Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

Then Emerald’s: “Keith Furlong is not my best friend.”

  “Don’t let Nigel see you doing that,” Kathy whispered. “He doesn’t let anyone sit in on interviews. He’ll think you’re a spy.”

  Inside the office, Matthew’s voice was soothing, seductive. “Do you mind if I ask you something kind of . . . off topic?”

  Another woman’s voice—a smoker’s rasp. “Depends on what it is.”

  “Don’t worry, Muzzy,” Matthew said. “It has nothing to do with those poor, poor birds.”

  Silence. Good one, Matthew.

  He said, “Emerald, you have such beautiful, graceful arms. Why do you cover them with all those bracelets?”

  A long pause. Simone held her breath.

  Finally, Emerald said, “I like the way they look.”

  “But . . . a woman with a body as hot and lithe as yours chooses to cover up a part of it, you can’t help but think . . .” Matthew’s voice trailed off, then came back again softly, almost pleading. “You can’t help but think . . . What is underneath? What is she hiding?”

  “I thought we were supposed to be talking about Keith.”

  “I just wanted—”

  “I didn’t agree to answer questions about . . . my personal choices.”

  “Choices?”

  “Wardrobe choices.”

  “Obviously, that’s all she has to say about the bracelets. Next question, please.”

  Kathy gestured at her to move away from the door. “Nigel, ” she said.

  And Simone heard the accent resounding from reception. “What do you mean she wasn’t there?!”

  She moved into the reporters’ room with Kathy as Elliot’s voice replied, “I waited for an hour, then I checked the strip club, Pleasures, it’s called. I even checked Furlong’s bar and—”

  “This is fucked,” Nigel said. “This is fucked beyond all fucking fuckedness.”

  Nigel stormed into the reporters’ room poking at the numbers on his cell phone as if he wanted to cause them injury. Elliot trailed behind him.

  “What’s his problem?” Kathy asked Elliot.

  “Keith Furlong’s favorite underaged stripper,” he said.

  “Shit,” said Kathy. “I forgot about that. She’s a no-show?”

  “Yep, along with the eight grand Nigel paid her up front.”

  “Well, maybe she’ll turn up. . . . Of course, I don’t know how long Matthew can keep Emerald in there. It’s been, what, like twenty minutes already.”

  “Destiny,” Nigel hissed into his cell phone. “I realize I’m being recorded, so I will keep this as civilized as possible and remind you that you did sign a binding contract and if you do not come to our offices and/or contact us within five minutes of this call, our legal team will grind you into a pulp so fine your own mother won’t even recognize you!”

  He ended the call. “Why can’t you ever trust a stripper?”

  “They tend to have issues with male authority figures. ”

  “Don’t you dare get arsey with me, Elliot, or I will sack you this minute.”

  “But . . . I wasn’t trying to be arsey.”

  Simone looked at Kathy. “A stripper was supposed to be here?”

  She nodded. “It was going to be an ambush. Destiny was going to show up in the middle of the interview, tell Emerald all about this hot night she spent with Keith.”

  “A raw porterhouse steak was involved,” Elliot said.

  Kathy winced. “Right. And we were going to take pictures of the moment of discovery. You know, Emerald learns the truth about the man she loves. . . .”

  I still wish I had a big sister.

  Why?

  Protection.

  “That is awful,” said Simone.

  Nigel glowered at her. “It would have been brilliant.”

  “Honey, we’d be doing Emerald a favor,” Kathy said. “If my boyfriend did that with some other woman and a piece of raw meat, I’d want to know about it.”

  Elliot shuddered. “I wouldn’t.”

  “This entire conversation is a waste of time,” Nigel said. “We officially have nothing—not even a sodding coke addiction.”

  “Hold up—we just might,” said Kathy. “Simone saw some blood in Emerald’s sink. Matthew’s going to find out if she’s injecting.”

  Nigel perked up a bit. “Really? Well . . . we would need her on the record, admitting—”

  “She didn’t,” Simone said.

  Nigel glared at her. “How do you know that?”

  “Well, I mean . . . I wouldn’t think she’d admit—”

  A loud beep escaped from Simone’s speaker phone, followed by the receptionist’s soporific voice. “Nigel? Are you in there?”

  “Let me guess, Carl. It’s not Destiny.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s New York.”

  “Fuck me.” Nigel sat on Simone’s desk, picked up the phone, and said, “Right, Willard.”

  Kathy whispered, “The editor in chief.”

  “No, no,” Nigel said. “Destiny’s not here yet, but we’re expecting . . .”

  Simone knew enough to get up from her desk, to back away from the bureau chief as he stammered, “But . . . but . . . but . . . but . . .” into the receiver, like a dying outboard motor.

  Elliot and Kathy were looking out one of the room’s two small windows at Beverly Drive below. Simone stood next to them, watching brightly colored cars parading down the wide street, the sun glinting off their polished hoods like a smirk.

  The three of them listened to Nigel saying, “Willard,” and “But,” and “Listen,” over and over and over again, until finally Kathy put voice to her thoughts. “We’re doomed.”

