The Lonely Hearts Club (19 page)

“Neither can I,” I say. And I really mean it.

28 - Brilliant Disguise

I always thought I’d be in the
New York Times
one day, but I thought it would be the Arts section, not the Styles. And I thought it would be for my music, and not as some trend piece. But here I am, on the front page of the Styles section, the poster girl for the anti-love movement currently taking place in Manhattan.

“Above the fold,” Max says. “Nice.”

Max tosses me the
Times
and then brings me a cup of coffee in bed. He’s got a great apartment on the Upper West Side—a prewar place filled with light and far enough away from Chloe’s to avoid being caught. He hops back into bed with his own cup of coffee and my cell phone buzzes.

It’s a text from Chloe:
Where ru? Never came home last nite?!

I text back:
Didn’t think u were making it home
—
what happened to rockboy?

Chloe:
Never showed. U were right. Brunch?

I text back:
Crashed with some old college friends - meet u l8r?

Chloe:
I’ll be in the park drawing
.

I should have known Chloe would be in the park drawing. The second the weather heats up, that’s where you can always find her—at Bethesda Fountain, with her sketch pad and charcoals. And it’s already summer, so the weather’s perfect for it. But there’s no way I’m leaving Max’s bed anytime soon.

“Lemme see,” Max says, and grabs the Style pages from my hands. “‘Manhattanite Jo Waldman has started something. In just a few short months, she’s become the spokesperson for all things anti-love, a movement that’s 875,000 people strong and growing.’”

“I can’t listen,” I say. “Don’t read anymore.”

“Aren’t you closer to 900,000 these days?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You don’t know?” he asks. “I check every half hour to see if we’ve hit a million yet. I can’t believe you’re not checking this thing more often.”

“That’s why I employ a super-handsome IT guy to take care of that stuff for me. And maintain all of the fabulous ads he’s procured.”

“Employ? You’re paying me for my time?”

“No,” I say, twirling a lock of seriously mussed hair around my finger. “But you still must do as I say.”

“Yes, mistress,” Max says, and puts his coffee mug down on the bedside table. “Anything you say.”

My cell phone rings. “Please hold for Bee Maran.”

“Hello?” I say.

“Hi, Jo?” a voice I can only presume belongs to Bee Maran says. “I’m the booker for
The Today Show
. I just read your Styles piece and we want to book you.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, and put my phone onto speaker mode. Max and I huddle over the phone as Bee explains.

“We want to do a story on this anti-love movement you’ve started,” she says. “Usually summer is when we talk about fun outdoor dates or how to meet people in the Hamptons, but this
summer is looking like it’s going to be dominated by punk rock and black roses. All because of you.”

“Black roses actually symbolize death,” I say.

“Is that a no?” Bee asks.

“She’ll do it,” Max says, and Bee thanks him. He grabs my phone away from me and takes out a notepad to write down all of the information Bee gives him. I’m glad he has the presence of mind to think about jotting this stuff down. I’m sort of awestruck by the whole thing—a mix of excitement and fear overcome me. By the time I’m cognizant enough to speak clearly again, Max has already made all of the arrangements with Bee.

“I can’t believe you just did that!” I say to Max as he shuts my phone off.

“You aren’t getting this whole ‘advertisers bringing you money’ thing,” he says. “Don’t you ever want to move back into the loft? Or get a place of your own? Or move off Chloe’s couch?”

“Yes,” I say. “I do. Of course I do.”

“Well, this will get us even bigger advertisers,” he says. “And maybe we could even line up some investors, start getting ready to sell the site when interest peaks.”

“Sell the site?” I say. “It’s my band’s Web site.”

“It’s the Lonely Hearts Club now,” he says. “And the way to make real money off this thing is to sell it when it’s hot. Lesser Web sites have made millions off sales like these.”

I don’t know what to say. How could I sell the Lonely Hearts Club Web site? That would mean that I’m giving up on the band forever. Sure, we haven’t played together in years, but other bands have been apart for years and then come back together. Wasn’t that always the plan?

Only, I’m not sure what the plan is anymore.

29 – Today

Backstage at a downtown rock club is a dark and dirty place where the dried-up alcohol on the floor sticks to your boots and you’re ill-advised to sit down. The green room at
The Today Show
is an entirely different sort of place. It’s beautifully appointed, with welcoming couches and a water and coffee setup. There’s even a tray of delicious-looking mini muffins.

“You’re going to do great,” my mother says, and smiles warmly at me. My father refused to come (“I won’t encourage this negativity” were the words he used), but my mother stands proudly as I nervously stuff mini muffins into my mouth. “We should live tweet the green room.”

“What do you know about live tweeting?” I ask my mother.

“It’s a thing,” she says. I suspect she’s not entirely sure what Twitter even is. “I heard one of the other guests talking about it in the ladies’ room. They said they were going to live tweet the green-room experience so that by the time their segment went on, they’d be going viral.”

“That’s actually kind of brilliant,” I say.

“Do you want me to live tweet for you?”

“Do you know how to use Twitter?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “But how hard could it possibly be?”

My mother has a point. I quickly hand over my phone, and give her a brief explanation of 140 characters and what a hashtag is.

“Can you tweet a photo?” she asks, holding my phone up to my face to take a quick shot.

“Sure,” I say, and then take the phone back to show her how. It’s then that I see what her proposed first tweet is:

Jo looking gorgeous as she gets ready to chat up Matt Lauer. #LonelyHeartsClub

“Mom,” I say. “You cannot tweet this.”

