Without another word, I grabbed the bottle of wine from his fingers and dumped it in the sink. Then I went to my room and slammed the door behind me.
CHAPTER 3
Kingsley
Cornelius better be right about this shit helping my image, I thought as I looked out over the crowd gathered in front of the stage at the newly built Greater Chicago Zoo.
My manager had a list of things he was convinced were going to get studio execs to hire me in the upcoming Hosier biopic, and starring in something like that about a massively talented singer-songwriter could catapult my own career to a whole new level.
Everything in my career had come easily to me. But this role was highly competitive, and I didn’t have any acting experience. Cornelius was betting my reputation as a genius songwriter would outweigh my reputation as a playboy and PR risk.
Since I had never attempted to look respectable, this shit was way outside my purview, so I had to trust him.
But this whole project shit was not starting off very well.
Firstly, this whole crowd at the zoo amphitheater appeared to be mostly families, which meant my manager had gripped my arm and hissed, “don’t forget to change all that stuff you normally say. You can’t swear now! Look at all these grannies out here!”
Change what I said? I had a list of prewritten banter I rotated through, and I did not know any family-friendly banter.
“Maybe you should put a jacket on,” Cornelius hissed in agony. “Remember you have a tattoo with some serious profanity on it.”
“I’m not putting a jacket on,” I snarled. “It’s ninety-five fucking degrees outside.”
“OK, OK,” he said. “You can only see part of it anyways. Who knows, it might say fuchsia.”
He scuttled off and I felt irritated that I’d even agreed to this.
Eunice the reporter was already pissing me off, buzzing around me like a little bee and asking about my writing process and how did I come up with my ideas.
It would have been so fucking funny if Rosalie had been there, her eyes all lit up with amusement, adding some funny shit like, “he gets his best ideas in nature” or “the sunrise really brings out the poetry in his soul.”
But apparently she was not talking to me.
Also, Rosalie always did vocal warmups with me before a show, her saucy little voice always stretching and flexing mine with the perfect pitch and range, and now that she was pissed at me my voice felt tight, raw.
Even worse because it wasn’t like my normal show, so I had to do the warm-ups right there in the amphitheater.
Somewhere, a baboon howled.
I felt irritation prickle down my spine. Rosalie wasn’t even backstage watching. She was ignoring me completely, off on the outskirts of the crowd, pointing out some baby elephant or some shit to Matt, when she was supposed to be backstage.
“Man, we need to get going,” Mick my drummer said. “Some of these grannies look pretty restless.”
I glanced over at Rosalie again.
If she wanted to be a brat, fine. I wasn’t going to beg her to help me warm up.
Although I had never known Rosalie to be jealous, this must be about Dolly. That was the only explanation for her behavior. In that case, I absolutely wasn’t going to tell her the truth. I was just going to let her be jealous as long as I could, because it would serve Rosalie right for not coming to my hotel room. That was like a pretty fucking necessary part of my pre-show ritual and now I was all off balance.
“Dolly, want to help me warm up?” I called out loudly, but Rosalie didn’t even turn around.
Dolly came over, her face shining up at me like a sunbeam, which was pretty fucking annoying with the kind of headache I had.
I wanted Rosalie to come over and kick me in the shins instead, but I had to make do with what I had, and maybe if I really played this up, Rosalie would be pissed off enough to come over.
Dolly instantly started off with an operatic trill that pierced my skull, and I attempted to follow. But our voices weren’t really complementary at all, and I finally waved her away.
Whatever. Time to do this shit.
