1 - Good Help Is Hard to Find

“Tony, I need you to come help me.  I can’t get the fucking TV to work – or the Blue-Ray or the satellite – or even the stupid Wii.”

Jon’s younger brother snickered – although to his credit, he tried to do it quietly.  Jon knew that Tony thought he was hopeless when it came to electronics, but only because it was true.  Hell, his mother had more home electronics savvy than he did.  As long as it was limited to power, volume and channel buttons, he was okay.  Anything beyond that was a disaster waiting to happen.  It was still a novelty to check his email without screwing something up.

“I’m not your personal fucking Geek Squad, you know.  I have a business here, which doesn’t revolve solely around Bon Jovi, if you can even imagine that.”

Tony and his crew were the sole production and video company for the band’s live productions.  At the moment, the band was not on tour.  They had just put out a new album, but the road trips wouldn’t begin for another month or two.

“Come on, Tone.  Take a little fucking pity on me.  The kids are at Dorothea’s house – it’s not my weekend – and I’m bored as hell.  If I run one more mile on the treadmill today, my arches are going to collapse in protest.  All I wanna do is watch the ballgame, but Romeo –or Jake, maybe – has hit one of the five million buttons on this huge universal remote and I can’t even get the damn TV to come on.”

His brother merely snorted.  “Yeah, it’s so damn hard to be Jon Bon Jovi.  Stick your head out the door and you’ll have plenty of company in about thirty seconds.  I’m sure some chick would be happy to help you while away the day.”

Once upon a time, a million or so years ago, that may have been appealing.  In the two years since his divorce, Jon had nearly lived the life of a monk, more involved with his kids and business endeavors than any woman.  He couldn’t clearly recall the last time he’d been on a date.  That date was bad enough that he’d blocked it from his memory.

“Are you finished bustin’ my balls yet?  Or do I have to put up with more of your brotherly witticisms before you come over and fix my fuckin’ television?”

“I reserve the right to continue the witticisms later, but I’ll send somebody to fix your TV,” he relented, but Jon didn’t accept his offer gracefully.

“Aww, dammit Tony, I don’t feel like being nice to some stranger today.  Just take five minutes out of your hectic fucking schedule and come fix it.”

Unfortunately, through the years his brother had developed a hide tougher than Superman’s cape and adroitly dismissed the pleas that bounced right off him, leaving no obvious marks.  Jon briefly thought if he hadn’t stuffed him in a hamper every Saturday of his childhood, Tony might be more inclined to do his bidding.

“I have a life outside of you Big Brother,” he snorted.  “And I’m not on your payroll at the moment, so you’re gonna have to take what I feel like giving you.  Right now I’m busy, so I’ll send Petey over to look at it.  Be grateful and quit your whining.”

The click in Jon’s ear indicated that’s the best he was going to get. 

He grunted and tossed the phone, where it bounced off the black leather sofa cushion next to him.  Scratching his belly underneath the well-loved Patriots jersey he’d grabbed this morning, Jon decided he didn’t give a shit if he looked like a bum with his frayed cargo shorts and bed head.  It was his house, and damned if he was gonna make himself presentable for some gadget geek named Petey.  It was noon on Sunday.  Any self-respecting guy looked like this.

He harrumphed at himself.  Although today wasn’t one of those self-respecting days in the life of Jon Bon Jovi.

Since the divorce two years ago, he’d kept a regimented schedule with his kids.  Every other weekend, half of August and half of Christmas vacation.  Plus whatever other odd days he negotiated on the fly with Dorothea. 

When he had the kids, he almost felt normal.  Jakey and Ro kept him drawn into their crazy stories and activities, and the older kids – Stephanie and Jesse – always had some kind of teen drama brewing.  Not that they often did more than roll their eyes when he asked about it, but it was a diversion, and he tried to be the responsible Dad and keep up with their friends and activities.

Then there were the times that he didn’t have the kids.

He could manage to keep busy during the week with the multiple pots he kept his finger in:  philanthropy, music, acting, even speculating on an NFL buy-in.  Meetings and lawyers kept him hopping from early morning through late dinner. 

Weekends and late nights were harder.

Those were the times he started questioning who he was and what he was doing – and what he had done.  It was ironic that the very things he was depending upon to keep himself distracted nowadays were key factors in the demise of his twenty-plus year marriage.

She told him over and over and over, “Jon, if you don’t slow down and start spending some time with your family, you’ll find yourself without one.”

Dorothea was nothing if not a woman of her word.

He’d blown her warnings off, justifying that his business provided for his family.  It required a huge chunk of his attention in order to thrive.  Only it shouldn’t have required quite so much attention. 

One more neglected phone call to tell her he wasn’t going to join them for dinner – again – and he stepped into the foyer, nearly tripping over the bag she had packed for him.

“I told you Jon.  I’m tired of it all.  You have more money than God.  Why do you have to keep working to the exclusion of everything else, just to make more?  I don’t want it, the kids don’t need it.  We wanted and needed you, but I won’t let you disappoint them or me again.  It’s easier to live without you than to be a constant afterthought.”

The sad part was that he couldn’t even argue with her.  He was guilty.  Every night, lying in the huge king-sized bed in SoHo, he kicked himself in the ass for losing the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

It had taken her extreme measures to realize how integral her input and wisdom had been in his business decisions through the years.  She was his voice of reason, and instead of listening to her, he’d instead chosen to be unreasonable.

“Fuck this,” he mumbled, letting gravity pull his bare feet from the mahogany coffee table to the floor. Wincing at the pain in his right knee, he shuffled over to the wet bar in the corner of the living room.

