“But Chris is on my side. He told me so.”
“Faye, you’ve been doing this long enough that you should know, believing what people tell you in this business is both foolish and dangerous.”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t cut out for this.”
“No one’s cut out for this. You think I was born the way I am, or Jules, or even Chris for that matter? This business changes you. It makes you stronger or weaker, better or worse, but one thing it doesn’t do is leave you the same. As I told you before, Chris isn’t evil, only ambitious. The show and its success are all that matter to him, threaten either of those and he’ll cut you out like a cancer, which is what he thought he was doing by getting rid of you…”
“How was I threatening the show? He had already convinced me that quitting wasn’t an option.”
“He knows you threatened Mitten…”
“How?”
“The walls have ears.”
I close my eyes and for the millionth time wish I could rewind time, go back and do it different, instead of threatening to expose Mitten, just do it. Set up a hidden camera in his office to catch him with some young starlet and send it off to Star Gazer or one of the other tabloids anonymously.
“Between that and threatening to quit, you were a loose gun…”
“A loose cannon,” I correct.
She frowns at me. “A loose whatever. The point is, he was worried and figured it was better to get rid of you before it got out of control. And of course, the whole Griff thing isn’t helping matters.”
“He’s mad at me because Griff is famous?”
She rolls her eyes like I’m an idiot. “No. He’s mad at you because he’s a man and you chose Griff over him. It’s the whole alpha-male thing. Griff’s always been his rival in terms of power, and now it turns out that not only is Griff the super alpha because he’s mega-famous, but he also gets the girl. I’m not saying that’s the reason Chris did what he did, but it probably didn’t help.”
I drop my face into my hands.
“You should call him,” she says.
“Who, Chris? You said he was calling me.”
“Griff.”
The thought causes my heart to close in on itself, my head shaking back and forth. I can’t face him knowing that once again life steamrolled over me and that I let it happen. I can’t do it. I won’t ever be able to face him.
“Well, like it or not, you’re going to have to face him at some point,” she says.
“No, I won’t,” I mumble into my hands.
“Yes, you will. I told you, Chris is going to call. He needs you to come back, and when you do, Griff is going to be there.”
“You just got done telling me I’m a cancer. Why would he ask me to come back? You’re crazy.”
“Yes, certifiable, but that has nothing to do with this. He needs you to come back because your children…well, two of your children…are brilliant little thespians.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that Molly and Tom seem absolutely incapable of performing without you.” She gives a naughty smile. “Ever since you’ve been gone, no matter who works with them, neither is able to remember their lines, and the show is terribly behind because of it. And I have no idea what’s gotten into Molly, but she won’t even crack a smile for Hershey’s or Mattel. It’s downright catastrophic.” Her voice is full of glee.
“And whose idea was it for them to suddenly become incompetent?”
“Let’s just say you have friends in low places,” she says, her grin widening, and my heart cracks open an inch with overwhelming affection for this beautiful, wonderful woman who has become my friend.
“So Chris is going to ask me to come back as their manager?” I say, barely able to whisper the wish out loud for fear it will jinx it from coming true.
“Yes, so you need to be prepared.”
“Prepared for what? Yes, yes, I’ll come back. Can I come back today?”
“Today is Sunday.”
“Then tomorrow.”
“See, this is why I needed to talk to you. You’re terrible at this. You can’t say yes.”
My eyes bulge. “Of course I’m going to say yes.”
“Eventually you’re going to say yes,” she corrects. “But first you’re going to negotiate.”
The light bulb goes on. “I’m going to force him to give me my kids back.”
“You’re going to ask him to undo what he’s done,” she corrects.
I nod, a glimmer of hope igniting.
“Then you’re going to figure out how to get yourself and those darling kids of yours out of this mess,” she continues.
I shake my head. “I tried that. That’s how I ended up here. From now on, I just need to play by the rules and not rock the boat.”
“To hell you do,” she says, her temper flaring. “You need to get them out. That older one of yours is already going down a dangerous path, and Molly’s going to be right behind her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“It’s a pretty good guess. Child stars end up miserable. It’s a fact.”
“You’re not miserable.”
“I’m the exception, and make no mistake, I’ve had my share of misery. I’m tired of going to funerals, and I’m not standing at Molly’s or Tom’s.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Normally I would say guilty as charged, but there’s no need for theatrics here. It’s the simple truth, child stars end up screwed up. Being famous when you’re young messes with you, and a lot of us end up dead. We struggle, and when the struggle gets to be too much, we throw in the white flag.”
“You didn’t struggle,” I defend, irritated with her tale of woe as she sits on my couch in her designer jeans and Prada boots with her limo waiting downstairs to drive her to her mansion. If I do what she’s suggesting and break Molly’s contract, the studio is going to sue me, and I’ll lose every penny I have and won’t have a pot to piss in, or worse they’ll take the kids away from me permanently. That’s struggling.
“Of course I struggled,” she snaps. “I’m better now, but I struggled like hell. I lost two husbands, nearly my daughters, and I still struggle with eating and with looking at myself in the mirror. I’m still standing, but I struggle.”
