Adulation (14 page)

“Overnight? Holy cow, doesn’t anybody sleep? And I didn’t see a phone in her hands when shemade the comment.”

“Looks like it was taken by someone standing behind her.”

“Fucking great,” muttered Danny, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“We can trace it and get the lawyers to do a C and D on the grounds of character defamation.”

Danny laughed more out of ire than humor. “We are not going to send out a cease and desist letter for what I am assuming isn’t more than ten seconds of video. It’s not intellectual property, it’s not a sex tape, and two thousand hits is far from viral. Just let it have its day in the sun, and it’ll go away.”

“Fine,” said Jackson.

Danny slid to the edge of the bed, put his feet on the floor, and hunched forward, rubbing his eyes again and pushing his hair back. He’d had better morning afters when he was drinking.

“You said it’s on YouTube?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“OK. I’ll go check it out, and then I’ll post an apology on Twitter.” Robbie Marsh, a tweeting fiend, had persuaded Danny to jump on the Twitter bandwagon nine months ago. But Danny found Twitter to be boring and had stopped using it.

“That’s probably a good way to go, although apologies sometimes seem disingenuous. And maybe

Twitter’s not the best place to do it.”

“What, you want me to hold a press conference?” Danny said sarcastically.

“There’s a lot of chatter taking place on Masterminds—”

“No.”

“I think it’d be good if you posted something there,” said Jackson.

“Even though I have no official affiliation with the site? Won’t that mislead people?”

“Who cares? You have no official affiliation with the site.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want anyone thinking
 
I
 
actually hang out there.”

“Look Danny, you just insulted all the fans who went to your premiere. You wanna insult the rest of ’em too?”

Danny inhaled and exhaled forcefully, as if taking a long drag from a cigarette, and God, how he could use one right now.

“Fine. I’ll post something there.”

“Good,” said Jackson. “Now for the good news:
 
Exposed
 
is projected to break all box office records for a Danny Masters-scripted film premiere, not to mention blow away the competition for the weekend.”

“That’s great.” He couldn’t have sounded less interested.

“You’ve got one more Q and A to do tonight at the Palace Theatre, and then you’re pretty much

done with the publicity tour.”

“OK, Jackson. I gotta get my ass in gear. I’ll talk to you later.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m sorry, man,” said Danny, “it’s just been a rough week with everything. I just wanna get to work on the next thing, you know?”

“Go look at the YouTube video and Masterminds first.”

They exchanged good-byes, and Danny tossed the phone on the bed, went to his laptop, and typed the URL address for YouTube in the search field. On the homepage, he typed: “danny,” “masters,” and “jackass.”

How telling.

He hit Enter, and the results took him to the frozen image of his stunned expression. He played the shaky, fuzzy video, lasting all of about twenty seconds. He watched himself smile, his head bobbing up and down, saying “thank you” repeatedly to fans’ exclamations about and praise for the film. Based on their behavior, one wouldn’t know that he’d offended anyone. And then he watched himself see
 
her
—his eyes, even on the murky video, were so revealing, the way they flickered for a split second. The way he leaned in a little bit, as if to pull her to him. Happy to see her. It was all there for the world to see. Could
 
she
 
see it? He wondered. He had so hoped he would be able to see her face, but from the angle of the camera, all he could see was most of her hair and not quite a profile. Even with the volume maxed out, he could just barely  hear the words:
 
Mr. Masters, I have been proudly working at a bookstore for twenty years. I’ve also written four novels. And although I have never been published, I am no wannabe. You, sir, are a jackass and a failure.

A wave of nausea overtook him.

He went back to the bed, picked up his phone, and dialed Jackson, who picked up on the first ring.

“You watched it?”

“Yeah,” said Danny. “And it’s up to five thousand hits now.”

“It might go up to ten by the end of the day. And I’m sure the blogs are posting about it as we

speak.”

“It was a stupid remark,” said Danny. “I don’t even know how or why I said it or where it came

from.”

“Well, you’ll have a chance to fix it. Go on Masterminds—trust me, that’ll put it to bed.”

Danny put the phone down again and returned to his laptop. He went to the Masterminds website, where a full-scale blowout was taking place. A link to the video was posted, followed by a slew of comments either defending him (“I was *there*,” one fan wrote) or calling him a lot worse than a jackass. Anger replaced the hunger that had settled in the pit of his stomach. With the exception of two or three, none of these people had been there. None of them had a right to comment on things they knew nothing about. And weren’t these people proving his point? Didn’t they have anything better to do?

As far as he was concerned, he only owed one person an apology. And suddenly he was even more pissed off that she hadn’t given him the chance to give it to her in person.

Danny hastily typed a message, proofread it for errors, and submitted it to the Masterminds forum. He then went to the bathroom, dry heaved, and practically crawled back to bed, curling himself in a fetal position.
 
Failure.

Within sixty seconds of Danny’s posted apology, five replies had appeared, all of them thanking him forhis response, for taking the time to visit the site, for his wonderful writing, and for making their day. Sitting at the desk in his bedroom a couple of hours later, he read each reply, thinking that perhaps Jackson had been right after all. Until the next one appeared:

With all due respect, Mr. Masters, people love your writing because it contains substance, content thatis provocative in thought and discourse. They’re not “wannabes,” they’re human beings. Youmentioned an apology, but nowhere in your post did the words “I’m sorry” appear. Are youapologizing for speaking your thoughts out loud or are you apologizing for saying something that wasunequivocally *wrong*? Is your apology for those people or one woman who spoke out? You call yourinsult “an innocent misstep.” It was far from it. You said it with such conviction. If you are sincere inyour intentions, then you owe your fans more than an ambiguous mea culpa.

