There was so much work to be done to prep for the new album, so many things I needed to go over with Leon Jensen, the hotshot manager I had hired to manage my solo career after the King Brothers imploded. He was all business, and I liked that. He was exact opposite of the last guy, who'd spent way too much energy trying to be our friend - to the point of stuffing Gabe full of pills just to make and keep him happy.
Jensen didn't want to be my friend and it made for a refreshing change of pace. "I've got some ideas and I need to see if their workable. Maybe a duet?" I mused aloud, making a mental note to have Jensen start making me lists of female vocalists that suited my new style.
At that my mom snapped her eyes back up eagerly, like a shark scenting blood in the water. "A duet? Oh Jojo, you know Claire would be perfect for that. Your sister would love to, she has such a nice voice."
Oh god no. I could just picture Claire in a recording studio with me. The family story was that I was the control freak, but that's only because Claire manipulated everyone into thinking they wanted what she wanted all along. If I was a control freak, then she was a control mutant. "Mom, I have to do what the label tells me to, you know the drill."
"Well I would think you had some clout..." my mom said, going right for the sore spot. "They have to listen to you, don't they? If you really wanted to, you could make it happen."
I licked my lips. "Does Claire really want to?"
Mom hesitated.
I let out a breath and a low chuckle. "She doesn't even know you're asking."
Mom threw up her hands. "You caught me, fine. You happy now Mr. Smartypants?"
"What's wrong, Ma? Are you trying to send Claire as a spy or something? Make sure I'm not embarrassing the family name?"
Her cheeks reddened slightly and I knew I'd guessed it. "Well, I never had to worry about the four of you when you were together!" she huffed, mad at being called out. "The four of you out on the road, most people thought I should be petrified you would try stuff, get exposed to all these bad influences, but I knew that you had each other. And as long as you had each other, you didn't need anything else."
I inhaled slowly. As I did, my mother's face fell as she seemed to realize the absurdity of her words. "Well, I mean - " she started, and then stopped.
"Yeah," I said stiffly as I turned and zipped up my luggage. "That turned out to not be the case, did it?"
"Jonah," she sighed. Heavily. "You're still blaming him."
"No," I said straightening back up again. "Let's be clear here. I don't blame him for breaking up with his cheating girlfriend one bit. That was awful, Mom, walking in on her like that. Until the day I die, I'll never forget the look on his face. No," I shook my head. "I blame him for breaking up our band. Talk to him about how we had each other."
My mom hated this. She hated that her sons, the four famous King Brothers who were once a symbol of sibling affection for the whole damn country, now barely spoke to each other. I knew it was tearing her up inside. "He was hurt," she pleaded. "He was so angry."
"Well he was angry at the wrong people," I snapped.
My mother did that pressed lip thing she always did, like she was physically holding back the words she really wanted to say. She looked at me fiercely for a moment, the kind of maternal fire that makes you flick through your conscience really quick so you have an answer when she asks you if you know what you did wrong. Is it the broken window? The flat tire? Did I leave the lid off the milk carton again?
But I knew exactly what she thought I did wrong. And I also knew she was mad at the wrong person, so I wasn't about to apologize.
Slowly the fire drained from her eyes. She stepped back into the hall. "Well, it was good to see you, Jojo. Even if it was under sad circumstances."
"You too, Ma. I'll be down in a minute."
I hefted my suitcase and patted Duke on the head. He huffed a lungful of doggy breath in my face and gave me one of his big, dumb smiles. "You be a good boy," I told him, as I pulled my phone out from under the pillow.
There were three missed calls. All from Jensen. I must have never turned the volume back up after the wake yesterday. Curious, I swiped to call him back.
He answered like he had been waiting for me. "About time."
"I had my ringer off. What's so important?"
"Listen," I heard him shuffling papers on his desk, which was odd because he always made a point of giving me his full attention. "Were you headed in to New York?"
I blinked and then laughed. "We've had a meeting on the books for weeks now, and I have that appearance on the Howard Stern Show. So yeah, I'm headed to New York."
Jensen paused, though I could still hear the paper shuffling. He cleared his throat. "Maybe don't."
"What?" I half-laughed, half shouted.
"Don't come. You can stay home longer if you'd like."
This wasn't making a bit of sense. "Didn't we need to go over the game plan for the new album?" I reminded him. "You said you wanted to audition some guest vocalists."
Shuffle shuffle "I said that?"
"Yeah," I said, trying to lean more towards laughter than yelling. This had to be a joke. Jensen was on top of things, he was one of the best in the biz. He also seemed to have an endless stack of papers to shuffle. "You sound stressed, man," I joked. "Does my manager need a manager?"
The shuffling suddenly stopped and in the ringing silence left behind, I could hear every word he was saying loud and clear. "Listen, Jonah. There's no sense beating around the bush," Jensen said, ignoring the fact that he'd done five minutes of exactly that. "When you hired me on, it was to manage you as a King Brother. But you've gone off the rails, man. I can't work with you any more. Not after that performance at the Hullabaloo."
I felt the heat rising to my cheeks. "A fucking storm blew up, Jensen. What, you think I can control the weather? They hauled me off the stage and shut down the entire festival." My voice rose higher as I tried to make him understand. "I wasn't trying to leave."
"Have you seen the press?" he said shortly.
I'd been looking through it obsessively all morning, but he didn't need to know that. "No. I've been at my uncle's funeral," I said through gritted teeth. "With my family. My mourning family." I shook my head and tried to force a smile back onto my face so he couldn't hear how badly I was starting to panic. "You obviously watched some of the video from the festival, right? So you saw how I was giving it everything I had. I mean, Christ, didn't you see how hard I was working out there? If they hadn't dragged me off the stage I would have won that crowd over," I declared. "I know it."
"'Would have' doesn't pay the bills, Jonah. You've had three cancelled appearances since that day. Howard Stern being one of them."
My jaw went slack. "Jensen, the festival was not my fault. The wind..."
"Save it."
"You're shitting me."
"I'm not. And I can't see a way to right this ship," I heard his chair creak as he leaned back. I could picture him there in his office, completely at ease with making the biggest mistake of his career. "You've gone off course and are sinking badly. "