Davonte hired Harris with some of the last of his tour money, and together they’d formulated a new plan: disappear for a while, lose fifty pounds, write some new songs, and pen a best-selling book. Davonte had made his mark on the world as a sex object, possessed of a smooth golden voice and six-pack abs. A certain scandal involving unpaid taxes (really his manager’s fault), a follow-up record that didn’t sell, and several years of daily pot smoking and delivery pizza had eroded the appeal. Except in his hometown, where people seemed to look at him with pity (like they had ever headlined in Vegas!), Davonte didn’t even get recognized anymore.

You couldn’t make money these days except from touring and making appearances, so now was the perfect time to create a new Davonte Gold. He was going to have a Christian focus and the same six-pack abs. Look-but-don’t-touch, Coach Harris had explained. Ladies dig that, he said, because it meant that no one else would have him either.

Coach was the one to find this place, a writing ranch that would help him get started on his manuscript, a novel about the life of a strayed artist who found the Lord and made a comeback. He had it on good authority that Davonte needed only fifty pages—tops!—to sell the whole thing for a healthy six figures, which would lead to media appearances and opportunities to perform. He’d bought Davonte a handheld voice recorder and a laptop. He’d rented an apartment not far away (its address still undisclosed to Davonte), and he was taking meetings with reality show producers (not one of those celebrity rehab shows, he’d promised, but something more in keeping with Davonte’s talents). How much was all this costing? Davonte asked, and Coach had replied, as usual, with his own question: How much is your comeback worth to you?

Davonte checked himself in the mirror. He’d never hidden his body with baggy T-shirts and sagging jeans, but now he had no choice, as none of the slim-fitting clothes he liked to wear fit him anymore. He still wore a one-carat stud in each ear and kept his hair in neat cornrows, but the weight had softened his once-sharp jawline. “I know you better this way, Donald,” his mother told him after he put on the weight. She lived in the same brick rancher he’d bought her after his first big paycheck, but she’d never liked his new name, and she used every opportunity to call him by the one she’d given him. She refused to watch the video the girls had gone crazy over, in which the camera had focused on Davonte’s naked, sweaty, slowly gyrating abdominals, and seemed to prefer the sweetly smiling, decidedly chubby Donald of the school photos that decorated the hall table and the long-unused upright piano. He’d moved back in with his mother after meeting Coach, who knew that Davonte couldn’t be trusted to live alone. Coach had given her a low-carb cookbook and a stack of Lean Cuisines for the deep freezer, but after a half hour of study she said the whole business was confusing and went back to the same meat-and-potato meals she’d always cooked.