“If it’s so damn awful, get out. You’re Helen Harlow. If you want to quit, quit.” I realize I’m being rude, but my patience is used up for Hollywood royalty, the despots of Tinseltown like Helen and Chris, who can do as they please; write their own tickets; decide what they do or don’t want to do—who, with the snap of their fingers, can make or break lives; who have no idea what it’s like to be a mere mortal, a nobody with no power at all.
“I don’t want to quit. This is what I do. It’s the only thing I know how to do and the only thing I do well. Plus I’m treated like a queen and I make a shitload of money.”
“You’re contradicting yourself.”
“No. I’m telling you how it is. That’s why Griff came back also. He’s great at what he does. Even when he was a kid, he could visualize a scene, see it in his head then recreate it. This town nearly killed him, and he shouldn’t have come back, but he did because, like me, this is what he knows and it’s what he’s good at. I can’t believe he pulled it off as long as he did, nearly ten years without anyone realizing who he was until you came along.”
“If you’re here to make me feel better, you’re doing a lousy job of it.”
“I’m here to tell you that Chris is going to call and that you need to be ready, and that you then need to figure out a plan to get yourself out of this mess without getting yourself fired again.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll get right on that.”
“Rumpelstiltskin,” she says.
“Really? That again? I thought we were over the whole intimidate-the-new-stage-mom thing.”
She laughs, a high, lilting giggle. “I did have fun meeting you that first day, like a cat toy
ing with a lamb. But this isn’t about that, it’s about the actual story. You’re kind of like the maiden. You’re stuck and your children are going to be taken from you if you don’t figure a way out.”
“Yeah, okay. So?”
“So, do you remember how it ends?”
I recall the story. Rumpelstiltskin turned a room full of straw into gold for a young maiden in exchange for the promise that she would give him her firstborn. When the promise came due, she begged him not to take her baby, and out of pity, he gave her one chance to save her child—she had three days to guess his name. If she did, she could keep her baby. It was an impossible task, except Rumpelstiltskin was cocky and foolishly sang a song around his campfire, giving away his secret, and the maiden’s child was spared.
“My mom really liked that story,” Helen says.
“So you’re saying I should be like your mom. Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” I shake my head and drop my face back into my hands. I’m not Helen Harlow, and I’m certainly not her mom.
“I’m not saying you should be like my mom. I’m saying you should be like the maiden. The story is about the reversal of power, about using the arrogance of the person who thinks they’re in control against them. The studio thinks they’re untouchable, that the show is invincible.”
I lift my face to look at her. “And it’s not?”
“I’m saying there’s more than one way to skin a dragon, and sometimes charging straight at it with a knife isn’t the best approach. Television shows are like Jenga, pull out the right brick and the whole thing comes tumbling down.”
My head tilts, and silence pulses between us as what she’s suggesting registers in slow motion like a sunrise, glowing warm at the edges then growing brighter until it blazes white and fills my whole brain. “You’re telling me to sabotage the show?”
“I’m not telling you to do anything,” she says, a small smile playing on her lips. “Though if the show were cancelled, your problems would be solved.”
“Helen, if the show is cancelled, you’ll be out of a job.”
“Please,” she says as she stands, “I’m Helen Harlow.”
86
Sabotage the show. The notion is unsettling and perversely attractive.
Grabbing my purse and phone, I follow Helen out the door, for the first time in a week, certain of what I need to do. If there’s a person who will know how to bring down a show it’s Bo. Home. I need to go home.
Too impatient to wait for the elevator, I take the stairs. Because the kids are no longer around, neither is the paparazzi, so as I walk toward the Pathfinder, I am unconcerned that my hair hasn’t been washed in days or that I am wearing stained sweats and an old T-shirt of Sean’s that says, “C.S.A., Can’t Stand Idiots.”
I am ten feet from the car and clicking open the locks when a man steps from the shadows, startling me and causing the keys to drop from my hands.
“Where is she?” he says.
It takes a second for me to recognize him, and if it weren’t for the round glasses, I might not know him at all—John Lennon. But he doesn’t look like the clean-shaven young man who used to wave at us from the corner. This morning his face is shadowed with beard, his hair is long and unclean, and his expression is anything but friendly. In his left hand is a folded sheet of paper, in his right, a small gun.
My heart clatters around in my chest. The gun is not pointed at me. It hangs loose by his side. But regardless of its aim, there is a man with a gun standing two feet in front of me demanding to know where my daughter is.
“Where is she?” he says again.
I want to answer, but I can’t, my voice lost in my fear.
“I need to see her.” Despite being in his twenties, the man sounds oddly like a little boy.
My head shakes back and forth, and my strange waitress voice emerges to say, “She’s not here.”
“When’s she coming home?”
“I…I don’t know,” I stutter. “She doesn’t live with me anymore.”
“She lives with the man with the red car?”
I don’t answer, my eyes fixed on the gun.
