Off Message

by A. C. Fuller

  Foxworth lifts her hands from her lap, pressing them into the desk like she's trying to steady herself. "Please tell me we're not going to get into the noises."

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Foxworth, but this is important. The noises. Were you trying to say 'No'?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Were you trying to say 'Stop'?"

  "No."

  "So they were sounds of…pleasure?"

  "Possibly, I don't recall."

  "But you have watched the video?"

  "Eight times today, yes."

  "And?"

  "And I think they were just...noises. The sorts of sounds people make. I don't know."

  Grimmel is clearly frustrated. The show is almost over and she, like the rest of America, wants a direct answer that Foxworth refuses to give. Most likely, Grimmel hoped for a direct accusation of rape, or else a full-throated defense of DB, complete with salacious details of how he was in bed. She got neither.

  "We're just about out of time, Ms. Foxworth, but I'll ask one more time. America wants to know. Accusations are being made. Were you raped by David Benson?"

  Foxworth meets Grimmel's stare. "You switched to the passive voice there."

  "What?" Grimmel asks, flustered.

  "You just said 'Accusations are being made.' That's passive voice. My old English teacher would be proud of me right now."

  "I—"

  "You don't know who is making the accusations, that's why you used a passive voice. Otherwise, you would have said 'Betsy made an accusation' or you would have said, 'You, Ms. Foxworth have accused David Benson.' But I haven't. I haven't done anything except sit back as America got off on a video of me having sex, as millions of people used an encounter I had two decades ago to have a conversation about rape that the media refuses to have unless forced to by a salacious video. You don't want answers, you want me to play one of two roles: the tragic victim or the scheming slut. You want to define my entire life by one drunk sexual encounter from college. And I'm telling you that you don't get to do that. Clear enough for you?"

  The last shot before the show cuts to commercial is Bonnie Grimmel staring at Sandra Foxworth, mouth agape.

  I mute the TV.

  "Holy shit," Peter says.

  "That's what I was thinking." We sit in silence as I contemplate whether this will be good or bad for DB, and I realize that it won't be either. "This is going to raise more questions than it answers. This story isn't going away."

  Peter's phone rings again and I stand up to head to the kitchen. I need a glass of wine.

  I stop when I see the look on Peter's face as he stares at the caller ID.

  "What is it?" I ask. "I mean who is it?"

  "It's DB."

  5

  As Peter answers, I dash to the kitchen. I don't want to miss the call, but the interview left me on edge and there's a bottle of insanely good Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge.

  Returning with a glass, I sit next to Peter, who says, "DB, you sound terrible. Calm down."

  I motion to Peter to put it on speakerphone. "DB, Mia is here, and I just put you on speakerphone. We watched the interview."

  "Oh, God," DB says. "Why couldn't she have said I didn't rape her. Why couldn't she have said…" He's upset, possibly drunk, his voice muffled like he's been crying. "What kills me is that those exact thirty seconds leaked. They are the thirty seconds that make me look terrible. I remember that night and she was completely into me the whole night. One of her girlfriends even encouraged us to hook up."

  I take a small sip of wine. "If that's true, then maybe you can find her, have her tell everyone what she saw, what she remembers."

  "Yeah," Peter says, his face hopeful. "I could help you track her down and…"

  "It doesn't matter anyway," DB says softly.

  "Why?" I ask.

  "Disney is pulling the fourth Atlantis movie. I'm finished. I'm just 'that rapey guy' from now on."

  I frown at Peter, who closes his eyes. Neither of us speak. In interviews, in person, and certainly on the big screen, DB exudes confidence and charisma. It's jarring to hear him so torn up.

  "I'm sorry," Peter says.

  "Yeah, really sorry," I say. "That seems…sudden." It feels odd to be comforting DB. Having watched him on the big screen for years, it's like he's part of my life. But even though I've now met him twice and watched him rise to the top of Ameritocracy, I don't really know him. I feel empathy because he's clearly suffering, but I also get the sense that, at best, he's a sleazeball. At worst, he's something much worse.

