She yelped. “Let go!” Her hand flailed in an attempt to catch her hair below his clutch and release it. But he yanked again, twisting it, and dragged her toward the mirror. He shoved her face sideways against it and locked her head in place. For a few seconds, she was in too much shock and pain to resist.

“Stop it!” she tried to call out, but her cries broke midway.

“You listen to me, little slut,” he hissed and gave her hair another yank. “You listen to what I have to say.”

She pushed the words out. “Let go, or I’ll scream.”

He jerked her head further to the side. “No, you won’t. There’s no one on the floor to hear.” His face contorted with fury. She remembered the squashed mouse in the Beijing market. And how he had tried to dispose of Lulu.

“Wade!”

“You’ve had it too easy!” he yelled. “You have no idea the rare talent it takes to grow and ripen an artist. How many one-hit wonders have you met over the years, never to be heard of again? How many record companies lost interest in an artist—pulled the plug!—and there was no manager to prod them to keep on going? How many managers have dropped the ball on their clients!? How many artists have freaked out or gone on drugs because there was no one to prop them up through difficult times?”

The spray of his saliva hit her cheek. “Do you realize how, with a single misstep—the wrong song, the wrong venue, the wrong outfit—a manager can torpedo a client’s career? I forged the way for you. You didn’t have to spend years singing at bar mitzvahs or shake your tits at off-off-off Broadway musicals while waiting tables. It was I who traveled alone to godforsaken AM stations, sleeping in cockroach-infested motels and eating shit on muffins for breakfast and shit on pizza for dinner. I paved a shortcut for you directly to Heaven so you could start at the top! Do you think it was easy to get the best lyricists and composers in the country to write smash hits for an unknown teenage punk? And when you insisted on writing your own songs, it was I who pulled Jean-Claude in by his miserable ears and forced him turn your dreck into music. I charted your career with no margin of error for mistakes.”

In his torrent of words, the grip of his hand loosened. Nola thought of Ming-Ji’s words about Daniel, “He don’t do it for you. He do it for himself. We all do what we do for ourselves. For what make us happy.”

“Let go!” Nola glowered at Wade in the mirror.