“What?”
Her voice was low and guttural now, full of teary rasp. “Stop calling me ‘sweetheart.’ Stop calling me ‘honey.’ Stop talking down to me like I’m your goddamn bitch.”
I leaned forward, stunned. “I’m sorry. Harmony. I didn’t know that bothered you. If I’d known—”
“Just stop talking! I am so sick of you talking! I’m sick of you talking, and playing me, and acting like you care about me and shit!”
“I do care about you.”
“You never cared about me! You only care about getting what you want!”
I stood up. “Harmony, I’m not the one you’re mad at right now.”
“Yes you are! I’m mad at you, Scott! I’m mad at you for always talking down to me! I’m mad at you for always telling me how I feel! I’m mad at you for not telling me about Lisa Glassman!”
“Wait. What?”
“And for promising me all this money and then not letting me take a dime!”
“Hold it!”
“And I’m mad at you for kissing me and promising me the world and then locking me up in this motherfucking room for the rest of my life!”
“Wait!”
“Fuck you!”
The line went dead. The phone fell out of my hand. I put it back on the coffee table, then lay down on the couch again. My eyes were wide open. I spent the next few hours staring up at the ceiling, connecting the stucco dots into images that were both grand and intricate.
________________
Although she didn’t tell me, Harmony had another visitor on Saturday.
At three o’clock a lovely young woman of Korean descent approached the bodyguards outside Harmony’s suite. From her small white bikini, she seemed to be a guest who’d stumbled off (way off) from the pool area. After greeting the men, she removed the towel from her waist and slowly spun around for them. Her goal, aside from causing erections, was to prove that she wasn’t hiding any recording equipment. She wasn’t with the press. She was simply a businesswoman who required a few moments of Harmony’s time.
Like most women who caused erections, and like most erections, she was indulged. The bodyguards let her deliver her pitch through a two inch crack in the door.
Harmony, my name is Kathy Oh. I’m a publicist. A very good one. Now you can listen to me or not, but I’m telling you right now that whoever’s handling you is wasting you. You’ve got a spotlight on you that few people ever get. You should use it before it goes away. Make a difference. Make some money. I can get you enough offers in the next seven days to set you up for the rest of your life.
To give Harmony a taste of her own potential, Kathy brought a ready-made deal. On behalf of the Coca-Cola Company, she was authorized to offer Harmony fifty thousand dollars, all up front, in exchange for being seen with a can of Coke in her hand. Left or right. Diet or regular. The variables didn’t matter as long as the can was caught on the news. The arrangement was completely confidential, and it was valid whether or not Harmony signed with Kathy. She would return, with cash and paperwork, at 6 p.m. Think it over. Have a nice afternoon.
Naturally, the offer provoked much discussion among Harmony, her bodyguards, and her visiting roommates. Even her friends, who had each turned down tabloid money on principle, couldn’t find a problem with the Coke proposal. Neither could Harmony. The one thing standing between her and free money was the stern specter of me.
Circumventing me altogether, she called Alonso, the lenient parent, in the hope that he would bless the deal. No such luck. He simply told her everything I would have. Despite Kathy’s grand fancy, word of the arrangement would inevitably reach the press, and the press took a harsh eye to secret shills. Harmony was better off sticking to open endorsements, and not until after the twist.
But, sensing Harmony’s resentment, Alonso adjusted his spiel. Look, that’s just how Scott explained it. If it were up to me, I’d be having a Coke and a smile right alongside you. But this is his show. And we both know his take on this.
I didn’t learn about this until Sunday morning, when Maxina gave me the secondhand story. I had to laugh, not just at Alonso’s cheap evasion but at Kathy Oh’s resourcefulness. Like me, she was a freelance operative. Unlike me, she was renowned for her effective lack of subtlety.
Yet we were both minnows compared to Maxina. She was never one for the bikini trick, thank God, but she had her own way of getting things done. By the time she showed up at my doorstep, bearing news and gifts, she knew who was in the superior position. I couldn’t blame her for being smug. I couldn’t even blame her for being superior. I lost Harmony on my own, with only a little help from others.
________________
“She’ll come around,” Maxina assured me from the bottom of my front steps. “That thing with her father really threw her for a loop. You just got caught in it.”
She stood. I sat. She was clean and well rested. I still wore my clothes from last night, plus a new dark circle under each eye. I was miserable. She was not. But her joy had little to do with me. On Friday night, while in the lowest of low moods, she returned to her hotel room only to find her husband and sons waiting there, fresh from Atlanta. They’d conspired with her staff to surprise her, and it worked. Maxina told me she screamed so loud, she probably set off every car alarm in the area.
Currently, her three men — all big and burly fellows — waited patiently outside her rented Lexus. They were all about to take a nice, relaxing jaunt up the Pacific Coast Highway. Maxina only came by to deliver her latest coup, which I now held in my hands. It was a cardboard box the size of a toaster oven. There wasn’t a news director alive who wouldn’t club me for its contents.
“Well,” I admitted, “you certainly put me in my place.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You told her about Lisa Glassman.”
Expressionless, Maxina unwrapped a peppermint candy. “Yes. That I did.”
“Kind of like the scorpion stinging the frog, don’t you think?”
“It was a calculated risk.”
“It was your first bad move.”
She popped the candy in her mouth, then slipped the wrapper into her shirt pocket. “You had way too much power over her. Every time I talked to her, every other sentence out of her mouth was ‘Scott says this’ or ‘Scott says that,’ ‘Scott thinks this’ or ‘Scott thinks that.’” She laughed. “I mean you really won her over. I was trying to ride my way in on the surrogate-mother train, but you, you seduced her.”
Maxina brushed a ladybug off her shoulder. “Not literally, of course.”
I had the urge to become loud and nasty, but her family was just ten yards away.
“Ordinarily, that wouldn’t concern me too much,” she added. “Except that you yourself were getting a little too ‘Harmony this and that’ for my comfort.”
I lowered my head and laughed. Maxina didn’t share the humor.
“I’ve been in this game a long, long time, Scott. One of the reasons I’ve endured, I think, is because I’ve always kept an inch of space between me and my causes. It doesn’t stop me from fighting passionately. It doesn’t stop me from working eighty-hour weeks. It just stops me from losing myself in the mission. I’ve seen some bright and talented people burn up that way.”
She tossed me a meaningful glance. “So have you.”
I twirled the box in my hands. It didn’t make a sound. Whoever packed the tapes sure packed them tight.
Maxina sighed. “Okay, I have better things to do than stand here and annoy you. I just wanted to drop off the present. To be honest, I was hoping I could convince you to convince Harmony to end this sham tomorrow, but obviously—”