Chapter 29
They’d only been back in the Sanctuary for half an hour when Keith heard a knock on his door.
He was fresh out of the shower and in the complimentary American Fantasy robe.
One of Keith’s favorite things about the Sanctuary was the robes.
Last year he’d asked Sarah if he could take one home, and she’d left a clean one in his room on the last day, so it also felt like being at home.
Keith pulled open the door and saw his brother and Jonathan standing in the hallway.
“Come on in,” Keith said, wishing that he were wearing actual clothes. If he were a different kind of person, he would have told them to wait while he changed.
The cabin had a small sitting area with a couch, and Shawn and Jonathan lowered themselves onto it in unison. Keith spun the desk chair around and sat facing them, holding the heavy cotton closed on his lap.
“I just wanted to put this together,” Shawn said. “Jonathan and I have been talking a lot about really exciting opportunities. Really exciting ones.” Shawn took his hat off and put it on again.
“Okay,” Keith said. As far as he knew, his brother had never gone to therapy, but he’d done a lot of this—finding people to agree with him.
The Papa Fiore’s pizzerias had a laminated list of goals hanging on the wall in every location, and Keith could hear each of the goals in his brother’s voice: Our goal is to provide our customers with sustenance for their body and soul.
We strive for greatness in every bite. We promise to serve you from our hearts.
We aren’t satisfied unless you want to come back again tomorrow.
That was Shawn. Never satisfied because he was never sure people were coming back tomorrow.
How could he know for sure unless he checked?
Keith knew at least half the things that Shawn and this guy were about to say, so he just closed his eyes and waited for them to start.
“Well, Keith,” Jonathan began. Keith opened his eyes. “Your brother has told me a lot about you. About your talent, about your voice, about your gifts.” Jonathan pulled on his beard with one hand and then the other, like it was a rope he was trying to climb.
“You know you’re the best of us,” Shawn chimed in.
“Thank you,” Keith said. “That’s generous.
” It wasn’t true, at least not now, but it may have been true once upon a time.
He actively avoided thinking about things in those terms, and Keith didn’t like hearing other people say it either, that there was such a thing as the best of anything.
The past was over. It was so far away he couldn’t even see it anymore.
They’d been together longer as adults than they had as kids.
Maybe that didn’t matter to the Talkers, but it made a big difference to Keith.
This version of himself was the real one, not vice versa.
“Let me ask you this: How are you using your talent? How are you using your gift?” Jonathan leaned forward.
Keith felt suddenly like a teenage actress being hit on by a disgusting movie producer, even though he was the one in the bathrobe.
He didn’t respond. Keith lit a cigarette, even though Shawn hated when he smoked.
Keith wasn’t embarrassed that Shawn did paid Instagram posts for his Botox injector—why should he care that Keith smoked?
Why was that worse? It was the hustle, that’s what Shawn would have said.
Everything was for the hustle. Keith took a long inhale and then blew a plume of smoke toward the ceiling.
After a minute, Shawn cleared his throat and said, “So?”
“I thought that was a rhetorical question,” Keith said.
“Like ‘what are you doing with your life,’ or whatever.” He leaned back.
If Keith could have leaned back far enough that he was in the next cabin, he would have.
They both looked at him expectantly. “I’m here, aren’t I?
I’m singing the songs that make people happy.
That’s how I’m using my talent. How are you using yours, Shawn? ”
“That’s fair, and I’m glad you asked,” Shawn said.
Shawn was a big believer in fairness. Sometimes the Talkers got upset about something or other—the cruise selling out, merch not being available in all sizes, the price of meet and greets—and Shawn was always the one to respond.
That was his talent: total devotion. Keith wondered if Stacy found it irritating, the way Shawn spent hours every day pressing the little heart button on posts that fans had made.
“But do you think you’re using your full potential?” Jonathan said it like Keith could be an astronaut or cure cancer, like the possibilities were limitless.
“I don’t know,” Keith said. He thought about how he’d sung everywhere as a kid, even before the group, and put on little dance shows for his parents, singing in his socks on the living room rug.
Applause was better than allowance, better than ice cream.
That was when talent had meant something to him—he’d felt it, the thing inside that made him different from the other kids, the thing that made him special.
But now—for so many decades—the thing that made him special was being Keith Fiore, and talent had nothing to do with it.
This was what Corey had complained about when he’d quit the band—he wanted to do more.
He wanted to act. He had all these ambitions that took what they had built and used them as a staircase to actual credibility.
Keith didn’t see it like that—for him, what they had built was a cliff, and there was nowhere to go but down, and so he’d been sitting in that spot for twenty years, thinking about jumping off.
He had almost jumped last year. He felt like jumping now too.
Keith made a promise to himself: If Shawn kept talking for more than ten minutes, he would never speak to his brother again.
“Jonathan had an idea. Well, it was both of us, really,” Shawn said. “It’s a way you could make Steffani and Madison really proud, not to mention make fucking bank.”
The hair on the back of Keith’s neck stood up.
Jonathan cleared his throat. “Do you want to do the pitch, or do you want me to?” he asked Shawn.
Shawn put out his hand. He would do it, of course.
“Here’s what’s next. Forget Cleveland and Detroit and Atlanta—we’re going bigger.
Zero to sixty, like the Concorde, baby. Boy Talk: World Tour.
Think about it—we haven’t been to Japan since we were teenagers.
