Illusions Complete Series (Illusions Series Volumes 1-3)

by Annie Jocoby

  “But she had all those marks on her body. Cigarette burns, whiplashes, deep gashes where she was slashed with a knife.”

  “The woman is a self-mutilator from way back. She was hospitalized three times for that. She obviously did those things to herself.”

  I could feel Ryan’s eyes now on me, boring into me. I was shaking. I couldn’t look at him. I could feel my face burning, red hot.

  Ryan didn’t say a word.

  Blondie continued. “But why would they accuse Ms. Anderson of this? She is a very well-known socialite, with a lot of connections. Why not just get some random person involved in this, instead of somebody like Ms. Anderson?”

  “Mr. Gallagher and Ms. Anderson had an affair when Mr. Gallagher was very young. It didn’t end well. Mr. Gallagher apparently saw an opportunity for revenge, and he took it. She is nothing but a scapegoat for Mrs. Gallagher’s self-mutilation and accidental overdose. Or, who knows, maybe it was an intentional overdose. Wouldn’t be the first time with her.”

  Again, I felt my face flush hot. I felt nauseated. Ryan was still staring at me, I could feel it. But I refused to look at him.

  “I understand that he was only 14 when he got involved with her.”

  “Right.”

  “Isn’t that a crime that she can be charged with?”

  “Statute of limitations has long since run on that one. There is no crime there to charge her with at this point.”

  “So let me get this straight. The theory is, as you understand it, that Ms. Gallagher mutilated herself, and overdosed on heroin. When Ms. Gallagher ended up in the hospital with an overdose, Mr. Gallagher cooked up this story to cover up the fact that she overdosed, because he got her involved with drugs. He implicated Ms. Anderson because he wanted revenge on her for seducing him when he was only 14?”

  “That’s exactly what I understand happened.”

  Blondie shook her head. “What a wild story.” Then, looking at the camera, blondie said “We will have further updates for you as the story progresses. Now, for the top story….”

  Ryan and I sat in silence, staring at the television. Neither of us said a word. My mind was surprisingly blank, and I had a preternatural calm, like when I was first kidnapped by Rochelle, and I thought that I would die. The enormity of what was about to happen didn’t yet enter my mind.

  Finally, after what seemed like days, Ryan spoke. “Iris, is all that true?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  I shrugged. Words couldn’t come out of my mouth. However, I could feel hot tears coming out of my eyes. The thing that I sought to bury, that I tried so hard to forget, was now on the international news, and god knows where else. If that station has it, then the possibility exists that this story is going to blow up. Then, I would never be able to get away from it. Ever.

  I comforted myself a little bit, though, thinking that nobody died. Therefore, the story couldn’t possibly blow up too big. Maybe it will be just a little story.

  No, this story is going to be big. A socialite being accused of heinous things – torture, kidnapping, attempted murder. This was just too juicy.

  My suspicions were confirmed when I switched the channel to another 24-hour news channel, and they, too, were talking about it. This time it was a dark-haired woman, and a different attorney who was discussing the “facts” of the case. A new detail this time. “Mr. Gallagher was obsessed with Ms. Anderson. He was stalking her for years. When he couldn’t have her, he decided to get back at her.”

  I looked over, and Ryan was on the phone, talking to Sheldon. “You need to do something about this. Slap them all with a cease and desist letter. They can’t get away with these lies.”

  He paused. “What? She’s an involuntary public figure? What does that mean?...That’s ridiculous...I know, that will be the argument. But what the hell? What about the lies?” He shook his head furiously. “Rochelle hired who? Why did she do that?...Get on it. Do what you can. This is getting ridiculous.” At that, he got off the phone.

  “Sit down,” he commanded, motioning me to a chair. I dutifully obeyed.

  “There's trouble,” he said, stating the brutally obvious. “Rochelle was none too happy when O’Donnell withdrew from her case. So, she hired Greg Schultz as her attorney.”

