Mike looked fixed to have a heart attack. “You just fired my agent,” he nearly yelled. Like many actors with good training, he overenunciated when he got angry. “You can’t do that.”
“When’s the last time Gerald called you?”
Mike’s eyes went skyward in an effort to remember.
“If it was that long ago, you need new representation,” I said.
Then I scrolled down the list for the next business-sounding name.
It only took me about twenty minutes to fire his accountant, his manager, his personal trainer, and his lawyer. I also told the C-list TV actress he was seeing that Mike was taking a sabbatical from dating.
“Really?” she said. “But I just booked Dancing with the Stars, and I told them that Mike Barker would be in the audience. The producers are going to be so mad.”
The sad thing was that she was dead serious. “Sorry,” I said. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Well, tell Mikey to call me after he gets done with his sabbatical or whatever. Hopefully I won’t be eliminated yet.”
“I’m doing you a whole bunch of favors,” I said when I got off the phone with her.
By the time I was done, Mike was pacing back and forth, his face twisted up in worry and frustration. I wasn’t sure if he completely understood why I was doing what I was doing, but he never once tried to grab the phone from me. I think it might have given him a moment of pause to realize that none of these people called me out on who I said I was, even though Mike’s mother had died eleven years ago.
. . .
Over the next week, we began replacing all the people he had fired. I let Mike do his bullshit mirroring and attention thing—it was almost an asset at this point—because it allowed the potential team members we talked with to self-identify as the same kind of people who would take advantage of Mike’s insecurities and see him as a reflection of themselves, as opposed to the man who was paying their salary.
For both his new agent and manager, I told him to choose the mean-ass bulldogs, the ones that talked cold hard money and career comeback in between the usual compliments—because that’s what he needed at this point. Also, I wanted to make sure that his next manager would be the kind of guy who would hunt Mike down in Vegas, tie him up, and put his gambling-addict ass on a plane, if it meant getting his fifteen percent.
I am proud to say that by the end of the first week of meetings, I stopped having to guide Mike’s decisions. His new personal trainer, accountant, and lawyer were all business, all the time. And they all knew that his mama was dead.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Russell called me two weeks after we replaced Mike’s entire team.
“Here’s what I want to know, did you really think I wasn’t going to find out?”
I was confused. It didn’t sound like Russell was joking, but I didn’t know why else he would come at me this way, right off the bat.
“Find out what?” I asked.
“About your mother and Congressman Farrell. You know, the father of your ex-boyfriend.”
My heart seized, just like it had in high school when I had seen Veronica Farrell standing outside our window. I went straight to begging. “Russell, please don’t. You have no idea how many people this would hurt. I need you to do me this favor.”
“No more favors, Davie. I’ve done a lot for you already and you wasn’t forthcoming, so no more favors.”
I couldn’t believe him. The nerve. “You’re acting like I’m all obligated to leak the worst details of my life.”
“And you’ve always acted like I’m here to leak whatever you want.”
I wanted to say that wasn’t true, but of course it was.
I had thought I had felt the worst I could ever feel about my heartbreak campaign during the Driveway Dump, but now on the phone with Russell, I couldn’t have regretted my actions more. My tongue felt like metal in my mouth as the repercussions of my spree of dirty deeds kept on sending out wave after wave of consequences.