“The album’s called A to B, right?” Bosco said. “And that’s the question I want to hit straight on: how did I go from being a rock star to being a fat fuck no one cares about? Let’s not pretend it didn’t happen.”
   Stephanie was too startled to respond.
   “I want interviews, features, you name it,” Bosco went on. “Fill up my life with that shit. Let’s document every fucking humiliation. This is reality, right? You don’t look good anymore twenty years later, especially when you’ve had half your guts removed. Time’s a goon, right? Isn’t that the expression?”
   Jules had drifted over from across the room. “I’ve never heard that,” he said. “‘Time is a goon?’”
   “Would you disagree?” Bosco said, a little challengingly.
   There was a pause. “No,” Jules said.
   “Look,” Stephanie said, “I love your honesty, Bosco—”
   “Don’t give me ‘I love your honesty, Bosco,’ ” he said. “Don’t get all PR-y on me.”
   “I’m your publicist,” Stephanie reminded him.
   “Yeah, but don’t start believing that shit,” Bosco said. “You’re too old.”
   “I was trying to be tactful,” Stephanie said. “The bottom line is, no-one cares that your life has gone to hell, Bosco. It’s a joke that you think this is interesting. If you were still a rock star, it might be, but you aren’t a rock star — you’re a relic.”
   “Whoa. That is harsh,” Jules said.
   Bosco laughed. “She’s pissed that I called her old.”
   “True,” Stephanie admitted.
   Jules looked from one to the other, uneasy. Any kind of conflict seemed to rattle him.
   “Look,” Stephanie said, “I can tell you this is a great, innovative idea and let it die on its own, or I can level with you: It’s a ridiculous idea. Nobody cares.”
   “You haven’t heard the idea yet,” Bosco said.
   Jules carried over a folding chair and sat down. “I want to tour,” Bosco said. “Like I used to, doing all the same stuff onstage. I’m going to move like I moved before, only more so.”
   Stephanie put down her cup. She wished Bennie were here; only Bennie could appreciate the depth of self-delusion she was witnessing. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You want to do a lot of interviews and press around the fact that you’re an ailing and decrepit shadow of your former self. And then you want to do a tour—”
   “A national tour.”
   “A national tour, performing as if you were that former self.”
   “Bingo.”
   Stephanie took a deep breath. “I see a few problems, Bosco.”
   “I thought you might,” he said, winking at Jules. “Shoot.”
   “Well, number one, getting a writer interested in this is going to be tough.”
   “I’m interested,” Jules said, “and I’m a writer.”
   God help me, Stephanie almost said, but restrained herself. She hadn’t heard her brother call himself a writer in many years.
   “Okay, so you’ve got one writer interested—”
   “He gets everything,” Bosco said. He turned to Jules. “You get everything. Total access. You can watch me take a shit if you want to.”
   Jules swallowed. “I’ll think about it.”
   “I’m just saying, there are no limits.”
   “Okay,” Stephanie began again, “so you’ve—”
   “You can film me, too,” Bosco told Jules. “You can make a documentary, if you’re interested.”
   Jules was starting to look afraid.
   “Can I finish a fucking sentence, here?” Stephanie asked. “You’ve got a writer for this story that will be of no interest to anyone—”
   “Can you believe this is my publicist?” Bosco asked Jules. “Should I fire her?”
   “Good luck finding someone else,” Stephanie said. “Now, about the tour.”
   Bosco was grinning, sealed inside his glutinous chair that for anyone else would have qualified as a couch. She felt sudden pity for him. “Getting bookings isn’t going to be easy,” she said gently. “I mean, you haven’t toured in a while, you’re not . . . You say you want to perform like before, but . . .” Bosco was laughing in her face, but Stephanie soldiered on. “Physically, you aren’t — I mean, your health . . .” She was dancing around the fact that Bosco wasn’t remotely capable of performing in his old manner, and that trying to do so would kill him — probably sooner rather than later.
   “Don’t you get it, Steph?” Bosco finally exploded. “That’s the whole point. We know the outcome, but we don’t know when, or where, or who will be there when it finally happens. It’s a Suicide Tour.”
   Stephanie started to laugh. The idea struck her as inexplicably funny. But Bosco was abruptly serious. “I’m done,” he said. “I’m old, I’m sad — that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away — I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art. Now, Lady PR,” he said, gathering up his drooping flesh and leaning toward her, eyes glittering in his overblown head, “you try to tell me no one’s going to be interested in that. Reality TV, hell — it doesn’t get any realer than this. Suicide is a weapon; that we all know. But what about an art?”

7

  

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