Authors: Callie Harper
“So, thanks,” she
mumbled. “If you ever want to, you know—”
“Yeah.” I gave her
my signature wink. Class dismissed. And what did she do when I was
such an asshole? She giggled and blushed, like they all did.
I could get away with
anything. And I took full advantage of it. I was 26 now, but I’d
been famous since I was 19 and my band charted its first number one
hit. People called us the harder-driving, U.S. version of Coldplay.
We had some Green Day in us, some Fun once you cranked them up. Some
compared us to the Sex Pistols or Guns ‘n’ Roses. Whatever you
called it or compared it to, we made music that made you jump up,
dance your ass off and bang your head against the wall. No ballads,
no whining, we made screw-the-consequences,
fuck-it-all-I’m-going-for-it RAWCK.
There were lots of
benefits to my status. Touring the world, VIP access to anything
anytime, but at the top of my list had to be the constant supply of
pussy. It wasn’t as if I’d been hard-up before I’d gotten
famous. My father was Richard Kavanaugh, billionaire real estate
mogul and investor. I’d learned early that being rich and handsome
opened up all kinds of doors and legs. But it was when I picked up a
guitar as a teenager that girls really started getting crazy. Waiting
for me naked in my bed. Texting me videos of them making out with
their girlfriends or playing with themselves as they thought of me.
By now, I’d gotten so
used to the whole sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll routine it was
almost boring. I was almost tired of it. Almost. Don’t get me
wrong. I wasn’t playing a tiny violin of pity for myself. I was
having the time of my life. Every night.
That was it, though.
With the exact same shit every different day, every now and then in
the midst of the wild and crazy carnival I’d have a whisper of a
doubt. I’d look around and think, is that all there is? Then I’d
do a show and get wasted and fuck groupies and nothing would matter
all over again.
I’d been the bad boy
for a long time now, my whole life really. I’d started off the
black sheep in my family, doing nothing right in my father’s eyes,
dark in my perfect older brother’s chip-off-the-old-block’s
shadow. Then as the rocker, I’d become the poster boy for
devil-may-care defiance. I’d spent years riding that long wave of
adolescent rebellion while I proudly held up my middle finger.
Sometimes I wondered
what it would feel like to stop. Get off the crazy train. Be still
and silent for even a moment.
When media darling
Mandy Monroe and I first got together a couple months ago, I’ll
admit it, I’d been curious about her. Everyone knew her story, the
daughter of a coal miner from West Virginia discovered on
American
Idol
. Seventeen years old and singing her heart out with
those big, brown eyes and long blonde hair, the world had fallen in
love with her. I’d wondered, maybe it would be different with her?
She’d certainly grown up outside the bubbles I’d lived in my
whole life. Maybe she’d be real?
I didn’t know what
kind of person Mandy had been at 17. But at 22, the Mandy I got to
know was as vicious and shrewd as they came, always angling for the
right PR shot, constantly scheming about how to stay on top of the
headlines. It hadn’t taken me long to realize her sugary image had
nothing to do with her sour reality. The only reason things had
dragged on as long as they had between us was we were never in the
same place at the same time. Until last night. We’d gone out to
dinner here in Vegas. Hadn’t we?
My phone buzzed again.
With a deep down-to-the-bones groan, I stumbled across the room to
retrieve it. I still didn’t get there in time to pick up. The
screen announced that I had 15 missed calls, 10 from my agent, four
from my PR firm, one from my older brother.
Uh-oh. My big brother
never called unless it was to give me shit. I’d done something to
screw up. What was it?
My phone rang again in
my hand. My agent. With a sigh, I picked up.
“Yeah?” My voice
creaked out, gravelly and hung-over.
If words came across
visually, his would be bright red and all caps. “WHAT THE FUCK?
YOU’VE FUCKED UP ROYALLY THIS TIME!”
“Goddamn it, Joel, do
you have to yell?” I rubbed my face with my hand. It was too early
for this shit. Wait, what time was it anyway?
“DON’T YOU TELL ME
TO QUIET DOWN! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING LAST NIGHT?”
“What are you talking
about?”
That made him pause.
“You don’t know yet, do you?”
Aw, shit. “What now?”
I’d clearly been up to something, but it wasn’t the first time
I’d gotten into hot water. That was why I employed a full team to
keep the Ash Black show on schedule.