“Hello, my friend,” he greeted the Pinot Grigio after liberating it from the half-empty mahogany wine rack.  He plopped it on top of the bar with a ‘thunk’ and began to scrounge around for the corkscrew that always went missing.

Days like these, he could more than empathize with his best friend and the alcohol-drenched ghosts in his past.   Richie had done rehab twice now and, as far as Jon could tell, he finally had a grip on the demons that had haunted him for the better part of his life.  Too many more weekends like this and Jon may be looking for his own rehab center.

Of course that wasn’t going to stop him from polishing off this bottle before the sun set today.

The cork came out with a loud ‘pop’ and he slid a glass from the overhead rack, filling it fuller than socially acceptable.  It would save time in the long run.

Maybe he should find a new hobby – something that he could do while the kids were here, but immersed in their own individual electronic worlds.  Jess and Steph always had headphones on or laptops open, and the younger boys would live on the television and gaming systems if he allowed it.  He tried to be a responsible parent and limit their time, but loved their squeals of delight when he broke down and let them play.

Hell, maybe he should learn how to work the electronic mess that his house had become.  That would save him about a grand a year in Advil alone.  Probably more last year, since he’d lost one of the new song mixes on his laptop and had to have it done all over again.  That was a pretty fuckin’ penny.

And there you have it…

Jon shook his head, downing the remnants of his wine and re-filling the glass before wandering back to collapse on the sofa. 

Dot was right.  What a surprise.

It all came back to money.  He didn’t mean for it to, but somehow it did.  Perplexing, really.  The Bongiovis had made certain their three boys never went without, so he it wasn’t like he could blame it on overcompensation for a deprived childhood.

Jon snorted, throwing back another swallow. 

I’m probably just a greedy bastard.  Saint Jon the Greedy.

Left up to the media, they would canonize him because he used a drop of his ridiculous wealth to give a hand up to those in need.  What self-respecting man wouldn’t?  Human decency wasn’t anything like sainthood, for God’s sake.  It wasn’t as though he didn’t get a healthy compensation for it on his taxes.  He was just a regular guy, like anybody else, trying to keep the karma on an even keel.

Some days being a rock star was just an ego-inflating pain in the ass. 

He glared at the blank television screen. 

It sure as hell wasn’t getting his TV fixed any faster. 

Damn little brothers.

As he drained his glass again, Jon balanced it on his flat stomach and made a mental note to tell Jesse that he should be nicer to his little brothers.

☠ ☢ ☠

Petey glanced back with a grin for the doorman, who appeared to be sick.  Green around the gills sick.  Kind of like he'd just released a nest of cockroaches into the upscale SoHo apartment building that he was supposed to be guarding.

You'd think it would get old after a while, but freaking shallow people out with the way I look is always a rush.  If crack is anything like this, I understand how people get hooked.

‘Knee-high black combat boots with dyed-to-match hair and a dog collar’ was clearly the Webster definition of undesirable in this part of the city. Didn't matter that ten blocks away it was damn near the dress code. That extra dollar sign in the Fodor's travel guide made all the difference.

Throwing up a hand to the queasy-looking doorman, Petey waited for the elevator doors to slide closed before laughing.  The look on that guy’s face was almost worth wasting a Sunday afternoon to come and turn on the television for Tony's pathetic brother.

Almost.

The Patriots/Steelers game should be starting any minute, and after taking two seconds to fix whatever the problem was and walking back over to East Village, it would probably be half-time.  Screwed out of the entire first half, all to hold a helpless celebrity’s hand. 

Jon Bon Jovi.  Not on Petey’s top-ten celebrities to meet.  Work for, yes.  He was reputed to be fair and pay well.  Even as sub-contracted help through Tony’s production company, Bon Jovi Management was one of the best employers in the business.  But unless his autograph was scrawled on the bottom of a payroll check, Petey didn’t need or want it.

Begrudgingly admitting that the guy could sing didn’t make him any more likable.  And yeah, he obviously had something the women wanted with that disheveled surfer-boy head of hair and a grill of pearly whites.  That was probably why Petey was the one in the elevator right now instead of Candace.

Petey had mentally dubbed the woman Brainiac Barbie, because she was surprisingly adept with video technology.  Now, she didn’t have any other kind of intelligence and would need a GPS not to get lost in a five by five room, but she knew her tech stuff.  She would also have given her eye teeth to be here, having hounded Tony for weeks to get an introduction to his famous big brother.  Given half the chance, Candace would likely screw the guy before the door closed behind her.

Not wanting to totally piss Jon off, Tony had passed the job onto the other low-man on the totem pole who had the added misfortune of living nearby.

Petey grunted in disgust. 

All I want is to get in and out as fast as possible.

At least Tony had promised to pay out the nose for this impromptu visit.  Maybe that would take away the sting of not tipping back a cold beer at kickoff.

The heavy wallet chain swung, scraping against the pockets of black cargo pants as Petey stepped from the elevator.  Heavy combat boots made deep indentations in the fluffy carpeting that graced the hallway to the penthouse.

Of course it’s beige.  Why wouldn’t it be?  Hope my dark presence doesn’t leave a smudge.

Lifting a grubby-nailed hand to the buzzer made the light glint off the jewels that were embedded in the eye sockets of a pewter skull ring.  Hearing the tinny sound echoing from within, Petey picked at flaking black nail polish and adjusted studded leather bracelets, waiting impatiently for Mr. Rock Star to answer the door.