Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you what, Marilyn?”

  “Thank you ever so.”

  He smiled, and the music began to sound okay—well, not heinous at least. For a moment she thought he might kiss her, but instead he said, “You want to know something interesting about Marilyn Monroe?”

  “Sure.”

  “She never left a suicide note.”

  “I . . . I knew that.”

  “Of course you did.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “Can I use your bathroom?”

  “Yeah. It’s right over there.”

  “Don’t go away. I’ve got a surprise.”

  He went into the bathroom, and she thought, Surprise? And soon he was standing over her, both hands behind his back. “Pick one.”

  “Huh?”

  He nodded at each of his shoulders. “Go on.”

  “You have a present for me?”

  “Two. But you have to pick.”

  A smile played at Nia’s lips. She imagined turquoise boxes from Tiffany, airline tickets for Rome, a movie script with the perfect part. . . . “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo . . .”

  She pointed at the left hand, and around it came. It held a small plastic bottle of pills. I don’t do pills, she started to say. But she didn’t get past the word “don’t” before she noticed the glove—pale blue latex, like the kind a dentist would wear. She looked at the label on the pills, Nembutal, and her pulse sped up. She knew what Nembutal was, knew Marilyn had killed herself with it. “Is this . . . some kind of joke?”

  “Want to see what’s in the other hand?”

  “No.”

  He clicked his tongue. “Pwetty please, Mawilyn?”

  Tears sprung into her eyes. This isn’t funny. It isn’t funny to take someone’s dream and just . . . “I . . . I don’t like this game.”

  “Aww. You don’t wike it.”

  One of the tears slipped down her cheek. “Please stop.”

  “Crybaby.”

  “I want you to leave. Now.”

  He showed her all his white, white teeth. “I don’t think so.” The right hand came around. She saw the glove first, and for some reason it took a few seconds longer to register what was in it. The long, narrow blade . . . the ugly black hilt. He touched the point to the hollow of her throat. She felt a slight sting, and the anger disappeared, devoured by fear, raw fear. This can’t be happening. Please, please let this be a dream, please, please, please. I’ll never do anything wrong again, I promise. . . . He brought it away, but just long enough to show Nia the red drop, glistening on the metal. This wasn’t a dream. There would be no more dreams.

  Nia tried to scream, but he clamped that gloved hand over her mouth, held the knife to her throat, and then the scream died. Why, she wanted to ask, why me? But she couldn’t say a word.

  “Relax, Nia,” he said. “You picked the pills.”

  As he dragged her into the bathroom, Nia found herself thinking for the first time in years of Mack Calloway’s face. The sweetness of his smile.

  ONE

  “Quite frankly, you’re making a tremendous mistake, ” Simone Glass’s sister, Greta, said while watching her pack up her Jeep.

  Simone could have said a lot of things in response. She could have mentioned that Greta had uttered this exact sentence at least five or six hundred times since Simone had announced her decision to move to Los Angeles, and, quite frankly, she was sick and tired of hearing it. She could have added that it would be nice—tremendously nice—if Greta would shut up, bend over, and help load these boxes before Simone’s spine quite frankly split in two.

  Instead, she said nothing. It was easier on the lungs.

  Greta said, “On top of everything else, it will be Santa Ana season in a month.”

  Simone could feel a statistic coming. . . .

  “Do you realize that during Santa Ana season, violent crime in LA increases by ninety-eight percent?”

  Yep, there it is. Regular as sunrise. “Really, Greta? Ninety-eight percent? And all because of some warm winds.” Simone shoved her last box of books in the back of the Wrangler and gave her older sister a long, steady glare. To the core of Greta’s soul, she was a cable TV news anchor. She oozed hyperbole. “Good thing it doesn’t snow in LA,” said Simone. “Or else we’d be talking . . . what? Anarchy?”

  “Look, I could understand it if you were going out there for a real job—”

  “Excuse me, but the LA Edge happens to be one of the most respected weekly newspapers in the United—”

  “I’m sure it’s very nice.”

