This Is How It Really Sounds (41 page)

He hated seeing himself painted that way, like everything he did depended on them. “Yeah, but I wrote those six songs
before
I went to Shanghai. When I was still nothing, by your standards.”

“Not nothing, Pete. You were still you. You were the guy that was willing to fly to Shanghai and punch that asshole in the face, which he richly deserved. That stands on its own.”

“But you were manipulating me the whole time!”

“No!” Beth answered. “We were
facilitating
you. It was your idea and your determination that made it all happen.”

He was confused. He'd come here tonight to get something straight, but he wasn't sure what it was anymore. “What about Charlie? Did he know?”

Bobby spoke. “Charlie knew everything, Pete. He arranged the videos. He got them shot and posted in China through his contacts there. He set it all up.”

Pete didn't say anything. Charlie, too. He'd probably had people in the crowd of fans, or standing around on the Bund like tourists. Maybe that Chinese girl he'd met, too. Maybe it was all Charlie, even the part when he wanted to back out but went through with it anyway, for Charlie's sake. Maybe that was just Charlie playing him, again. He shook his head and let out a long breath that he hadn't realized he was holding. “Well, you got me on that one,” he said quietly. “You got me.“

Ira cleared his throat. Even though he'd been in Hollywood for a long time, he was still a book dude from New York, which set him apart. “Pete, I just heard about this a couple of hours ago, so I'm looking at it from the outside.”

That was a relief. “Well, I'm glad there's at least one person who wasn't in on the joke.”

“I admit: it's not a perfect way for things to happen. In fact, it's pretty damned weird. But I think Beth and Bobby were just trying to help you in the only way they could.”

“Ira, they lied to me! I mean, you're a moral person: don't you see that's wrong?”

“Yes, it's wrong. They weren't honest. But they couldn't be. If they had been, then millions of people who've gotten a little bit of joy or a little feeling of justice from what you did never would have heard anything about it. There was nothing phony about what happened in Shanghai.”

“I know that, Ira! I was proud of what I did! I thought I did something good. Something pure. For myself. Now all I think is, I got played! Again! Like I always do! And I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life lying about it! All these people are accusing me of a publicity stunt—I just want to say, Yeah, you're right! You're fucking right! It
was
all a publicity stunt! That's what I want to tell them.”

Bobby actually came to his feet. “Pete, hold on! Just hold on! You need to get this straight! You're going on tour in one week. It's fully booked; we're adding extra dates. You're making six thousand dollars a day just in downloads. You can't fuck yourself over like that! You're mad at me? Fire me! But for God's sake, Pete, please don't piss this all away. You did something for people that they could never do for themselves, and they love you for it. They love you like a hero! But they love you because you're real, and they will hate you even harder if they think you're fake. They will turn on you like piranhas. Take a minute and imagine what that's going to feel like!”

Beth took up where Bobby left off. “You have all the power here, Pete. All you have to do is say
one
word in
one
interview, and it will all come crashing down. Within days. And all your effort to find that prick and strike a blow for the little guy will be completely undone. Your career will be over, and that will be permanent. That will be the rest of your life.” Her voice caught. “Everybody in this room loves you, Pete. You're the only one we know who's crazy enough and brave enough and just … completely unreasonable enough to do what you did. You touched the untouchable. You really did. Please don't make it all look like a sham. Because it wasn't one.”

He sat there hunched over and staring at his shoes. There was nothing he could say that they wouldn't have a perfectly good answer for. “You all see me as just a silly guy who sings okay and who'll act crazy enough to sell a few tickets. And you know something? Finally, I see myself that way, too. Thanks for making it all clear.” He stood up to go. “Ask Charlie to call me, please.”

“I'll do that tonight.” Beth stood up. “Pete—”

He held up his hand. “Forget it, Beth. I can find my way out. I'd rather go out alone, if that's okay. Just respect me in that, at least.”

“We'll talk tomorrow,” she said.

