Slick (50 page)

I wasn’t the first high-minded artist to get caught up in his subject. I wasn’t even the first one to get caught up in Harmony. Four years ago, a progressive filmmaking duo followed her around with a camera, studying her in her natural habitat like she was an exquisite gazelle. They amassed a hundred and two hours of raw video, all of which fell into a deep legal crack once the couple split hard.

By Thursday every network was pounding at their respective doors, looking for some way, any way, to untie the Gordian knot that was keeping all that beautiful footage from being released. Then Maxina cut right through it, not only freeing the product but getting an exclusive hold on it. When I asked her how, she said, “Who cares?”

The moment I reentered my apartment, I opened the box, closed the shades, and popped in the first of the eighteen videotapes. In my state, I must have looked like a moping ex-boyfriend, losing himself in old, happy images of the woman who dumped him. There was a little of that, but mostly I was working. I held a notepad in my lap, marking the most poignant segments. I wanted to explain to the masses, in a compelling nutshell, why Harmony lied. Why she stopped lying. Why everyone should forgive her and ultimately admire her for the person she is. I had my work cut out for me, especially since I was building my case off the person she was.

Outwardly, Harmony at fifteen was little different from Harmony at nineteen. Her hair was longer. Her teeth were crooked. She had some mild acne. All to be expected. What jarred me was the vastly different way she carried herself. There was a sharp edge to her that didn’t exist anymore. This Harmony was still two years away from being mowed down in a crosswalk by a wayward police cruiser. She talked quicker. She moved quicker. I could even see her think quicker.

She also had clearer access to some very bad memories, and it showed. The more I watched her interact with people, the more I noticed a
jagged
edge. She was polite to her teachers, funny to her friends, even a little sexy to the boys who paid her attention (and there were more than a few), but a lot of it seemed artificially generated for the cameras. Behind the act was a thin layer of contempt that never seemed to reach the surface.

Clearly the filmmakers adored her. Since this was all rough copy, I could hear Jay and Shiela’s off-screen chatter. They’d fallen for Harmony just as hard as I did, although I wouldn’t have been as easily roped in by this version. This one was a little less than genuine. This one put her best foot forward.

Twenty hours into the footage (and eight hours into my viewing), Harmony dropped the mask. She sat on a couch in her shabby group home, drawing into a sketchpad. It was yet another maddeningly dull segment to fast-forward through, but there was something about her increasing discomfort that made me slow down and watch. She kept peeking at the camera through the corner of her eye, increasingly vexed.

“I don’t know what y’all find so interesting about this.”

“We think it says a lot about you,” replied Sheila, invisible as always.

“Yeah, well, I don’t know what you find so interesting about me.”

Now Jay chimed in. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re pretty remarkable.”

I rolled my eyes. So did Harmony. “Why? Because I’m less fucked up than I should be?”

“You’re a girl who grew up in a culture of violence and abuse—”

“I’m a black girl who grew up in Inglewood,” she countered. “And you only calling me ‘remarkable’ because I don’t got a pimp, two kids and a crack habit.”

I laughed. The filmmakers didn’t.

“Harmony, we admire you for the things you do have. You’re intelligent. You’re talented. You’re affable.”

“We look up to you.”

“Yeah, but you looking down to look up,” Harmony told them. “You admiring me like I’m the nicest dog in the pound.”

The next few seconds were pure nerve-racking silence. I sat forward, mesmerized.

Vindicated by the filmmakers’ silence, Harmony got back to her drawing.

“Don’t worry. I’ll play along for the show. I’ll even roll over and beg if it’ll get me out of this place.”

The scene would never have made it into Jay and Sheila’s final cut, had there been one. I couldn’t even work it into my own product. For the media, it would only be a tool to simplify her, a way to squeeze her into one of their preexisting molds. The world would never get Harmony right. But I was finally starting to.

