18. Oh, Just Hit Record
18
OH, JUST HIT RECORD
ARCHER
“Stop looking so nervous,” I said to her as I got out of the BFT. She followed, and I finished my thought. “I don’t know why you think I’m so easy.”
O’Connor blinked at me. “I’m sorry?”
I clipped Charlotte’s long lead to the bumper and put out her bowl of water. “You’re looking at me like I’m going to take your virtue.” I opened the tailgate. “Take this. Tent pegs. I’m telling you, I’m not that kind of guy.”
She was fighting an uncertain grin. “All evidence to the contrary.”
“We’ll set up over there.” I grabbed the tent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please.” She followed me to a level plot of land screened by evergreens, fragrant in the chill morning air. “I could track your concert path this summer by the number of women who posted about you. You should have your own hashtag. IFuckedArcherArmstrong. ”
I dropped the tent and began the set-up process. “Lies. All lies.”
She wasn’t buying it. My lascivious past had come back to haunt me. “I’m so sure,” she said, meaning exactly the opposite. “What am I supposed to do with these?”
“Tentpoles. Fit them together. Like this. Anyway, I’ll have you know, I’m leading a monastic life at the moment.” I tried to sound noble as I gathered the cluster of flexible tent supports. I needed steel—a jouster’s lance—to complete my image, not the designed-to-bend-in-a-high-wind tentpoles I was working with.
“You?” Her scorn was stinging. I set her to work sliding the poles into the tent’s sleeves, ignoring (or trying to ignore) the imagery of something long and hard sliding easily into the slippery nylon. “You’re celibate? Yeah. That seems likely.”
I turned away to hide the distaste that wrinkled my nose. “Oh, I see. You’re going to mock me if I’m celibate and you’re going to mock me if I’m not celibate. Just what is it you want from me, O’Connor?”
She was on her knees, her jeans pulled taut against the curve of her ass and the line of her long thighs. She looked up, blinking. “Me? I don’t want anything from you, Archer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Everyone wants something. You just don’t happen to know what you want, that’s all.” She seemed more startled than the comment warranted. “Hand me those pegs.”
I let her think about her double standard—that men shouldn’t be sluts, but they also shouldn’t be celibate—as we put up the tent. Because she didn’t question every task, it went quickly and easily. I was using the pump on the air mattresses when she put her thoughts together.
“So, you and I are going to sleep alone in this tent, and nothing is going to happen because you’re celibate.”
I chuckled. Her forehead was still wrinkled in a frown. Girl was tense. “Nothing will happen until—and unless—you want something to happen, and I want something to happen. Jeez, O’Connor. Have none of the sexual harassment messages gotten to you yet?”
I grinned at her. Don’t take this too seriously, woman. Don’t take anything too seriously.
She was taking it too seriously. “Do you think I’ve been harassing you? Sexually?”
I thought about telling her that her jeans were sexually harassing me, but there was no humor in that topic, so I killed the thought. “You’ve been harassing me. Obviously. That’s what you’re doing here. Telling all of America that I kiss with my teeth.” A flicker of anger interrupted my determination to take nothing seriously. A flicker of anger—and of shame.
“How long has it been?” she asked.
I winced. “My celibacy?” It was tough to realign my image of myself, but there was no hiding from the truth. It had been many, many weeks since I’d gotten laid. “Almost a . . . yeah. A month now.” I threw the sleeping bags into the tent to land on the air mattresses.
She frowned. “So, since the article came out.”
“Since you told America I couldn’t kiss. Yeah.”
“And that’s why you’ve been celibate.”
I seized onto that excuse gladly. No sense telling her that none of the women who had offered were red enough. Smart enough. Tantalizing enough. “Well, duh. Mal and Ian think I need to get with you to get over it.” I rolled my eyes and turned to her. “Look, since you’ve been tracking my conquests on social media anyway, did any of them complain that I didn’t know how to kiss? Since you’re so interested?”
