Fame Adjacent

by Sarah Skilton

  Thom fed me pieces of toast and spoonfuls of yogurt while I drove. Normally I wouldn’t have been impressed by the paltry food selection Motel 6 had on offer, but I was so hungry it tasted like a Thanksgiving feast.

  The way he brought the toast to my lips made me self-conscious. Did I have crumbs on my lips? And what did he think of said lips? If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were a couple. A nauseatingly cute couple.

  We’re saying goodbye in a few hours, I reminded myself. Your crush is not only unreciprocated, it’s pointless.

  He wiped a smattering of bread crumbs off his hands. “What’s on your mind? Besides that, of course.” (We were passing another one of Kelly’s “Single Mom Cop Show” billboards. Gotta promote the Chicago-set TV program in the heartland, even though it’s filmed in Canada.)

  “Can I ask you something personal?” I said.

  He finished chewing the last of his toast. “Okay.”

  “How come you chose internet rehab instead of Gamblers Anonymous?”

  “Two reasons. First, it was free. Second, it was free.”

  “How can you be sure the treatment’s going to work?”

  “I don’t think anyone can. I never sought out real-life poker, though; my problem was strictly online, which definitely exacerbated the situation. It didn’t feel real; it was like playing a video game, which meant my money got swallowed up before I comprehended it, before I could see that it corresponded to a real bank account with real money in it. It seemed harmless. Pixels and pictures on a screen.”

  “You were scammed, you mean?”

  “No, I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t let myself know. You know what I mean? It was all about the endorphin rush I’d get when my phone or my desktop ‘won’ a round. It’s the same spike of excitement you feel when a new email comes in, or you see a new response to your Reddit posts.”

  I’d felt those exact spikes at the Cracker Barrel yesterday, yet the high was brief, and didn’t correspond to the level of anticipation I’d ascribed to it the previous three weeks.

  “It’s the same with gambling,” Thom continued. “You’re rewarded at random intervals. You might go days without winning, and then, bam, win six in a row. It happens enough to keep you hooked, and since it’s random, there’s no incentive to stop. In the next round, you could make all your money back. You really could. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.” He cleared his throat, and I wondered if he was remembering a rewarding or terrible experience at his computer. Either way, he seemed ready to drop the subject. “Lisa referred me to a local GA group that meets every week in Greenburgh, so I’ll check it out once I get home.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I chirped. Overconfident in my stick-shift abilities, I didn’t slow down enough switching gears. Incensed, the Passat made a noise like broken glass dragged through gravel.

  Thom winced at the sound.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay, take your time.”

  I concentrated on driving for the next forty-five minutes.

  Perhaps sensing I’d regained my equilibrium, Thom started to talk, right when I said, “About when we get there…”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “No, you.”

  Nauseatingly cute couple again.

  I forged ahead. “I’ll have a whole day and night to kill before the anniversary on Friday. I might be able to crash at a friend’s place, but I’m not sure.”

  “We’ll figure something out. Whether it’s finding you a room in the city, getting you to a friend’s, or…of course, you could, uh, crash at my place. In the guest room, obviously. Until you needed to go.” He sounded nervous, the way he did before he asked me to hang out at Mall of America.

  I took my eyes off the road for a split second. His clear blue eyes offered a calming solace. All I had to do was fall into them and float, dreamily, to shore.

  “I won’t leave you stranded,” he promised.

  I was dead certain he wouldn’t. Thom was reliable. Thom was safe. (If I hadn’t felt safe with him, I never would have gotten in his car in the first place. Still, it was nice to know he had my back.)

  I tapped the brake and shifted gears again, a big improvement on my earlier attempts. It should have been a seamless transition (or as seamless as his POS car allowed), but the horrid screech returned, catching us off guard and menacing our ears.

  That’s when the engine died.

  10

  INT. LION’S DEN—DAY

  (MELODY, HOLLY)

  MELODY

  Fun fact: Did you know crocodiles can’t chew? It’s true! Once their jaws clamp down, they can’t lift up again, so they have to spin their bodies around to rip off smaller chunks and swallow them whole.