“Watch it on YouTube.
It’s already got two million hits.”
“How do I—?”
“Type in your name.
It’ll come right up.”
I sat down on a chair.
I had a feeling it would be better to be sitting down when I saw
this. But, again, it wasn’t the first time I’d had footage of me
leaked doing something naughty. People might tsk and wag their
fingers, but they loved it. It was all part of my persona. Right?
My agent was correct, a
video popped right up under the title “A**hole Ash Black”. Only
35 seconds long, someone had caught it on their camera phone, a
perfect shot. Mandy Monroe and me in a fancy restaurant last night.
Tears streamed down her lovely face. I looked shitfaced, shadows
under my eyes, my black hair tufting out in crazy angles.
Listing slightly to the
left, I leered at her and asked, “What, are you gonna do? Cry?”
Her lower lip wobbled,
those famous big brown eyes brimming with tears. “Why, Ash? Why?”
she pleaded.
“You’re an idiot,”
I slurred. “And what’s worse, you’re boring.”
“But I thought…”
Her voice trembled. She brought her shaking hand to her heart. “I
thought you were the one.”
I burst out with an
evil villain’s laugh. Did I really laugh like that? More of a
cackle, really.
“I’m out of here,”
I declared, standing up and kicking over my chair like a twit. “Go
crying home to Mommy.” My sorry ass stumbled on out of the frame,
leaving Mandy alone at the table for two with silent tears of pain
traveling down her perfect face.
The girl deserved an
Oscar. It had been staged, all of it. I knew that the second I saw
it. I’d been in the media spotlight long enough to know, no one
held a camera phone that steady, at that perfect an angle, with the
sound quality so excellent at exactly the right moment without it
being a set up. It had all happened, that I knew as well, but she’d
arranged the whole thing right down to having someone seated nearby
to film it.
“Have you seen it?”
my agent asked. I’d forgotten he was still on the phone.
“Yeah.”
“This is a disaster.”
“It was a set up.”
“You and I know that,
but the rest of the world doesn’t. And don’t act like you didn’t
say all that shit. You know you did.”
Sure, I’d said all
that. I remembered now, all of it. Mandy and I had had a rip-snorting
fight earlier that evening. It had started out stupid, something
about how I’d said she looked pretty in a dress instead of amazing
or breathtaking or some over-the-top shit like a character out of a
Harlequin romance novel. It had escalated into a tantrum over how I
didn’t appreciate her enough. She’d thrown a glass vase against a
wall, screaming that a miserable, washed-up hack like me was lucky to
be with a bonafide superstar like her. No camera phone had caught
that, though.
It was genius, really.
Mandy had obviously known I was going to break up with her. She’d
realized she’d milked all of the press she could out of our
relationship. So she’d decided to go out with a bang. She had a new
album coming out filled with love songs and this would give her just
the boost she needed to score a few out-of-the-gate chart-toppers.
Hats off to her.
“Mandy Monroe is
America’s sweetheart,” my agent told me. Like it was news.
“I know.” I rubbed
my brow.
“You just broke her
heart.”
“Yup.”
“You tore it up and
threw it in her face. And it’s all on video. This is bad, Ash.”
“People love it when
I’m bad.” I tried to defend myself, but even to me it sounded
weak.
“Not this kind of
bad. This is not going to go over well.”
I had nothing to say to
that one. I could practically see Joel shaking his head in
frustration.
“You had to dump the
coalminer’s daughter. On YouTube.”
“Shit, you have to
put it like that?”
“Listen, there’s
going to be backlash. It’s going to be big. We have to figure a way
out of this one.”
“That’s what I pay
you the big bucks for, Joel.”
“You can’t make a
joke out of this, Ash. You fucked up good. Clean up, fly back and
meet me at five o’clock.”
“I’m supposed to
head to New York today.”
“Why? Your next show
isn’t until next week and it’s in L.A.”
“Family stuff.”
This coming weekend I had my family’s huge holiday party. It wasn’t
the kind of event I normally went in for. Black tie, so that was a
big strike against it. Plus it involved my family, which guaranteed
that it would suck. But my grandmother required mandatory attendance
at the annual Kavanaugh holiday party. Even a rule-breaker like me
had to comply. She might be the only person I really listened to. If
you met her, you’d get it.