  "There's more," DB says. "The studio was already investigating me."

  "Because of the intern thing from Twitter?" Peter asks.

  "Not that intern thing. Different intern thing."

  Peter looks at me and grimaces. "What did you do? I mean, what are they saying you did?"

  There's a long silence, and I look around Peter's palatial living room as muffled sobs come through the phone. Something shifts inside me. I don't think DB is some kind of serial rapist, but the way he said "different intern thing" makes the image of him I'd built up over years fall away suddenly. I have a vision of DB carousing through Hollywood for two decades, using his looks and power to screw any woman he could, and possibly some of the men. I no longer feel bad for him. I don't have all the facts yet, but I feel bad for all the people who've gotten in his way.

  "Maybe a year ago," DB says, "when we first started shooting the new Atlantis movie, there was an intern, or…I thought she was a PA or something, now they're saying she was an intern. There are two hundred people on a movie set and I don't always know all the roles. That's okay, right?" He pauses, but not long enough for us to answer. "She was in my trailer one night after a shoot. Pretty girl but not one I'd noticed before. Maybe twenty, twenty-two. We'd finished four hours of high-intensity shooting where I was dangling in front of a green screen over a giant tank of water. In the movie they turned it into me falling out of a helicopter. For four damn hours I said some variation of the same line, 'The ocean doesn't belong to Atlantis, Atlantis belongs to the ocean.' Anyway, I was exhausted, wrapped in a towel. She came to my trailer with a coffee and…"

  "What?" I ask.

  He doesn't reply, and I realize I shouldn't have said anything. He feels comfortable sharing this stuff with Peter. Not with me.

  "DB, it's alright," Peter says, figuring out the same thing. "You can trust Mia."

  After a long pause, he continues. "We had sex. I definitely hit on her, but she was into it. Like, seriously into it, okay?"

  "And now she's saying it was rape?" Peter asks.

  "Not that. Studio says I promised her a job on my next movie, told her I could connect her to big producers. They're saying I abused my power."

  "Did you?" Peter asks.

  DB laughs bitterly. "I mean, probably. You know how it is, sometimes you say stuff to women..."

  "DB," Peter interrupts, offering me an apologetic look.

  I shrug. Of course I know that things like this go on all the time, especially in Hollywood. It doesn't make DB a rapist, but it makes him an asshole who deserves to be confronted by the dozens, or probably hundreds of women he's used his position to sleep with.

  That he admitted it with me on the phone makes me worried about his mental stability. Completely gone is the man who chooses every word carefully, the man who exudes a perfect blend of control and laid-back charm that melts audiences on late night talk shows.

  "I've given four million dollars to EMILY's List," he says. "Supported women candidates throughout California. I practically moved into Anaheim when I was campaigning for…what was her name? Doesn't matter. She lost anyway. It's just that…Oh God they're dropping the Atlantis movie."

  The more DB talks, the more he comes across as the worst kind of hypocrite. One who publicly espouses and performs his virtues, while privately doing the opposite.

  "I got into Ameritocracy for what I thought were the right reasons," DB says quietly. "I honestly didn't
think I would go to number one, but I thought my celebrity would bring eyes to the contest, would make it seem more real, more viable. I thought I'd help attract donors, and more serious candidates, and…"

  He trails off again. I want to tell him he has helped attract donors and new candidates, that he has helped grow the site. At the same time, though, I don't believe him when he says that he had no idea he'd rise to number one. Steph and I knew within five minutes that he was destined for the top. DB never struck me as naïve, and I don't believe he didn't know also.

  "Oh, God." DB's voice is higher now, almost panicked.

  "What is it?" Peter asks. "DB calm down. What is it?"

  "Are you on Twitter?"

  Peter looks around for his phone. "No, we're…why?"

  Grabbing mine from the table beside the couch, I open the app. "What is it?"

  "I'm trending."