  HOLLY, wearing Croc shoes, with a stuffed animal in her mouth, spins in a circle to demonstrate, thrashing her “prey” to and fro and growling. Cue: AUDIENCE LAUGHTER.

  MELODY

  (cheerful)

  Same thing goes in a fight. The best way for one croc to kill another is to clamp down with its jaws on the other croc’s face, piercing through its brain and eyes.

  Song cue: “Never Smile at a Crocodile” (Melody on vocals, Holly tap-dancing).

  * * *

  It took the tow truck an hour to reach us, and another twenty minutes for the mechanic to drive back and ferry us to his repair shop in Harrisburg. At least we’d crossed the border into Pennsylvania a while back.

  The mechanic wore a long-sleeved shirt and Wranglers over his boots. A patch with his name stitched on it—BENJAMIN—completed the ensemble. He tried to keep his voice free of judgment but it was pretty effing obvious he couldn’t believe how old our car was.

  “Engine failure” was the official diagnosis. “You see this a lot with the older Passats,” he said, jotting words on his clipboard. “Most likely caused by an oil sludge.”

  “See?” I muttered childishly. “It wasn’t my fault.”

  Thom had been silently seething ever since we’d pushed the car over to the side of the highway and called for help. The ride to Ben’s shop had only increased his frustration.

  “I never should have let you drive.”

  “‘Let me’?” I repeated, enraged.

  “What if we’d gotten pulled over? You don’t even have your license on you.”

  Ah. True. I decided shutting up was my best move.

  “You’ll need a new engine—” said Ben.

  “Not an option,” Thom interrupted.

  “At the very least, I need to clean it and replace a few parts, but to be honest, from where I’m standing, the car’s not worth the parts.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Thom replied gruffly, swiping a hand through his hair. “But that doesn’t exactly help us.”

  “I’d offer to buy it from you, but it’s not eligible for the Cash for Clunkers program.”

  Something about that combination of words, and the fact they’d been used by a business owner in an actual sentence about our fate struck me as comical.

  “Did you hear that?” I shrieked at Thom. “He said it’s not up to the standards of a Clunker.” I laughed like a lunatic. Confused by my contradictory, potent emotions, tears of mirth and anger filled my eyes. I was light-headed from lack of food, and Clunker had become the only word I ever wanted to see, use, or hear for the rest of my life. It was clearly the most perfect word ever invented. It captured the sadness of its subject as well as the sound it made when it fell to pieces. I was so grateful to whoever made up that word that I couldn’t stop talking even if I’d wanted to. “It’s not Clunker material,” I sputtered helplessly. “The Clunkers won’t allow it in their club.”

  Ben faced Thom. “Is she okay?”

  “This is how she always is,” Thom said.

  “Oh, nice,” I snapped.

  “Get it together,” he added through clenched teeth. It was exactly what Kelly had said in the blooper reel from the first day on set.

  I no longer saw the guy I’d shar
ed secrets with, the guy I admired, who understood and challenged me in ways I hadn’t known I was missing.

  I saw a stranger preventing me from what I needed to do and where I needed to go. The whole reason I’d gone on the ridiculous road trip was to bust up the anniversary, and I’d lost sight of that, and it was Thom’s fault for having such an absurd, ancient CLUNKER of a car.

  I glared at the Passat and flung my arm in its direction. “Why is this your car? Why?”

  He didn’t answer, which angered me further, so I got in his face. “Seriously. Why would this be anyone’s car? You have a good job, you’re obviously smart, so what the actual fuck?”

  “I sold my Mercedes to pay off my debts, okay?” he bellowed. “Are you happy now? I stole from Sammy’s 529 to fund my gambling, and until I pay him back, until I put every goddamn cent back in his college account where it belongs, I’m living like a pauper and my car was the first thing to go. So to answer your question, it’s a piece of shit because I’m a piece of shit!”

