“You know, I’ve been waiting for this one guy to call,” she said facetiously, “but I don’t think it’s gonna happen. So you know what? I think I’m gonna get rid of this phone. I think I’ll drop it right off the balcony.”
“Just be careful,” I said. “You could hurt someone.”
“Yeah, well, if I do, I’ll just have to live with it.”
“Just live well, all right?”
“You take care of yourself now, stranger.”
“You too.”
“I’m dropping the phone now.”
“Do it.”
She did it. I could hear the wind whistle through the receiver as Harmony let me go. When the phone hit the pavement, the resulting noise was so loud, I had to turn my head away. Ka-CHINK! It was like an aluminum bat hitting a stack of quarters right behind a megaphone. I couldn’t even imagine the number of high-tech fragments spread out on the sidewalk. I wished I could have dropped my phone with her. They could have died thematically together, bleeding circuitry so far and so wide that people wouldn’t be able to tell where one device began and the other one ended.
It wasn’t meant to be, I suppose. But I couldn’t complain. This was a fine way to end our arrangement. As for my own red phone, it would have to die elsewhere. Symbolically, there was no better place than the ocean. It was in for a cold, dark swim. Not now, but soon.
There was no hurry. I wasn’t going anywhere.
________________
By a quarter after three, my mind and body had both collapsed to mush. I’d spent the last five hours laid out on my sofa, wallowing beneath my blanket as the television infused me with a running drip of zeitgeist. The current distraction was Babes in Arms, a 1939 Busby Berkeley number with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. I knew I was in trouble when I started laughing at the jokes.
Madison came back from the kitchen with a hot cup of lemon tea and placed it on the coffee table. Funny that she came to work in a turtleneck sweater. So did I. My brain wasn’t entirely dead. I still had a nice big hickey to hide.
“Thank you,” I creaked. “You know, you really don’t have to take care of me.”
She sat down on the floor. “Oh, shut up. What else am I going to do here?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“I still can’t believe they fired you.”
I sniffed. “Yeah, well, that’s the way it works sometimes.”
Harmony’s plan had reached fruition sometime around noon. Much ado was made about the fake recording, the evil attempt to frame her. I didn’t watch a moment of it. All I knew I heard from Madison. I assured her the tape wasn’t made by anyone from the Hunta camp. In fact, they fired me simply because they thought I was the one behind it. That was sort of true.
“Will this be bad for your freelance business?”
I sighed. “Yeah. Things are going to be real quiet for a while.”
“That’s not fair.”
I wriggled my way down to the floor, between the couch and the coffee table. I took the mug in my hands.
“It’s all right,” I told her. “We’ll manage.”
“But what are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to finish this nice cup of tea you made me. I’m going to lie back down on the sofa. And then I figure I’ll either get better or die. I haven’t decided which.”
Madison smirked. “Don’t die.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d miss you.”
After a few long moments, I put the tea back down and muted the television. Despite my minor release in the car, there was still a tempest brewing inside of me. I was filled with emotions that were constructive and otherwise, positive and otherwise. I would not expose my cherished assistant to such untested energies. Otherwise…
“I’d miss you, too,” I said.
“God, Scott. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”
“I’m all right,” I assured her, unconvincingly. “I’ll be all right.”
I tried to meet her gaze, but she stared me down in three seconds.
“Can I please give you a hug?”
“That’s sweet of you, Madison. But I don’t want to get you sick.”
“It’s all right. My mom’s already coming down with something. If I don’t get it from you, I’ll get it from her.”
I let out a weak laugh. Doesn’t that figure?
“Still, I don’t know if she’d want us crossing certain professional boundaries…”
“Scott…”
Madison crawled her way over to me, curling up against my side. She threw her arms around me, then rested her head on my shoulder.
“It’s a hug,” she said. “There’s no crime. No scandal. It’s just a hug. You need it.”
After a few awkward beats, I put my hand on her back. Damned if she wasn’t right. Damned if this wasn’t all the medicine I needed right now.
“I warned you I was a business jinx,” she quipped. “You should have listened.”
“Madison, hiring you is one of the few things I don’t regret.”
“You make it sound like this whole thing’s your fault.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s all my fault…”
“You didn’t form the Bitch Fiends,” she declared. “You didn’t put a gun in Annabelle Shane’s hands. You didn’t tell the media that lynching Hunta was a perfect way to spend sweeps. And you didn’t tell Harmony Prince to lie.”
She was three for four, but this wasn’t the day to correct her. Thank God this wasn’t the day. Thank God, thank Fate, thank Harmony.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s still a rough trade. You sure you want to go into it?”
She ruminated on it a moment, then heaved an airy breath. “I might as well now. I mean, you were right. Once you get that X-ray vision, you can’t turn it off. I see the business spin behind everything now. All the dirty tricks, all the ulterior motives, all the colored words. I see lots of colored words.”
On TV, Mickey Rooney and his flock of happy halflings continued to dance, jump, and kick to beat of absolutely nothing.
“I guess it never used to be that way,” Madison mused.
“There were still plenty of illusions back then. They were mostly just happy illusions.”
“Do you think people are getting worse, Scott? Or are we just getting more cynical?”
I mulled it over. “I don’t really know. I mean I’ve worked for some of the world’s most disreputable businesses. And I’ve met some of the nicest people there. I’ve also met some real assholes who worked for nonprofits and charities. You just can’t tell at a glance.”
The movie ended with a grand splash. The credits began to roll.
“But there are good people out there,” I said, rubbing her back. “There always will be.”
“There’ll always be liars, too.”
“Yeah, but that’s nothing new. There have always been liars and there have always been lies. It’s human nature. That’ll never change.”
I kept my pensive gaze on the credits. I believed everything I told her, but now I had to wonder. When did we all get so good at fooling each other? When did we all get so goddamn slick?
Madison bunched up next to me. I held her close, resting my head on hers. The poor girl. She was going through such a hard time at home, at school. Everywhere. I wished she’d drop the brave face and share her troubles with me, but I certainly wouldn’t force the issue. In this apartment, she could wear any face she wanted. Around me, she could be whoever the hell she wanted to be.
That was pretty damn decent for a man who was secretly romancing her mother. There’d be hell to pay when Madison caught that twist. Another issue. Another challenge. Another crisis to manage. It would keep until I got better.