I’d never done this kind of stuff before, but that wasn’t the thing to tell her.
“They knew I loved my job. They knew I was good at it. They were just happy with that, I guess.” I switched beats. “Although they had a good friend. A rabbi. He gave me a hard time. I remember once he pulled me aside and said, ‘Scott, what you do is not a good living. It may be a job. It may be a well-paying job. But you’re playing tricks on people, and that’s not a good living.’”
“Damn. What’d you say to him?”
“I simply looked him right in the eye and said, ‘Silly rabbi! Tricks are for kids!’”
Harmony screamed with laughter. “You didn’t really say that!”
“No. But I would have.”
“If?”
“If any of that actually happened.”
She screamed again. “You set me up?”
“And you walked right in,” I crowed. “I’m still the tricksta. Still the slicksta.”
“You’re terrible!”
“Anything to get a smile out of you.”
“You’re too much.”
I checked the clock. “Listen, sweetheart, you’re done for the day. I want you to rest and enjoy your new digs, okay? Take a nice long bath. Order a huge meal. Spoil yourself. You’re a celebrity now. Besides, you need to recharge your phone. I don’t want to lose you to a low battery.”
She took a deep breath, then let out a stretching moan. “Maybe I’ll take a nap. If I can.”
“Good. Recharge your own battery.”
“Thank you, Scott.”
“For what?”
“For making me feel better, like always.”
I looked out the window, beaming. “Harmony, I’d move heaven and earth for you. You know that.”
“I know,” she said softly. “You the only one I trust.”
That lit me up in dangerous ways. As my feelings and senses were heightened, so were my urges. I wanted to devour a huge rack of lamb, even though it was only breakfast-time. I wanted to sprint down the street, even though I was barefoot. Now I wanted to hug Harmony, hard. I wanted to envelop her, to wrap myself around her so tight that I wouldn’t be able to tell her heartbeat from mine. Although the feeling was hot, my reasons were shamefully cold. This was a woman who, just by leaving the apartment, had managed to upstage the twenty-million dollar opening to a hundred-million-dollar theme park. This was a woman who, in just forty minutes, had scored at least thirty million dollars’ worth of comparative ad exposure. Oh, Harmony. I liked you from the moment I met you, but now — God help me — you turn me on.
________________
Once the nation’s newest celebrity disappeared inside the Miramar, the networks reluctantly returned to scheduled programming. The cable news channels, however, continued to squeeze every last drop out of Gail Steiner’s peach. They paraded an endless list of experts, authors, lawyers, pollsters, professors, prognosticators, the whole Goya beanery.
And yet as cerebral as these people were meant to seem, their conclusions were jam-packed with masturbatory drama. This new development has HUGE implications! For Hunta. For the entertainment industry. For the victims of Melrose, their families, their families’ lawyers. For all of us! God, yes! This affects all of us!
Surprisingly, very few of the strokes were devoted to Harmony herself. To the media, she was still just a stamp-sized pinup, a thumbnail tease. You could practically hear the news editors howling as they launched their flying monkeys out the window. Go, my pretties! Find me everything you can on this girl! Go! Go!
Fortunately, one of the minions had been given a head start. Hell, I’d slipped Andy Cronin the key to Harmony’s whole life story. By now, of course, he knew exactly where it fit in. By now, he was typing as fast as he could.
________________
Scott. It’s Maxina. We need to convene. Come to my hotel at 10am. Eighth floor. L’Escoffier Room.
I had just finished showering when she left the message. I knew there’d be some kind of emergency status meeting, but this seemed eerily formal. Why the change of venue? Why the fancy meeting room? Who else was coming?
At a quarter to ten, I arrived at the Beverly Hilton. Maxina had been staying there for the past week, courtesy of the Recording Industry Association of America. She wasn’t taking a dime from Mean World’s coffers. They couldn’t afford her. But Maxina wasn’t in this for the money. Like the RIAA, she remained focused on the larger battle. Why else would she leave her beautiful home in Atlanta? Her husband and sons. Her orthopedic chairs. To save one measly rapper? No way. In her mind, in her heart, she was fighting to save music.
Simba, on the other hand, had no love for the business. Many were starting to wonder if she had any love left for her husband. But when Maxina summoned her to the Hilton, she arrived just as promptly as I did. She was standing in the elevator bank when I caught her dark and lovely scorn.
“Is it me,” she asked facetiously, “or have you gotten even taller?”
She was dressed in a loose black blouse and tight gray jeans. Her long hair was clipped back. She hid herself under a hat and dark glasses, but nobody seemed to recognize her. A hefty bodyguard flanked her left side, just in case someone did.
“Simba. Hey. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
“Oh, and why not?”
“You want the real answer or the polite one?”
An elevator opened. The bodyguard escorted us in, then pushed back a plump tourist who tried to embark with us.
Simba removed her glasses. “Let me guess. You heard I was being a real pain in the ass.”
“Something like that.”
“That’s all right,” she replied as the doors slid closed. “I heard you were fucking Harmony.”
Shit. I knew there’d be a downside to chewing out the Judge, aside from his lifelong enmity. Shit, shit, shit. That was not a constructive rumor. And worse, it was the kind that denials only strengthened. I’d have to say something clever to counter the buzz. Whatever it was, I’d save it for the meeting.
“I was being a pain in the ass,” Simba admitted, three floors up. “I was sick of that hotel. Sick of Maxina telling me what to do. And I was definitely sick of Jeremy acting like he was the only one being put out.”
“But then?”
She bounced a glare through the mirrored doors. “Let’s just say I got a wake-up call this morning.”
“How’s he holding up?”
“How do you think he’s holding up?”
“It’s just medicine,” I assured her. “It may taste like crap but it’s going to make everything better again.”
“So you say.”
“Just stand by your husband. You can’t go wrong.”
The elevator stopped at the top floor. After sniffing for reporters, Simba’s bodyguard led us down the hall to our meeting place. A pair of hotel security guards blocked the entrance. They checked our IDs against their lists, then opened the double doors to a massive, sun-drenched room.
“For the record,” Simba added, “I don’t think you’re fucking Harmony.”
“Good to hear.”
She put her shades back on. “I’d like to think you have better taste than that.”
We stepped into the light.
________________
In its heyday, L’Escoffier was the swankiest of swank places to dine, a place where you could rub shoulders with the Hollywood elite over a rich crème brûlée. Eventually Merv Griffin’s people shut the restaurant down and left a chamber in its memory. The place could comfortably seat three hundred people, but there were only twelve of us here. We formed a tiny cluster in the center of the room. None of us looked very comfortable.