Inside Straight

He’d slept with a dozen of the contestants and staff of American Hero after his stupid affair with Pop Tart, after it was apparent that Kate was never going to forgive him for the slip. It was stupid and he knew it, but if she thought of him as the slut rock star, then he’d play the role to the hilt. The tactic earned him the response it deserved. After he’d been “drafted” by the Diamonds, after Fat Chick had been voted off the show, after the show had revealed that he was sleeping with Tiffani, he’d tried again to patch things up with Kate and she had stared at him as if he were a stranger. When he’d persisted, things were suddenly flying at him very hard and very fast, and he was too busy ducking and shielding himself to make any reply at all. The other Hearts took judicious cover.

“You’re an ass, Michael!” Kate shouted in the midst of the barrage. “Go bang your drums!” A vase exploded on the wall nearest him, scattering water and petals and china shrapnel and leaving a hole he could have put his head through. “Go bang your groupies, too!” A pencil caught him on the ass, punching through his jeans and embedding itself point-first in his buttocks. He gave up trying to cover himself and retreated entirely. He heard glass hit the wall beside the door and shatter. “Stay away from me!” he heard her say as he fled.

Fortune was serious; he had a vision that included more than CDs and concerts and screaming fans, even if that vision was driven by the goddamned bug inside him. Fortune was also dangerous. Michael felt that instinctively; but Kate…Kate didn’t see him that way, just as he felt she couldn’t see beyond the persona of Drummer Boy.

Hell, sometimes he couldn’t do that either.

He’d been sent to the Discard Pile after the Blacks had lost their challenge, and that’s when his growing fury and discontent couldn’t be contained any longer. He lasted a single day there, listening to the stupid prattling, the ego games, the posturing all of them did for the cameras. It was stupid, all of it—fake drama and fake heroism. That same evening, he packed his clothes and headed for the door, only to find his way blocked by King Cobalt and Hardhat. Other discards watched the confrontation: Ana, standing in the middle of the huge living room with hands on hips, shook her head as if she’d been expecting something like this; Toad Man lurked in the archway to the kitchen like a wart-ridden VW Beetle; Brave Hawk, his arms folded on his chest, gazed down stoically from the balcony above them; two five-foot-tall Matryoshkas huddled against the wall. And the cameras. Always the cameras.

“Where the hell you going, DB?” King Cobalt said.

“I’m outta here,” Michael told them. “Fuck this shit. I got music to play with people I actually like. I’m done with this crap.”

King Cobalt shook his masked head, the silver lightning bolts sewn there glistening. “Uh-uh. That ain’t how it works, and you know it.” Hardhat gestured, and a crosshatch of glowing steel beams barred the door of the mansion.

“You think that shit’s gonna stop me from leaving?” Michael told him. He flexed his six arms, looking at all of them. “It’s gonna fucking take most of you to do that, and it’s gonna be real. No stuntmen, no dummies, no breakaway furniture, no pulled punches. Real.” He wanted them to try, in that moment. He wanted to lose himself in blind rage. All it would have taken was a word or a movement. Hardhat glared. King Cobalt’s eyes glittered behind the blue mask, but then King Cobalt stepped to one side. He waved at Hardhat; the barrier at the door vanished.

“Michael,” Ana said as he stalked past them to the door and wrenched it open. “All you’re proving is that you’re still an ass. Kate—”

He hadn’t allowed her to finish the sentence. “Fuck Kate. Fuck you. Fuck John Fortune and Peregrine and this whole goddamn show.” He doubted that they would play those exit lines on the weekly wrap-up, and the slamming of the door behind him was entirely unsatisfactory. He took some small pleasure in ripping the locked steel gates of the driveway from their hinges and tossing them aside. He gave a sextuplet of fingers to the cameraman filming his exit.

As he walked down the street looking for a taxi and drumming irritated riffs on himself, his anger slowly cooled. He wondered what Kate would think when she heard, and how he could ever apologize, how he could ever apologize to any of them.

He would never be able to apologize to King Cobalt. Not now.