  I knew I should argue, tell him it wasn’t true and he had so much to be proud of, at work and with his kid, but I didn’t have it in me right then. All of this was for nothing. If I was going to miss the anniversary anyway, I should’ve stayed at Prevail! and tried to have a normal existence again, whatever that meant.

  “So what’ll it be?” Ben said. “The tow’s on me if you decide to fix the car, but otherwise I’m going to need seventy-five.”

  “Seventy-five just to walk away from it? Can we at least set it on fire first?” I moaned.

  “What’ll it cost to clean out the sludge and get the other parts you need?” Thom said.

  He thought for a moment. “Seventy-five.”

  Of course. “Either way he needs seventy-five. Give him the money,” I told Thom.

  “Then we only have twenty-six left,” Thom exploded. “That’s barely enough for half a tank of gas!”

  “Then we better hope he can fix it!”

  “I’ll throw in gas,” Ben offered, probably to shut us up.

  A cord in Thom’s neck twitched as he reluctantly handed Ben the cash. “Fill it all the way up.”

  Ben nodded. “I’ll get started on the paperwork.” He walked away quickly, to escape our spat before we got any more of it on him.

  I angled my head so I could see Thom’s watch. Even his watch annoyed me right now. Who wears a watch?

  “It’s noon,” I said. “Can I go online, ‘Daddy’?”

  He shot me a withering look. “Fine.”

  He tapped the code and handed the phone over.

  “Aren’t you going to set the timer?” I asked.

  “Fuck it. I’m going on a walk,” he said tonelessly.

  “Good idea. Maybe some exercise will make you feel better.”

  He didn’t reply. His face remained blank, which upset me more than his earlier despair. I could see him shutting down right before my eyes.

  He left and I sat on the curb outside the repair shop and refreshed the Daily Denizen’s countdown clock.

  1 day

  8 hours

  7 minutes, 26 seconds

  We weren’t completely out of the running yet. Maybe Ben would surprise us and pull off a miracle.

  Next up, Twitter. At least #JJJ was no longer trending. However, something else was, and it took me a moment to understand what it meant.

  #PickupthephoneHolly

  I clicked on the phrase and entered a house of horrors. He’d tattled on national television last night, claiming I wouldn’t take his calls. Played the part of a poor, jilted lover left out in the cold.

  Somehow, he’d spun my “hanging up on him once” into “Holly should be publicly shamed for not following the protocols of interacting with famous people.”

  #PickupthephoneHolly

  Some of the tweets included gifs of J. J. in the Break It Down movies crying into a pay phone, or his face hovering over a nuclear explosion. Yet another involved a speech bubble drawn above J. J.’s head: “Surprise, BeatOffs! Not gay!”

  There were thousands of mentions, and even links to articles purporting to “introduce me” to “the world.”

  “Who the Hell Is Holly Danner?” TMZ demanded to know.

  As if in response, a People magazine headline read, “The Girl Next Door Who Captured J. J. Randall’s Heart.” They chose a blurry photo from their archives, me at Brody’s twenty-seventh birthday party at Soho House, the same batch of WireImages Lisa had shown me in her cramped office. In the picture, I raised a glass of champagne, my mouth wide with laughter. The champagne had spilled and dribbled on my shirt. Girl next door, my ass, the image seemed to say. Next door to a liquor store, maybe.

  At least I looked happy in the photo. I’d been nannying for over a year by then, and the party provided a much-needed break from diapers and spit-up.

  Star magazine pondered, “Childhood Sweethearts No More?”

  Us Weekly took it a salacious step further with “The Girl Who Broke His Heart,” a misleading statement paired with a photo from my senior year in high school in which I rehearsed for the school play as Diana in Lend Me a Tenor. Diana’s sort of a sexy role, and I’d been proud of my teen-self for doing it justice. I got to wear my hair in a Lauren Bacall style and a low-cut dress with a slit up the thigh. In the photo, as the character, I kissed another character, because that was what happened in the play. Us Weekly clearly intended to imply I’d cheated on J. J. all those years ago.

