45 - Feces, Meet Fan

Richie strummed another chord or two and picked up the pen again. He was in a good place today. The words were flowing. The music was flowing. They were melding together in a cathartic salve to soothe his tattered soul.

He was convinced that if he could get this album finished, the ghosts would finally be exorcised.  Work - this work - would be the final step in his personal road to redemption.    There was a light at the end of the tunnel and he was getting steadily closer.

And finding the inner fortitude and strength to put the songs in front of producer and get the tracks down...  It would give him something to fill the void besides booze.  Once he got this off his chest he could live life clean and fully present. 

He set the guitar aside for a moment and, returning the pen to the center of the pad that lay on the coffee table, Richie swept his hand to the right.  Long, string-imprinted fingertips gently grasped the glass stem of his wine glass. A rich red vintage swirled in its bowl, and then swam past his lips.

Wine relaxed him. The words came more fluently if he had a glass while he wrote.

The fragile base clicked against the teak surface of the table, and he scooped up the phone that was also lying there, face-down.   It had been on silent, as was his habit when writing, and he pushed the button to wake it.

“What the hell?” 

He had six missed calls from his publicist and a text – all in the last ten minutes.

[2:30 PM]RHONDA: Call me.  NOW!

What could be so damned important? 

He held the phone at arm’s length so he could read the names in his contact list, scrolling until he found Rhonda Valentine.    With a single tap, he initiated the call and leaned back into the sofa, crossing his legs so that his right ankle was resting on his left knee and waited for it to ring.  He didn’t think it had a chance to do that when she answered.

“Where have you been and what have you been doing?  Better yet, who was doing it with you?”

The normally unflappably thirty-something’s voice was terse.  Or perhaps annoyed.

“Hello to you, too, Darlin’,” he drawled, putting on his game face.  Never let ‘em see you sweat unless it’s on the stage.  It was a motto that went way back..  “What’s the problem?”

“TMZ has called here no less than three times in the last half an hour wanting confirmation that you fell off of a stool in a drunken stupor, injuring your back and driving you into rehab again.”

Mother.  Fucker. You’ve got to be kidding me!

Only two people knew about that, and one of them was his best friend and boss.  Jon would never breathe a word of it.  Ever.  But his new girlfriend…  had called a gossip rag from Richie’s fucking house.

That bitch!

“Well?”  The pitbull on his payroll demanded.  “Is it true?  What happened?  I have to know so I can figure out how to spin this, Richie.”

He was beyond furious.  A woman who was a guest in his home went and blabbed a private incident?  What the hell kind of nerve did she have?  All because he was slightly inappropriate?  Because that wasn’t a blip on the inappropriate radar in their world.  If he’d been inclined, Richie could have bent her over the counter, fucked her senseless, and still made it fly with Jon.  She should consider herself lucky he’d jacked off before coming to the kitchen.

“I had a house guest who might have misrepresented an incident,” he informed her tightly.  “I slipped in my kitchen.  Period.  It didn’t even require medical attention.  Anything they’ve heard has been blown completely out of proportion, and I’m sure as hell not going to rehab.  Get a lid on this Rhonda.”

❧❧❧

“Jon, it’s not good,” Jeri told him gravely.  “TMZ has been calling your PR people trying to confirm a story about Richie.  Something about hurting his back in a drunken fall in his kitchen and that he’s headed back to rehab.”

Sonofoabitch!  Richie, you schmuck.  Why can’t you keep your ass sober??

He didn’t need this now.  Hell, he never needed this.  Every… damn… time...  he got one of these phone calls, it sent his blood pressure skyrocketing high enough to dwarf the Statue of Liberty.

Call-waiting beeped in his ear before he could form a more coherent thought, and he jerked the phone away from his head to squint at the screen.  He felt the furrows trench into his forehead as deep as the Grand Canyon and the frown lines around his mouth set in concrete. 

Sambora. 