Germany? They fucking love us in Germany.
The Philippines. Brazil. All the places with the best fans.
Just rocking their faces off every night. ”
Never mind that the Concorde had been out of business for twenty years.
Japan was on one side of the world. Germany was on the other.
Brazil was nowhere near either of them. The kind of tour Shawn was talking about would take six months of nonstop touring, easy.
The last time they were in Brazil was in 1990, when Corey was seventeen, and he had slipped off in the night, and they’d lost him for several hours.
It was before cell phones, and Bobby had almost killed him when Corey slunk back into the hotel at dawn.
Shawn had laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, but Keith hadn’t thought it was funny at all.
Corey had accused Keith of being an old lady with no sense of humor, which had made Shawn laugh even harder.
Keith felt like he was going to throw up.
“What does Bobby say?” he asked. Bobby was the one who managed all their fears, who talked Keith back onto the ship every year.
Bobby knew what they liked, what they hated, what their personal bills looked like and how much shit they would shovel to pay them.
Scotty was always in a bad way financially, and Keith had said yes to more than a few things because he knew Scotty needed the money.
If someone’s mother was dying and they had to pay for round-the-clock care, that was what brothers did.
Shawn shook his head. “You don’t get it. Bobby’s vision has only gotten us this far. Sometimes you need to make a leap if you want to get to another level. It’s like Super Mario Bros., you know?” Shawn punched the sky.
Jonathan leaned back, nodding. He crossed one ankle over his opposite knee. “It’s the circle of life. It’s beautiful, really, when you think about it.”
Keith pulled his robe tighter. His bare feet looked so pale, with a few dark hairs poking out of his big toe.
They looked just like his father’s feet.
“The circle of life is cutting out Bobby? And going to Brazil?” He thought about seeing Corey every day for six months, all the digs, all the piteous looks, all the jokes that weren’t really jokes.
About all the rehearsals they would need.
His body wasn’t ready. His heart wasn’t ready. Keith’s toes started to sweat.
“Listen, I know what you’re thinking.” Shawn rubbed his hands together and then held them open like a magician who was releasing a dove into the air.
“You’re a good guy, Keith. You always have been.
And Corey’s a good guy too. I know you haven’t always gotten along, but that’s water under the bridge, you know?
This is bigger than any one of us, or any combination of us, don’t you think?
” Jonathan nodded in confirmation, his mouth a smug closed-lip smile.
There had been offers. A dancing show, a cooking show, a home renovation show, a prank show, a reality show.
Keith had said no to everything. He knew what he could handle, and what he couldn’t handle was Corey and watching Shawn fawn all over him.
It was pathetic. When Keith saw how hard Shawn was trying to keep going a hundred miles per hour, how hard Corey was trying to pretend that anything he ever did would mean half as much as what they’d done when they were teenagers, he just felt sad for them.
It was like the guy pushing the rock up the hill.
“I am not doing that,” Keith said.
“I don’t think you’re getting it,” Shawn said. “You could be doing so much more. You’re just sitting at home in Jersey.” He shook his head like it wasn’t a real place, like it wasn’t where they were all from.
“Are you talking to Corey about this too?” Keith asked.
“Come on, man,” Shawn said. “We’re talking to everybody.”
“I mean—are you talking to Corey about this?” Keith was getting mad. He wanted to try to get his wife on the phone again or maybe take a nap. He wanted to lie in the dark and have no one bother him until it was time to go to the lido deck in his stupid pajamas.
“This isn’t about Corey,” Shawn said, which is when Keith felt sure that it was just like it had always been, with Shawn and Corey off scheming, leaving him in the dark.
“Did you already ask him? Before you asked me?”
Shawn looked at Jonathan.
“We just thought that you could use some alpha attention,” Jonathan said.
“To help unlock the alpha wolf within. I see glimmers of it, I really do. And obviously we would need your endorsement—everyone’s agreement—before we start talking to insurers.
” Here he chuckled a little. “I have a lot of experience with that, though. I once got insurance for Robert Downey Jr. pre–Iron Man. It shouldn’t be a problem. ”
Glimmers. Jonathan clearly thought this was a compliment. Keith was staying up all night shaking his ass at middle-aged women, pressing his cheek against strangers, probably going deaf, and this guy was seeing glimmers.
“We can talk more about it later,” Shawn said.
“But I’m telling you, bro, this is it. This is the legacy.
This is us and the Talkers and their kids…
” He knit his fingers together. “This is how we make it last forever. This is the world, bro. If we do this, we will be so tight, we can tour the States as much as we want to. We can really be in fighting shape, you know? I know you never wanted to get back to that kind of life, but our kids are big now. This is a new phase, bro. Just pack your Xanax and let’s boogie, you know? This is our time.”
“Okay,” Keith said, meaning I’m done with this conversation. He had a one-bro limit per conversation. He stood up and pulled his robe even tighter, like it could hold in all of his feelings too.
“Love you, brother,” Shawn said. He stood up and wrapped his arms around Keith’s terry-clothed body. “See you upstairs.”
Jonathan bowed, his hands joined in prayer. “I’d be happy to connect anytime,” he said.
“Mm-hmm,” Keith said. He looked at his watch. It had been four minutes. He let the door close behind them and then lay down face-first, wishing that the floor would swallow him before he ever had to hear any of those words again, and then he opened his mouth and screamed into the beige carpet.