  “Greg Schultz? The Greg Schultz?” I asked. Greg Schultz was, to my mind, the most famous attorney in America. Well, next to Gerry Spence and possibly Alan Dershowitz. He was right up there with Geoffrey Feiger.

  “Yes, the Greg Schultz. So, now Schultz has his minions out there fanning the stories on all the 24-hour news stations. They’re wanting the public opinion to be on Rochelle’s side, for the purposes of tainting the jury, and the only way to do that is to spread absolute lies on these stations.”

  “But we can sue them for libel and slander, right? Right?”

  “Of course. But how do we prove it? It's her word against ours.”

  “I don’t understand. You were there. You know what happened.”

  “Yes, but who else knew that I was there except Rochelle herself?”

  “You called the cops, they came and picked me up at her house. They arrested her at her house, too.”

  “Yeah, but the lawyer is saying it was all a setup. I dragged you over to Rochelle’s house after you overdosed yourself, then had her arrested, because I wanted revenge on her for leaving me. Or some such ridiculous story.” He sighed and put his head in his hands. “The problem is that I was in rehab just recently. Rochelle doesn’t have a spot on her record. She also owns the Kansas City social scene. I look like the derelict with a bone to pick. She's involved with every charity in the world, too. This is going to be tough.”

  “But Ryan, the story of your relationship with her when you were 14 is also out. Doesn’t that tarnish her?”

  “Of course. She’s going to spin that, too, though. You just wait.”

  “How can she spin that? That's child molestation, plain and simple.” I was dumbfounded by all of it. Just when I thought that I was safe, and my ordeal was behind me….

  I continued “what’s this about my being an involuntary public figure?” I knew something about invasion of privacy laws, and knew that facts may be disclosed if they are a matter of legitimate public concern. Therefore, most people in the public eye can have their private lives exposed. I didn’t feel that I was a public figure, so I wasn’t sure how my hospitalizations could be a matter of legitimate public concern.

  “Sheldon just told me that, because you were a part of a crime that is a matter of public significance, your participation makes you an involuntary public figure. Because of this, the details of your life is considered to be legitimately newsworthy. That’s why the stations can broadcast that information about you.”

  “But what about the lies? They can’t just go on repeating falsehoods like they are.”

  “Let me talk to Sheldon again,” he said. “I’ll see what can be done.”

  He came back. “Sheldon is already on it. He is threatening them all with slander suits. He is also pressing an invasion of privacy issue with them, on the chance that a court won’t find that you and I are public figures because of our involuntary participation in Rochelle’s crime.”

  I sighed. It really didn’t matter. The damage was done. So we win millions against them – so what? We had millions in the bank, more than we could ever hope to spend in our lifetime. What was a few million more? The point was that everybody now knew all of my deep, dark secrets. Plus, everyone now knew all the dirt in mine and Ryan’s relationship.

  He looked at me. “There is something else.” I nodded. Of course there was something else. There was always something else, it seemed.

  “Rochelle is out on bail.”

  My breath quickened, and I felt my legs buckle as I collapsed on the floor. I realized that I was hyperventilating, and Ryan was rushing to my side. He picked me up, and laid me gently on the couch.

  I finally found
my voice. “How is she out? She was a flight risk because of her private jet and her house in Monaco. How could the judge let her out?”

  “They don’t call Schultz the miracle worker for nothing.”

  “I bet money changed hands. Who is the judge?” I hadn’t asked that question before, surprisingly.

  “Judge Reingold.”

  “He has a stellar reputation. I can’t imagine him taking a bribe. So, how did Schultz convince a judge to let her out, I wonder. Also, how is Schultz taking this job? He isn’t licensed in Missouri, I don’t think.”

  Ryan raised his brow. “You know, the pro hac vice thing.”

  I nodded. Out of state attorneys can practice anywhere they wish, as long as they have local counsel overseeing them. I wondered which of my cohorts was willing to do that. Probably any one of them, if the money was right.