  “Why?” said Simone.

  “We can’t afford to piss off New York. Willard’s been making noises about shutting down our bureau—just using freelancers who’d report directly to the editors in the main office back East.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said. “Who ever heard of a Hollywood gossip paper without an LA bureau?”

  “Nobody,” said Elliot. “Best job I’ll ever have in my life and they’re going to kill it because of arbitrary bullshit . . . because of sales, for chrissakes! I feel like I’m going to cry.”

  “Don’t cry,” said Kathy. “I really don’t think I can look at that.”

  Simone said, “How can sales be that bad?”

  “It’s those glossy celeb weeklies,” said Elliot. “Lamest headlines ever: Stars walk their dogs, too! Stars get parking tickets, too! Stars order takeout! Stars take a crap! I mean . . . that’s news?! But they’re murdering us with it. I mean, on top of everything else it’s unbelievably insulting.”

  “There’s also the Enquirer, which we can’t even touch,” said Kathy. “The Globe, the Interloper—”

  “Word of advice,” Elliot said. “Don’t mention the Interloper in front of Nigel unless you want to wear your ass for a hat.”

  “We are doomed.”

  Simone thought of her apartment, of the eleven months left on her lease, and she could hear Greta as if she were in the room. Wow, Monie. Two lost jobs in a month. That’s got to be a record. Not to worry, though. I’m looking for an assistant. . . .

  She remembered what her mother had said, just after she’d accepted the job offer at the LA Edge. Your sister stayed in New York, and look where she is.

  Reading off a teleprompter?

  Jealousy is unattractive, Simone.

  I’m not jealous.

  I understand the way you feel, dear, but to pick up your entire life like that, all for a newspaper no one has ever heard of . . .

  You know, the LA Edge has won a lot of awards and—

  Let her go, Elaine, Simone’s father said. She’s twenty-six. She’s old enough to make her own mistakes.

  It’s not a mistake!

  Simone looked at Elliot and Kathy. “We can’t be doomed! I just got here!”

  When Nigel finally hung up, he called Elliot over, handed him a stack of blurry color photogra
phs that looked as if they’d been taken in the dark with a camera phone.

  Elliot peered at one. “That’s Destiny?”

  “I want you to go into that office,” said Nigel. “Show these photos to Emerald Deegan and tell her everything.”

  “Not everything, Nigel.”

  “You heard me.”

  “But . . . the raw steak. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to describe that out loud to a woman.”

  Nigel narrowed his eyes. “Everything.”

  Elliot strode into the hallway, as grim as a soldier with marching orders. As she watched him go, Simone turned to Nigel. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

  “You can find that fuckwit stripper,” he said. “Or Furlong. Or both. Or you can locate Emerald’s dealer and get him to go on record, or you can get video-fucking-tape of Emerald Deegan shooting up.”

  Nigel stood up and walked out of the room, leaving nothing behind but a thick, gloomy silence.

  Kathy looked at Simone. “Emerald wouldn’t admit injecting, huh?”

  Simone shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so. Remember how she was in the trailer, when I told her about my quote-unquote cocaine problem? Cool as a fucking fruit smoothie.”

  Simone stared at her. “You’re right.” She remembered Emerald’s voice in Nigel’s office, the way it had pitched up and trembled when Matthew had asked what was under those bracelets. I didn’t agree to answer questions about . . . my personal choices. Not cool at all. Terrified.

  Again, Simone envisioned that blood—fresh red blood, spilled into a sink. But there had been no needle in sight.

  Why get rid of the needle but not the blood?

  There had been no spent needles in Emerald’s garbage either. But there had been blood—thick, crusted blood on the heel of a silver Jimmy Choo.

  You can’t help but think . . . What is underneath? What is she hiding? Spent needles or not, track marks or not, coke addiction or not, there was one fact of which Simone was certain.

  Emerald Deegan was hiding something.

  FOUR

  Back when her name was Sara Rose Rogers, Destiny had one goal in life, and that was to work at Disneyland. At age four she’d gone there with her mom and had her picture taken with Snow White, just outside the entrance to Fantasyland. It was the happiest moment of her life, no contest. Thirteen years later, she still remembered the cotton candy her mother bought for her and the perfume Snow White had worn, which smelled faintly of apples. She remembered Snow White’s shiny yellow dress and her voice, like the tinkling of bells. You look just like a princess. Your mommy must be so proud.

  Yes, I am. Sara is my princess.

  Mom died six years ago, and Destiny didn’t want to work at Disneyland anymore, but still she kept that picture in her wallet. Every night before she went to Pleasures, the club where she danced, she took it out, gazed at it for a few minutes, and whispered, “Welcome to Fantasyland.” Weird, she knew. But it helped her get psyched for the job.

  She wasn’t due at work for hours, but today she had something else to get psyched for, something that would change her life forever. “Welcome to Tomorrowland,” she said to the picture. And like a response, her doorbell rang.

  “Yeah?” She wasn’t expecting anybody, but that didn’t matter. The men in Destiny’s life had a way of just dropping by.

