by Lisa Ferrari
In the center of the room, on the white carpet is painted in blood-red paint:
CALISTA WAS HERE
The refrigerator is empty. Everything that was in the fridge is now in the swimming pool.
Perhaps worst of all, all of my books have been torn up. The pages torn out. The covers stuck to the walls with more butcher knives from the kitchen.
I stand in shock, frozen, with no idea what to do, what to say, what to think, how to react.
Kellan says, very quietly, “Stay by the door. If anyone but me comes into this room, you run.”
Before I can protest, Kellan heads into the back of the house. He grabs two knives out of the pool table felt and arms himself, one in each hand. I dart over and grab a knife for myself, then put my back to the wall beside the door.
I stand there, staring at the mess, the destruction. I’m beginning to feel violated.
Kellan returns. “No one’s here. Bedrooms are empty, so is the gym, so is the wine cellar. Back yard is clear. Whoever did this is gone.”
I wander through the house, surveying the rest of the damage.
The cars appear to be okay because they were in the garage and the garage was locked.
Nothing appears to be missing.
Both of our laptops are untouched, which is surprising.
Our clothes are in the closet, untouched. We check our drawers.
“I can’t find my blue-and-black panties.”
“The ones you were wearing the day I came home and you were waiting for me? Are you wearing them?”
I look inside my jeans, just to make sure. “Nope. Red silk today.”
Kellan takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Fuck. Okay, I’ll call the cops.”
Kellan makes the call while I begin trying to salvage my books. Only the ones I loved most did I bring with me from my apartment. Fuck. Fuck!
Kellan calls Sheila and tells her what happened.
A bunch of cops arrive about twenty minutes later, both uniformed officers and detectives in suits.
They begin making calls, trying to ascertain Calista’s whereabouts. After about then minutes, no one is able to find her.
I go into the bathroom. CALISTA WAS HERE is spray painted on the mirror.
I take a pic of it and text it to Calista.
Thirty seconds later, my phone pings. It’s a text from Calista.
HOLY FUCK!
WTF?
Somebody broke in.
And impersonated me? WTF???
Jesus are you guys okay??????
Fine. We weren’t home.
The cops are
looking for you.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Manhattan Beach.
Been surfing all morning.
Broke my brand new board, too. See?
A few seconds later, I get a pic of Calista. She’s on the beach, in a wetsuit. Her hair is wet and stringy. The front of the wetsuit is unzipped, showing her cleavage. Half of her surf board is sticking out of the sand. The other half is in her hand. She’s frowning. But even wet and salty she looks hot. I wonder for a moment if I have lesbianic tendencies.
Did they steal anything?
Just one pair of panties.
Okay, that’s even more creepy.
All my books are trashed.
Calista sends me a frowny face. She then writes:
Don’t worry.
We’ll go shopping together
and buy you all new ones! K?
It’s sweet, but most of my books are old, many are first editions, and some are collectibles I’ve assembled from purchasing on ebay and Amazon and online from private collectors. They’re irreplaceable. But I appreciate her commiseration. I send back a smiley face.
I leave the bathroom and find Kellan in the kitchen speaking with the detective. I show them my correspondence with Calista.
They agree her alibi appears to check out, but they’re going to continue checking to make sure she didn’t drive here, break in and trash the place, and then haul ass to Manhattan Beach and pretend to have been surfing. And that she didn’t put someone up to this.
I tell Kellan I want to get out of here. I don’t feel safe. We quickly pack some stuff and drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel, a pink retro hotel hidden from Sunset Boulevard by a stanch of palm trees. It’s an historic place and I wish we were visiting it under better circumstances.
Once I’m in the room, Kellan drives back to the house and meets with the Realtor to discuss clean-up and repairs, pool cleaning, new carpet, et cetera.
Kellan comes back about two hours later. He says everything is taken care of but it’ll take a few days to get the work completed.
“What about my books?”
“Yeah, that sucks. What do you want to do? You want to go to a book store and see if we can replace as many as we can?”
“They’re not replaceable. Some are, maybe. But most aren’t. Most of them are old. I’ve had them for years. Do you think this is a bad omen? Is God trying to tell me something?”
“Like what?”
“Like maybe this isn’t for me? That maybe I don’t belong here?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just some dumb shit who broke in and wrecked our house because they’re obsessive and stupid. Honestly, celebrities deal with stuff like this all the time.”
“We’re not celebrities.”
“We’re not?”
“No. Well, you are. At least to some extent. But I’m not. No way.”
“Claire, everyone in the entertainment industry knows about this movie and they know that you and I and Calista and Garth are in it. Everyone knows who you are.”
“Including the fucking asshole who wrecked my books.”
“Yes.”
“What if they come back?”
“I’m having a security system put it. If they come back, they’ll be on video.”
“It’s like Panic Room. What would we do if they came back when we’re home? Lock ourselves in the wine cellar? Should we stock it with food and water and guns and ammo and MRE’s and wind-up flashlights and canned goods and a bucket to poop in?”
“They won’t come back when we’re home. People like this are chickenshit.”