  Usually, when someone like DB trends on Twitter, it means he had a charming interview on late night, or won a Golden Globe. Right now he's trending under two hashtags, and neither are positive.

  The first hashtag is #WasItRape? I click through and give the thread a quick scroll. Mostly, the tweets are responses to the Bonnie Grimmel interview, accompanied by a debate over whether Sandra Foxworth was raped. Some argue over the definition of the word, some say the interview proved that DB did nothing wrong, some argue that Foxworth sold out women everywhere by failing to define the encounter as rape. Others—and they are a minority—argue that Foxworth's interview proves there's a lot of gray area in the discussion. Twitter, they argue, isn't the place to have such a nuanced discussion. Of course, they're trying to make this point on Twitter.

  The second hashtag is the one causing DB's panic: #DBUsedMe

  In the thread, dozens of women tell stories of their sexual encounters, and rejected encounters, with DB. New tweets appear every few seconds. Dozens turn to hundreds. Most of them tell stories similar to the one DB just told Peter and me.

  Three different interns from the first Atlantis movie claim to have slept with him, and two of them say he promised them roles in later films. One says he didn't promise her anything, and that she's not mad at him at all. Another young woman says that DB aggressively pursued her after leading a Master Class for young actors at the Los Angeles Film Academy. Yet another says she only gave in to his demands after months of unwanted pursuits, and only to make him go away.

  On Twitter, anyone can say anything, and as the tweets fly by, it's impossible to know what to believe. But it's also impossible not to get the sense that, by and large, the accusations are true. At the very least, DB has a long history of using his power to sleep with hundreds of young women in a way that has me feeling sick to my stomach.

  I set my phone aside and take a long sip of wine.

  Peter consoles DB by talking about their days sitting on the bench of their college soccer team. "Remember that time we were up five-nothing and coach put us both in the game and we almost coughed up the lead in ten minutes?" He laughs nervously. "We almost blew the season just by being on the field."

  "The thing that gets me, the thing I can't figure out," DB says, as though he hadn't heard Peter's story, "who shot the video?"

  I slide closer to Peter and nestle my head on his shoulder.

  He puts a hand on my knee. "That doesn't matter right now, DB, what matters is—"

  "There were often video cameras around, but if someone filmed that, it means…I mean obviously someone was in the room. For the life of me I can't recall if it was Sandra's friend, or…maybe there was another guy involved? Fuck!"

  "DB, buddy. You're scaring me."

  "I wish I knew who shot that video, and why only those exact thirty seconds were leaked."

  I hear a thunk.

  "DB?" Peter says.

  "David, are you still there?" I ask.

  Nothing.

  "I think he set down the phone," Peter says.

  Thirty seconds goes by, then a minute. Peter and I stare at the phone, then each other.

  "Do you think he went to get a drink or something?" I ask, finally. Peter gives me a funny look, one I can't read. "Peter, what?"

  "I just…" He shoots quick glances around the room, then digs in the couch cushions.

  "What?"

  "Give me your cell phone."

  I give it to him and he dials a number, then another, then another.

  "What is it?" I ask.

  "I'm worried."

  "Who are you calling?"

  Peter taps another number into the phone. "His various cell phones, his agent."

  "What are you thinking? Peter, you're scaring me."

  He taps out a text. "His agent lives next door and I…" He hands me my phone, then takes it back and picks up the landline. "DB! Are you still there? DB?" He switches it off speaker phone and presses it to his ear. "DB!"

  Dropping the phone on the couch, he resumes dialing on my phone. "I'm gonna try his agent again."

  Terrified by Peter's frantic energy, I pick up the landline and hold it close to my ear, listening. I hear quiet movement on the line, like someone walking around the room. "DB, is that you? Are you there?"

  "Is he there?" Peter asks.

  "I don't know, I—"

  "Yes, this is Peter Colton," he says into my cell phone as I continue listening to the land line. "I need you to get over to DB's apartment. I can't make it there as fast as you. I'm worried."