  Simone’s jaw tightened. She felt her cheeks heat up. She was glad she’d been exerting herself so she could blame the red face on that, but still . . . “Twenty-five people from my class at Columbia tried for this job and . . .” She could hear the hurt in her voice. “Forget it.”

  “Listen, I don’t mean to upset you. But I’ve been a journalist a lot longer than you, and LA is no place to start a career.” She put a hand on Simone’s shoulder, and her face went serious. “Did you hear about Nia Lawson?”

  Simone squinted at her. “You mean that actress who had an affair with . . . the congressman . . . What was his name?”

  “She killed herself.” Greta’s tone was hushed and pained, as if she were talking about a dear friend rather than a Trivial Pursuit answer.

  For a moment, Simone thought her sister was going to start crying. “Did you know her or something?” she said.

  “No, but we’re doing a story on her.”

  “Ah. Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Nia Lawson took a dozen Nembutal so she could die just like her idol, Marilyn Monroe. And when she couldn’t keep the pills down, she cut her own throat with some kind of . . . fish-gutting knife.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Greta gazed at her sister as if she had a red ON AIR sign blinking atop her head. “Dreams don’t just get crushed in LA, Simone. They crush you.”

  Simone rolled her eyes. “Good night, Greta, and have a pleasant tomorrow.” She opened the Jeep’s driver’s-side door and got in.

  Greta said, “You’re leaving? Now?”

  “Yes,” said Simone. “And by the way, I think you do.”

  “Think I do what?”

  “Mean to upset me.”

  She pulled away from the curb without saying good-bye. Throughout her five-day drive across the country, Simone received text messages from her sister. (U need 2 grow up. Honestly, how could anyone not see the irony in that?) And Simone ignored them, telling herself she didn’t care what Greta thought about her new job; she was more of a journalist at birth than Greta had been in her whole teeth-bleaching, spray-on-tanning, nose-job-getting lifetime.

  But then there was that one night in the Best Western, just outside of Carson City, Nevada. Unable to sleep, Simone turned on the TV to a rebroadcast of Greta’s new criminal law show, Legal Tender. She was about to snap it right off, until Nia Lawson’s picture flashed on-screen and Simone finally remembered the name of the congressman and her curiosity got the best of her.

  Simone turned the sound up. “. . . most disturbing and poignant of all,” Greta was saying in voice-over. “No one has found the other open-toed Jimmy Choo stiletto heel. Nia Lawson killed herself wearing one silver shoe.” Greta’s face—as somber as a headstone—replaced Nia Lawson’s. She spoke slowly, carefully. “As if to tell the world that in Hollywood there is no such thing as a Simo—sorry, I mean to say no such thing as a Cinderella story.” Simone gaped at the TV. “You did that on purpose!” she said. “You started to say my name on purpose.”

  “Next up, Ms. Lawson’s manager, Randi DuMonde.”

  Simone flipped off the TV and said, “Next up, nothing .” But as she closed her eyes and waited for sleep, she couldn’t stop her mind from replaying the image of Greta’s face on the afternoon she’d left, her chlorine blue contact lenses sparkling from indignation and New York City sunlight and something els
e . . . Was it concern?

  Dreams don’t just get crushed in LA, Simone. They crush you.

  She realized she had no idea what she’d be doing a week from now, what her life would be like, whom she would know. And she whispered, so quietly she couldn’t hear the words as they came out of her own mouth: “Please don’t let Greta be right.”

  “Please let me get this job,” Simone whispered as she steered into the parking lot of the sleek white building in Beverly Hills. She’d been living in LA for a month—easily the worst month in the twenty-six years she had spent on this planet. And she was applying for a job as a supermarket tabloid reporter.

  Nothing had turned out the way she’d hoped, dreamed about, or even expected. Her North Hollywood apartment, on which she’d signed a yearlong lease sight unseen, was . . . well, it was in North Hollywood, which, as it turned out, was nowhere near West Hollywood (where the LA Edge was located), or Hollywood, for that matter. North Hollywood was in the San Fernando Valley, which looked like Wappingers Falls—the Poughkeepsie, New York, suburb where Simone had grown up, or like any suburb anywhere, only with spindly palm trees, way too much traffic, and such potent sunlight that Simone’s pupils shrieked if she didn’t wear sunglasses.