“Sure, whatever. I'm still in. I'll shut up like a good boy.” He opened the door of the den and hesitated. “You know the most demoralizing thing about all this, Beth? The most depressing thing? It's that I know you're right. Without you and Bobby, I'm just another over-the-hill rock star with a bunch of new songs that nobody wants to hear. I'm a nobody.”

He went out and closed the door behind him. When he turned, Dylan was sitting there, watching, listening. He'd been waiting to show him how to advance in City of the Dead.

“Hey, Dylan.”

The boy got up from the chair and stood in front of him. “What's wrong?”

Pete looked down at him. Dylan's eyes were at the level of his chest, gazing upward to his own. He wanted to get on his knees and talk to him, the way he'd used to, but Dylan was too old for that now. He patted his shoulder awkwardly instead. “Sometimes, my man…” He trailed off. He couldn't think of anything to say, didn't have some stale bromide he'd pulled down off an Internet commentary board. He looked down at the little person wanting so badly to grow, to be taken seriously, to be in control. All that impatience and unhappiness swirling there in that little face. “I'm really sad right now, Dylan. I'm forty-five years old and I don't understand life at all.”

“Neither do I,” the boy said, and he gave a beleaguered little smile. “But at least I can get you past level six.”

Pete started laughing; then he felt his vision blurring. “Level six, eh? That's a start.” He wanted to reach down and hug that last vestige of childhood but he knew it would make Dylan feel awkward, so he just stood there beaming at him for a few moments. At last he clapped his hand on the boy's upper arm. “Do your homework, man. 'Cause this weekend, you and me, we're fuckin' some zombies
up
!” He walked down the hallway, threw back, “I'll have my people set it up with your people.”

“Got it!”

“That's your mom and dad, in case you were wondering.”

“I know that!”

“Tell your sister I said hello.”

“Okay!”

He unlatched the door and stepped outside, then put his face to the opening. “I love you, Dylan.”

The voice came back to him. “I love you, too, Pete!”

He closed the door and started along the footlights that led to the driveway. The lawn was green in the little pools of footlight and black beyond that, and he walked along from pool to pool listening to his soles scuff on the brick pathway. He was going to be asked about Shanghai in e-mails and in interviews, forever. His mother was going to ask about it, and so would his sisters. Even Dylan would ask him one day if it was real, and he'd have to go on lying. He felt a mixture of sadness and confusion and grief and, somewhere in there, the warmth of Dylan's consolation. And maybe it was supposed to be like that, that mix of all those opposite things at once, that you were supposed to just let wash over you without trying to identify and name each one. He gave up trying to figure any of it out and just let it play across his mind. His phone buzzed, but he ignored it.

When he got home, he checked his voice mail on the call he hadn't answered. Charlie had left a message, and, as pissed as he was at him, he couldn't help feeling a flush of affection when he heard the old man's voice. “Pete! If you're not sore, I'd like you to meet someone.”

 

10

Super-Hot Mystery Babe

Pete guessed
the heat was off. Beth's lawyer had already said there was no real legal threat, and whatever other revenge Peter Harrington might be planning didn't seem to be happening. No nasty letters. No smear campaign. It seemed like the guy had just decided to drop it. Charlie named a coffee shop up on Melrose and said twelve noon would be the best time. It surprised Pete that he didn't specify Canter's Deli, their usual place. When he got there, Charlie was sitting in a booth at the back of the room, facing the door. He pulled himself carefully to his feet as Pete came in and watched the singer cross the restaurant, a serious look on his face. He put his hand out to shake, then motioned toward the booth. “Your ex called. I figured it was time we talked.”

“Thanks.” Pete slid onto the plastic cushion, acutely aware that his back was to the door. Charlie could have somebody slip in with a silenced .25 and put a slug into his skull. The old man seemed a little sinister now, and, at the same time, there was a crap-load of stuff he was itching to talk over with him. They'd never done the kind of postgame commentary where you talk shit about the touchdowns you scored and all the mistakes the boneheads on the other side made. He wasn't sure where to start. There were three menus on the table, and he picked one up and looked it over without saying anything. Let Charlie make the first move.