  "DB, are you there?" I ask again.

  But DB doesn't answer me, and the next thing I hear through the phone is an explosive crack. I'm stunned and confused.

  Finding my breath, I shout, "DB? DB? Oh, my God, Peter. DB?"

  Peter grabs the phone. "DB? Mia, what is it?"

  "I think I heard a gunshot. Call nine-one-one."

  6

  I sit at a sunny sidewalk table in front of Baker's Dozen, adjusting my dark sunglasses as I glare at the empty chair across from me. Gretchen Esposito is late. Late for an interview I didn't want to do in the first place.

  I should have canceled. Under the best of circumstances, Esposito is a tough interview, and I'm in no mood to endure what I anticipate will be a brutal string of questions.

  Peter dropped me off fifteen minutes ago, only hours after DB's coffin was lowered into the ground at the cemetery of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.

  DB didn't do half-measures, and I knew he was dead the moment I heard the shot. It took an hour to be sure. Peter finally reached DB's agent, who broke into his house just as the police arrived.

  When they found him, DB lay dead on the floor of his living room, a Glock 26 9mm on the floor next to him. In his first movie, he played a cop carrying the same gun in a direct-to-video thing called Brutal Justice. He had three lines before a Russian hitman took the Glock out of his hands and turned it on him. In real life, he turned it on himself. No special effects needed.

  After the funeral, DB's agent told me and Peter that he sat with DB's body for fifteen minutes as the police locked down the scene. Even as the blood congealed on DB's organic bamboo floors, new opinionated tweets appeared on the computer screen he'd been reading before he shot himself.

  I sip a glass of orange juice, and I can't shake the image. DB, dead on the floor, guilty of much of what he was accused of, innocent of some of it. Loved by some, loathed by many who loved him a few days earlier. Tweets filling his screen. Tweets defending him, tweets condemning him. Tweets lying about him, tweets telling the truth about him.

  I take my phone from my purse, close to tears. I'm going to cancel the interview, and I feel justified doing so since Esposito is now twenty minutes late.

  "Mia, may I have a seat?" It's Gretchen, standing in front of me with her back to the sun, the harsh light haloing her.

  "Please do," I say tersely, putting away my phone.

  "I'm so sorry for being late. My editor at the Times called and…but you don't want to hear about that."

  I can't argue with her. Before Ameritocracy
got popular, I loved and respected journalists. I knew how annoying they could be, of course, and how often they did shoddy, even reprehensible work. I also knew that the work that appears in the media is often shaped more by publishers, editors, and financial considerations than by the journalists themselves. Still, I valued the fourth estate beyond measure. I'd seen what good journalists could do, and how necessary honest reporting is to a functioning democracy.

  Since Ameritocracy blew up, though, my relationship with the press has grown more complicated. At first, we were happy for any coverage we could get. But through the winter, requests piled up faster than we could fill them, and as the political press started taking us seriously, they also looked at us more critically. Gretchen Esposito is writing a feature for the New York Times Magazine, a story we would have killed for three months ago. But today I feel on guard, paranoid.

  "Shall we get started?" Esposito asks, setting a small recorder in the center of the table.

  "I thought you didn't need a recorder."

  "It's backup, so subjects can't claim I misquoted them. Shall we?"

  "Why not?"

  Walter, my usual waiter at Baker's Dozen, appears and after telling Gretchen what a huge fan of her podcast she is, takes her order for iced tea. I'm looking for comfort, so I ask for another orange juice. Even though I feel crummy, the free refills on fresh-squeezed orange juice are too good to pass up.

  "So," Esposito begins. "You just came from the funeral?"

  "Yes. We flew down to L.A. early this morning, then flew back afterwards."

  "Tell me about it."

  "I'd rather not."

  "We can go off the record for this, if you need."

  "It's not that," I say. "I don't feel like talking about it." I pause as Walter sets down our drinks. "What's the angle you're taking on the story?"