“Tell that to John Lennon. Who do you think would do this?”
“Someone who wants to get Calista in trouble. Maybe keep her out of the movie or something. It happened after the press release, which may or may not be related. But they waited until we left, which means they were watching the house. Probably waiting out front somewhere in a parked car.”
“That’s a disturbing thought.”
“What do you want to do? You want to go back home and forget about all this and wait for people to forget about you?”
“No! I want to be in this movie with you.”
“That’s my girl.”
Kellan hugs me and I hug him back, tight. I couldn’t bear it if something were to happen to him.
Chapter 21
WE SPEND THE next three days pretty much holed-up in the hotel. We train a lot. A lot. Like, more than usual. We do cardio every morning and then hit the gym again in the evening for our resistance training. Neither of us mentions it, nor did we intend for it to happen, but there’s an intensity in our training we haven’t had for some time. I find myself attacking my sets, attacking the weights, banging out reps, getting extra reps, upping my weights, not resting very much between sets. I’m not listening to music. Neither is Kellan. We barely speak. Our conversation is mostly limited to discussing the exercise, the weights we want, and encouraging each other to get extra reps.
We both hit personal bests on most of our lifts. The first day I didn’t know what to make of it; perhaps it was an anomaly. Sometimes it happens; you have a particularly good training session. Your mind is focused. You’re really into it. Other times the workout kinda sucks despite your best efforts. And still other times, the workout is phe
nomenal despite not having enough sleep or not having eaten enough. So you can never tell. The important thing is to get in the gym, whether it be a public gym or a home gym, and hit the weights. Get in there and get it done. Even if it’s only 20 minutes. That’s better than nothing.
But on the second day, our sessions are even better than the first day. Cardio and weights, both. I begin to suspect that Kellan and I are pissed about the low-life who broke into our place, and we’re channeling that anger into the weights. Each time I think about it, usually in the shower after we get done training, I discover that I’m not scared; I’m pissed. I want to kick that fuck in the nuts. Hard. I want to stomp his dick into mush so he can’t reproduce and can’t infect the world with his asshole DNA.
The third day, our workout is insane. We both want to do compound movements, something which requires more than just concentration curls or bench press. Kellan suggests power-cleans. We load up an Olympic bar with a 25-pound plate on each end and I pick it up off the floor and clean it up to my chest, then drop my elbows underneath, catching it. I do the opposite, set it down, and repeat. I don’t count. Usually, I count. I always count. But today I’m simply going for it, rep after rep after rep until I can do no more. My lower back is on fire and my hands are exhausted. Kellan has to help carry my stuff by the time we head back to our hotel room. The pain feels good.
That day, my passport arrives via courier, just as Kellan said it would. It looks great. Yay, my very own passport!
EVENTUALLY, WE HEAD back to our house.
The carpet has been replaced. The mirror has been replaced. The pool has been cleaned. The pool table is as it was, with new felt (although it’s red instead of green). The kitchen has been re-stocked (though all of our edibles are long gone, which pisses me off because, regardless of whether or not we would have actually eaten them, they were a gift). The food in the pantry was untouched, though there wasn’t much in there, other than some bottled water and our gift basket of little jars of cannabis courtesy of Roger and Hera. I could sorta use a little herb right now. A glass of red wine. Both.
Everything is repaired. Like it never happened.
Except for my books. Their tattered remnants have been piled into a big cardboard box.
Kellan and I flop down on the new sofa. We sit quietly.
I survey the box containing all my defiled books.
In an instant of simultaneous brilliance and eat-shit-and-die defiance, I decide to fix them.
I kneel down and begin carefully sifting through the pages, examining them and placing them on the carpet.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to fix them.”
“What?”
“I’m going to fix them. Fuck that person. They don’t get to take my books from me.”
“But the pages are torn out.”
“That’s why God invented Scotch tape.” I go to the kitchen and grab a dispenser out of the drawer. I return to the living room and dump out the entire contents of the box. I find The Sorcerer’s Stone. I begin sifting through the pile. To my surprise and delight, I find the first missing page.
“Here it is.”
I line up the text and carefully tape the page into place.
“There. Looks almost the same. It might make the book thicker, but that’s okay.”
“You’re really going to try to repair every page of every book?”
“Yep. What do you always say? Life is ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent how we react to it. Right? So I’m choosing to react in a positive manner. Fuck that guy. Or girl. Whoever did this. They’re not going to scare me. They’re not going to make me run crying back to mommy and daddy and just give up my hopes and dreams for our future. I’ve worked too hard to quit now. We both have. It’s going to take more than torn up books and stupid red spray paint and pickles in the swimming pool to get rid of me. Of us.”
“Amen to that. Wow. Jeez, Claire, I wish I had that on video.” Kellan pulls out his phone. “Can you say it again so I can record it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why should we?”
