Trancas Canyon

Spin & Win

It was dinner time in Tokyo but Madli's body had no idea what time it was. She had eaten a sandwich on the plane hours ago. She was slightly nauseated from the smell of cigarettes which she had become unaccustomed to because so many places in Chicago were smoke free. She wanted nothing more than to go into the mini mart inside the terminal to get some crackers and a Sprite but she was already aware that she was officially on the clock and her time was not her own anymore.

A faint grin spread across Yoshimoto's face as he stared about a hundred yards in front of them. It was the first time he had shown any emotion.

"There he is."

Yoshimoto pointed and waved at Jaan whose eyes gleamed like lasers that had been activated by recognizing Yoshimoto's familiar face. Yoshimoto smiled sardonically as Jaan strode toward them.

"He is monster."

With his shaved head and nearly seven foot frame, Jaan did in fact look like an android.

Yoshimoto came to life as he and Jaan exchanged a hearty bromance style handshake. Madli craned her head up to meet her new colleague's gaze.

"Tere."

A look of surprise spread across Jaan's face as Madli greeted him in Estonian.

"You speak Estonian?"

"Yes. My mother is Estonian."

"So your name is Mahdli he said pronouncing it correctly. She had grown up in the suburbs of Chicago being called Madly like madly in love or truly, madly, deeply.

"Väga hea."

Madli recognized his interjection to mean, "very good." She hoped that he wouldn't continue speaking in Estonian because she in truth she was far from fluent and her vocabulary was limited to what she called, "kitchen Estonian." She was relieved when Jaan continued in English.

"Fiori's flight was delayed by a storm so they are not here yet. I've been on vacation for two weeks so I flew in separately last night to meet them. 'V' called me. She said you would be a lost lamb on your own here in Tokyo. I called Taro to meet you." Madli gazed at her completely foreign and surprisingly quiet surroundings. Even the ATM machines with their vivid graphic displays and extra slots, looked alien to her.

"I would have been lost."

"I am going to take you to Fiori's motorcade."

"Okay."

She followed alongside Jaan, doing her best to keep pace with his long strides. With every step, the sound of screaming fans who had been cordoned off at the end of the arrival terminal escalated. The wailing reached a fever pitch when the hundreds of fans spotted Jaan. The terminal was overcome by a hysteria the likes of which Madli could never have imagined. Airport security fought to hold back the fans who lunged forward and blindly raised their cell phones to capture Jaan's movements.

As Madli, got closer she could see that many of the fans were dressed up to look like Fiori from her different incarnations going back to her early career. Some fans wore outrageous blonde wigs while others had boldly slipped into skintight, sheer jumpsuits accessorized by knock-offs of her trademark platform boots. One young male fan who had secured a position up front, boldly stood amongst the others in a dress made of meat.

The gasps and screams of the hundreds of fans gathered outside hit Madli like a sound wave as she stepped through the sliding glass doors behind Jaan. White gloved airport police officers struggled to keep the crowd under control as Jaan escorted Madli to a caravan of shiny black luxury SUVS parked at the curb. From what she could tell, the whole terminal had been shut down for Fiori's arrival.

The shrieking hysteria broke off and shrugged its way to an abrupt and disappointed end when the eyes of the fans came to rest on Madli pulling her roller bag behind Jaan's towering figure. A delicate, doe-eyed female driver hopped out of the front of the third SUV and came around the car with an exaggerated smile frozen on her face. She bowed from the waist when she greeted Madli.

"Nihon e Youkoso."

Madli smiled back at the driver then climbed into the back of the SUV. The plush leather seat was far more comfortable than her cramped airplane seat. She was utterly exhausted. She had been to Europe and to Greece but the flight from Chicago to Tokyo had really taken a toll on her thirty-six-year old body. Maybe it was because this was not a vacation. There were no bike tours, restaurants recommended by friends or shopping to look forward to. She would be performing the most menial of tasks. Buying tampons, walking dogs and packing suitcases were just a few of the tasks outlined for Madli at her second interview.

It was her best friend Jill, a high powered music agent in Los Angeles who had put her up for the job. Jill was a self-made success story from a small Indiana township known for having two time zones. Madli had met Jill in business school before Jill quit halfway through the first semester to move to New York City to manage a Ska band. By the time Madli was out of business school, Jill had built a full-fledged music management firm with an impressive client roster. Ten years later, Jill was the head of the music division at a mega talent agency in Beverly Hills that represented the biggest names in music – including Fiori.

The day after her father's funeral, Jill had persuaded Madli to fly back to Los Angeles with her. It was rainy and dismal but she spent the week being pampered by Jill and her husband Jesse. They cooked for her and booked spa treatments at a neighborhood wellness center. They also dragged her to Pilates, Spinning and yoga where Madli lost control of her emotions and cried her way through the classes.

When Madli returned to Chicago, she needed something to do with herself that didn't involve second guessing decisions she made about Chicken or erasing her father's life by wrapping it all up into cardboard boxes and file folders. By the end of the week, Madli was signed up with four temp agencies. She accepted entry level jobs across Chicago where she quickly learned productivity was not necessarily valued. To fill the hours at her temp job, she registered for radio show contests even voting daily on some sites for the chance to "spin and win cash." To keep track of all the contests, she created spreadsheets to manage her activity. One afternoon she emailed the spreadsheet to Jill as a joke. A few minutes later, Madli's cell phone rang. It was Jill.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm temping at a law firm today."

"That's not what I mean. You need to move forward."

Jill's words were like cold water on Madli's face.

"I'm grieving."

"You can grieve and still move forward."

Madli searched for a response that wouldn't escalate their conversation into an argument. Madli could hear Jill quickly type a few keystrokes her computer keyboard before continuing.

"I have a job for you. You've heard of Fiori?"

"The singer?"

"Yes. She's one of my clients. She's in a free fall and her team is imploding. Her father just fired her manager for licensing her name without permission in the Middle East and Brazil. Her second assistant quit during a flight to Azerbaijan. They sat there ignoring one another in first class for ten hours then when they arrived, the assistant let Fiori get into the wrong town car on the tarmac. The one before her one was carried out of Fiori's birthday party for being drunk and disorderly. And the one before that was fired for hitting on one of her song writing collaborators."

"This is why she's in free fall?"

"No. Look, it may be too soon for you to hear this but I'm going to say it anyway. Fiori's husband committed suicide. It happened while your Dad was in the hospital."

"Oh my god. How awful."

"She's a mess. I need you in there. I need someone I can trust, that she can trust, to help manage her while she's promoting her new album."

Jill's request was indeed a big one but Madli knew it was time to move forward in some way. Getting out of her childhood home and escaping to where she wouldn't recognize anyone or anything might be just the way to do it.