by Jess Bentley
Her hand darts out, snatching the phone away from me. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she starts typing but won’t let me see. Next to me on the counter, her phone starts ringing and a picture of her mother pops up.
“Get that for me, will you?” she mutters distractedly as she scowls and types some more with her thumbs. “Just tell her I’m home. I forgot I was supposed to text her.”
“What are you saying to him?”
“Oh, and tell her I took the chicken out of the freezer!” she barks, turning away toward the fridge and opening the freezer door with her pinkie.
Carefully I pick up Bunny’s phone, thumbing the green button to connect the call. Her mom starts talking before I even lift the phone to my ear.
“Actually, it’s Dahlia,” I mumble, trying to interrupt.
But she just keeps talking. I start nodding absentmindedly, interjecting with affirmative noises to keep her happy. She's had a hard day at work and wants to vent about it a little bit before she comes home for dinner. Her boss is a jerk. Everything is late. Why can't the world just be a little bit easier, you know?
I snap my fingers in Bunny’s general direction and she glances over her shoulder at me as she's typing away on my phone. My stomach turns, threatening to make me sick. That bright pink wine is suddenly acidic and foul in my belly.
“Okay, okay,” I tell her mom as she winds up her rambling monologue. Finally she disconnects the call.
Bunny turns my phone over and places it triumphantly on the counter next to her.
“There,” she announces. A smug smile stretches across her lip-glossed lips.
“Your mom's going to be late for dinner, she says.”
“Yeah, I figured. Thanks for taking care of that for me.”
“Yeah. So. Can have my phone back please?”
I hold out my hand expectantly and she edges in front of it, blocking my path.
“Now, don't be mad,” she starts. She holds both her palms up in front of her as if pushing against an invisible wall like a mime.
I shake my head. That sick feeling in my stomach rises up a little bit higher. “Don't be mad at what, Bunny? What did you do?”
“I opened the door for you,” she explains simply, but her hands are up like a traffic cop or hostage negotiator. “The rest is going to be up to you. But I bought you some time, so you don't have to respond right away. Just think about it, okay? Answer him in the morning. Just think about it.”
“Seriously, Bunny, what did you do?!”
She shrugs uncomfortably. “Well, I had to think of my feet, you know? I mean, all of a sudden he was coming on to me or whatever. So… well, it might've gotten a little flirty. But you will get that meeting with Kirkman, I promise! All you have to do is pull the trigger. Tomorrow morning is probably best. Give him time to simmer.”
My hand trembles as I hold it out, waiting for my phone. I want to see what she said, but I'm also terrified to find out.
What did she just get me into?
Chapter 29
August
One of the main things that I need to do is race against Melanie and the marketing team to stay on top of social media. I wish that I could just work alongside them, but my agenda is different than marketing’s agenda. I have to identify the crazies and get them safely off to the side before marketing decides to comment on or share somebody's tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram story… or upvote somebody’s Reddit post… or whatever the hell else people are doing these days to make it seem like they rub shoulders with the temporarily famous.
More than once, marketing has beaten me to the punch and shared someone's post who was definitely not just looking to innocently express their admiration for Kirkman. Marketing just sees his name and assumes any mention is good press and adds to his brand. That's just not the case. Sometimes “press” is some crazy stalker or someone recently released from a rehab facility who wants to implicate Kirkman in their next freefall toward addiction.
Not that I blame them personally. Everybody has their problems in life. But my problem, currently, is keeping everybody else's problems away from Kirkman's.
So even though I despise every kind of child-infested social media outlet, I still have to spend quite a lot of time on them. I have searches set up automatically and apps that alert me to mentions of his name. And then I have to do a little digging on my own, trying to keep up with any kind of new hashtags.
But the most part, most of the work is done by a simple search on his name. When people tag him, I get a ping. I check them out, trying to see who their friends are, what kind of posts they've made. Is it just posts of their lunch and make up tutorials and maybe some emo shots of local weather systems? Or is it something more troubling — cries for help, mangled song lyrics, excessive use of eyeliner and duck face?
So people are dumb enough to just post an outright threat, but usually it's more subtle than that. I rely on my gut.
I understand the position that Kirkman and his marketing team are in, I really do. He's dependent on social media to keep his brand on everybody's mind. He needs to be able to have the public's support and interest at a basically constant level so when he releases a new single or album or goes on tour, people still remember who he is. The public has a notoriously short memory span, and new things are constantly happening. Everyone follows the new shiny object, whether it's the new release, or new scandal, or even a whiff of danger.
I didn't talk to them directly, but apparently Kirkman's former security detail didn't understand how to balance these problems. Eventually, it appears as though they relaxed their standards to the point that there were some bad characters installed in the entourage itself. That’s unacceptable. They should never have been able to get that close.
From time to time, celebrities understand that there's a risk that someone will target them anonymously, remotely. They'll send threatening messages, or even try to make it look as though they have a relationship with the artist that exists only in their imagination. That's just a part of the game.