His anger married itself to a sinking feeling of dread.  There were only so many places this information could have come from, and he kind of doubted Richie leaked his own backslide.

Slapping the device back against his ear, he used a velvet glove over his voice of steel. It wasn’t her fault, after all.  “Jeri, you know the rule.  No comment.  Ever.  I gotta go.  Thanks for the heads up.”

He swiped a resigned finger over the right button to switch calls and braced himself.  God only knew how Richie would react.  Anger, casual indifference, or devastation – any and all were possible, depending on his mood when the news broke.

“You brought that bitch into my house when you don’t even know how to keep a leash on her?”

Apparently Richie assumed Jon already knew what he already knew.  It was a fair assumption.  He usually did. 

“Calm the fuck down, Richard.”  He kept his voice flat and uncolored by any semblance of emotion as he paced the wall of windows in his living room.  Going into defense and killing each other wasn’t going to undo anything.  “You don’t know that Sheridan did anything, so don’t go slingin’ shit, when you’re the one who fell in it.”

“I don’t know?  How the hell could I NOT know?  You wouldn’t tarnish the damn band image, and she was the ONLY other one who knows about it.”

Jesus H. Christ.

He perched on the arm of the sofa, disheveling his hair with a restless palm, his knee bouncing agitatedly.  Why couldn’t life just be simple for once in his damn life? 

“No.  To be fair, Dottie knows about it.” 

Also to be fair, that was about as asinine as Jon calling TMZ personally.  Dorothea had gone decades without breathing a word to anyone about anything.  She couldn’t be pissed enough to take a lifetime code of silence and shatter it with one bitchy blow.  Could she?

“Well, she’s sure as fuck never cared before,” Richie concurred with the unspoken rationale.  “Why would she start now?  No.  It was your fuckin’ girlfriend who tried to sell me out.  I heard her on the phone with that gossip rag while she was still in my damn house.”

“What?  What gossip rag?  What the hell are you talking about?”

The call to the publisher?  Was that what Richie was talking about?  Frowning, Jon realized Sheridan never offered any further explanation after saying the woman was an old friend. 

“She was in my office on the phone.  I heard her.  Told the chick she had some interesting news for her, but that she wanted her to keep it under wraps for the time being.”  The bitter chuckle rankled in Jon’s ear.  “Gee, wonder what the hell that could’ve been?”

Jon scrubbed a hand over his face, pained eyes scrunched together to block out the shit storm flying around him.  Blowing a sharp breath out, he forced his eyes wide and his blood pressure down.  “Let’s not forget Grace is not exactly out of the loop here.  Reality is, you don’t know jack.”

“I know Sheridan keeps your balls in her tampon case.”

There was no way he could engage in that debate without creating an irreparable rift in their friendship.  Richie was upset and emotional.  As usual, Jon had to be the one to man-up and take care of business instead of wallowing in the gutter.  He didn’t get the luxury of defending himself.  “I will get to the bottom of this, and in the meantime…”

“Yeah, I got it, Boss,” the normally congenial guitarist sneered, loathing dripping from his voice.  “Keep my fuckin’ mouth shut.  I’m not a moron.”

“S’not what it looked like when your drunk ass it the floor.” The Jersey in him couldn’t resist the one-line zinger, but he stood and seamlessly shifted back to his Godfather persona.  “This will die a quick and painless death if we don’t feed it.  I’m hanging up.  I’ll call you back when I know something.”

Jon crossed the arm holding the phone over his middle and placed the fingers of his other hand thoughtfully against his lips.  His mind raced as the lights of New York City did their best to break through the early evening darkness that had just settled into the bustling metropolis.

He didn’t want to believe Sheridan could be responsible for this.  She was so…  responsible, honest, compassionate, caring…  All the positive traits he liked to think that he, himself, possessed. 

But she doesn’t have your negative traits does she?  Temper, arrogance, impatience.  What negative traits does she have for that matter? She’s almost too good to be true.

