Love Always, Harry

V

December 19, 1985

It was a little past midnight, but Harry still sat in the now-vacant Orange County Civic Center in Orlando, Florida with his open notebook in front of him. He'd been to hundreds of concerts as a journalist, but he still couldn't quite reconcile the stark emptiness of the arenas to the electric energy that pervaded them an hour before.

Struggling to write up his first impressions of the concert, he looked at the sea of ticket stubs, crushed soda cans, and candy wrappers that littered the floor beneath him for inspiration. On closer inspection, he saw a small baggie with two butterfly-stamped pills that he knew one of the cleaning crew would happily snatch up.

Putting his pen to the page, he barely wrote one word before he heard his name.

"Are you going out with the band tonight, Styles? Tommy wants to know," Mötley Crüe's tour manager boomed.

"Not tonight, Rich."

"Really? Why not? Your intern's already backstage getting ready to head out."

"Oh fuck, I didn't know Chris was backstage. I'm sorry, I'll go get –"

"No, no! It's totally fine," Rich smiled. "The more the merrier. You should join us."

"I really can't, actually. It'll take me at least an hour to get back to the hotel and I have to call my boss about work."

Harry stood his ground against the manager's coaxing. After his last fling on Thea's wedding day, he had firmly set a "no one-night stands" rule, and he was sure clubbing with the band would guarantee an infraction.

"I think I'll let the intern have fun for tonight," Harry grinned. "But could you just make sure that –"

"Yeah, I'll keep an eye on Chris. Make sure nothing gets too wild."

"Thanks, I appreciate it." Harry stuck his hand out to Rich. "It was a pleasure meeting you, and you'll get a draft of the article as soon as my editor approves it."

* * *

Harry sank onto the lumpy mattress in his hotel room with the telephone propped between his ear and shoulder, snacking on cold pizza as he waited for his editor to answer.

"Christ, isn't it four a.m. in the States? Why are you calling me instead of partying somewhere?"The phone gave his boss's voice an unusually tinny quality.

"Very funny. I didn't go out tonight. I thought I'd get a jump on the article, and I have a very rough draft finished. I'll send it to you tomorrow."

"Oh. Well, excellent. I'll take a look. Is that all you called me for?"

"Yes. And to get my next assignment. So I can just go straight from here, instead of having to stop over in London."

"You don't have one."

"What?" Harry straightened up, a frown creasing his face. "What do you mean I don't have one?"

"You don't have an assignment. It's the holiday season. Take a break."

"I don't want to take a break."

"You've been working pretty much non-stop for the past seven months and –"

"If you don't want to send me out on tour, I can do an album review or something. I don't care. I don't mind working, you know that."

"That's fantastic. But you are aware that there are other writers on my staff? I have to give them assignments and publish their articles so I'm not just paying them to sit around."