“Because. News of this is going to get out. It’s going to be online and on TMZ and all over the web and they’re all going to make jokes about the fact that you and Calista are in a feud and she hired someone to do this and then went surfing and the fact that you read Twilight and then Robert Pattinson will tweet how awesome you are and then everyone will really freak out because that will mean Robert Pattinson and I are in a feud and that we’re battling over you and that you and I are on the rocks and what will happen to The Really Big Movie now that The Love Couple have split up before they even started shooting and then everyone will be all like, ‘See, Calista’s plan totally worked. Now she can get into Kellan’s pants and see if the rumors about his big dick are true.’ And then Stacy will see it and she’ll start calling me and acting all nice and sweet and bubbly and wanting to know if I want to go for coffee. I’ll say no and she’ll start sending me nude selfies like she used to do. So, we have to set the record straight and take charge of our own image and our own branding. We have to let everyone know that this is just a tiny little hiccup and that we’re not scared or intimidated and that Calista had nothing whatsoever to do with this. So, can you say it again, just like you did before?” Kellan holds up his phone.
I feel kinda stupid repeating something I said spontaneously in the moment.
But Kellan’s argument makes sense. I’ve come to learn that he’s very intelligent and that he does his homework. He knows how the world works and he’s almost always right. How else would he own a beautiful home and several businesses and a handful of exotic cars?
Plus the mention of Calista trying to get into his pants and Stacy trying to get into his pants by way of an innocent meeting at Starbucks or Pete’s or The Coffee Bean or wherever pisses me off. To say nothing of the notion of Stacy texting naked photographs of herself to Kellan. That really makes me angry.
It’s also not lost on me that Kellan said ‘Robert Pattinson and I’ instead of the more common but totally effing wrong ‘me and Robert Pattinson’.
Kellan says, “Ready?”
I nod.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the carpet, surrounded by what used to be my books. Kellan is sitting opposite me.
“Okay, go.”
Trying to recapture my extemporaneous truth, I begin.
“Hello, everyone. As you may or may not know, some a-hole broke into our home and vandalized it. We quickly repaired everything and everything is back to normal. Except for my books. Which, as you can see, are here in this pile. This was the worst part because I love books. Many of you know I’m a writer and a novelist but I’m also a bibliophile through and through. That’s a person who loves loves loves books. I got my degree in English Literature for that reason. I love books. Always have, since I was a little girl. All the books here, in this pile, are my absolute favorite books. Or, what’s left of them. Because, as you can see, they were torn to pieces. But, Kellan is always saying that life is ten percent what happens to us and ninety percent how we react to it. So I’m choosing to react in a positive manner. First, let me say that it was not, I repeat, it was not Calista Roth, as was initially reported. Calista was surfing at the time and had nothing to do with this. So, just stop with all the crap about a catfight. Calista and I are cool. Now, as to the guy, or girl, who did this, eff you. You don’t scare me. You’re not going to make me run crying back to my mommy and daddy and make me just give up my hopes and dreams for the future. I’ve worked too hard to quit now. Kellan and I both have. It’s going to take more than some torn up books and stupid spray paint and pickles in the swimming pool to get rid of me. Of us.
“So, as you can see, I’ve already begun repairing my books. I have plenty of Scotch tape and it will only be a matter of time before the books are good as new.
“So, thank you, everyone, for your l
ove and support. Stay tuned, too, because things are about to get interesting.”
I wink and blow a kiss to Kellan.
Kellan cuts.
“How was that?” I ask.
“That was awesome. That was perfect.”
Kellan’s phone rings. It’s Jeremee. She’s out front and wants to come in. We get up and go outside to let her in.
“Oh my God, are you guys okay?” Jeremee throws her arms around me, and then grabs Kellan at the same time and hugs us fiercely. “Calista told me what happened. I came by the other day but you weren’t here.”
We invite Jeremee into the house.
“Where’s all the damage? Calista said there was paint everywhere.”
“We had it all fixed. We’re back to business as usual. Except for my books. But I’ll have those fixed in no time. Got plenty of tape.” I grin at her.
Kellan shows the video of me to Jeremee.
She loves it. She agrees we should upload it.
THE VIDEO IS live within the hour.
The response is immediately heartwarming. Everyone commends us for our poise. There are some haters, too. A lot, actually. We ignore them. And by ‘we’ I mean me.
THE NEXT SEVERAL days, Kellan and I get back to enjoying life in our new home. We eat, sleep, train hard, work, have lots and lots of phone calls and Skype sessions and emails with Sheila and with Rami and with Aaron.
We even manage to make love a few times. I can tell we’re both putting on a good front. We’re both still a bit creeped out by the home invasion and vandalism. But neither of us says anything about it.
I use every spare moment to repair my books. I finish Sorcerer’s Stone and Kellan takes a pic of me reading it. The strips of shiny tape are visible, but you almost can’t tell it’s been taped back together.
A few days later, we get a notice saying we have packages at the post office.
When we get there, there are hundreds of books.
There is even a complete set of Harry Potter. And it’s signed! I can’t believe it.
A copy of The Stand shows up, also signed!
Holy bibliogasm!!!!
I lovingly put all the books on the shelves and begin uploading pics, thanking everyone.
