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“What does Sloan like to do?” he asked.
I squeezed my temples. “She likes to cook. Paint. See Kristen.”
“Okay, then that’s what you arrange. She needs a vacation from this shit. The burnout is real, and you’re not even overseas yet. You drag Sloan to the UK like this and she’s jet-lagged and miserable, and she’s gonna end up going the way of my second wife, packing up and leaving your ass for your drummer while you’re at sound check somewhere in Berlin.”
I nodded wearily.
“And she’s sick?” he asked.
“She’s been sick for weeks,” I admitted. I probably should have made sure she went to urgent care, but she hadn’t had a fever and it wasn’t exactly easy to get away.
“I’ll send a rock doc over to have a look at her.”
“A what?”
“A rock doc. A musician’s physician? They’re on call for tours. They come to you. There’s a guy in Memphis I like. I’ll get him over there. He’ll patch her up—antibiotics, a shot of B12, she’ll be right as rain. I’ll do that and you figure out how to get her home for a few weeks.”
I let out a long breath. “I guess it’s a good idea.”
“Of course it is. All right, I gotta go. I gotta bring the wife a mimosa and a credit card in bed or my back might never recover from this couch.”
“Why don’t you just turn off your phone?” I asked tiredly.
“Because I need to be there when my clients call. What you’re doing is a hell of a lot harder than what I’m doing. If I would have had an agent who answered the phone to give me relationship advice when I needed him, I might still be married to my first wife. And that was the only wife I ever shoulda been married to.”
There was a serious pause in the silence. “Take care of her, Jason. You won’t get another one.”