  I asked myself something many a celebrity has likely pondered: Why was there always someone with a yearbook handy, willing to scan it at a moment’s notice?

  The hate directed at me in the comments section was astounding. All the things I’d been insulated from in the ’90s, especially pre-internet, rushed out at full speed. A geyser of mean.

  ewwwww

  Howl-y is like if a horse had a baby with the clown from american horror story

  she thirsty AF. Run, JJ!

  would not bang

  Yikes! Jay-jay darling you can do so much better

  For the first time I understood, on a visceral level, why it had been a good idea to keep me a secret.

  J. J. had been protecting me.

  I’d accepted it intellectually at the time. I’d understood in the abstract that it wasn’t healthy to court the press or invite them into my life. I’d seen the damage paparazzi could cause, read the fabricated articles speculating on my friends’ personal lives, and naively felt left out of their shared experience of running from the cameras.

  But today, five years since J. J. and I broke up for the final time, and twenty-five years since I’d first been on TV, a shudder of relief rolled through me regarding what might have been, and I sent a prayer up to the heavens. Thank God no one knew about me back then. Thank God I had been left alone.

  Thom’s hand appeared and playfully covered the screen.

  “Come to put a stop to my fun?” I asked.

  “Is that what your expression means?”

  “I’m trending on Twitter.” I pivoted the phone screen so he could look. “Hashtag PickupthephoneHolly.”

  “How do you know you’re the Holly?”

  “Look at this one: ‘What an ungrateful bitch.’ What did I tell you? Word for word.” I felt strangely pleased.

  “Congratulations. You predicted the internet’s misogyny.”

  “Some group calling themselves J-fenders have decided to hold a candlelight vigil on his behalf. Until I pick up the phone, I guess. You’ll be waiting a long time, J-fenders. Don’t burn down the house.”

  After reading insults about myself for five minutes, numbness spread over me. I’d been removed from the world, peeled off like a scab and thrown away. The only thing I knew for sure was this Holly Danner chick seemed like a grotesque waste of skin.

  Why did anyone think social media would improve humanity? How could anyone handle that kind of treatment for years on end? Day, after day, after day?

  I popped over to my inbox, where e
mails from twenty or so entertainment publications, blogs, and gossip rags waited for me, requesting interviews. They probably thought I’d leap at the chance to cast off the shackles of obscurity.

  Instead I scrolled until I found an email from my sister, time-stamped yesterday afternoon.

  We’re taking the red-eye home tonight. I can’t believe you left rehab! YOU MUST TELL ME EVERYTHING. I’ll FedEx your purse to you—where do I send it? Love, Renee and Lainey

  I handed the phone to Thom. “Could you type in your address, please? My sister needs to know where to send my stuff. If it’s okay with you, I mean.”

  “Sure, no problem.” He dutifully followed my request.

  “Thanks.”

  We both seemed to be overcompensating for our earlier fight by treating each other with kid gloves.

  “What’s all this stuff?” he asked, referring to the influx of interview requests.

  “Everyone wants a piece of J. J.’s piece.”

  “Make ’em wait,” he suggested. “You’ll be giving those reporters a great story tomorrow night. Let the mystery about you build. Better they’re clamoring for you and curious about you.”

  If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s keeping a low profile.

  “That’s a good point.”

  “I occasionally have them.”

  “You think we can still get there before eight o’clock tomorrow?” I asked tentatively.

  “We don’t have far to go. Three hours’ drive, four tops. If the car cooperates.”

  “Bus tickets?”

  He shook his head. “The closest station is fifteen miles away. We don’t have enough cash to get to the station and pay for tickets.”

  “Train?”

  “Even worse.”

  “So waiting on Ben is our only choice?”

  “Looks like it.”

  There was another choice, but I wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up. It had to be Thom. I’d give him a few hours, and if he didn’t say it by then, I would. But I owed him time to come around on his own.

  We went inside the shop, found Ben, confirmed that he had Thom’s number and would call us with updates, and walked across the street to a charming little restaurant. It seemed silly to starve ourselves after the morning we’d had.