This Is How It Really Sounds (38 page)

The weird thing was, he didn't have too much interest in “Kickin' It” anymore. Let's face it: he'd already kicked it. Instead, he kept thinking about that house outside Wilksbury, and that song that he'd never gotten right. He couldn't put his finger on what it was about. A small house in a small town. Guys in plaid shirts sitting with a cup of coffee talking over shit that had happened twenty years ago. It was like … everything that got away: the girl who got away, the friend who got away, the years that got away, his grandfather. It all got away, eventually, and there was something beautiful about that, too: everything perfectly in place at the same time that it was disappearing. That's what he wanted to write about, but he didn't have a tune and he didn't have a first line and the song was all one big nameless beautiful thing that hung over him then disappeared into the mist whenever he tried to nail it down. When the mist cleared, all he saw was himself as a plastic mini-figure, punching a fan in the face over and over again.

*   *   *

The bullshit started to crop up about two weeks after
“
Kickin' It” hit number 4 on the charts. Not that Peter Harrington, financial swindler, had a lot of defenders out there. Most people took it as exactly what it had been: a pissed-off victim finally laying some fucking Truth on someone who mistakenly thought he had all the truth he needed. Ninety-eight percent of the comments were happy as shit, but there were always a few droolers and know-it-alls ready to down you for one thing or another. Anonymously, of course. The first scattering of theories claimed that the Pete Harrington in the beat-down video was a look-alike, or that the banker was an actor. They cited the “fact” that the victim did nothing to defend himself, and they compared the finely tuned right cross of the “Pete Harrington” in the video with the clumsy Pete Harrington that had flute-whipped the bassist of Uncle Sam's Erection three years before. To these buttheads, there was one ultimate proof that the whole thing was a publicity stunt: it had gotten publicity.

After the conspiracy nut-jobs came the computer geeks, Silicon Valley eggheads teaming up with some Chinese tech know-it-all to track the spread of the videos. Like, excuse me, guys, but shouldn't you be hacking into X-rated Web sites and stealing porn or something? They were talking about ISPs and diffusion velocity. They pulled apart all the videos and matched them shot for shot, claiming that some had been spliced together from multiple cameras or that the quality of the cameras was too good not to have been staged. Even though he knew the chatter was bullshit, he couldn't help reading the questions. Such as: the release of the video in Shanghai had happened only three hours after the event, and had appeared with titles a few hours later. How had the financier been identified so quickly? Such as: the link had first been posted at ConnedbyCrossroads.com by a user who had registered only six weeks earlier and had never posted before that. The verdict of the geeks: it was a professional job, from beginning to end. A publicity stunt.

It took some serious iron will to keep from climbing into the Internet arena and busting out some raw language on them, but he held true to Beth's rules. He never confirmed, denied, or explained. Still, it made him start to turn it all over in his mind. He'd had at least a dozen passersby filming him when he walked up to Peter Harrington. Could there have been some ringers in there? And what about when he'd gotten back: Bobby had asked him if he'd gotten good footage, then played it off like he'd asked whether he'd kicked the banker.
Footage
. An unusual choice of words, and Bobby was no poet. Could Bobby have set it up from L.A.? Did he have those kinds of connections? Or Beth? If they did, how'd they pull it off without Charlie finding out? They'd have needed some cameramen in China following him and Charlie all the way to the setup, and Charlie'd had a lifetime of experience spotting tails. Charlie probably would have led him into a dark alley and then slammed him up against the wall, old-school, to make him talk.

But the only one who got ambushed was him. It was some enterprising camera crew from
Entertainment Today.
Not the second string here, not a Web site, but Frankie Lang himself, probably trying to show that he could have been a real journalist if he hadn't gone “lite.” He'd showed up at their studio right on time with a few free CDs to sprinkle to the crew. It was supposed to be about his new album, talking about the songs and the inspiration behind them, touching very lightly on the whole thing in Shanghai, but instead Frankie did the classic: asked him some easy questions, gave him some strokes, got his trust, then stuck the knife in.