  “Let me call Sheldon again. He might be able to fill in more of the details.” At that, he went into the other room to call Sheldon. I could hear him talking through the door.

  After about 45 minutes, he came out. “Ok, here's the deal. Rochelle has an electronic monitoring device. Sheldon thinks that she got bail because she now has a plausible story for what happened. That wasn’t true before.”

  “And? Isn’t it funny that she's now changing her story?

  “One would think. She's spinning, though. Get this – she says that she didn’t tell her story before, because she wanted to protect me, because she loves me. Then, when I got married to you, she made the decision not to protect me anymore.”

  “Geez. Who's going to buy that?”

  “That’s the reason for the PR blitz. This story was buried before she got Schultz involved. Now it's exploded because of all the surrogates out there telling the story.”

  “And the tales grow taller on down the line.”

  “Right.”

  “And this story has all the elements of a juicy tale. The socialite, the son of a prominent billionaire, obsession, jealousy, drugs, suicide attempts, self-mutilation, child molestation. No wonder it's blown up.”

  “About that.” Ryan looked at me expectantly.

  “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  He put his hand on my face, and tenderly stroked my cheek. “You can talk to me. You know all about my past. It sounds like you've had similar experiences.”

  “Maybe later. Right now, all I can think of is that woman is on the loose.” I shivered. “I know that we're thousands of miles away from her right now, but her Monaco house isn’t that far away from here.”

  “She has on a monitoring device. I don’t see her coming this way.”

  I looked out the window. Press people with cameras and microphones were hanging around outside, just beyond the gate. “Whatever. Everybody knows that we're here, now, so Rochelle knows, too.”

  Ryan joined me at the window. “Looks like we'll be camping out here for awhile.” He didn’t look entirely unhappy. “Well, we might as well make the best of it, Mrs.Gallagher.”

  “Dude, not now. I'm sorry, but sex is the very last thing on my mind.” At that, I ran into the bathroom and heaved my breakfast into the toilet. Ryan was kneeling on the floor next to me, stroking my back.

  “It's going to be okay,” Ryan said soothingly, stroking my back and playing with my hair. This was usually such a loving, comforting gesture to me, but, right now, his hands just felt like thorns on my back. Scraping my skin. I didn’t want him near me.

  “How can you say that? How're we going to get out of here? What am I going to tell people? God, all those people who know me, and nobody ever knew about my cutting and suicide attempt. Including you.” The tears were burning in my eyes now. I couldn’t look at him. I was so ashamed of him now knowing my secrets.

  Now he was sitting next to me, still naked, his hands on his knees, his knees curled up to his chest. Still meltingly handsome, and I felt more inferior to him than ever. It was bad enough feeling that I didn’t measure up to him when he didn’t know these awful things about me. Now that he knew them, he had to think that I was some sort of a nut. He probably wanted an annulment, I thought, miserably.

  He just watched me, silently, my head still in the toilet. Nothing was coming out anymore, and I knew that nothing else would. But I still couldn’t face him. I hoped that if I stared at the toilet long enough that he eventually would get up and just leave me alone. That was all that I wanted at that point, was to be left alone. But, still, he remained, watching me without a word coming out of his mouth.

  I wondered why he wasn’t getting the hint.

  Finally, I spoke. “Hon, why don’t you go and get dressed. Get me some clothes, too, please.” And take your time about it. I am in no hurry for you to come back.

  He got up without a word, and returned not five minutes later wearing a pair of shorts and a button down. He wordlessly handed me a pair of shorts and a tank top, along with some underwear. I looked up at his pained eyes, then immediately looked away. I couldn’t take those eyes, not now. I felt myself hating him for loving me so much.