She backed up a step under the heat of my question but then stood her ground. “Most people don’t tell the truth on social media. They go online to brag that they bagged a celebrity, not to complain about his kissing technique.”
“You did. ”
“I’m not most people,” she shot back. “I’m known for my honesty. I’m respected for my opinions. That’s what has made me successful.”
I scoffed, which made her toss her head proudly. I had no comeback to that and she knew it. In the land of verbal fencing, that round went to O’Connor, and I didn’t like it.
“I’m going to take Charlotte for a sniff-and-poop before bedtime. You want anything out of the back of the truck?”
“Bedtime?” She frowned, and I sighed.
“You’re safe, O’Connor. I told you.”
“It’s not that. It’s just—it’s Tuesday morning.”
“Why, yes it is. Excellent observation.”
She rolled her eyes at my sarcasm. “I need to finish up my podcast today so I can edit tomorrow and post on Thursday. That means I need an interview with you.”
“Now?” There was only so much I could take, and I’d already been smacked around by her enough for one morning. “Let’s do it this afternoon. Before we get on the road.” Her grimace was unwarranted. She didn’t like the idea. “Why not? What’s the matter?”
O’Connor wrinkled her nose and gestured generally toward her face. “I hate sleeping in makeup.”
“Yeah? Me too. So what?”
She rocked her head in annoyance. I was irking her with persistence, which was interesting. “If I wash all this off now, I’ll have to put it all back on again this afternoon.”
She touched her eyebrow, frowning. I remembered her look at the Omaha gig—those ginger brows. The pale lashes. The utter lack of eye makeup. The ground shifted under my feet, and I couldn’t block off the laughter that welled up in me.
This round was going to go my way.
“Go ahead. Let’s set up your cameras. That picnic table okay? Hang on, I’ve got the trunk. No, I’ve got it. Here? ”
“Why are you so happy all of a sudden?” Her suspicion delighted me.
“We’ll not only do the interview,” I said, “but I’m also going to be your guest host for this episode of the Opinionated O’Connor podcast.”
“No you’re not.”
“Sure I am. Your people will love it. Set it up.”
“What are you up to?”
She knew her business. We were set up in minutes, each of us with a camera focused on our faces.
“Ready?” I asked her. “Hit record.”
“I’m pretty sure I won’t like this.”
“Don’t use what you don’t want. Hit record.” Her eyes squinted in suspicion, but she touched the button. The red lights on our cameras both came on. “Hello, America! Welcome to the Opinionated O’Connor podcast. I’m your guest host this week, Archer Armstrong. I’m with O’Connor herself, who is briefly on tour with Aftermath. Say hello, O’Connor.”
Her eyebrows formed the international “confused” symbol. “Hello?”
“This special video version is coming to you from a campsite in Tennessee because that’s how Aftermath rolls.” I picked up my camera and swiveled to show Charlotte gnawing on my old boot as she lay on the winter-brown grass beside us. “There’s Charlotte, the Aftermath dog. Where are Ian and Mal? Unwilling to face O’Connor, so as usual, I’m in the line of fire by myself.”
I set the camera back down, not missing her relieved expression, just a hint of a smile fading from sight. Now she knew she and I were united on keeping our just-her-and-me journey on the down-low.
“America,” I said, “I’m sure you know O’Connor has claimed that I am an unusually arrogant person. I think you said, ‘the vainest person you’d ever met,’ is that right? ”
“Do you deny your vanity?” she shot back.
“Absolutely not.” That took the wind out of her sails. “I know I was blessed at birth. You said I won a genetic lottery, and I think you’re right. I look good. I know I look good. And you yourself said honest arrogance is better than false modesty.”
“That was Frank Lloyd Wright,” she tried, but I ignored her.
“Any way you look at it, vanity is a bad thing. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Vanity is—it is a bad thing.” Her voice was cautious. She knew I was confident, and she assumed correctly that I was leading her into a trap.
