Paparazzi: A Rock and Love story (Roadies Series Book 2)

by Erika Vanzin

  “Her mother suffers from an early form of senile dementia. She needs assistance all day, every day, and Iris has no other choice but to put her in a long-term clinic because she can’t do it alone. Those clinics cost a lot, and it’s hard to find the money,” I explain, feeling a little guilty. This is Iris’s business, I shouldn’t blab about it to all of them, but my band is like my family: what’s being said in this room will never leave here, not even under torture.

  “Okay, my question is still valid: why not just give her the money?” asks Simon, increasingly puzzled.

  “I tried, and she almost ripped my eyes out. Trust me, that girl scares me when she gets angry.”

  “No, I give up. I don’t even want to try to understand how women think,” Simon says when it becomes clear that a month out of town was enough to shake up the quiet state he’d left us in.

  “Enough with the bullshit. How do we come up with it?” asks Michael.

  “I have an idea, but I don’t know if you’ll like it,” Lilly suggests as we all turn and look at her. She’s got that enthusiastic, persuasive smile on her face that almost makes my skin crawl. That girl, behind the sweet and innocent facade, could drag you into anything. Lucky for Damian—and us too—there’s not a shred of evil in her. Compared to us, she’s a lamb in a pack of lions.

  *

  How Evan agreed to this, I don’t know. I think he’s with our press office right now writing a press release to try and save Damian and Lilly from what they volunteered to do for me. I’m in front of Iris’s door, my heart pumping furiously in my chest, and I feel the urge to get out of here quickly. I’m worried this isn’t such a good idea anymore. I’m afraid this time she really will kick me out of her apartment and call the police. I have no time to change my mind because the door to her apartment suddenly opens before I can even knock.

  “You’re getting creepier and creepier, you know that?” she says with a half-smile at my dazed face.

  “How the hell did you know I was here? I didn’t knock...did I?” I ask for confirmation with a puzzled raised eyebrow.

  Iris’s lips widen into an amused smile. “No, you didn’t knock.” It reassures me somewhat to hear these words. “I noticed Dexter nervously pacing back and forth in front of the door. I came to look through the peephole, and I found you with a terrified expression,” she explains.

  “I don’t look terrified,” I say, pretending to be shocked.

  Iris lets me in while she giggles. “Yes, I can assure you that you look terrified, and you’re usually like this when you have to tell me something I won’t like.” She crosses her arms on her chest and raises an inquisitory eyebrow.

  I never knew what performance anxiety was until I met this woman. “This time, I’m sure you’ll like it.”

  Her non-answer, and the eyebrow that arches even more, weakens my confidence, so I hasten to add an explanation. “I won’t offer you money or try to pay for something you don’t want.”

  “But?” she’s too smart to believe it’s that simple.

  “But you can make a lot of money from it,” I explain proudly, realizing that, given Iris’s perplexed face, I didn’t explain anything at all.

  She sits at the table stool in the center of the kitchen and looks at me carefully. “Why is it every time you come up with one of your ideas, I get the feeling that I’m going to get mad at you?” Her question is slightly mocking, but she doesn’t seem particularly angry.

  “No, I swear that this time it is organized well and thought out. I can give you the story you’re looking for on Damian and Lilly.”

  I get her full attention, her face lighting up with hope, concern, perplexity. “And you would sell your friends out like that?” she asks doubtfully.

  I smile and shake my head. “Actually, it was Lilly’s idea,” I admit almost proudly because this time, I didn’t act impulsively or alone; I ran it by my friends before I offered it to her or did it behind her back. I’m getting better, given my record.

  “Okay, this thing is getting more and more surreal. Who’s involved, exactly?” she asks me halfway between incredulous and amused.

  “All my bandmates, Lilly and even Evan, who’s working with the press office,” I say as if it were the greatest idea ever, and I take in Iris’s face, first amused, then puzzled, then incredulous.

  “So you involved everyone?” her tone is almost shrill.

  “I called a meeting tonight. Simon even came back from Connecticut.”