But to actually have a threat get right up close, even into the entourage… That's a whole other kind of thing. That means that the security detail failed him on several levels. They didn't properly vet the personality. They didn't do a background check, perhaps. And while it's true that not everybody has a police record, any decent intelligence agent should be able to question an entourage applicant without them even knowing.
It can look like small talk, just pleasant conversation. It can be that subtle. Personally, I was able to ascertain three of the people that Kirkman wanted to bring here were potentially dangerous and have them removed immediately. It only took about ten minutes over breakfast to find out that two of them are mentally unstable, and the third had a jealous boyfriend with a rap sheet that included gun violence.
Of course, I'm excellent at my job. Not everybody is going to be able to spot every risk all the time.
The worst-case scenario is someone who doesn't even seem unstable will slip in and get close enough to actually cause my client harm. That's the real reason Kirkman is even here. That's how catastrophic a failure there was in Seattle.
The young lady in question had spent a good six months getting closer and closer to him. She started as a fan on Facebook, sharing his posts and enthusiastically promoting him. She caught the eye of Melanie and the marketing team, who thought that she was a excellent grassroots promoter. Her cheerleading for Kirkman had resulted in noticeable revenue at a couple of his performances, where she would bring twenty or thirty of her attractive friends to liven up the party in the front row. Cash money got her a favorable impression.
She's not a bad digital artist either, and she created several “fanart” pieces where Kirkman appeared as some kind of manga hero, which appealed to his vanity. Actually, he does kind of look like a Japanese cartoon character in real life. I can see why that was so attractive for him.
So little by little, she got around every obstacle. Melanie had see
n her face, had even pointed her out to Kirkman on Facebook. He knew who she was. So at some performance, he could see her in the front row. He smiled, she smiled back. She got invited backstage. They had a great time, or so I heard.
After that, everybody's defenses were down. She would show up to a gig and get invited backstage immediately. She would show up early, and get invited into the green room before the performance. She just started being an accepted part of the entourage, even though nobody got the bright idea to do any kind of background search on her at all.
The first borderline act didn't even get a lot of notice. She posted a selfie in which she was kissing Kirkman on the cheek. The caption was “my new boyfriend."
A couple of weeks later, there was another picture with her sitting with her legs draped across his lap, her fingers tucked into the waistband of his pants while he laid there with his head back, apparently unconscious.
The trade rags picked it up and promoted her as his new girlfriend. It was everywhere.
What happened next, everybody should have seen coming. Kirkman went on tour, and in LA he was photographed sucking face with someone else. The rags jumped on it that he was a “cheater.”
They loved the story. It made a huge splash. Lots of other celebrities weighed in, either egging him on, cheering him on, or criticizing him for being a cheater.
The girl went off the deep end. There was a tantrum. Death threats. She leaked a video of them having sex in the bathroom. Then she posted another video where she tried to take her own life.
Unbelievable. She's fine, by the way. Still in the hospital, but fine.
I won't let any of that happen, but I do need Melanie and Kirkman to cooperate if this is going to work. I can not have him inviting random women up to the penthouse, seemingly in defiance of me. Just to fuck with me. Just to act out like a little kid who doesn't like being told what to do.
It's not like I enjoy this. It's just my job.
Scrolling through the search results on Instagram, it's the usual smattering of selfies and lip-synching to Kirkman’s songs. Even though there were extra women in the penthouse yesterday, word doesn't seem to have spread just yet. Melanie must have already had the dick pic taken down before it started really picking up steam.
If it had started trending significantly, half of DC would be in the city by now, trying to get that cross-platform cultural significance. Surprisingly, politicians love being around pop celebrities. It makes them seem more like people, I suppose.
Sighing, I scroll through the list with the side of my thumb, ready to switch over to Facebook. One picture in particular catches my eye, and I reverse direction to take another close look at it.
She's not showing her face. That's not too unusual, though sometimes it can be an indication that the subject is under age. It's a flash lit shot of deep cleavage, with just the border of a red, lacy bra pushing together the full breasts. The bottom of the picture dissolves quickly into shadow. The top of the picture is collarbones and an open shirt collar, almost blown out by the light of the flash. It's at an angle, one of those compositions that looks artful yet candid and un-staged. It looks quick. Furtive.
Something about this seems… strange. Maybe strange isn’t the right word. But it’s worth another look, not just because those are a damn nice pair of breasts. The text across the photos says Kirkman HMU! “Hit me up,” is what the abbreviation stands for.
He's tagged in the post, so she's reaching out to him directly. I click on the profile, annoyed to see that this is her one and only picture. It seems like a plant. Seems that the deliberate taunt. And the location… Shit. She's in town.
We could be in trouble here.
I click the Follow button immediately. She won't know who I am, so it really shouldn't matter. My Instagram is set up with a bunch of phony shots of the Potomac River, Smithsonian, and dimly lit photos of hard liquor in ice filled glasses in bars. Your basic macho group of photos, but nothing that reveals anything about me personally. It's meant to be sort of a lure to get people to feel okay about me following them, without blocking me immediately.