  To get to West Hollywood, she had to drive up Coldwater Canyon, a winding mountain road where everyone drove quickly and bitterly—as if they’d all signed their leases unaware of this annoying commute. Always, there were headlights pressed up against the rear of Simone’s poor Jeep as she drove up crumbling, twisted Coldwater, desperately trying not to re-create the last scene of Thelma and Louise.

  But Simone was adaptable, and anything beat going back to New York and telling Greta, “You were right.” So she would have gotten used to LA by now—probably would have even grown to appreciate its sprawling, treacherous beauty—if she hadn’t lost her job at the LA Edge before it even started.

  On her first day of work, Simone had been greeted by a typed piece of paper, taped to the locked office door, informing her that the Edge was “closed indefinitely.” Unable to pay its staff and suppliers, the fifteen-year-old paper had folded during Simone’s drive across the country.

  She still hadn’t gotten around to telling her family. Her pride wouldn’t let her do that—though it would let her get down on her knees and beg for a job at the Asteroid if she had to. Because even though the Asteroid had recently been dubbed “the lowest form of sleaze” by the editor of the National Enquirer, it had advertised for reporters. And after a full month of sending out résumés that never got read and making calls that were never returned and scanning the classifieds with a lump in her throat that grew larger by the day, that ad read like a love song.

  Dreams don’t just get crushed in LA. . . .

  Simone was ten minutes early for the interview—a good thing, because it meant she didn’t have to run through the parking lot in this weather. Santa Ana season had just begun. And, though Greta may have exaggerated her statistics, Simone could easily see how the Santa Anas could raise the violent crime rate.

  They were not just warm winds. They blew in from the mountains as hot as breath, so dry they sucked the moisture right out of you. They were winds that violated, air that may as well have been wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a Shriner’s hat, pushing you up against your car and blowing heat on you, blowing and blowing until you felt like passing out, or screaming, or both.

  When she walked into the building and that blast of air-conditioning slapped her in the face, Simone felt as if she were finally breaking the surface of a deep, churning sea. I can breathe! Of course, her breath left her as soon as she saw the Asteroid’s lurid red logo on the directory listing.

  What if they didn’t want her? Tens of thousands of dollars of her parents’ money spent on college and journalism school and she couldn’t even get a job reporting on some American Idol winner’s boob job? She heard her mother’s voice in her head: Don’t worry, dear. I’m sure Greta could find you something at her network. Come to think of it, I heard her saying she needed an assistant!

  Stop it. She got into the elevator and pressed the button for floor eight, trying not to think of anything at all.

  When Simone had called to set up the interview, it had been five thirty p.m.—after hours—and the phone had been answered by the bureau chief, a fast-talking British man named Nigel Bloom. Nigel said “right” instead of “hello,” and “very good” instead of “good-bye,” and in the middle of Simone’s sentence he’d hung up on her.

  Immediately, Simone had started to wonder about Nigel Bloom’s staff. Was everyone at the Asteroid stuck on fast-forward? Had they learned to speak in abbreviations? Did they consider breathing between sentences to be a waste of time?

  If the receptionist was any indication . . . no.

  A balding, middle-aged guy with a soft, pleasant face, he was on the phone when she entered. “So you’re saying it’s alopecia? Okay. . . . And what proof do you have she wears a wig on the show? Interesting. . . .” His voice was mellow to the point of anesthesia. Just listening to him slowed Simone’s pulse. “You know, my mother has that same problem. Poor thing can’t even go outside, what with these winds. . . .”

  Simone sat on the white leather couch and gazed up at the series of framed Asteroid covers: BRITNEY GOES BERSERK! BRANGELINA BABY SCARE! CELEBRITY CELLULITE HALL OF SHAME! It was like an exclamation point convention up there.

  “You’re a very kind person,” the receptionist was saying. “I’m going to put you through to Kathy Kinney. She handles most of the female hair loss stories, but can you give me the number of that wig maker first? Wonderful. . . . Can I help you?”