Anger swelled inside Danny as he read the comment, its author identified as “Sunnyside,” condemningand criticizing him for no other reason than because she (he assumed the commenter was a “she”) couldso anonymously play judge and jury without consequence.

He proceeded to type:

Sunnyside, unless you live in my head, you have absolutely no right to speculate on my intentions orscrutinize my word choices. I didn’t have to come here to make penance. In fact, I would’ve beenhappy just going on with my life and letting the whole thing blow over. But it’s people like you whoneed to be appeased, who think you’re entitled to an explanation from me. I am not your servant, notyour property, not your public access channel. I am not a role model, not a preacher, not a politician. I am a *writer*. I owe you nothing, but now you owe *me* an apology.

There. Take that. He shouldn’t have taken the bait, and he knew it. But he hit Send anyway and abandoned

his laptop in search of some coffee in the kitchen. However, as if some magical rope had tethered him to his laptop, he returned to see if Sunnyside had deigned to reply. And sure enough, in addition to the now dozen or so replies, both to his original post and now this second post, was this:

For what reason do I owe you an apology? My tone was not hostile. I called you no names, and I madeno assumptions. I carefully read what you wrote—read it several times, in fact—and never found aspecific, direct apology. You may think I’m in no position to make assumptions, but I know for a factthat although your fan took it personally, she was also offended on behalf of the others to whom theremark was directed, whether they were in the audience or not.

Perhaps you’re correct. Perhaps I don’t have that right. But you went on to say: “I would’vebeen happy just going on with my life and letting the whole thing blow over.” How can one read thatand not feel as if your apology was disingenuous? And  what does “people like you” mean? How canyou possibly know anything about me?

“Fuck!” Danny exclaimed when he finished reading, and furiously pounded his fingers on the keyboard.

Public figures have one-sided relationships. An audience not only gets to watch my shows or plays ormovies, but also gets to read about me on Wikipedia, IMDb, and God knows where else, or see me on Letterman or Colbert. They occasionally get a piece of me in 140 characters or less. They’re gettingmore words from me right here on this forum, and at no extra charge. When I meet my admirers, Idon’t get to ask them about their life stories, where they went for dinner last night, how many childrenthey have, what their last project was at work, etc. Many of them don’t tell me, and frankly I don’tneed to know. I don’t appreciate the voyeuristic aspect of celebrity-ism. I don’t think any one personshould be or feel entitled to have access to any other person’s life just because they entertain peoplefor a living. Hell, even the president of the United States can’t take a vacation with his wife and kidswithout the 24-hr-news vultures scrutinizing what kind of ice cream he bought and what he looks likein his swimming trunks. “People like you” referred to those who offer unsolicited advice. And while I’ll concede that I don’t know anything about you, I’ll also charge that half of what you think youknow about me is false.

He clicked Send and waited, staring at the screen, practically willing a reply from Sunnyside, when hisphone rang.

“What the fuck are you doing, man?” asked Jackson. “I’m on this forum and I’m watching this trainwreck in real time.”

“I’m doing what you told me to do,” said Danny.

“I told you to post an apology. I didn’t tell you to get into a war of words with one of these

nutcases.”

Suddenly, inexplicably, Danny felt protective. “She’s not a nutcase.”

“You’re making this ten times worse—you know that, don’t you? You’re turning a five-dollarparking ticket into a five-year sentence. What’s more, if you keep replying to her and no one else, you’regoing to alienate the rest of your fan base. And what makes you think she’s a she?”

“You’re right,” said Danny.

“Just delete all that shit, get off the goddamned Internet, and do something else.”

“And let it just hang there?”

“Let what hang there? Seriously, Danny, are you on crack?”

Danny waited a few seconds before refreshing the web page. Nothing.

“OK,” he said. “I’m done.”

“Let it go, man.”

Danny went downstairs with his phone and onto the patio to smoke a cigarette. He made calls to Dez, Ken Congdon, Gabby Hanson, and others who had left messages congratulating him on the opening night success of
Exposed
. Strange, that premiere suddenly felt like aeons ago. He reentered the house and made himself a BLT on rye, but couldn’t swallow more than a few bites. He then called Ella, but got her voice mail. He called Frannie’s house and got her voice mail as well.

His iPad sat on the kitchen counter. He used it to check Masterminds. No reply from Sunnyside.

“I gotta get outta here,” Danny said to no one as he grabbed his keys from the counter and took off for a drive on the Pacific Coast Highway, blasting a playlist of classic rock music and skipping all the songs by Avalon Gone.

Ninety minutes later he returned to the house and checked Masterminds again. Still nothing.

He silenced his phone and tried to take a nap, but dammit, he couldn’t escape the voice in his head —the
female
 
voice—demanding he return to the Masterminds page. He wanted a reply. Expected it. Once again he refreshed the page and scrolled through what had to be at least fifty replies since his post, if not more, until he found the one he was looking for: