Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  “So,” MorningFan wrote. “Addison went to the White House with Baxter? Hmm. Do you think she finally figured out that Hughes is gay?”

  Chapter 11

  Early this morning, Cassie came to see me again. She arrived at the visiting room all chatty and happy. I had not been expecting her. But when I said so, she scoffed at me. “I had to bring you some clothes, didn’t I? It’s Tuesday! The hearing is tomorrow!”

  She carried with her a spiffy skirt and jacket from the Versace fall collection that Ryan Seacrest had shipped to her. She said the suit was fine, despite the shawl collar being a bit dramatic for the occasion. But she did not like—at all—the glittery tank top that Ryan had selected to go with it. Blazoned across the front were the words: BITCH FROM JAIL.

  “I think it’s supposed to be ironic,” I explained.

  “It’s not,” Cassie replied.

  She said that she’d lend me a conservative ivory blouse to wear. (She always kept a couple of extras in her briefcase for coffee spills, lipstick smudges, and other emergencies. She was that kind of person.) I feared her blouse would be tight in the chest and big in the waist, but I just thanked her and silently planned to go without a blouse.

  I did question the black pumps, which were low-heeled, devoid of detail, and boring in every sense of the word. I glanced at the tag. “You ordered these from Lands’ End?” I said. I tried to sound upbeat about it, but I had once heard Hughes refer to Lands’ End as “Fashion’s End.” I still can’t help putting a lot of stock in Hughes’s opinion. Even now. Even when he shouldn’t matter to me at all.

  “Yeah,” Cassie said. “Lands’ End has great deals on shoes. They hold up well and they look nice enough. No one pays attention to shoes, anyway.”

  I wasn’t sure that “holding up well” was the primary consideration for someone in my particular situation. But I couldn’t see how saying so would accomplish much. So I just fingered the shoes, absentmindedly.

  “Now,” she said, still breezy and happy. “Let’s see what you’ve written.” She plopped down next to me, put on her reading glasses, and held up my papers with a big smile. “Good, good,” she had said. “Nice thick pile of papers. I’m sure this will help.”

  But the farther she read, the more she grimaced. At one point, her fingers moved up to the bridge of her nose, just as Hughes’s had. Am I giving everyone a migraine these days?

  “You don’t like it,” I said.

  “Addison, Addison, Addison.” She closed her eyes, rubbed her cheek wearily. “I didn’t really need this much information about George Clooney or Hollywood Squares.” She flipped through the pages again, looked at the ceiling, and sighed. “And I had forgotten about the gauze bikini and the ‘wrapped in newspaper’ cover.”

  She stood up, looked at her watch.

  “Also, I’m obligated as an officer of the court,” she said, “to point out to you that the conditions of your sentencing forbid you from speaking to Hughes.”

  I nodded.

  Her voice softened. “I’m obligated as your friend to point out that he’s been nothing but trouble from day one. Don’t see him again.”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  She stood up as if to leave. But instead she looked at me for a long moment. There was a touch of vulnerability in her face, something I had not seen for a long time—perhaps not since her Pork Queen effort.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “I’m going on all these cable talk shows, waxing on about this stuff. I don’t know why. Who cares what Geraldo thinks? Meanwhile, I’ve still got a big turkey dinner to plan. My in-laws are getting here tonight. The kids are all excited. But I don’t even have time to think about it.”

  I had forgotten in the sterile seasonless world of prison that this is Thanksgiving week. Cassie had, I remembered now, argued against scheduling my hearing the day before the holiday, but the judge said he certainly hoped no one expected the testimony to last more than a few hours. “We’ll all be home late Wednesday afternoon,” he had said, looking at the lawyers in a pointed way. “Easily.”

  Suddenly I felt very bad for Cassie. I know how much big holiday gatherings mean to her. Even as a girl, she would get all excited about helping her mom make cranberry sauce. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.

  There was a long pause, and then she added, “My mother-in-law claims I always overcook the turkey.”

  She glanced down at my stack of papers. “Also, as a point of fact, there were four contestants in the Pork Queen competition. Lindsay Martin came in fourth. She sang ‘Over the Rainbow’ and tap-danced.”

