Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Fisher
If I’d scheduled a meeting with Gerry Banks, he’d have probably dodged me for weeks. Enough time has been wasted. So I’m taking a leaf out of his book and being underhanded to get what I want. Sometimes the ends justify the means.
Lucky for me, Vivian sees me as family because of the connection to Efa and Bennett, and when I asked if I could arrange a meeting with Gerry and pretend it was a meeting with her, she didn’t even ask why. She just agreed.
I’ve requested a private room in the restaurant. I’m not sure how Gerry’s going to react. He’s hated me for years and has covered it up. Now I’m going to reveal I know who he really is.
When I arrive at the restaurant, I’m ten minutes late. I want to make sure he’s situated so it’s less easy for him to walk out when he realizes Vivian’s not coming, and he’s stuck with me.
The hostess assures me Gerry has already arrived and leads me to the back of the restaurant to the private dining room.
“Gerry,” I say. “Good to see you.”
His mouth falls open, but he recovers quickly. “What a surprise. Is the lovely Vivian with you?”
I turn to the waitress. “We’re going to need a bottle of your finest tequila and two shot glasses. You drink tequila, don’t you?”
Gerry’s wearing a tense smile, but he nods.
“And a selection of appetizers. Unless there’s anything in particular you were looking to order?”
Gerry’s smile falters. “Anything works for me.”
I take a seat opposite Gerry, and we stare at each other until the hostess closes the door.
“You’ve hated me for a long time, Gerry,” I say.
“And I’ve always wondered why. At first, I thought it was just the way you did business, but over the years, it’s become clear that you do business differently when it involves me.
You try to undermine me. Undercut me. Steal artists. Take credit for things I did.”
He stares at me blankly.
“I let it go mostly. Avoided you when I could. When you got into management, I deliberately swerved doing business with your artists, ducked out of parties when you arrived. But when you turned up at the Colorado Club, I realized that this game of cat and mouse was never going to stop. It got me thinking.”
I stop as the door to the dining room opens and a waiter appears with a bottle of tequila and two glasses. Before he can offer to pour us some shots, I take the bottle. I need something to take the edge off of this terrible conversation.
The waiter leaves and I pour us out a shot each. I slide one across the table toward Gerry and pick the other one up. I knock it back. The burn at the back of my throat feels good, like a grazed fist after a deserved punch. It fits. Feels right.
Gerry doesn’t touch his. I get it. He wants a clear head. He might suspect, but he doesn’t know what’s coming.
“It got me wondering why?” I say. “I realized this was more than professional rivalry. It was more than I just irritated you, or I reminded you of a guy back in high school. But what?”
The corner of Gerry’s eye twitches.
I pour myself another shot and sit back. “So I did some digging. You’re not the only one who can track people down at remote locations in the way you did with Vivian.”
I’m grateful he doesn’t deny it. We both know it would be ridiculous, and I admire him in a way for just staying silent.
“For a long time, I had a very happy childhood. I thought my mom was thirty percent cookies and my dad hung the moon. They were loving parents to me and, I thought, in love. Our house looked just like my friends’ houses.
My backyard the same as theirs, complete with water pistols and Slip ’N Slides and a barbeque when the weather allowed.
I don’t know why or how, but even though my life looked a lot like my friends’, something told me I was lucky.
That I’d hit the jackpot. Maybe it was the way my friend Jonny’s mom used to yell at us when we trailed mud into their house.
Or if we got too excited, the way Jody’s dad used to grab him by the arm and whisper in his ear with his jaw clenched, like he was threatening to murder him.
My mom rarely yelled. My dad always joined in the fun. ”
Gerry’s mouth is set in a straight line, his jaw clenching tighter and tighter as I speak.
“And then, just before I left for college, my parents announced they were divorcing.”
I exhale. Every time I think of that day, I always get a little unsteady on my feet. It’s a hint of the feeling I got that day—that the earth I stood on was no longer solid.
“No big deal, right?” I ask him, not expecting an answer.
“Plenty of couples get divorced. And I was technically an adult. But to me, they might as well have told me they were Russian spies, or that they weren’t my real parents and they were just looking after me for the couple next door.
It was as if they’d revealed a fundamental lie about my life up to that point. ”
Gerry takes the shot of tequila I poured him and downs it. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and replaces the glass on the table. I pour him another shot and then, together, we both take our second.
It doesn’t burn as much this second time. I wish it did. I wish the discomfort in my throat could make me think of something else other than the lies my parents told me.
“From that moment, I trusted nothing and no one. If my own parents could lie to me so easily, if they could pretend so well that their own son believed them, then there was no one who wasn’t capable of lying to me.”
I swallow at how fucking lonely my next confession feels.
“In that moment, our relationship was fractured forever. All I could think about was how I wished I was Jonny, having a mom who yelled, or Jody, who had to put up with his dad’s temper, because at least those parents weren’t liars.”