“Why not?” she pouts. “You look fabulous. I told you that black leather jeans were the way to go.”

“You just can’t tweet that,” I say.

My mother’s about to object again, something about how the Twitterverse would want to see how beautiful I look, when we’re interrupted by Matt Lauer. I don’t even have a chance to question my mother on how she knows what the Twitterverse is.

“Jo?” Matt Lauer says as he comes to greet me. “Hey there, just wanted to say hello before we went on the air.”

“Hi,” I say, shaking his hand. I’m hoping that mine isn’t too sweaty. It’s easy to look cool, but my hands always betray me. “Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Jo’s mother,” my mom says, grabbing Matt Lauer’s hand. “Nancy Waldman. You can call me Nan.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Matt says. “Jo, did Bee tell you how it’s going to go today?”

“Yes,” I say. “We’ll talk about how the whole thing started, how social media plays into it, what my plans for the site are.”

“Exactly,” he says. “I saw your NY1 interview. It was great. Do the same thing—look at me, not the camera. We’re just having a conversation. Nothing to be nervous about.”

“Oh, she’s not nervous,” my mother interjects. “She’s been on stage since she was five years old.”

“Great,” Matt says. “Then we’re all set.”

“You have a glow about you,” Matt Lauer tells me. We’re on air, and I’m trying to act natural, just like he said. Trying to pretend we’re just two friends having a regular conversation. But it’s not easy. My face feels like it’s on fire and I could really use a glass of water. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were in love.”

I laugh nervously. I don’t really know how to respond. Do I deny it? Do I admit everything? Do I accuse him of being glib?

“Love?” I say, and Matt smiles back.

“But I’m guessing that’s not it, since you’re the face of the anti-love movement taking place in Manhattan right now,” he says. “Tell us about that.”

I take a deep breath. I can do this.

“It all started on Valentine’s Day. I was broken-hearted, alone, and drunk. Not a very good combination.”

“No, it’s not,” Matt says and laughs.

“I decided to get out all of my feelings, all of my frustrations, on my blog. Little did I know, I was actually broadcasting these feelings—my deepest, darkest thoughts—to 2,500 of my closest friends.”

“Your band’s old mailing list,” Matt says.

“Right. But it turned out to be a good thing. Because now I know I’m not alone. There are other people like me. People who’ve had their hearts broken. People who have been betrayed by love. People who want to vent their pain and anger. And we’re the Lonely Hearts Club.”

I look off camera, and I see my mother frantically taking pictures of me. I can’t help but smile, and I take another deep breath.

“And for those of you who don’t know where to find them,” Matt says, “we’ve got the Web address right there at the bottom of your screens right now. Tell us, Jo, what’s next for the Lonely Hearts Club?”

“Okay, lonely hearts: mark your calendars. Get ready for the Lonely Hearts Club Ball—this year on Valentine’s Day. Now you don’t have to sit at home drinking vodka and eating cheap drugstore candy. You can be with people like you—others who have sworn off love and just want to rage.”

“I assume information about the party will be on your Web site?”

“It’s there now,” I say. “Tickets go on sale in October.”

“You heard it here, folks,” Matt says. “Go to the Lonely Hearts Web site and check out the information about the Lonely Hearts Club Ball. Now, Jo, before you go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you one last thing. Are you sure you’ve sworn off love? There isn’t anyone out there who could convince you otherwise?”

“No, Matt,” I say, looking into the camera. “I’m done with it. No more love for me.”

30 - You Drive Me Wild

“Well, if I show you how to do that, you won’t need me,” Max says. But it’s not true. I will need him, still. I
do
need him. I tell him so.

He smiles widely and shows me how to make the changes to the site I was talking about. He has it set up in a very user-friendly way, since when he first created it, he imagined that he’d be setting it up for me and then walking away. He didn’t intend on staying around quite as long as he did.

“Thanks,” I say, and he tells me that I am very welcome.

Everything he says to me seems like an unqualified invitation to sex. “You’re very welcome” means “Let’s have sex.” “What do you want for dinner tonight?” means “Let’s have sex before the food comes.” “Whose place are we meeting at?” means “Do you want to have sex at your place or mine?”

I’m in a particularly good mood today because the Amber Fairchild lip-synching scandal is on full tilt. Her fake celebrity friends have all shunned her, and there’s even talk that her squirrely husband has moved out. I have to Google the word “schadenfreude” to explain to Max how I feel about it.

“Well, that’s not very nice,” he says, furrowing his brow.

“Maybe I’m not a nice girl,” I say, an attempt at flirtation. I edge closer to him, but Max doesn’t respond.

“No, seriously,” he says. “Why would you revel in someone else’s misfortune?”

“I should have had her life,” I say, anger I didn’t know was there bubbling in my voice. I feel the folds of my forehead deepening, my hands balling into fists. “I should have had her career.”

“You don’t want her life, do you really? Married to a man she doesn’t seem to really love, making music that you think is overproduced and awful, tethered to an image you think is deplorable, and surrounded by sycophants, not real friends.”

“Well, no,” I say. “I don’t want those things. But I do want a record deal. I want a career in music.”

“You will get a record deal,” he says, taking my hands in his. He takes one hand and raises it to his lips. He kisses it gently and it sends a chill down my spine. “Jo, you’re enormously talented. If only you could see what I could see. It just takes the right person to see what you have, and you’ll get what you want.”