  It took Simone a few seconds to realize he was talking to her, not another caller, but he didn’t repeat himself. He just waited for her to look up at him.

  When she told the receptionist she was here to interview for the reporting job, he smiled—but Simone looked into his eyes and saw nothing but pity. “Don’t let him scare you,” he said.

  Nigel Bloom was short and wiry, with a face full of angles and tense, darting eyes. He spoke even faster in person than he did on the phone, words rushing out of his mouth and bumping into each other as if they were trying to escape the danger in his head. Meeting Simone in the reception area, Nigel gave her a tic of a nod and yanked the résumé out of her hands before she was able to think of offering it to him.

  “You’reapplyingforthereportersjobverygoodthenright thisway.”

  She followed him down a long hallway lined with older Asteroid covers (CHER DUMPS BAGEL BOY! MADONNA AND SEAN’S SEXXX-RATED SECRET!) past a large room, no doubt the reporters’ room, where muffled phone conversations barely penetrated the closed door. Finally, they reached Nigel’s office. She looked around at the blank white walls. The desk, too, was empty, save for the phone and computer. Strange. In the entire space, the only sign of life was the empty Red Bull cans, which filled the wastebasket to near overflow.

  Simone tried looking into Nigel’s eyes. She’d always been able to tell a lot about people this way—Greta used to call it her lie detector stare—but she couldn’t get the bureau chief to meet her gaze. He kept looking her up and down in this strange, self-protective way. She half expected him to frisk her for wires.

  “Faseet,” said Nigel. It took her a few seconds to translate. Have a seat.

  She sat in the hard-backed chair across from his desk as he scanned her résumé.

  Nigel said, “You’ve never worked for the Enquirer, have you?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “What about the Interloper?” He scowled at her. “I could swear I’ve seen the name Simone Glass on their masthead at one time or another.”

  Simone’s skin jumped. “It wasn’t me. Must have been another—”

  “Relatives? Friends? You have a boyfriend, perhaps, with a connection to the Interloper, Enquirer, Globe, or one of the British newspapers? The Sun? News of the World?”

  “No . . . I . . . I swear.”

  He clos
ed his eyes for a long, uncomfortable moment—then returned to the résumé. “I suppose I’ll have to believe you.”

  Simone exhaled heavily. “Thank you.”

  Nigel said, “You went to Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.”

  “Yes, I did. I really enjoyed the—”

  “Graduated with high honors.”

  “Yes.”

  Nigel raised an eyebrow. “So, why in God’s name do you want to work here?”

  Simone had prepared an answer to this very question—an enthusiastic but humble speech about the challenge of celebrity journalism. About how, when it came to reporting jobs, hands-on experience trumped subject matter every time, and how a daring publication like the Asteroid would be the ideal venue for Simone’s well-honed investigative skills. But hearing the question now, asked at a hundred miles per hour in this safe house of an office, with Nigel Bloom’s flinty gaze boring into her near-nonexistent job history, Simone could only think of Greta and her parents and the PAY RENT OR QUIT notice on her apartment door.

  “I’m desperate,” she said.

  “Right,” said Nigel. “We’ll try you out, then, at a day rate of one hundred thirty dollars.”

  “You will?!” Simone would have hugged Nigel Bloom, if she didn’t think it would make him call security. When he told her to “bugger off for now” and come back at eleven thirty p.m., “in head-to-toe black,” she had to blink back tears of gratitude.

  It wasn’t until she got back into her Jeep and started driving home that she wondered what the “head-to-toe black” was all about . . . and what type of reporting could be done half an hour before midnight.

  Santa Ana season was no time to be wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. Though night had fallen hours ago, Simone still felt as if she were trapped in an evil blow-dryer. She was close to swooning as she walked through the Asteroid’s parking lot with the other reporter, Elliot, but she tried not to show it. Elliot seemed fine with the whole head-to-toe black thing.

  Simone didn’t know whether Elliot had a last name, but he looked just like Ted Kaczynski after a bar fight—wild hair and beard, skin so pale it glowed a little, and an angry purple welt under his left eye that Simone had no desire to ask about.