“Well, come to S.F.
today. Go to New York tomorrow. We have to get a plan in play. I’ll
have Lola and Gary meet us and…aw shit.” His voice trailed off.
“What?”
“You’re the number
one hashtag trending on Twitter.”
This wasn’t going to
be good. “What is it?”
“#HatePlayerAsh.”
It wasn’t the first
time I’d inspired my own personal hashtag. #DoMeAsh #HotAsh,
#FuckMeAsh. I was used to those. But this, though? This was new. And
it was blowing up.
With a groan, I sank my
head into my hands. I didn’t mind making messes so long as I didn’t
have to clean them up. But now I stood with a sponge and a bucket and
knew I’d have to get down on my hands and knees and scrub.
Ana
“Is this the one
where they fly? I really like it when they fly.” A little girl
wearing a giant snowflake sweater and fairy wings looked up at me.
She couldn’t be more than four years old and she couldn’t
pronounce her ‘r’s so “really” came out “weely.” She was
perfect.
Kneeling down, I
studied the book jacket.
Rudolph
the Red Nosed Reindeer
. “Well, the reindeers fly, if
that’s what you’re thinking about.”
“Are they mean?”
She turned to me with gravitas, the weight of the word “mean”
filling her brown eyes.
I could not tell a lie.
I nodded. “At first, the other reindeer are mean to Rudolph.” She
frowned in response. “But it ends happy.”
After another moment of
consideration, she grabbed it. “Yes,” she declared. “And the
fuff-flies.” I’d also helped her find a book about a family of
butterflies. She marched off in her boots to a young woman engrossed
in her cell phone. Her nanny, I assumed. In this part of SoHo I met a
lot more nannies than parents coming into the children’s wing of
the library. We were in an extremely affluent corner of the city,
tucked into an amazing brownstone with gargoyles and lions sculpted
into the edifice. Too bad our branch was so short on funds we were on
the chopping block to close.
I’d already been
furious over the cutbacks on our hours. How could a library with a
children’s wing not open until noon? Didn’t they know how early
in the morning little kids woke up? They started their days at six,
sometimes five a.m. The very latest we should open our doors was nine
o’clock. Even by then, I bet we’d have a few exhausted caregivers
standing outside with strollers desperate to come in and give the
kids something to keep them entertained.
But last week our boss
had gathered all of us together to tell us that, no, we wouldn’t be
getting end-of-year bonuses. And, surprise, due to lack of funds we’d
been short-listed for closure. We’d find out for sure in January.
You’d think in a city
with this kind of money there’d be enough to keep the libraries
open!
I felt a small tug on
my sweater. A little boy with short, black curly hair looked up at
me.
“Hello, may I help
you find something?” I smiled down at him.
“This is my truck.”
He held up a green, plastic dump truck and demonstrated how it could
move. “His name is Oscar the Truck.”
I couldn’t stay
grumpy, not for long. I loved this job. It paid nothing. I got little
kids’ snot on me almost every day, especially now that it was
December. I spent a lot of time engaged in nonsensical exchanges
about random facts and made-up stories with preschoolers. But I loved
it. At least one thing, and sometimes a whole lot of things, made me
laugh every single day. And I never tired of seeing a little kid get
engrossed in turning pages, cuddled up in the cozy corner of pillows
I’d created, their little faces lighting up with delight.
My career choice had
left my parents underwhelmed. Here I was, 24 years old and already
resigned to a lifetime of obscurity and penury. They’d raised me
for much more, enduring great personal sacrifice, and they liked to
remind me of it. Also, they liked to remind me of the millions of my
ancestors who’d died under Stalin’s rule. But that was kind of a
given for Russian immigrants, the references to the homeland, the
starvation and freezing and hardship I’d never know because I was
such an American.
I knew my parents loved
me, their only child, born to them when they were already in their
40s. My mother liked to tell me that I was a miracle child. They’d
immigrated to upstate New York and toiled, year in and year out, to
make a better life for me. They’d poured their resources and
energies into training me as a classical pianist, paying for every
lesson, driving me to countless recitals, helping me prepare for
competitions and soloist showcases. When I’d started studying at
the local community college I’d declared music as my major and
they’d still kept the dream alive.