“I could go for Chinese,” Haley says, swiping a lock of hair from her face.
“Chinese it is, then.”
“Or maybe Italian.”
“Haven’t you had enough Italian?” I grin, with dumb glee.
Haley rolls her eyes. “Do you have kids, Brando?”
“Hell no!” I say, almost jumping back at the weird heaviness of the question.
“Then don’t make dad jokes,” Haley says with a sweet smile.
I laugh. My normal laugh, which is big, long, and can be heard from across the street. Which is why it happens.
“Over there!”
“Shit! That’s her!”
“Haley!”
“Haley!”
“Haley!”
The paparazzi are on us in seconds, like jackals with SLRs. Yapping and filling the night sky with flashes from their peeping-tom lenses. There are more than a dozen of them, bombarding Haley with random shouts and questions. One of the bodyguards moves toward the street, pushing several of them with him, while the other two form a barrier between the photographers and us.
We shove through, guided by the bodyguards like the world’s clumsiest football play. I cover Haley with my coat like a smuggled package, ruining multiple gossip editors’ morning stories in the process. We make it to the side of the road, where a yellow cab is already waiting for us.
I’m about to shove Haley into the cab, dive in after her, and start thinking about food, when she stops and pulls away from me. That’s how quickly it happens. That’s how fast my happiness disappears. A new record.
“What did you say?” Haley shouts, as she squeezes between the bodyguards to get a full view of the reporters.
“Rex Bentley!” comes the reply from multiple scumbags at once. “Are you really Rex Bentley’s daughter?”
“Haley!” I shout, grabbing her arm and holding the cab door open with the other. “Come on!”
Haley freezes, brings a hand to her head, and looks down wildly, trying to find a straight thought in the maelstrom of noise and attention. The bodyguards go full linebacker, sweeping the reporters away with giant arms in order to buy us some space.
“You’re Rex Bentley’s daughter! What’s your real name? Why did you keep this a secret? Haley!”
When Haley raises her head again she looks at me. She doesn’t need to say a word. Her tight lips, her cold eyes, her clenched jaw says it all.
“Haley, wait,” I say, sounding more desperate than the reporters, “No. Don’t…I didn’t do this. This isn’t me. I swear.”
She shoves me aside and slides into the taxi, her hand on the door. When she speaks it’s a low hiss, a coiled ball of disappointment and resentment that she seems to pull from the pit of her stomach.
“You were the only one I told. The only one I trusted.”
“Haley, wait! Please! I didn’t—”
“Fuck you, Brando,” she sneers through the streak of tears, as she slams the door of the cab closed. It speeds away with the reporters following desperately behind for a while.
“Do you need a cab, boss?” one of the bodyguards asks.
“Yeah. Find one that’ll run me over.”
Chapter 12
Haley
I cried all the way through the six hour flight to San Francisco. I cried when I spoke to the lady at the car rental agency. I cried for most of the 35. By the time I pull up to my mother’s sloped, brick house on a hill in Santa Cruz, I think I’m all cried out. But when she comes out the door and screams “Sweetie!” I start bawling harder than I have since I lost my first talent show at eleven years old.
She carries me inside, through the seventies décor and the antique furniture she never gave away, past the stacks of records and the acoustic guitars she hardly uses anymore but still loves, into the living room with the thick carpet and the smell of oak that I never notice until I’ve been away a while. She places me on the velour couch, drapes a hand-crocheted afghan around my shoulders, and sits beside me.
“Haley?” she says in a voice as light as a summer breeze. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”
I look at her through the wetness of my eyes. Without the crows feet and the wrinkles around her jaw, she’d still look just like the photo on the TV. She’s still got the long, straight hippie-hair, still wears long, flowing, patterned dresses, and still has the eyes that seem too pure for anyone but her.
“You don’t know?” I say, through sobs.
“Know what?”
“What happened on the tour.”
“I know everything that happened on the tour!” she smiles, nodding toward the stack of newspapers and magazines on the coffee table, the scissors and glue she uses to cut and paste clippings set neatly beside them. That’s when I realize she wouldn’t know about the Rex Bentley leak anyway – she doesn’t use the internet, barely turns the TV on – and when I think about having to tell her everything that happened, I break down again, folding into my lap.