  “No, no,” I said. “Remember she fell while tap-dancing? She ran off the stage—well, off the flatbed—crying and shouting, ‘I quit.’?”

  Cassie turned and was on her way out the door. She looked over her shoulder and glared at me. “She still got fourth place.”

  There was a pause.

  “Get your affairs in order, Addison.” She didn’t meet my eyes. Her voice was soft. “Say your good-byes.”

  I allowed myself to feel a little discouraged. Getting your affairs in order is, in and of itself, not exactly an uplifting thought. But it was the casual Say your good-byes that really got me.

  I hadn’t thought about it that way, somehow. If I get deported, I’ll be leaving people—my parents, that cute guy at the Starbucks near the studio who always gave me a free upgrade to a Venti. Even Hughes.

  Yesterday when he came to visit, I just treated it like the “latest” episode in our little ongoing saga. I didn’t think about it being, perhaps, the last time I would ever see him. I didn’t think about it being my last chance for “closure.”

  And Baxter. What about Baxter?

  Cassie had left me a videotape with some of the media coverage of my case. The guard walked me to the audiovisual room, and I shoved the cassette into the player with a loud sigh. The tape did nothing to improve my mood.

  Leno made a joke about the “good news” that I’d already landed a job in my new country—hostess of It’s Morning Now: The Desert Edition. The bad news, he said, was that I’d be paid in chickens.

  Lou Dobbs—not known for his concern for the problems facing holders of green cards—tossed to Anderson Cooper by asking, “Why on earth is this McGhee case getting so much attention?”

  Anderson pointed out that no celebrity had ever been deported before, which segued nicely into the clip from Regis and Kelly. “Has anyone ever been deported before?” Regis asked. And Kelly said: “Not anyone I know.”

  The tape concluded with an immigration expert telling Greta Van Susteren that the result really looked inevitable. “Addison McGhee is going home,” he said.

  Chapter 12

  It says something about my naïveté and my misguided priorities that on the weekend that began with the first lady threatening to deport me, I became consumed with the question of whether Hughes Sinclair was gay.

  MorningFan’s simple question—“Do you think she finally figured out that Hughes is gay?”—caught me entirely off guard. I was sitting in an armchair, which I’d pulled up to the built-in desk at my Midtown hotel. I had been celebrating my extended conversation with Weatherjunkie—the poster who said 80 percent of social encounters left him feeling depressed—by eating an ice cream sandwich from the mini bar. (Fifty calories, no fat, no added sugar.)

  I chewed slowly as I read MorningFan’s comment. It still rings in my head.

  Do you think she finally figured out that Hughes is gay?

  I drummed my fingers on the empty space around the built-in mouse on my laptop. I took two quick bites of the ice cream sandwich—so much for savoring. I swallowed, hard. Harder than you need to swallow an ice cream sandwich.

  Nah, I thought.

  Then I thought more.

  Actually, that would explain a lot.

  I took another bite of my ice cream sandwich.

  Curiosity got the best of me. “MorningFan,” I wrote, tentatively. “Where do you get your inform
ation?” I felt I was crossing some great line. Not only was I continuing to violate my rule about posting on the boards, which were already sapping great wads of time that would be better spent working on my abs, but I also was seeking an anonymous and probably unreliable stranger’s information about my own good friend.

  I reread the note. And what struck me at that moment was not the legitimate concerns that should have stopped me. No, I thought the note was too confrontational, too journalistic, too formal.

  I backspaced. Started over. “Gay?” I said, with calculated casualness. “Oh, come on. Some of you guys never will get over that lavender tie incident.”

  And I waited.

  You can’t believe what you read on the boards, I told myself. These are people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

  Still, I wasn’t about to shrug it off and go to bed. I clicked around, literally, all night, reading everything I could find about Hughes on the Web. Which was a lot, really. There was so much I didn’t know about him. His grandfather was apparently quite the philanthropist, and his great-great-grandmother was a bit of a character, creating a stir by wearing pants and keeping her own name way back in the 1800s. And Hughes’s father, the former chief justice, was credited with practically saving the nation during that constitutional crisis while he was on the bench. (At least he was credited with that by the people who agreed with him.) His mother, meanwhile, was believed by some critics to have performed “the world’s most perfect fouetté.” Yes, the Sinclair family, I learned with delight, practically defined America.

  There was never a mention, in any of it, about Hughes having a girlfriend. But not a boyfriend, either, I told myself.

  I clicked around in an increasingly frantic way, reading up on “gaydar”—to see if I could develop some. And further reading up on flirtatious body language, trying to see if he used any with me. (“You can lie with your words,” one of the Web pages said. “But not with your body.”)

  I wasn’t sure, really, why I was reacting quite so strongly. Certainly I was crazy about Hughes. I had clearly built him up in my mind as the embodiment of some sort of American ideal. I had, during our many platonic after-work dinners, entertained fantasies that our relationship was going somewhere.

  Obviously, I would be disappointed to learn that my crush was hopeless. But sitting there in my hotel room, racing around the Web for hours that really should have been spent sleeping, it occurred to me that my behavior was not, perhaps, completely ordinary.

  I realized I might have a problem of some sort.

  But what sort? That was the question.

  When the sun rose, I pulled the laptop over to the bed, where I could, at least, recline as I continued to surf. I eventually nodded into a restless, uncomfortable sleep. I woke at 6 PM, and the first glance in the mirror was startling. I had the imprint of a keyboard on my cheek and crumbs from the ice cream sandwich on my face. I looked—dare I say it?—absolutely haggard. On the bright side, I realized that sleeping away the day meant I had made my way through an entire Saturday without eating.

  I spent the rest of the weekend in a fitful state, checking the boards over and over again, unable to understand why MorningFan had not responded to my message. What else could he be doing on a weekend?

  Finally, I forced myself to go to bed early on Sunday night—trying to get myself back on a regular work schedule. It wouldn’t do to have bags under my eyes. On Monday, I “checked my e-mail” one last time before heading into the office. The only new post was from a site administrator who had not approved of Weatherjunkie and me chatting about our social encounters. We were admonished to, in the future, keep our discussions “on the topic of Baxter Bailey and his entirely new approach to weather.” (I think that was partially sarcastic.)

  I sighed, logged off, headed into work—where I was surprised to find everyone asking about my evening at the White House. By that point, it seemed like old news to me. I wasn’t even worried about the photo. The simple truth is that I believed the first lady. She was powerful and confident and not afraid to take charge. She would not hesitate to threaten, or even blackmail, to get her way. I naively believed that if she promised to “take care” of a photo, especially one taken by a White House employee, then she could and she would. I didn’t give it another thought.

  I told everyone who asked that Baxter and I had a marvelous time watching a pig cook on a faux pit and eating its carcass at the president’s home. And Baxter agreed that it had been spectacular. I don’t know if he knew we were lying.

  It did not take me long to realize I was in a bit of a downward spiral. I was totally losing control. I was posting all the time. I remember one night in particular when I ate three of those low-fat ice cream bars while waiting for replies from Weatherjunkie and searching, in vain as usual, for a response from MorningFan.

  Three bars! That’s 150 calories right there. And I found myself thinking, If I had just one more, that would be two hundred calories. That’s not so bad, for a snack. Just two hundred calories? That’s hardly anything. See. I was out of my mind. Then I slapped myself in the face and ran down the hotel hallway and into the stairwell, forcing myself to do five laps up ten flights of stairs. That undid the ice cream damage, but left me without any remaining willpower when it came to the Internet. I read everything. I posted everywhere. I didn’t care. The Internet might suck up your time, exacerbate your worst tendencies, and lead you down a path of ruin. But it won’t make you fat. At least not directly.

  I started by poring over the boards where people discussed me, but quickly found that did not help my mood. Reading notes from people who are spending the wee hours of the morning talking about you—whether it be good or bad—does not exactly erase paranoia.

  Besides, I had nothing in common with those people. The people who were fawning over Hughes, though—they were kindred spirits. I would giggle with them. I would share their enthusiasm. I could read long threads of discussions about, say, Hughes’s suits, the general consensus being that he needed to dump the gray ones. Oh, no, no, no, I thought, but still I appreciated that they shared my interest in the matter. We discussed the vital issues of the day. “Has Hughes whitened his teeth again? Or has the lighting in the studio improved?”

  It was several days before MorningFan responded to my “casual” question about why he thought Hughes was gay. MorningFan said only: “Oh, come on, ObjectiveObserver . . . observe. He’s as gay as, well, as gay as that gay bar he frequents in the gayest section of Chelsea.”

  I laughed with glee at the note. I happened to know that a lot of straight celebrities frequented that bar. Vince Vaughn had been there just the other day. He’s as straight as you can get!

  So that bar meant nothing. MorningFan was just filled with your typical ill-informed board bluster. I was ridiculous to get so upset. That is what I told myself.

  Besides, that very morning, Hughes had confessed to me and all of America—or at least the small but big-spending segment of America that watched us—that for the past several years he had nursed an agonizing crush on Mia Hamm. It was a confession that filled me, in those long-ago innocent days, with relief and jealousy. “Oh please,” I said, not knowing quite what else to say.

  He said: “Surely you didn’t think that you were the only woman in my life, Addison!” He gave me his warmest smile. And I said again: “Oh please.” And moved the conversation gracefully to the recent flap in California over the right of homeowner associations to restrict the use of political signs in upscale subdivisions.

  “You know, if you don’t secure those things properly, they can blow away with the smallest storm,” Baxter said in what I thought was sort of a clunker of an observation. But it’s hard to fault him, really. Bringing a weather-related observation to a free-speech issue is hard enough. Who can ask that it be a good one?

  “If you’re not careful,” he continued, “the whole neighborhood will be polluted with Nader signs.”

  “Oh,” said Hughes, “th
e irony.”

  We all chuckled.

  As we faded to commercial, Hughes turned to me and winked. “Dinner at Emilio’s tonight?” he asked, quietly enough that only I could hear.

  “Sure,” I said. I winked back. MorningFan was forgotten. And things were back to normal.

  Except for my use of the Internet, which was reaching alarming proportions. I had come to rely on the Internet for comfort, for company, for the compliments I felt I so desperately needed. Soon I was spending hours each day this way. I beamed with pride when people on the boards talked about my wit and wiles. I enjoyed having a place to say that I thought Hughes was the dog’s bark and the kitten’s purr. I defended Baxter and mostly I escaped the dreary confines of my life.

  I know. My parents survived war and famine. I know. Most of the world lives in squalor and poverty. Even in the rarefied world of upper-middle-class America, I was at that point extraordinarily lucky, with my safe and glamorous job, with my paid-for hotel room with room and maid service. I had everything in the world going for me.

  That is all true.

  But I was still so lonely.

  I would lie awake in bed at night, rethinking my social life. I was beginning to get the impression that—regardless of Hughes’s sexual orientation—our relationship was stalled at Emilio’s. So I would go back over long-ago dates and near dates. I would replay the scene where George Clooney asked me if I had dinner plans. I had said, honestly, that I couldn’t possibly eat that day. But what if I had pretended that I could? I wondered if Pharm Boy and I could have hit it off, if I hadn’t been so uptight. I even thought about the jerky boy I briefly dated in high school. And that always led me to think about Kevin Ford, the only person ever to ask me to play basketball.

  It was pathetic. Even at the time, I knew these questions were pathetic. Pharm Boy? He had no redeeming qualities. George Clooney? I mean, really, the man could not remember my name. And Kevin Ford? Kevin Ford moved away after my freshman year of high school. I couldn’t even remember what he looked like. Not really. I remember he had sandy brown hair and really nice eyes. But I was fourteen the last time I saw him. And fourteen was a long time ago. Besides, why him? His brother, honestly, was nicer to me. His brother didn’t laugh so much when I missed a basket. Thinking about Kevin Ford now was crazy.