We sit in silence, my thoughts loud in my head. I’d been so angry. So let down. So altered from that moment.
“And then,” I say eventually, “when I did some digging on you, I found out that about the same time my parents told me they were divorcing, your mom had finally gotten the courage to file for child support from my father.”
Gerry nods, slowly. Solemnly.
“I don’t know if my mom just found out he’d cheated then.
Or she’d lived with it since it happened.
Maybe it happened throughout their marriage, and she just didn’t know what to do.
She didn’t work. I think she would have been too frightened to divorce my father when I was a kid, even if she had found out. ”
I pull in a breath and feel lighter for it.
“I have compassion for my mother that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Maybe ever. I think she did the best she could in the circumstances.
It took me a long time to trust my gut, but actually, ever since that day when they told me they were divorcing, my gut’s never been wrong.
I think my mom was a victim of my father’s bad behavior…
” I pause. “And so were you.” I want him to believe me when I tell him the next bit. “I didn’t know.”
Gerry finally speaks. “He denied my existence my entire life.”
I pour out two more glasses of tequila, ready to hear his story.
“I hated you,” he says. It must feel good to admit it.
And I can’t blame him. I would have hated me too.
“I wanted what you’d had. I wanted a dad who wanted me.
I wanted the perfect family. Growing up, my lack of father just wasn’t talked about.
I craved him, though. I wanted a dad to throw a ball with, to have water fights with.
My mom was a good mom. She worked two jobs. She loved me.
“Then things shifted when I was thirteen. My mom lost her job and she got really stressed. She told me later that that’s when she reached out to…
” He grimaces, unable to even refer to our father.
“When she’d told him she was pregnant, he fled.
She never saw him again. And when she reached out, he wouldn’t take her calls.
It wasn’t until she lost her job that she got lawyers involved. ”
Since I was eighteen, I’ve thought my dad was a liar. But now I can add coward to his character description. And all this time, my mom has never told me what happened. Maybe she’s been trying to save face. Or maybe she’s been trying to protect me.
“She got another job, so she dropped the lawsuit for a couple of years. At that point, I knew what had happened. I knew I had a father and that he had another family. I guess it was just my age—I didn’t understand how the world worked.
I just accepted things. I think she wanted to give him an opportunity to know me.
” He lets out a cynical half laugh. “He didn’t take it, of course.
I overheard them on the phone. My mom told him that he had two sons.
Not one, and that you had a brother. He hung up. ”
My stomach churns at the lies. At the cowardice. At the lack of fucking character. The guy I idolized for so long. The man who called me his sidekick. The man I thought hung the moon was nothing like the man he’d pretended to be.
“Before then, I’d never really pictured him or you.
I accepted he wasn’t in our life without question.
But from that day, I couldn’t get you out of my head.
You were easy to find on social media, after I learned your last name from the court papers my mom had.
” He sighs as if he’s finally given up the fight, like he realizes there’s been too much misplaced bitterness.
“I went to the same college. Even managed to get myself in the same dorm. I was sick of missing out, and I was determined not to anymore. I wanted what you had.”
It all makes sense now. I wish we’d had this conversation earlier.
“Turns out we both like music. I’m not sure if it was my passion before I started in the business, but it is now.
I love it. And managing the bands—that’s what I loved most. Spotting potential in artists and delicately shaping it so they fulfill their potential…
” He nods and smiles for the first time since I ordered the tequila.
“I should be grateful to you. My job is genuinely my calling.
Anyway, when we both ended up working at EMG, I thought my time had come.
I could take what you thought was yours.
Make sure you had less to make up for all the time when you had far too much. Much more than I had.
“And after EMG, you set up your own fucking label. Man, I was pissed about that. You were going to get to work for yourself and not have to put up with asshole managers who didn’t give a fuck about anything but being spotted out with the latest singers.”
I chuckle at his frustration. The music business is full of people whose only ambition is to be seen as close to the talent. I’ve never understood it.
“That’s why I became a manager. I didn’t want to have someone telling me what to do when you didn’t have to put up with that shit, either.”
Jesus, even when I thought we’d followed different paths, he’d chosen his because of me. I’ve never felt so sorry for a man as I do for the one sitting in front of me.
“Anyway, I’m good at what I do,” he says. “I got the opportunity at Re because of my own merits.” He sounds slightly defensive.
“I know,” I reassure him. “There’s never been any doubt about that in my mind.”
He nods, his eyes flitting around the room, like he can’t quite take the compliment.
“Our father is an asshole,” I say, pouring out another shot of tequila. “But I’m not him.”
“I don’t know what’s worse,” he says. “Never having the perfect family, or thinking you’ve got it and discovering it’s all been a lie.”
“Pick your poison,” I say. He looks at me, and I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I swear there’s something I see that wasn’t there before. A softness… or maybe a lack of bitterness.
We both reach for our glasses and raise them in the air and tip them back. It feels like the beginning of a truce or something.