 

 

On Monday, February 12, the word got out fast: Harmony was breaking her silence. CNN lifted the gag order at 8
a.m.
, four hours earlier than promised. In a business where each rating point was worth millions of dollars, and in a month when the broadcast nets took great pains to trounce their cable competitors, the network couldn’t hold it in any more.
We’ve got Harmony Prince, and we’ve got her tonight! Exclusively on CNN! Kiss our cheeks, Fox News! Oh, happy day! Happy day!

It certainly wasn’t a happy day for MGM. The final first-weekend box-office tally for
Hannibal
came in at $22.4 million, way lower than even the most skeptical forecasts. Move My Cheese had predicted a $58.1 million opening, a miss so wild that it shaved at least three points off the program’s overall accuracy rating. Ira briefly returned to the corporeal world to check the numbers and mutter a few expletives before vanishing back into his monitor.

Also cursing: Alonso.
The New York Post
ran a malevolent piece on his spotty reputation as a lawyer and citizen. The story included damning quotes from disgruntled ex-clients, ex-employees, ex-girlfriends, and a leery investigator from the California Bar Association who’d been sniffing after him since the early 1990s. If that wasn’t bad enough, the article contained two cleverly veiled references to transvestism, ambiguous enough to avoid a libel suit but clear enough to get the insinuation across.

When Alonso called me at 10
a.m.
, he was sputtering with rage. He was convinced that the story had been planted by none other than Doug Modine.

“So, that’s the way we’re playing it now?” he bellowed. “We’re using
live
ammo on each other?”

I only had to scan the byline to know the true culprit. The author, Jenny Alvarado, was the maid of honor at Gail Steiner’s wedding. Gail Steiner had harbored a mad-on for Alonso ever since he publicly blasted her for revealing Harmony’s name (after privately giving her permission). She should have seen it coming, but alas, journalists were a sensitive bunch. And they stuck together. This, I explained, was simply revenge by proxy.

“Double proxy,” Alonso snapped. “I’m being punished for
your
maneuver.”

“Hey, you made me the heavy with Harmony for that Coca-Cola thing.”

“I’m entitled to a little latitude! I’m out here on the front lines, while you’re safe and snug in your hidden bunker.”

Okay, okay. Whatever. I promised I’d help him with the counterspin. Anything to get him out of his own problems. His first and foremost task was to prep Harmony for her
Larry King
Live
appearance, since I obviously couldn’t. She had yet to lift her grudge and it was driving me insane.

“Harmony, Harmony, Harmony,” griped Madison at the start of her second work week. “You know, there are other things going on in the world besides Harmony.”

She was talking to me but scolding the media. I couldn’t blame her. She must have highlighted Harmony’s name at least five hundred times since Thursday. It didn’t help that I was watching yet another tape from the Jay and Sheila archives when Madison arrived. When she asked me how I obtained the footage, I gave her the loaded truth. “Never underestimate the great Maxina Howard,” I told her. When she asked me what I hoped to gain by watching it, I gave her a loaded lie. “Know your enemy,” I said. “Know your enemy.”

Madison was more interested in getting my take on the Kournikova virus, which had also scored considerable attention today. All through out the weekend, all over the world, tens of thousands of computers were infected by a tainted JPEG of eminently screwable tennis star Anna Kournikova. Not being a tennis fan, I only learned of her existence and screwability recently, thanks to the virus.

“That’s my point,” said Madison. “I bet her publicist was behind it.”

I gave it some thought. “I don’t know. That seems a little risky. I mean they almost always catch the guys who start those things.”

“So? You just talk some teenage hacker into planting the bug and then deny the hell out of it when he points the finger at you.”

“That’s a horrible thing to do.”

“What? He’s a kid. He’ll just get probation.”

“Yeah, well, how would you like it if I hung you out to dry like that?”

“I wouldn’t like it at all,” she replied. “But then I’d be smart enough to record our conversations as insurance.”

Goddamn, she had a future. “Get back to work.”

At a quarter to five, Harmony stepped out of the Miramar and back into the media swarm. Only the news channels broke in with live coverage of her reemergence, but every network this side of Telemundo would be rolling the tape tonight.

