Starbucks
Tuesday, July 27
With shoddy reception out on Maple Street, Arlo and the kids stopped off at Starbucks on the way home from the hospital. He bought everybody a mini maple scone, then called that old friend with the house in the Hollywood Hills. Danny Lasson with the Hohner 64. Turned out the number was the same more than fifteen years later.
Danny picked up on the second ring like no time had passed. “Arlo!” he hooted. “You shiner, how the hell are ya?”
“Well…” Arlo’s cheeks flushed. Standing by the cream dispensary, he whispered so the kids didn’t hear, though a man pouring about a pound of sugar into his nonfat latte craned his neck. “I’m not a junkie anymore.”
“Yeah? I heard that. I follow your wife on Facebook. Your children are adorable! When I speak about them I call them the adorables.”
“What?”
“I talk about you all the time, man. We were Fred Savage’s Revenge!”
Arlo shoved an entire scone into his mouth. Then he couldn’t talk. Because it was super dry. The fiftysomething man was listening and pretending not to listen. He put down the sugar and traded it for cinnamon. Shake-shake.
“What’s happening?” Danny asked, all happy and Hollywood. “What can I do you for?”
Still chewing, his voice muffled, he blurted, “I thought I’d sell the Grammy. But I figured I should call you first. Out of respect.”
The man started stirring his latte, which had to be semisolid by now. He was looking at Arlo, trying to place him.
“Whoa!” Danny cried. “You can’t do that!”
Arlo walked away from the latte guy, and from his kids, too. He headed for the corner. Stayed there, talked to the wall like the bad kid from Blair Witch. “I know it’s not cool. But I’m in a bind. I thought you should know before it goes on the market.”
“Did AA put you up to this?”
“No. There’s all different kinds of addicts. I never had a problem with alcohol. I don’t like it enough to have a problem with it. So the Grammy. So I’m sorry, obviously.”
“Oh, I forgot! It’s NA, not AA. Are you in NA? Did Narcotics Anonymous put you up to this?” Danny asked, polite and concerned, his lockjawed accent from a tax bracket Arlo had only seen on PBS. Had he always enunciated this much? Where was that inner-city drawl they’d all shared?
“This is stupid. I’m sorry to interrupt your life. Can I sell the Grammy or what?”
“You can sell it. I don’t think it’s worth much.”
Tears burned. He pressed his head against the corner, and he could feel the eyes of the people in Starbucks, including his kids. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Hold on. I’m at a recording studio. Let me take this outside,” Danny said.
Arlo waited, forehead against cool plaster. Looked back once, to see that in fact the kids weren’t watching. They were playing slap hands, at which Larry was a master. The latte guy had taken a seat. Was on his phone, but also looking at Arlo, which maybe meant he was looking him up.
“Okay.” Danny got back on. “That’s better. How are you?”
“You know. Been better. Been worse.” Arlo’s voice was shaky. Since sobriety, everything felt raw and new and scary, because it was.
“Want to tell me about it?” Danny asked, the voice of supreme confidence. Arlo remembered now, how they’d gotten that record deal in the first place. Danny had hounded this agent at UTA for months. Written e-mails and even tracked down his cell phone and texted him. It wasn’t an accident when the guy showed up at their first gig at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, and it was no coincidence he’d brought his friend from Virgin Records. Danny, whose parents had owned a restaurant on the Upper West Side, and who’d gone to this private school called Regis （and who Arlo only now realized had exaggerated his street accent to put scrappy Arlo and Chet at ease）， had been a self-promotion machine.
“It’s not drugs. Just real life. I don’t think this is the time to talk about it. It’s been years. It’d be a dick move to call you out of the blue, just to unload.”
Nobody talked. Arlo felt choked up in all kinds of directions.
“You’re right. Don’t tell me. But here’s the thing. I don’t mind your selling that Grammy, so don’t think this is about that. The problem is, the Grammy people. If you win an award from them, it’s not legal to sell it. They could fine you.”