  “You’re completely out of your mind,” she says with a smile that makes me hope she’s not mad. She’s not going to kick me out of her apartment, or attack me screaming like she did at the clinic. It’s a huge step forward.

  Iris inhales deeply as if she’s undecided about what to say. “Well, what is it? You haven’t explained it to me yet.”

  “You’ll find out when we get there. You have to get your camera and come with me.”

  Iris’s face darkens. “I can’t take pictures with this shoulder.”

  I smile at her and pound a hand on my chest. “That’s why you have an assistant. You tell me what to do, and I shoot in silence,” I say as she bursts into laughter.

  “I knew you were crazy, but I didn’t think you were this crazy. You’ve completely lost it.”

  She’s right, and what makes me the most nervous is that I’ve never done anything like this, not since I got out of prison, at least. Since keeping on the straight and narrow, I’ve become someone who never lets himself get carried away by emotions, who thinks before he acts, who calculates every move. Now, I’m feeling like a little boy on his first adventure.

  “So you’re in?” I ask for confirmation.

  “At this point, I’m curious to know just how far you’ve gone,” she confesses before turning around and going to get her camera bag which I offer to carry.

  *

  We’re stationed behind a six-foot hedge at the park in front of Lilly and Damian’s house. When we have a nice view of their stairs and entrance, I position the camera and pull out my phone to send a message to my friends.

  “So what? What are we going to do?” Iris asks, the curiosity obviously consuming her.

  “Wait, they should be in sight soon.”

  As if summoned by Iris’s question, Damian and Lilly walk out the door. They look around to make sure there aren’t too many people around but, thankfully, at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night, there’s not much going on in a residential, private street in this part of Manhattan. The show begins: they pretend to shout at each other, to fight furiously like two crazy people in the middle of the street. They look like mimes gesticulating, pointing an accusing finger at the other, but not making a sound. As I begin to shoot, I feel Iris beside me, struggling to hold back a laugh. The grand finale comes when Lilly pushes Damian on the chest, he staggers slightly back, then she goes back inside, banging the door behind her, or at least pretending to. Meanwhile, my friend sits on the steps, elbows on his knees and hands digging into his long dark hair. When the scene ends, he gets up, gives us the thumbs up, then goes back inside the building laughing like a madman.

  Iris turns to me. “You are completely insane. Can you imagine if anyone had seen them shouting like two idiots without making a sound? They’d take them for two fools! Or call the police!”

  I laugh and put the camera away. “They would’ve called the police if they’d really been fighting furiously in the middle of the street. Damian’s voice isn’t meek and mild...and trust me, Lilly can screech like an eagle. I’ve only heard her a couple of times, but I had to run before my eardrums pierced.”

  Iris smiles at my story then lowers her gaze, shyly. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  I don’t know what to say. I’d do anything for her, she doesn’t have to thank me. But I suspect that if I say that, she’d think I’m a fool, so I stretch my hand out until I grab hers
and squeeze it.

  “Come on, they’re waiting for us.”

  Iris looks at me with her wide eyes, and I have to bite my tongue to resist the temptation to lean in and kiss her right here, in the middle of the street. “Who?”

  “Damian and Lilly. Do you really think they did that whole scene without wanting to see the pictures? Those two are so picky that, if they didn’t come out well, they’d make us stand in the middle of these bushes until we shoot something decent,” I explain, and I hear her giggling as I drag her across the street and up the stairs leading to the apartment.

  I can sense her amusement but she hesitates as we reach their door and I squeeze her hand. I know she’s nervous, and, in a way, so am I.

  When Lilly opens the door, she wraps Iris in a hug that leaves her almost disoriented. I see her wide her eyes, caught off guard, while Damian laughs at his girlfriend’s affectionate gesture.

  “So? How did they come out?” Lilly asks when she finally frees Iris from her grip.

  “I don’t know. We haven’t seen them yet,” Iris admits in a somewhat uncertain voice.