We watched her on CNN. Madison booed. Ever since she conversed with Hunta, her fealty to him was unshakable. Even when I told her he was a habitual philanderer, she denied it.

“If he never admitted it himself, then you have no proof. All you have is hearsay.”

Well, I did hear it from numerous sources, including his wife, but I let Madison have the point. I even joined in on the booing, despite the fact that Harmony never looked better to me. She wore a form-fitting white blouse with slit sleeves over wide-legged trousers. Her hair was done up, salon-style, and her jewelry adornments were formally chic.

Once again Alonso held her in defensive position, but now they had a throng of bodyguards to keep the press at bay. Harmony looked a lot calmer now than she did during her last walk of fame. She made eye contact with the cameras. She was wise enough not to smile.

Madison resumed her highlighting with a derisive cluck of the tongue. “She’s loving this. You can tell.”

“I don’t know. I heard a major soft drink company offered her a lot of money to be seen with one of their products. She turned them down.”

“Does that stuff really work? I mean are people going to go out and buy Pepsi just because they saw some rape accuser holding a can?”

I shined her a crafty smile. “I only said ‘soft drink.’ What made you think of Pepsi?”

“Thinking is not the same as buying.”

“It’s all cumulative. Wallets are opened by hands, hands are controlled by brains, and brains are full of other people’s ideas. Nobody’s immune to it. Not even your mother.”

She threw me a teasing grin. “What made you think of my mother?”

“Get back to work.”

Ducking all questions, Alonso and Harmony scuttled into a big white limousine, courtesy of CNN. As soon as it drove off, the network went back to its polls and pundits.

I shook my head at the TV. “Man, those guys sure love Harmony Prince.”

“I know you’re talking to her,” Madison said.

“You know I’m talking to Harmony Prince?”

She fought a smirk. “I know you’re talking to my mother. A lot.”

I kept my gaze on her until she looked up from her highlighting.

“It’s okay,” she assured me. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I mean I think you’re secretly seeing someone, but considering that you’re always talking to her on that weird red phone of yours, I know it’s not Mom.”

“Madison...”

“I’m sorry. It’s not my business. I just wanted—”

“I’m not seeing anyone, secretly or openly.”

“It’s not my business. I just wanted to say I’m okay with you and my mom talking. That is my business. And I’m telling you, in case you wanted to know, that I don’t have a problem with it. Not anymore.”

She had her mother’s ability to exasperate me. “What
was
your problem?”

Madison resumed her work with a sigh. “It’s just that she always freaks out about me. I didn’t want her freaking you out, too.”

“I can form my own opinions.”

“I know,” she said warmly. “I can tell. It’s appreciated.”

Ever since she cried at my tardiness last Tuesday, Madison had declared a ban on all unprofessional emotions and expressions. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to impress me or imitate me. Either way, she succeeded far too well. I could have used some mushy sentiment at the moment. I could have handled hearing what a wonderful guy I was.

Still, her genial praise was enough to get me out of the grim mood I’d been hiding. And what excellent timing, too. At five o’clock my “weird” red phone rang. As I carried it upstairs, Madison held up her hands.
Not my business.

Although my face was cool and bemused, the inner me was howling with relief. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. With just one hour to go before speaking to Larry King and the world, Harmony was finally speaking to me.

 

 

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” I closed the bedroom door. “You look wonderful.”

“Oh, you saw me?”

“I never miss you.”

Harmony was quiet. As I threw myself down on the bed, I could hear the hum of the limo’s engine. I could hear Alonso chattering away in the background.

“Who’s he talking to?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He’s always talking to someone on the phone.”

“He’s always talking.”

She chuckled. “Yeah.”

“Well, for tonight he’s been given firm instructions to shut up and let you speak for yourself.”

“I know. That scares me.”

“You’ll be terrific,” I promised. “This is the part we’ve all been waiting for. This is where you really get to shine.”