I just go off. I fuckin’ blow, man. I unclip my ’chute right there in the plane, and throw it out the hatch. It’s gone—a dot, a tiny dot, falling toward Manhattan. Some homeless dude in Central Park probably thought it was a sleeping bag from heaven. And I say to Blade, over the engines, I say to him, ‘It’s your lucky day, motherfucker, ’cause I’m gonna jump out this plane, right now, and you don’t have to do a thing. Just let me fall, let me die, and all your problems are solved. You got enough dough from royalties, you’ll never have to work another day again in your life; that’s how much I care about you, asshole. But if you wanna trust me, if you wanna COMMIT to this band as much as I do, then jump out after me, and catch me, man. Just catch me. And we’ll land together and do the gig. Your choice. Farewell, my friend.’”
I’d never heard this story before. I mean, I knew about the jump, of course. Everyone knew about the jump. After the Beatles playing The Ed Sullivan Show, it was the most famous event in rock ’n’ roll history. But I thought it had been some kind of prank gone wrong, an accident with a very lucky ending.
“And?” I said, when I found my voice. “What happened?”
“What happened? Dude caught me. We played the show. Best night of my fuckin’ life.”
“He just… ‘caught’ you?”
“Blade’s been skydiving since he was in the womb. Literally—his mom was some kinda champ, did jumps when she was pregnant. Dude can pull midair moves like an F-18. In fact, he messed with my head before saving my life. He flew right past me, showed me the birdie, and told me to aim for the spike on the roof of the Empire State Building. I thought I was pink slime, man. I was crying, praying, wishing I hadn’t thrown away the ’chute, then—WOOOMPH—he’s right there behind me, arm around my waist. Next thing I know, he’s hooked me onto him, and we land together, best buddies again. It made me rock hard, man.”
“That’s… amazing—I mean, that he caught you.”
“Well, the president didn’t think so. He called me ‘Joey Dumbass’ the next day in the Rose Garden.”
“Must have hurt,” I said.
“You kidding? It was like a billion bucks of free advertising. Not that I was thinkin’ about that at the time. Honestly, I just wanted Blade to believe me when I said I cared more about the band than my own life. By jumpin’ out of that plane, I proved it to him. And believe it or not, Bungalow Bill, I feel the same way about Project Icon. I’m gettin’ older. Look at my legs. I can’t jump around on stage every night of the week. My doc gives me two years max before I start rollin’ in a wheelchair, Johnny Cash—style. So I need a regular job. And no, by the way, I don’t wanna sit on a beach. You think that’s fun? Honey, you ain’t never done it. I retired to Hawaii in 1984, after I got my first hundred million in the bank. Six days, it lasted. And I’m surprised I held out that long. I was hitting myself in the face with fuckin’ rocks, I was so bored. Beautiful place, man, don’t get me wrong. But live there? Try it, I dare ya. Relaxation is stagnation. Fuck that shit. Besides, at Project Icon, I can help give some cow town kid like Jimmy Nugget a shot at doin’ what I did. That means the world to me, Bungalow Bill. Where else is the next generation gonna come from, huh? Without Icon, there’d be no music shows on prime time. There’d be no audience. Shit, if you’re unknown, you can’t even get a gig these days, ’cause the venues make you guarantee the takings at the door in advance. What kind of young kid can afford to do that?”
I didn’t get a chance to answer this question—because without warning, Joey lunged. I guess I must have leaned in closer while he was speaking, or maybe it was the nude Olympics going on in the background that had triggered some sex impulse in his head. Whatever—I couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. And by that I mean, I couldn’t actually get out of the way fast enough. So there I was, pinned on the recliner, with the tongue of a sixty-two-year-old man