But I am surprised that she just followed me back.
I clench my jaw. Seems too amateurish. Then again, coupled with Kirkman's own amateurish errors, it might just be a trend. Maybe it's really happening just like this: he brought somebody up to the penthouse, she thinks that she deserves extended access, he kicked her out without a way to contact him and she's thinking on her feet and wondering if Instagram is going to be effective in getting back into the entourage.
It could be just that simple, just that innocent, right?
But I start to wonder even more, when my phone buzzes in my hand. I have a message. It's from her.
Are you him?
I pause for a moment, considering how to answer. Presumably, she means Kirkman, not me.
Yeah. What's up? I type back.
I was just thinking about you, she answers immediately.
I roll my eyes, partly at her and partly at myself who is not so old that I don't have some part of me that enjoys this. She was thinking about me. When the last time I got a text like that? Thinking about me? Trina never did that, anyway.
I rock back in my shoes a little, realizing this actually could be Trina. She knows I have a protocol for keeping track of my clients on Instagram. If she wanted to reach out in a playful way… this would be a very direct way to get my attention. Attention she constantly said I never gave to her.
All right. We have two possibilities so far. There's also the third possibility that this is an insane person I should be keeping from Kirkman for the time being. But I'll wait to get more evidence before deciding if it's that.
What were you thinking about me? I ask.
Immediately I see that she received the message. So she wants to play this game. Fine.
Whoever she is, I'm more than ready to play her game.
I was thinking about reaching out to you. How afraid I am to reach out…
My eyebrows go up. Not exactly the angle I thought this is going to take.
Reaching out to me? How do you mean?
I lean back against the doorframe, pressing the wooden ridges hard between my shoulder blades, trying to relieve the tension there. Eagerly I watch the screen, curious what's going to happen next.
Like with my fingers, she responds.
Perhaps she's referring to something that she and Kirkman did together? These comments seem completely out of context for me, so they might make sense to him. But they’re also generic enough that she could be making it up wholesale.
I definitely should investigate further, just to try to get more information. Only for that purpose.
Tell me more about that, I say.
…
…
I think you know what I mean, she finally responds.
But I need more. I need to figure out a way to get her to tell me more details about what is she's referring to. I need to at least narrow down the field of who I’m dealing with here.
You know that I like to hear the words. Tell me.
You're such a demanding man!
You have no idea, I agree.
Suddenly, I feel like I need to stop. Am I still solidly within the role of Kirkman? Am I merely drawing information from her to do my job well? Or am I showing my cards before I need to?
My heart rate is elevated. I'm a little too eager. I sound a little bit too much like myself.
I should stop now. I should get one of my buddies to put a trace on this picture, look for watermarks or some other detail, maybe even find her IP address. I probably shouldn't be going into this by myself, not even knowing who it is.
But I really want to find out, she says.
Then you have to tell me, I respond, before I even have a chance to talk myself out of it.
I’ll tell you a little bit now… and I'll tell you a little bit later… she teases. Can't have it all at once. Lol.
I don’t like to wait, I reply
. Why not just show me everything?
No. A little now. More later. Deal? she replies.
I have to consider this for a moment. What is she trying to do? Lure me in? Then again, it could just be innocent flirting from Trina. Maybe this is her attempt at reconciliation?
Since we broke up, I admit I’ve had some time to think. She brought up some good points about my solitude, my rigidity. She said she felt like she couldn’t reach me, that I was single-focused, and the focus was not ever on her.
She was right, I’m sure. Then again, I don’t think we were really a good match. I was never wholly attracted to her, never found her irresistible. And I still have the remainders of feelings about my deceased wife to sort through, or so they told me in group therapy.
Ugh. I’m overthinking this.
All right, I text back. I agree to your terms.
I want to reach out to, she writes. Start at your throat. Feel your pulse. Then reach down and…
…
…
What is this supposed to be? Is that a threat or a flirt? It’s hard to tell the difference.
Tell me more, I finally reply.
No, she says simply. I'll tell you more later.
After waiting for several minutes, the screen is still blank. She said I would have to wait, and I guess she was telling the truth.
Chapter 30
Dahlia
I have excellent coping skills, I'm told. When my mother passed away, I was a rock. It's my nature. I wasn’t in denial or anything, I just felt like a literal rock, letting everything flow over me. It could subtly modify my surface, but not move me from where I was. Pain washed through me. I tried to stay still and silent and accept it all.
My dad is more or less the same way. I probably get it from him. We try to accept things the way they are. If things got really rough we could focus on one another instead of focusing on ourselves. That helped a lot.
Even though my mom's cancer came on quickly we didn’t fool ourselves. We knew right away that pancreatic cancer wasn't something that people usually recover from. Usually they are taken away fairly quickly. It's an aggressive cancer, the sort that many times they don't even bother to treat, because the discomfort of treatment is not worth the remaining days of the victim.