“So, if vanity is such a bad thing,” I asked innocently, “then why won’t you appear on camera without your makeup?” She blinked, so I followed up. “You’re known for the honesty of your opinions. You’re a truth teller. But you won’t show your face without mascara and eyeliner and those darkened brows? How honest is that?”
She tried to regroup. “One of the areas I cover is health and beauty. Looking good is proof that I know what I’m talking about. It’s my job.”
“Oh, it’s your job to look good. Your success is based on your beauty, then.”
“No, not entirely. It’s not enough to be attractive.”
“But it’s kind of a prerequisite, right?”
She scratched at her scalp, which was a useful excuse to turn her face away from the camera. She inhaled slowly and then faced the camera again, shoulders square. “It’s an unfortunate truth in our digital world that good-looking people do tend to be more successful than—than less attractive people.”
I pounced. “And do you think it’s any different in the world of music?”
She sputtered. “I don’t?—”
“Let’s be very honest here, Opinionated O’Connor. Think of the world as a Venn diagram, like in grade school.” I circled my left arm. “Over here is the pool of people who are beautiful. Sure, I use bronzer and you use eyeliner, but basically, you and I are over here, in this pool of lucky people whose DNA happened to line up just right. And it’s a little circle. There aren’t many people as hot as you and I are.”
“Please. Could you be a little more arrogant, Archer?”
“Over here”—I circled my right arm—“is the pool of people who are musically talented. And that’s a small pool too. Some people can read music, fewer have studied music theory, a precious few have any experience making a living at being a musician. And the overlap between this circle and this circle? Man, it is tiny.”
“Archer, I get your point.”
“Do you? Because I’m not sure you do. See, there’s a third circle, and that’s way up here.” I fanned my arm overhead. The camera wouldn’t show it, but viewers would understand. “And this circle is the group of people willing to sacrifice any sense of a normal life to make their living in the insane, totally confusing, incomprehensible world of music these days, where you can’t sell albums and instead make your money off hoodies. Hoodies, O’Connor! What fucking sense does that make?”
“Archer.”
“So, you put these three circles together and the overlap is like a pinpoint. And you think I should be modest about being where I am? You think I should pretend I’m not the luckiest fucking asshole on the planet when I know I am? To be modest now, when all these other people did not make it into this tiny space—man, that would just be rude. Rude, you know?”
“Well, you make an interesting point.”
“And you’re there, too, because you’re gorgeous, and you’re talented, and you clearly have the ambition to give up whatever might pass for a normal life, right? So, tell me again why vanity is such a bad thing. Being willing to stand up in front of thousands of people at a concert . . . or millions of people through a camera? Millions, O’Connor! Man, if you’re not vain, then you’re not being honest.”
I suddenly ran out of steam and was left blinking at her. Wasn’t there something else?
She had just opened her mouth to speak when I remembered what it was, and I bulldozed her again. She’d had enough, and it wasn’t fair of me to keep going, but the point was there, waiting to be made. I couldn’t resist.
“One of the things we’re supposed to talk about today in this national reformation of my shitty personality is being kind to others, right? So, that’s like, do you tip the waiter? And I’m here to tell you that even though I don’t have a fat wallet—yet—I do tip well. As well as I can. Not because I’m a celebrity on the rise who’s supposed to look like some magnanimous distributor of hundred-dollar bills. I do it because I’ve been a waiter. I know what a shitty job that is. And anyone who manages to do that job, perfectly or poorly, is having a shittier day than I am, and I can leave an extra two or five dollars on my tip to let them know I understand.” I banged on the picnic table, making the camera jump. “It’s just my opinion,” I said, “but I’m right.”
Then I had nothing else to add.
O’Conner watched me from beneath lowered brows. “Finished?”
I nodded. “I’m done. Probably should have stopped before the tipping-the-waiter thing, but you gotta go where life takes you.”
O’Connor’s hands opened, attempting to embrace the confusion. “Okay,” she said. “America, I am very interested in what you think of my guest host today.” She provided her contact information and signed off, stopping the recording.
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
“So,” I said. “Now bedtime?”