The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

CHAPTER 11. Birmingham (First Day)

I felt way better in the morning, and when we got to the parking lot, I couldn’t wait to tell Zack my idea about crapping on the audience.

But the Latchkeys were already on their bus, I guess because Jane let me sleep late, so I didn’t get the chance. I didn’t want to tell the story to Nadine in the middle of tutoring. I wasn’t sure she’d get why it was funny and she’d probably ask me to articulate why I had that idea. Halfway through our session, Jane came into my room without knocking. Usually she knocks.

“Nadine, I need to speak with Jonathan alone,” she said in her business voice. Nadine got out without even gathering her stuff. Jane kept standing over me. “Did you go out to a nightclub with the Latchkeys in Memphis?”

“What do you mean?” I said, but my heart was drumrolling at 120 beats per minute.

“Never mind,” she said. “I know the answer already. What I really need to know is if you drank alcohol or not. Don’t lie to me.”

I wanted to say, But you lie to me all the time, you never tell me where you’re going at night, you don’t tell me when my father is trying to reach out to me, for all I know he’s a nice guy and not a bastard like you say. But I said, “Why are you asking this?”

She showed me her phone. There was an article on a news site headlined BREATHALYZER-TAKING? 11-YEAR-OLD JONNY VALENTINE ACTING DRUNK AT NIGHTCLUB (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO). It had all the standard search-engine terms below, like “Jonny Valentine” and “Celebrity” and the name of the nightclub, plus things like “Scandal” and “Underage Drinking” and “Busted!” and “Citizen Journalism.”

There was a low-def phone video of me that Jane played. It was so dark you couldn’t see it too good, but they’d edited it to when Zack handed me my glass of ginger ale both times, and paused it and put a circle around the handoff, then it showed me drinking from it and sleeping on the couch and almost falling down when I stood up. I wish Walter had been with us after all and could’ve beaten up the person who took the video like he did with the child predator in St. Louis. Or at least provided visual buffer with his body. But if he’d allowed me to go, Jane would’ve fired him on the spot.

“Only a little,” I said. “It was an accident, though.” She looked at me hard. “I mean it was my fault. I asked for some. I wanted to try it.”

“How were you there in the first place?”

“I asked the Latchkeys if they’d take me. I think they were afraid if they didn’t, they’d get fired or something.”

“Exactly how much did you drink, and does anyone have proof that you did? The entire truth, this time.”

I told her the entire truth, mostly. “Two drinks. No one has any proof. I made Zack do it under the table. The other Latchkeys didn’t know.”

“If that’s the truth, we can work with it,” she said. “That is the whole truth?”

“Yes. I swear.”

She told me to finish up with Nadine while she consulted with the label on how to spin this. Then she said, “This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done. When we get to Birmingham, you are not to talk to any of the Latchkeys. You hear me?”

I told her yes. Before she left, I said, “I’m sorry, Jane.”

She just told Nadine to come in. I didn’t tell Nadine what we’d talked about. She must have known something big had happened, especially since I couldn’t concentrate on my reading comprehension passages. Jane was going to get even angrier at me later and also at Zack, this was only crisis-control mode when she’s actually calmer, and I wanted to warn him but I had no way to do it. But Nadine didn’t ask about what happened or lecture me for not paying attention. She was always cool about things like that.

I stayed in my room the rest of the ride to Birmingham, and when we got there, Jane escorted me to my room and told me to stay there all night and that she’d be checking in every hour. I could’ve called Zack’s room, but by now she’d definitely have talked to him already, and I was worried I’d get him in even more trouble. I turned on the TV to see if it was on the news, except Jane had parentally blocked all the channels, so I played Zenon and did my homework but was crap at both.

Jane came in at 9:30. “Here’s the story,” she said. “No one’s come forward saying they saw you ingest alcohol. We’re going to say you were drinking soda, and you were tired from being on tour and fell asleep, but that you regret going to an over-twenty-one establishment. If we’re lucky, this will be a blip on the radar and pass.”

I didn’t want to say anything where she’d get upset. This was a worse feeling than when she told me Valentine Days had debuted at twenty-eight on Billboard.

“The label’s set up a photo op tomorrow at a children’s hospital before sound check,” she added.

“Is Zack coming, too?”

“No. The Latchkeys have just left.”

“Left where?”

“L.A., I suppose. The label is sending a new band on a red-eye. Some Christian rock group. But not that Christian. Ticket holders are permitted refunds if they want. We figure we’ll get as many additions as refunds.”

“They’re not on tour anymore?”

“Of course not. We couldn’t keep them after this.”

I felt like a tough minion had just delivered a sword-punch-kick combo straight to my gut. My dumb, beefy gut.

“It’s not their fault! They shouldn’t have to leave just because I was stupid!” I said. “You can’t do this.”

“It’s already happened, and they do have to leave. I’ve told you repeatedly, an entourage is the downfall of any celebrity,” she said. “What do you care anyway? They probably brought you along just so they could get into the club.”

My eyes got all hot, and I could feel I was going to cry, but I fought it back. When you can fake-cry onstage like I do for “Heart Torn Apart,” it’s easier to stop real tears, too. “That’s not true.”

“You don’t understand how these things work.” She stood up from the couch to show the discussion was over. She looked about ten years older to me, with all her wrinkles popping out under the bad lighting.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want the Latchkeys to leave.”

“This is to save your fucking career,” Jane hissed, like she was trying to hold in her anger the way I was holding in my diarrhea the other night. “The label has a morality clause in your contract they can try to claim you’re in breach of, and they’d love any excuse to back out of your next album. You want that to happen? You want to sell the house, go to a shittier label, get no promotion next time, put your career in the toilet?”

“They don’t want to back out of my next album,” I said. “They just want to do brand extension.”

“Everyone knows that’s a nicer way of saying rebranding,” she said. “And you don’t rebrand something unless it’s not selling.”

Sales for Valentine Days weren’t great compared to Guys vs. Girls, but I wouldn’t have thought they were so low that they’d drop me after just two albums. A lower-tier label would pick me up in a second, but Jane was right, it wouldn’t be the same. I’d be one of those artists who was lucky to crack the charts for a week or two. Everything I’d killed myself for the last two years would be erased. I’d never get fans like the kind the Latchkeys had, and definitely not like what MJ had. We wouldn’t be able to afford Walter, either. We might not even need Walter. And it wouldn’t be worth Jane’s time to personally manage me, so she’d get some cut-rate hack to do the job instead. My career would be in the toilet. No one would care about me anymore or remember me. I’d be diarrhea.

“No, I don’t want that to happen,” I said.

“Then don’t argue anymore. You screwed up, and this is what happens when you screw up. Internet presales are flat as it is, we don’t need some uptight parents’ group banning us.” She let out a long breath. “At least this is partly on Stacy, for picking them as your opener.”

I didn’t know presales were flat, too, which meant less money for promoting the MSG concert, which meant even flatter Internet sales. The vicious cycle of marketing budgets. There was nothing I could say. It was my fault.

I listened to the rough cut of the Latchkeys’ new album on my iPod in bed. One of the tracks began with a few seconds of Zack talking in the studio. They would cut it out of the real version, but you can hear him say, “For real this time, no more fucking around, especially you, Timothy,” and everyone laughs when he says Timothy before the drummer counts it off. The song itself was B-side material for sure, but I put it on repeat, and every time it looped back, it was like Zack was in my room, coming back to the same moment in a time machine, saying, Good night, little man.