  “We’re here to look at them together,” I explain as the hosts guide us to the sofa.

  Iris sits down and pulls out her camera. While Damian hands a beer to each of us, I watch Iris laugh at Lilly’s words, the light-heartedness on her face. It’s a moment that catches me off guard. I could spend my whole life like this, with my best friend laughing and joking along with his girlfriend and the girl I love. The realization comes so sharp, so sudden, that I can’t help but feel almost short of breath with happiness, and at the same time, fear. The only time I loved a woman, I gave her everything and ended up in prison, and the feeling that memory elicits scares me and at the same time excites me. I realize I don’t have the slightest control over my emotions, and I feel lost.

  “What are you doing? What are you waiting for?’ Lilly’s voice seems to come from afar as my mind is tormented by thoughts overlapping with each other. How the hell am I going to tell Iris about my past without ruining everything? How can I continue keeping her in the dark about a part of my life that has profoundly changed me? The fear that all this may end as soon as my past comes knocking at my door tightens my stomach in a cold vice. I feel like I might faint.

  Sitting on the subway, I smile like an idiot when I think back to last night. The hours I spent laughing and joking with Thomas, Damian, and Lilly, then him taking me home and wishing me goodnight with a sweet kiss at my door. A kiss that became two, then three, and finally a night between the sheets—the memory makes me blush.

  I’ve always wondered what rock stars were really like. I’ve made a thousand guesses about their personalities over the years, but I never expected Thomas to be such a sweet, at times insecure, generous person who’s usually utterly oblivious to how the female universe works.

  The lady next to me chuckles as she steals glances at me. I must really be smiling like crazy if I managed to cheer her up. When I arrive at my stop and get off, I wave my hand, and she reciprocates good naturedly. I give some spare change to the homeless man huddled with his dog just outside the entrance to the subway, and walk at a quick pace toward the café where I usually meet Ron.

  For the first time in my life, I’m meeting him without the weight of guilt on my conscience, without feeling like I’m losing part of my soul by selling the photos. I called Agata, the editor of a competing newspaper—the other shark in this tank—who has no qualms about running gossip stories. There was a period, between 1990 and 2000, when the paparazzo profession was at its most profitable. Some of those celebrity photographers became famous for their shots and their reckless behavior. The newspapers went out of their way to go after photos, until it got to a point where people were put in life-threatening situations. Celebrities were forced to flee from photographers at top-speeds, and at all hours of the day or night, endangering ordinary people who happened to be in their way.

  Photographers and newspaper editors came together and honored their consciences, took a step back, and put a limit on what was allowed. Since then, the decline of the paparazzo profession and its earnings has been slow but steady. Everyone in the media was at that meeting, but Ron and Agata were clearly elsewhere. Although they stick to this non-harassment agreement by buying most of their photos from the agencies, they still pay generously under the counter for great shots. To raise your fee, you just have to involve both of them, and the bid rises with each phone call. Thanks to editors like them, I sometimes manage to get prices that compete with the golden years of our profession.

  For what I’m going to sell to Ron, Agata has offered me seven thousand dollars. I’ve never received such a large proposal. With him, I can play the game of buy low sell high. Worst case scenario, I can go back to that despicable woman, though I was almost tempted to raise the price on her to avoid coming here. I also considered accepting her money and not contacting Ron so I didn’t have to see his face. But then I thought back to the satisfaction I’d feel getting the money for a job that’s nothing more than a setup. It won’t hurt Damian, Lilly, or the Jailbirds’ career—they’re just fake photos.

  I enter the café, and the aroma immediately makes my mouth water. I notice Ron at a table in the corner waving at me, but I take my time, letting him sit on pins and needles. I approach the counter where a new girl smiles and asks me what I want. I order a coffee and a piece of cake, enjoying the luxury of eating more, since I’ll be leaving here decidedly richer than when I entered.

  “Take your time. It’s not like anyone has work to do,” Ron says as I sit down, the irritation in his voice making me sneer, satisfied.

  “I’m working. Aren’t you?”

