Not That Story

In the mid-nineties, when I was twenty-four years old, I walked across Manhattan to meet a powerful man in a luxury hotel suite.

This is not that story.

I’d met him a few weeks before, when I was working at a music festival out of town. He was the top-billed artist, not my idea of a rock star but somebody’s. I coordinated transportation for artists, so when this man’s airport pickup got botched—roadwork, a detour, a lost driver making up time, the car pulled over for speeding—I felt responsible. The driver described a grim silence while the officer issued the ticket. By the time they reached the hotel they were hours overdue. The rock star still said nothing, only handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill for the ticket.

The driver drove straight from the rock star’s hotel to my cheaper hotel, handed me the hundred, and advised me to reassign the morning pickup.

Because of course there was a morning pickup. All weekend long, we’d take care of this artist and we’d begun horribly. I grew up backstage, well-attuned to privacy issues, so I