“I don’t like him. He isn’t nice.”
I don’t mean to, but my head moves up and down.
“She’s with him because you hit her? You shouldn’t have done that. That made me mad.”
I wait for the gun to rise and shoot me because I made him mad, but surprisingly it is his other hand that rises.
“You need to give this to her,” he says, thrusting the paper toward me.
My hand trembles as I take it. Then he bends, picks up my keys, and holds them out, dangling them by my keychain that says “World’s Greatest Mom,” a gift from Emily two Mother’s Days ago.
“You’ll give the letter to Molly?” he asks as I take the keys from his extended hand.
I nod.
“Thank you,” he says with bizarre politeness, then he walks past me, shoves his hands and the gun into his jacket pockets, and walks out of the parking garage.
I whirl and race back to the stairs. My fingers fumble with the code, and my feet trip up the risers, but I manage to make it up the six flights.
My first call is to my mom, warning her not to come home. She tries to ask questions, but I cut her off. There’s no time; I have other calls to make.
My second call is to the police. I explain who I am and what happened, and the operator instructs me to stay on the line, but like I did with my mom, I don’t have time and hang up before she finishes the request.
The third call is to Sean.
“Calling to grovel,” he answers by way of greeting. “Tough being on the other side of the custody fence.”
“Sean, there’s a man with a gun, and he’s looking for Molly.”
It takes nearly ten minutes for me to sputter out what happened, and with each word, I feel Sean’s anger rising. “Christ, Faye, you need to get the fuck out of there. I’m coming to get you.”
“No, Sean. I’m fine. The police are on their way then I’m leaving. I’m going to Bo’s for a couple days.”
“That’s good. Bo’s is a good idea.” His tension and fear for me resonates through the line. “Did you bolt the door?”
“Yes.”
“And the chain?”
“Yes, and the chain. Sean, he’s not coming up here. I don’t know why he had the gun, but he wasn’t threatening me with it. It’s like he wanted me to see it so I would know he was serious, but he wasn’t trying to scare me with it. He was just showing it to convince me that I needed to give the letter to Molly.”
“What’s the letter say?”
I sit down at the table and, my hands still shaking, unfold it in front of me. The paper is plain white and unlined, the lettering rudimentary and sloppy:
Dear Molly,
I hope you get this before it is to late. As you no by now I love you very much. I have left you dozens of pomes letters and gifts hoping that you wood relize how much I love you and wood start to love me back. I wanted to talk to you but there are always to many people around.
I no your mom is scared of me and that is why she told you not to wave at me anymore. I don’t want to scare her I just want you to no how much I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. We cood run away together and be alone without anyone else around.
I can’t wait any longer for you to notice me. I’ve got to do something to proove my love! By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope you will relize how deeply I love you. You can save me. I will be at the Hilton when the president arrives. If you are not there I will no you didn’t give me a chance. This is the greatest overture of love I can give. I am doing this for you.
I love you forever,
Ethan W. Howell
“Holy shit,” Sean says, just as sirens pull up outside the building.
“The police are here.”
“Molly’s not going anywhere fucking near that goddamn hotel,” Sean says, fury in his voice.
&n
bsp; * * *
The letter sends the police into a tizzy, and the condo looks like a squad room, and I’ve been interrogated by at least a dozen different people from half a dozen different agencies. The president’s staff has been put on alert and the itinerary for his visit changed so he will no longer be staying at the Hilton when he arrives next week.
Stakeouts are now in place at the hotel, at the condo, at Ethan’s apartment, and at Sean’s apartment, and an APB has been put out on Ethan W. Howell.
It’s nearly two thirty, and my head is throbbing.
My mom has returned and sits with me on the couch as the whirl of activity spins around us. The current debate seems to be whether Molly should be used as bait to flush him out if they are not able to apprehend him before the president arrives.
Sean’s answer is an adamant no. And for the first time in her life, my mom agrees with my ex-husband. I should be relieved that the decision is not up to me since custody at the moment solely belongs to Sean, but I’m not. Ethan’s sad, troubled eyes keep piercing my brain. If he sees Molly, he might not hurt anyone, and he might not hurt himself.
At three o’clock, I call Sean. “Sean, please listen to me. This guy, he won’t hurt Molly. He’s just confused and a little off…”
“Confused and a little off with a goddamn fucking gun. I told you, Faye, Molly’s not going anywhere near him. I hope the police take him out with a sniper bullet.”
“Sean, don’t…”
“One less fucking nutcase in the world.” He hangs up.
I’m thinking of calling him back when the phone buzzes in my hand. Chris is calling.
87
Chris huffed and puffed, swore up and down that he had nothing to do with the custody hearing, acted furious when I refused to come back unless the court order was reversed, then hung up on me.
An hour later, the police and FBI finally gone, he called back. At first he tried to be cajoling and sweet, and when that didn’t work, he tried bribing me with more money. When I refused to budge, he rattled off a litany of expletives and threatened to sue me, and that’s when I hung up on him.
No Ordinary Life Page 30