  “Don’t come in here and play Miss Know-it-All with me. Let me see what you have,” he demands, his tone implying this had better be good. I move slowly on purpose, pulling out my old, run-down iPad with the photos, and slide it in front of his eyes.

  His eyes immediately light up like a child at Christmas time, but he quickly recomposes his poker face to hide his true reaction. He’s been doing this for so long he probably can’t even recognize his own emotions in front of the mirror anymore.

  “I’ll give you five thousand for those.”

  His voice has no particular tone, impassive. He’s in bargaining mode.

  The laugh that escapes my lips is so genuine it surprises him. “Honey, Agatha offered seven thousand. And you know she’s stingy, too. Go ahead, call her,” I challenge, because I know he’s quivering with curiosity to see if what I told him is true.

  After five seconds of hesitation, he sends a text. The reply doesn’t give him much pleasure because his face looks like he’s just swallowed a sour lemon. “Eight.”

  “She would’ve offered me at least ten if I hadn’t mentioned coming to you.”

  “Eleven.”

  “You can do better than that,” I venture, knowing he desperately wants them.

  “Twelve. I’m never going to get to fifteen, and you know that.”

  I smile and nod. I know fifteen would make him look weak. I’m okay with twelve thousand dollars for twenty photos. With that money, I can breathe for a couple of months and pay the bills I owe.

  “I’ll upload them to the site. As soon as I get the money, you can automatically download them,” I remind him, because if I don’t charge him in advance, he “forgets” to pay.

  His bitter laugh is almost gruesome. “What’s this? Now that you’re fucking the drummer, you snub your nose at me and don’t trust old friends anymore?”

  I decide not to go into the details of my relationship with Thomas. “You’ve already screwed me enough times when I was a naïve little girl. I just learned who my friends really are and who I can’t trust.” My voice is calm, as I’d hoped, despite the anger mounting inside me.

  Ron gets up and looks at me with his usual arrogance before moving closer
, icily whispering to me: “Remember that you are still a whore. You sold yourself to the drummer to get close to them and take these photos. You just earned twelve thousand dollars sleeping with him.”

  “Look, these photos exist because of your phone call to Thomas that detonated a bomb in the band. Don’t blame me for something I didn’t do,” I hiss between my teeth.

  “Exactly. My phone call revealed that you opened your legs to get something in return...in this case, twelve thousand dollars. How does it feel selling yourself to get what you want? Are you really different from a street whore? At least they’re honest about their profession,” he shoots at me before walking out the door.

  He would’ve almost convinced me if I didn’t remember that Thomas helped me plan this whole thing. If there’s one thing Ron can do right, it’s get into your head and use your insecurities to get what he wants. But not this time.

  Not even five minutes after he leaves, I get a notification that the money has been sent. I immediately transfer it to my personal account and breathe a huge sigh of relief. I’ll be able to pay the hospital bill, the monthly fee I owe at my mother’s clinic, and maybe even start paying back the thousand dollars Emily lent me almost a year ago. For once in my life, I leave this café with a smile on my lips and the prospect of a bright future ahead of me.

  *

  I enter the small restaurant in the Tribeca area, and with its rustic wooden coffee tables and red and white checked tablecloths, I feel like I’m in a parallel world, outside the glittering, modern buildings of Manhattan’s financial district. The clientele amazes me: casually dressed customers sitting next to businessmen poured into ridiculously expensive suits. No bulky backpacks or Macy’s bags scattered everywhere. These are no tourists.

  I spot Thomas at one of the tables near the back, under a pergola of fake bougainvillea next to a red brick wall. I’ve never been to Tuscany, but the rustic wood, flowers, and other outdoor décor mimic a farmhouse in the hills, and it makes me smile. When Thomas sees me, his face opens up in a sincere smile that illuminates his face in a way that makes me almost faint. He stands up, kisses me on the cheek, and with his hand lightly touching my lower back, seats me across from him at the small table. A bottle of red wine is already open and has been poured into two glasses.