I sat across the room from her, listening, nodding, and covertly e-mailing her mother from my laptop.
Your daughter is here. I’ll try to stall her as long as I can. Please come soon.
I had returned from the Ishtar at 9:30 only to find Madison waiting outside my apartment door. In brighter light, I could see that she had inherited her mother’s sharp blue eyes, her perfect bone structure, and her tendency to drop by unannounced. It was also clear from her rumpled clothes and unwashed golden hair that she had yet to make her way home.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how I found you?”
That was the first thing she said to me in the hallway. I already knew the answer. My instant reaction was to play dumb. If Madison knew her mother was one step ahead of her, she might flee for an even less obvious hiding place. I decided my good deed for the year would be to capture this stray cat myself.
“Actually, I was going to ask why you found me.”
“I used a reverse directory,” she bragged. “It used to be that only the cops and phone companies had them. Now they’re all over the Web.”
“That’s pretty clever. How did you get here?”
“SuperShuttle. I also did some research on you. I found a lot of your old press releases. They’re really good. You write them just like articles.”
“Journalists are busy people,” I said. “They can use all the help they can get.”
“Yeah, but I love how you bury the things you’re selling into the story itself. I mean you’re really subtle. I want to learn how to do that.”
I leaned against the wall. “Madison—”
“You remembered my name.”
“I’m good with names.”
“I’m not. I’m only good with faces.”
“Madison, what’s going on?”
She lost her smile. Now she looked as frazzled and desperate as Jean. “Can I come in?”
“Does your mother know you’re here?”
No. That’s why she’s here. “No. That’s why I’m here.”
“Look, Madison, I don’t want to get involved in some domestic thing.”
“It’s nothing tragic,” she insisted. “It’s not like she beats me or anything. It’s just…Look, can I just come in? I promise I won’t stay long.”
After a quality pause, I let her in. Obviously, I didn’t want to seem too eager, lest she get suspicious. But it was all a Method act. The real Scott wasn’t in the mood for live family drama. He just wanted to watch HBO until he fell asleep.
As soon as I closed the door behind us, I had a horrible thought. What if, for some malicious reason, she decided to cry rape? I’d be just as screwed as Hunta. It wasn’t too crazy to think about. After all, she clearly wasn’t a model of teenage stability, if such a model existed. Even worse, she could turn Jean against me with a few mere hand signals. Oh, it was terrible, Mother! He kept me prisoner here! When you showed up, I screamed and banged against the window! But you just couldn’t hear me!
Problem B: Lisa Glassman’s file was all over the coffee table. Before Madison had time to sit down, I gathered the papers.
“Do you want anything to drink? I’ve got water, milk, apple juice.”
“Apple juice is fine.”
“Okay.” I still had Jean’s business card in my back pocket. As soon as I slipped into the kitchenette, I pulled it out and memorized her e-mail address. It wasn’t hard for an old X-Fan. Her user name was Phoenix.
After giving Madison the last of my juice, I sat across from her and turned on my laptop. “Sorry. I just need to check my stocks.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“I invest in the Nikkei market. They go six days a week. They should be closing right about now.”
That lie had more holes than a tuna net. Fortunately, it just triggered the story of Madison’s Black Monday juju, which gave me enough time to send the message. Relieved, I closed the laptop and leaned back in my seat. We stared at each other.
“So. Madison Spelling.”
“Madison McKnight.”
“Why Madison?”
She curled up on the couch. She was a skinny little thing. Her thighs were thinner than Hunta’s arms. But her face was wide and uniquely captivating.
“I don’t know. I think it was my grandmother’s name. I hate it. Too many syllables, and I hate ‘Maddy’ even more. Of course my parents don’t know that. I mean about the syllables.”
“Oh. So your dad’s also…”
“Deaf? Yeah. So’s his wife and their daughter. My stepdad isn’t. He’s a coda like me.”
“Coda?”
“Child of Deaf Adults.”
“Oh. I wasn’t even sure a deaf couple could have a hearing child.”
She scratched her nose. “Neither of my parents were born deaf. It was just something that happened to them.”
I shook my head at myself. “Right. Of course.”
“But even if both parents are born deaf, there’s still only a twenty-five percent chance that the kid’s born deaf, too.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that. That’s really interesting.”
“Not really.”
Her tense posture was a sign for me to move on from the family thing, but I couldn’t seem to find a new topic.
To my relief, Madison took the reins. “So you’re a publicist.”
“That I am.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What would you like to know?”
“You don’t work for a company or anything, right? You’re totally freelance.”
“Have gun, will travel.”
She smiled. “That is so cool. That’s like my dream life. Hey, you need an intern?”
Before I could say anything, Madison qualified herself. “Look, I’m smart. I’m media-savvy. I can find anything on the Web. And I really want to learn this stuff. You could be my mentor.”
“God. I don’t know….”
“Come on. Why not? It’d be great for both of us. I’d come over after school and on weekends. I’d do all your filing. Answer phones. Office stuff. You wouldn’t even have to pay me. Just teach me.”
As soon as she mentioned school, it finally hit me that her situation wasn’t as dire as I’d been led to believe. Here I was, guarding her like she was about to sprint off to Zurich, when all along she had every intention of going home. I guess she just needed to get away for a bit and torture her mother in the process. Jean called it karma but I didn’t think any non-abusive parent deserved that kind of treatment.
“I don’t think so, Madison. I’m sorry.”
“Why not?”
“Well, first of all, I’m out of the house a lot—”
“So? I’m thirteen. It’s not like I’m going to choke on a toy while you’re gone.”
I laughed. “I don’t have any toys. What I do have are a lot of sensitive documents—”
“I’ll sign any gag agreement you want. You can even give me the one they use for Survivor, where I have to pay you like ten million dollars if I open my mouth.”
Yeah, that would work. Publicist Sues Teenage Girl For Gossip. Demands $10 Million From Deaf Mother.
She wouldn’t relent. “Look, I really want to learn about this stuff. Everywhere I go, I’m hit by all this…I don’t know. I don’t even know what to call it.”
“Corporate conditioning,” I offered.
She snapped her fingers. “Yeah! Exactly! On TV, in movies, in magazines. I can feel it but I can’t see it. And I know there’s like this whole psychological world behind all of it but nobody’s able to tell me anything. But you’re different. You’re like the total insider. I want to learn what they’re doing to me.”