, but gave me a little wave.

Something switched inside me. I didn’t want to hear the boos. One more second of it and I might die. All the bodies in the darkness around me were people who only wanted me to sing good, and I’d make their night. Their
month
. I wanted to hear their applause again, more than anything.

I faced the crowd. “I’m sorry, everyone,” I said. “My voice was off
before, but it feels better. I’m gonna sing an a cappella number to make it up to you.” The band wasn’t expecting this, but I motioned for them to let me go, and I sang

I want you here, I need you here

Baby, babe, you always grieve me

I want you here, I need you here

Baby, please don’t ever leave me

It blew out of the water all the a cappella renditions I’d ever done. Even better, I drew the crowd into a sing-along by the third verse. And I knew I’d won them back, and that now they loved me more than they ever had before because for a while I made it seem like I didn’t care if they loved me or not, and that they could just as easily turn on me again but it didn’t matter to me. They worshiped me. Fans are like babies that way. You don’t give them their milk, and they cry their eyes out, then you give it to them and they suck it down and shut up and forget they were ever upset.

The rest of the concert was A-plus work, and I went out for a second encore and did an a cappella version of “Guys vs. Girls,” which I rarely do, but I couldn’t do anything wrong that night. Jane was waiting for me in her wheelchair when I came backstage.

“You were great,” she said.

I didn’t smile or anything. I just stayed in the Jonny Zone. “I know.”

“Sorry I got here late.”

“I thought you weren’t coming at all.”

“I bargained to get out early, and took a cab all the way here. I couldn’t stand the idea of missing one of your shows.”

I shrugged.

“You want to clean up and we’ll go to the hotel?” she asked.

I nodded and walked past her, but when I was right behind her I smelled her perfume, and I know it’s Chanel No. 5 but to me it smells like Jane, and I couldn’t help it, so I hugged her from behind around her shoulders and neck for a second, and she seemed a little surprised but put her hand on my arm, and then I let go and went to my room.

J
ane had basically made a full recovery by the morning and didn’t need the wheelchair anymore. She was supposed to take it easy the next few days, which I think even she was going to stick to. The original plan was for me and her and Walter to fly to New York ahead of the others, who’d take the bus and would have a day off, so I could do press and prep for my miniconcert with Tyler Beats. But I didn’t know how much publicity they’d want now with everything that had just happened.

Me and Jane took our own car to the airport, and Walter rode in a taxi ahead of us. He’s too big for all three of us to fit into the backseat sometimes, and Jane’s luggage fills up the trunk. A few minutes into the ride, I said, “I’ve been thinking more about school.”

She put down her phone. “What about it?”

“Like, maybe going to it.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. It seems like it’s something a regular kid should be doing.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “I can understand that.”

Boxy warehouses passed by us along the highway. Most cities were ugly on the way to the airport. It’s like they didn’t give a shit anymore
since they knew you were leaving anyway. “The thing is, you know, you’re not exactly a regular kid.”

“I know.”

“Other people go to school because they have to. You don’t have to.”

“But what if I want to?”

“No one’s stopping you, if it’s something you want to do. It’ll be a tough adjustment, but Nadine can tutor you after school. And we could refer Walter somewhere else.”

“Refer Walter somewhere else?”

“He wouldn’t be your bodyguard anymore. The school wouldn’t let you bring a bodyguard. The point is that you’re supposed to be a regular student. None of the other celebrity kids are allowed to have one.”

I hadn’t thought about that. I might not even be the most famous student there.

“What about after school?”

“That wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t be able to live on a part-time salary, and if we’re not working, I can’t justify spending a full salary on someone who works only a few hours a day. I’m sure we could find someone else willing to do it, though.”

“But when I go back on tour, he’d work for us again?”

“I imagine he’d be someone else’s bodyguard by then. And we’d have whoever we end up with.”

The sky was the color of a mouse and matched the highway and all the buildings. The outside was like an animal that changed its color to blend in. “I’m still mulling it.”

“Entirely up to you, baby.” She returned to her phone.

We found Walter outside the airport and did our thing where we get special treatment and skip all the lines, even the business-class line, and killed time before the flight in the private lounge area. They were always filled with businessmen working on their laptops, so I didn’t need to wear my baseball hat and sunglasses.

The TV above us was showing a morning talk show on closed captioning, and I was watching because I had nothing else to do, and after a couple boring minutes, Rog appeared on it. I elbowed Jane. She perked up. “He didn’t waste any time, did he?” she said.