“You know, Pete, speaking of Shanghai, there's been some controversy out there…” Frankie started spewing out some jibber jabber about videos and postings and various other crap that he couldn't really follow because this other little voice was saying,
Wow, I'm getting ambushed by Frankie Lang, the fucking royal flush of fake journalism! And he's just talking shit he read on the Internet! As if he knows anything at all about Charlie or push-ups or walking up to that guy with his bodyguard while the whole world is pointing their cell phones at you … Where the fuck did this guy—?

He realized Frankie's mouth had stopped moving and that the last words he'd heard were “What's the real story, Pete?”

He was supposed to say something now, with Frankie looking at him like he was some sort of boss investigator. “The real story? Here's the real story: I was there fucking standing up, while you were here pimping for sex lubricants and cut-rate car insurance. Is that real enough for you?”

He stopped suddenly and held up his hand, smiling. “Whoa! Hold on. Cut! Cut!” This definitely violated the “being insulting to an interviewer” part of his agreement with Beth. “Hey, I'm sorry, Frankie. Cut that. I didn't mean it. You're just doing your job. Ask me again and I'll answer the question.”

The interviewer smiled and asked him the same question again.

“Frankie, I was there, on the ground, face-to-face with the beast. There were at least a dozen Chinese people taking videos, just like if I go walking down Sunset Boulevard someone might whip out their cell phone and take a video. I have no idea who they are and no control over what they do with their footage. But I
can
tell you, a hundred-percent sure, that there was nothing staged or phony about what you saw on that video.” He nodded. Very professional. Even Beth would have to admit that. “How's that?”

“So you admit that someone might have purposely spread it.”

He looked at him. “What is this, man? A fucking witch hunt?”

*   *   *

He was still steaming when Bobby called him to check on the new band and brief him on the latest good news. It was all good news from Bobby these days. Every time he called there was a new gig or a fresh deal. It was like the old days. So he let about ten minutes go by with Bobby telling him about the new date he'd scheduled in Seattle and how the gig in Anchorage had sold out and they'd added another night. No longer necessary to pump him up with BS about Anchorage being the new Seattle. Even better—and here Bobby practically made him hold his breath—the leading late-night comedy show in the country, with an audience of sixteen million people squarely in his demographic, was talking to Beth about bringing him on as a musical guest.

“That's huge, Pete! It means you're back!”

And that was all very cool, but it didn't erase this other question, this silly, stupid crap about the Shanghai thing being a publicity stunt … “Listen, Bobby, things got a little rocky at my interview today.” He told him what had happened.

“You called him a pimp? On camera?” Bobby considered it a second, then changed gears. “Here's what's real, Pete: You went out alone, with your spear, and you brought down the elephant. Now all the little villagers that didn't have the guts to go after the elephant themselves are gathering around to snatch their little pieces and tell you how you could have done it better. You're the one who knows what really went down in Shanghai. Why would you pay attention to a bunch of chattering monkeys?”

He liked hearing it, but it didn't answer his question. “Bobby. You remember when I got back from Shanghai and you asked me if I'd gotten any
footage
?”

There was a silence on the line. “Not really. That was a long time ago. Are you sure I said footage?”

“You said
footage,
and then you said that you meant, Had I kicked him?” Bobby didn't answer. “I just think that's a strange word to use.”

“Pete, I don't know what I said. And you were pretty wiped out, as I recall.”

“Just give me a yes-or-no answer, Bobby. Did you have those videos made?”

Bobby was quiet again. Pete could tell that, in his mind, Bobby was jumping through the elaborate qualifications that would make “no” a truthful answer. Like,
No, I hired someone else, and
they
had them made
. Or,
No, I just arranged for some raw footage, not actual … Video!
“No…,” he said slowly.

The trap was closing now. “Does that mean,
No
, or does that mean,
No, not exactly, but kind of
.'”

There was a long silence. “Honestly … I'd have to say it's the second answer.” Bobby was struggling now, almost pleading. “Don't go down this road, Pete.”

“What road is that, Bobby?”

“Pete! Look—you found this guy. You trained yourself. You got straight in his face, and you served him a steaming-hot helping of
fuck you!
compliments of the little people. There is no part of that that is not hero shit.”

He wasn't distracted by Bobby using his own terms. “So you're not denying it?”