“Are you sore at me?” Charlie finally asked.

“Why would I be sore at you?”

“C'mon, Pete! We went over there and we got the job done. That's something to be happy about.”

“You lied to me, Charlie.”

He gave a soft sigh. “I did what I was hired to do—”

“Yeah, I understand that. Your job was to lie to me. That whole time, when I thought I was doing some hero shit and striking a blow for the good guys, that whole time I was just somebody being
managed
.”

Charlie didn't get excited. “Do you wish you'd known? Because my guess is, to your credit, we'd have flown back from Shanghai right away. And I say to your credit because I know you're not a phony. You've got integrity. You'd never do something so calculating and self-interested. Instead, you'd have spent the rest of your life sinking into some long, pathetic, drunken retirement, wishing you'd taken that one shot when you had the chance.”

“You're right, Charlie! Okay? That's been explained to me six thousand times already. I'm all out of logical resistance. But somehow, I just wish it had been real.”

“Pete, it was real!” Charlie got a strange expression on his face, almost a smile. “You think it's not real, but it's a bigger real. That's what I wanted to show you today.”

“What do you mean?”

“You'll find out. But let me say this: I'm sorry I wasn't straight with you. This job was on a need-to-know basis for all the obvious reasons, and I'm sorry I couldn't be completely honest. I thought I was looking out for your best interests.” Charlie cleared his throat. “Also, I never got a chance to tell you how much you impressed me. I've seen a lot of trained intelligence professionals who would have had trouble pulling that off the way you did, first time out.”

“Thanks, Charlie. But now I've got to lie about it the rest of my life. How do I manage that?”

“You just tell your part of it,” the old man said mildly. “You had a gripe, you went to Shanghai, and you set Peter Harrington straight. You don't know anything about anything else. After a while, people will quit asking. They always do.”

“Great. That's kind of depressing all by itself.”

“Do you forgive me?”

He looked at the deep wrinkles in Charlie's old face and the misty eyes. Yeah, he was a deceptive, manipulative old man, but there was something there that was true. “Charlie, man, how could I be mad at you? I'm not capable of staying mad at anyone. It's a fucking character flaw. And you know something? By the time we went to Shanghai, I wasn't even pissed at that guy anymore. I only hit him at the end because I didn't want to fail on you.” He lit up at the memory. “Especially after you took down the bodyguard. Dude, you played him like the two of clubs!”

Charlie grinned. “Aawww! That was easy. You should have seen it: he kept apologizing all the way to the hospital.”

“Were you hurt?”

“No. But I didn't want them to know that.”

Pete saw Charlie's gaze shift past his shoulder, then his face took on an expression he hadn't seen on him before: a rapt and delighted smile that filled his eyes. Charlie began to slide out of the booth, still looking toward the door, and Pete turned around.

There was an old woman coming toward them across the restaurant. She must have been eighty, slightly bent at the shoulders, wearing a powder-blue cashmere sweater over a pale pink blouse, her white hair twisted into thick braids that were wrapped gracefully around the top of her head, Heidi-style.

“Pete, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine. Anna Maier.”

“Anna Goldstein,” she corrected, raising her hand toward Pete. “It's a pleasure.”

“With all due respect for Mr. Goldstein,” Charlie said, “she was Maier when we met. Old habits die hard.”

Charlie had the kind of lift in his voice that Pete's grandfather would have called “chipper,” a word he'd never used before but that fit perfectly here. Pete grasped her hand, which was small and dry and delicate, and mumbled something polite. He took in her powdered face, with the lipstick and rouge she'd applied, the snowy cables of hair held perfectly in place with bobby pins, the pearls. She'd made an effort to look pretty, and she
was
pretty! Charlie was
beaming
! It was really happening here!

They all sat down, with Pete and Charlie facing Anna. She had rich brown eyes. “This is very exciting for me,” she said, pleasantly. “I don't get to meet many famous people.”