The closed captioning was screwing up a lot, like a few times it called me “Jenny,” but the interviewer was grilling Rog all about Jane, and he was saying things like, “She’s paranoid and a control freak,” and “She thinks she knows how to run Jonny’s career, but she doesn’t understand music—it’s everyone else who makes the smart decisions,” and “I only hope Jonny makes it out of this in one piece.” Every time he said something mean about her, my gut twisted up like it was my fiftieth crunch in a row. Jane had screwed him over, but I didn’t see what the point of bashing her in return was, unless he was trying to score a book deal or become a judge on a reality show. When people commit reputation suicide like this, it’s about money.

Jane made little sounds like she couldn’t believe him. She said to me, “If anyone interviews you about this, take the high road and say gracious things about Rog. Say he was a great coach and, unfortunately, sometimes people go their separate ways. Kill him with kindness.”

When they put up a bad photo of her near the end, she said, “The coffee here’s terrible. I’m finding a Starbucks.” After she left, I noticed a complimentary computer terminal in the corner of the lounge. This could be my only chance.

“I need to send Nadine follow-up questions for my slavery essay,” I told Walter, and I pointed to the computer. He nodded, and I ran over to the terminal and checked my email, though I really should’ve been asking her questions since I still had no idea what to write about. There was a message from him from a few days before:

I’m sorry I wasn’t in Cincinnati. I thought I might have the chance but it didn’t work out. Was it fun? Maybe I can see you perform in New York. I lived in Sydney, Australia. I moved there because it seemed like a place where you could really have an adventure and a friend of mine told me there was lots of construction work. Here’s a picture I took of my friend Dave on a hiking trip we took in Australia.

The picture was of some guy wearing sunglasses in the desert. I didn’t have time to think about what I wanted to say, so I quickly wrote

If you can get a ticket to my concert in NYC at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 14 I will find some way for us to meet. I can’t buy the ticket myself or get you on the list.

I ran back to my seat and picked up a glossy Jane had out and pretended to be reading it when she came back. It was published a few days ago, so there wasn’t anything on me or her. Anyone who says all publicity is good publicity never had actual bad publicity.

Jane typed something into her iPhone and said, “Rog’s career is essentially over, as of this email.” She said it loud enough so that Walter would hear, too.

She was trying to project confidence like you have to do onstage, but I knew
my
career might be essentially over if things didn’t go right the next two days. That was how quickly your star could fall. And I might meet my father. I tried not to think about either thing, and took out my slavery books and a piece of paper to outline my essay, but I couldn’t focus, and just stared at the blank page.

J
ane’s face sort of lit up when we landed in New York. She loves L.A., but wherever she is, she always feels like she’s missing out on the real business in New York. She says L.A. is for entertainment-industry people who dabble in business, and New York is for business-people who dabble in the entertainment industry, and business is what makes entertainment possible even though entertainment sucks up most of the media attention.

We had a few short-form interviews and one business meeting in the morning before my late-show performance with Tyler Beats. Jane cut out interviews with anyone that might be hostile press, and she’d had our publicist make sure that questions about Jane would be off-limits, so they were all softballs I’ve had a million times, like, “What’s your favorite song to sing?” (“Guys vs. Girls” is what I’m supposed to say, but it’s actually “Breathtaking”) and “What do you look for in a girl?” (a nice smile, which is something any girl can have, and someone who’s got a really fun and nice personality, because every girl thinks she’s got a fun and nice personality). Once in my life I want to answer something like, “I want a super-chubby girl so I feel less beefy compared to her.”

I asked Jane if I could skip the business meeting. She shook her
head. “We make more off branding and ancillary deals than we do with the music. The music is the plane that flies you to the branding.”

“But the music’s still the most important thing, right?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I didn’t mean to put it that way.”

Maybe Rog was right. Jane knew a lot about some things, but she didn’t know much about music. So I went but didn’t hardly speak, just shook the hands of all these men and women who told me their daughters were big fans and asked me to sign all kinds of crap merch for them, which was funny, since the meetings were mostly about producing more crap merch, like a cell phone decorated with pictures of me and with all my songs preloaded for ringtones.
I
don’t even have a cell phone yet. I was worried about overexposure, but Jane says it only seems like overexposure because we’re looking at it all, and the average consumer has to see something seven times before they decide to buy it. Maybe that’s another reason so many songs sound the same, to trick people into thinking they’ve heard it six times before and now they’re finally ready to buy it.

The whole time we bounced around the city in the car service, I looked out the window like I did in Cincinnati. I knew I wouldn’t spot my father on the street, but I kept thinking about how he
was
out there somewhere, and on every street I thought something like, My father could have walked on this street before. By now he’d probably read my email, and maybe he was trying to get a ticket. I wish they weren’t so expensive, though. They’d cost even more from a scalper.