“Denying what?”

“C'mon, Bobby!”

“I'm not denying it and I'm not confirming it. I'm saying, it doesn't matter. Let it drop, Pete.”

“Let it drop? Am I a fucking golden retriever?”

“Pete, slow down—”

“Fuck you, Bobby! I am not going to be part of this!”

“You need to talk to Beth—”

“
Beth?
Did Beth do this?”

“I'm just going to back off a little bit because Beth's really the person—”

“No, Bobby! You are not dumping all this on Beth. We're fucking dealing with it! Tonight! You, me, and Beth. In two hours. Set it up!”

“Pete—”

He was shouting now. “Set it up!”

 

7

Jersey Girl

It had taken
some time, but when Beth Blackman finally learned to recognize that life progressed in circles and spirals, and that moving backward was the same as moving forward, she was able to view her status as Pete Harrington's ex-wife as a privilege. Before that, she just wanted to slap his silly face and rip out his little gold earrings one by one.

Pete had been one of her first big clients when she came out to Los Angeles from the East Coast, a Jersey girl with a reputation for brilliant solutions and the ability to keep a supercomputer's worth of detail live and crackling in her brain. Her father had warned her to keep her head screwed on straight, but she was twenty-four at the time and he was a real rock star and it was the first time she'd been thrown full force into that world of people who were richer, more famous, and better looking than her. Just the fact that he would want to sleep with her was a pretty big deal. Not that she was ugly. She'd never have one of those chic, slim woman's bodies with big breasts: she didn't have the genetics, and even if she had the work done, she would still be just over five feet tall, and she'd still have real hips and thighs. She liked her body, thought of it as a wonderful, useful body, even if she didn't look like a mink, or a lynx or a fox, or a sorceress, or a porn star, or a Catholic-school girl, or any of the other women that constantly made themselves available to Pete Harrington and his band. But for some reason, Pete wanted her, and that in itself was a powerful drug. As long as she could see him as a client she enjoyed a certain immunity, but when that slipped, when they went to his ranch in Montana for a few days, allegedly as friends, and she ate mushrooms for the first time and sat for hours next to a stream with him saying almost nothing, her construct collapsed, and she went soaring into his blue eyes and his famous strong chin. He was an artist, an angel, a rebel: all the crap that she spent eleven hours a day perpetuating instantly became true. But now, she was inside it.

Their union lasted exactly twenty-two days. She liked to tell people that, as with many other marriages, the first third had been blissful—it was the second two weeks that were the problem. In that time he cheated on her with three different women, and she finalized the matter by beating a raw, gray dent into his locked bedroom door with a cast-iron skillet, a cliché that, incredibly, they both joked about all these years later. She'd ended up with no job and a ruined professional image, forced to start her own agency and make do with up-and-comers who hoped to parlay a scandal or a bit part in a movie into marketable notoriety. And those were her good clients: her bad ones didn't even have the scandal. She had to create their fame from scratch, a challenge that honed her publicity skills to a frightening acuity.

For a few years, she hated the man. The sight of him at occasional industry events reduced her to a caldera of anger and shame, no matter how hard he tried to make it up to her. She secretly relished the first missteps in his career. As her agency took off, though, their relationship progressed to guarded nods and brief, brittle conversations. She could sense his regret, and if at first she had reveled in it, a time came when she began to feel sorry for him. In his often-goofy way, he was trying to get her forgiveness, and four years later, attending an awards ceremony, she spotted him making straight for her with a pleasant-looking, dark-suited man with horn-rim glasses.
Great,
she thought,
he's going to do some weird trophy dance over me
. She said a nervous hello and he introduced the man: a literary agent Bobby had pitched Pete's life story to. Pete kissed her on the cheek, then spoke to him with fierce and urgent sincerity: “Ira, Beth is my ex-wife. I messed up and she booted my silly ass out of her life. This woman is more than a queen: she's a fucking
lioness,
and I was too stupid to realize that.” He finished his strange apology, or introduction, or whatever it was, and they all stood silently for a few seconds, uncertain where to go after that testimonial. He clapped them both on the shoulder. “Now, you kids get to know each other!”