There was at least one instance of dishonesty – or lie by omission.  She’d concealed that egg donation thing from her family and husband.  Was she simply omitting all of her bad qualities? 

She told you.  Doesn’t that count for something?

“Dad?”

He whirled around, commanding his facial muscles into a more neutral expression.  “Yeah, Jess?”

His oldest son gestured toward the staircase and the eight foot evergreen monstrosity that had been delivered about an hour ago.  “Do we have to wait until after the tree for dinner?  What are we having?”

A reluctant smile twitched at Jon’s lips.  Sometimes life came down to basics.  Starving teenage boys were basics. 

“Go find something to snack on, and then start putting lights on the tree.  As soon as I call your mom, I’ll run out and pick up some dinner.  We’ll start with the ornaments after we eat.”

“Can we have pizza?”

He snickered.  “Pizza?  Again?  Don’t you want something different for a change?”

“No.”  Jesse clearly had no idea why that would even cross his mind. 

“Go see if you can sell Steph on it,” he conceded with a sigh, knowing the other boys would be thrilled.  “Lemme make my call and I’ll stick my head in before I leave.”

“I can just call for delivery, you know.”

“Yeah, but I have an errand to run, anyway.  It’ll be just as easy to pick it up.  Now go.”

As the exasperated teen made his way back to the lower-level bedrooms, Jon slowly strode past the unadorned tree, carefully taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the top and got to his office.  Closing the door behind him, he took the few concentrated steps that would put him behind the big wooden desk.  He hoped it would remind him to stay calm and detached during this conversation.

Jesus, this is gonna suck.

A root canal would be preferable to making this call, but it was preferable to the alternative of calling Sheridan first.  He didn’t want to think this was possible.  He didn’t want to believe it.

So he would start with Dorothea.  She stayed pissed at him lately, anyway.

The phone rang once in his ear.  Then again.  And again.

Answer the damn phone so I can get this over with.

“Hello?” she picked up on the fourth ring.

“Dottie.”  He didn’t waste time with pleasantry bullshit.  “Have you seen TMZ?”

“No.  I didn’t watch that when I was married to a celebrity.  Why would I watch it now?” The snarkiness was so familiar that he barely registered it as anything other than her normal tone of voice. 

“They’re trying to confirm a piece on Richie.  If they haven’t run it yet, it’s just a matter of time.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!  What’s he done now?” she sighed with disgust.

“Nothing that you don’t already know about.  They somehow got wind of the fall he took in the kitchen this weekend…  The one I told you about yesterday.”

A thick, heavy silence grew long enough to bridge the distance from SoHo to Jersey.  It was stretching to the verge of being pointedly uncomfortable when she finally spoke

“I know…” she uttered with a deceptive and eerie calm.  “That you aren’t implying they heard it from me.”

“I’m just covering all the bases.”

“Oh really?  Did you cover the base that you’re fucking?  Your girlfriend?  I can only assume that if you were in bed there, that she was too.”

“Dorothea…”

But she wasn’t stopping to listen until she’d said her piece.  “I have never, in almost thirty years, spoken a word to anyone about the shitty trouble you guys can get yourselves into.  Sounds like she didn’t make it thirty minutes.”

“Don’t start!   I’m just ask-“

“No, you’re just insulting me,” she interrupted sharply.  “I realize you aren’t my husband anymore, but-  Christ, Jon!  Don’t you have any respect at all for me?”

He let his head fall back and his eyes closed in a rare silent prayer for strength.  This was what he’d been dreading.  It wasn’t that way.  Deep down, he knew she didn’t do it, but the alternative…

“Of course I respect you,” Jon assured her evenly once he’d checked his frustration.  “I respect the hell out of you.  That’s why I called you before I made any assumptions.”

She snorted loudly and rudely in his ear.  “Yeah, well, you’re a better person than I am.  I’m making plenty of assumptions.  And, whether you will admit it or not, you know they’re the right ones.”