  At the same time, I wondered if he did still love me. His eyes said that he did, but how could he? I did awful things to myself, and now the whole world knew about it. Everybody. And it would be a matter of time before all the sordid secrets of our life together was out for public consumption – Ryan’s affair with Nick, all those sex parties where he was the guest of honor, his dad…his mother, for that matter. On and on and on, it was all going to come out, and how would I ever face anyone ever again? These kinds of things were fine behind closed doors, men having oral sex with men, but what happened when everyone I know thought that I married a gay guy? I suddenly hated the world for being so judgmental about it all, just assuming that there were no bisexual men. They were all going to think that I was some sort of beard, because Ryan would never want to be with somebody like me otherwise.

  Nobody was going to understand it.

  Why did I care? I guess because I thought that I had finally attained respectability in the world. I had finally, after all my years of wanting and not having, found somebody who validated me as a special person. And everybody assuming that it was all a lie was more than I could bear.

  And, at the same time, the whole world would now know that I was some kind of a nut, a person who did things to herself to escape the mental anguish of being an outcast, a nobody, a misfit in society. The emotional pain of being invisible was always more than I could ever bear, so I cut myself to feel the physical pain, because the physical pain was so better than the emotional pain. So much better - when I sliced myself, the emotional pain went away. Even for just that short period of time, then it became like an addiction. I felt embarrassed for doing all of that to myself for my piddly little shitty problems, when there were people like Ryan in the world dealing with real shit. Yet he didn’t hate himself nearly as much as I hated myself. He had the emotional resiliency that I could only dream about. People loved him. Everybody loved him. He was the golden boy that I never thought would be attainable.

  And there was another problem – there was something else that I had never told him about, and it was something for which I still felt a deep well of shame. It occurred to me that my cutting problems and suicide attempt were mainly due to this incident, even more than the invisibility issue. But I couldn’t tell him about this. I prayed that the media never picked up on it and ran with it. I would be absolutely devastated if it got out.

  But I tamped down my feelings and decided not to bring it up.

  He was still staring at me. I finally got up the courage to look at him right in the eye, and not look away. I knew what he was thinking, without him even saying a word. He wasn’t thinking about the horror that had befallen us – the paparazzi and reporters outside on the street, the world knowing his secrets at last, the fact that Rochelle was on the loose. He was thinking about me, about why I would never tell him how much I really hated myself. All that time, when he confessed one horrible thing after an
other, and I never said a word.

  I simply stared back at him, willing him to speak.

  Finally I spoke. “How're we going to get out of here?”

  “I called John. He has a helicopter, and he's going to take us from the roof.”

  “To where?”

  “To the plane. Then onto…somewhere. We could stay with Nate for a few days. Nick wouldn’t be safe. I talked to him, and the pap are swarming him as well. They are being very careful not to be on his property, but are on the public street, waiting for him every day.” He stared at the ceiling. “Whatta mess.”

  “The plane. You don’t think that the pap and reporters are going to be there as well?”

  “Yeah, I thought about that. I'm going to have to call Giovanni, a friend from Harvard, to see if he doesn’t mind taking us the next time he heads to New York. He makes business trips there all the time. That would probably be our best bet.” He looked at me. “In the meantime, we have plenty of food and drinks here. But it looks like the honeymoon is literally over.”

  I nodded. “In the meantime, let’s not watch any of those stupid news channels, huh?”

  That night, I woke up in a start. Was it all a bad dream? I nudged Ryan awake. We had gone to bed that night without making love, wearing pajamas. Neither of us reached for the other in bed. I was on one side of the enormous, king-sized bed, he on the other. The distance between us was engulfing me. We were so close before.

  Ryan awoke with a start after I nudged him.

  “I can’t sleep,” I told him. I was shaking.

  He immediately put his arms around me, and I felt comforted. I hoped that we could fight this together, and not let it tear us apart. We were, after all, in this mess together – both of us were going to be humiliated, so we might as well lean on each other. If we could get through this, we could get through anything.

  It was then, when I finally accepted his touch, his affection, that I was able to let loose with the tears that were threatening all day. I cried for hours in his arms, and he held me silently. We were at the point in our relationship when each knew instinctively what the other needed at any given moment. And he knew that, right now, I just needed to be held, so this is what he did.