  “It’s me, baby.”

  Destiny recognized the voice. She placed the photo on the kitchen counter and hurried up to her front door. “Coming!”

  When she opened it, he didn’t say a word to her; he just slid his hand up her shirt and kissed her full on the mouth.

  That was what success did for you—it subtracted hesitation. All the Big Deal People she knew, the ones who moved with That Crowd . . . they never hesitated about anything, whether it was putting their tongue in your mouth or buying a thousand-dollar dinner at L’Orangerie or taking a private plane to Cabo, just to get a natural tan.

  Destiny longed to be one of Them, and she’d be a lot closer soon, when her story made her famous. Dancing was so much easier with that picture in her mind—her face on the cover of the Asteroid, a hot, glittering description underneath—Beauty . . . Vixen . . . Secret Lover. Sometimes she’d see beyond next week’s issue and into the future—paid on-camera interviews, reality TV, maybe a guest stint on some really good show, like CSI. And later, movies.

  Twenty minutes in a room with Emerald Deegan, and that golden ball would start rolling. It would be tough, yes. Destiny didn’t like to hurt people. But if there was one thing she had learned in the past few years, it was that anything was bearable—anything at all—so long as it took twenty minutes or less.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

  Instead of answering, he walked into her kitchen. After a long silence, she heard him say, “Is this you, with Snow White?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “My mom took that picture.”

  He chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Just wondering what your mom would think of you now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He flipped on her kitchen radio. She heard a jumble of music fragments, of deejays’ voices and news reports, until he found the station that he always listened to. The one with the dentist-chair music.

  He left the kitchen and moved behind her, pressing himself against the small of her back. Destiny glanced at the clock on the wall; she was due at the Asteroid in forty-five minutes.

  “I don’t have time,” she said.

  His lips moved against her ear. “Pwetty please?”

  “Well . . .” She closed her eyes and felt his fingertips, light on her throat. “Maybe I have twenty minutes.”

  “Might take longer than that,” he said. His other arm encircled her waist as the fingers stroked her neck, then the palm of his hand—a hand that felt strange, slick . . .

  “What will they call it, Destiny?”

  “Call what?”

  “The story,” he said. “In the Asteroid.”

  Her eyes snapped open.

  “You thought I didn’t know.” His grip tightened on her throat. “ ‘Keith Furlong’s Whore Tells All’? Is that what they’re going to call it?”

  She looked at the hand on her waist. He’d put on gloves. Latex gloves. Oh, no, this can’t be happening . . . . For a moment, the only thing she could feel were the blunt tips of his fingers tightening on her neck until tiny white flecks danced inside her eyes. “I . . . ,” she gasped. She couldn’t get the rest of it out—not enough air. I didn’t think you would mind. I thought you would understand. Destiny’s muscles strained against her skin, and then they went limp, her body surrendering as the flecks spread out, turned to white mist. She was vaguely aware of the dentist-chair deejay’s voice floating out of her kitchen: “Music to relax by.” But the voice faded away, and she heard nothing but the swirl of blood in her ears, like static. I didn’t think . . .

  His grip loosened and he let go of her neck. Destiny’s breath came back—a wet, retching gasp. She fell to her knees. She could hear him laughing.

  He said, “Guess I took that too far.”

  “What?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “I was just playing a joke.”

  “You were?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You mean . . . you don’t mind?” Her legs were weak. Her head felt woozy.

  “Of course I don’t mind.” He held out his hand, and she took it, and he pulled her to her feet.

  Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. . . .

  “You’re going to be famous,” he said, “aren’t you, baby?”

  Destiny nodded, her throat still aching.

  “You’ll be like . . . the next Nia Lawson.”

  Destiny coughed. She wondered if he had left marks, wondered if Emerald Deegan would notice. She wondered if, later that night, once she got to work, she’d have to hide them with cover-up. . . . It was okay, though. Marks on her neck were okay,
because he was joking, just joking. He had always been a kidder, and this time he went a little too far, that’s all. Didn’t know his own strength. Those gloves—he really had her going with those damn latex gloves. They were the killer.

  She wanted to say, Okay, joke’s over, you can take off the gloves now.

  But then she looked at his face, and she couldn’t say a word.

  He was smiling, but it wasn’t his smile—not the one Destiny knew. There was no feeling behind it, just teeth. And his eyes . . . it was like looking into the face of a shark.

  His grip pinched her wrist. Then he grabbed the other—her two small hands trapped in his one, like a claw, covered in latex, tightening. He said, “I want you to give me your autograph.”

  With his other hand, he pulled something out of the pocket of his jeans, something black—and when he pressed the side of it, the blade popped out—long, angry. “If you scream,” he said, “if you make a noise, I will cut you.” He touched the blade to the hollow of her neck. “Right there.”

  “No,” she said. “Please.”

  He pulled her hands up over her head, close to his face. This can’t be happening, this can’t be real. . . . Her arm muscles ached. That music he liked wafted out of the kitchen, mechanical and sterile. He frowned at her hands—a frown of concentration, as if he were threading a needle. “You’re a rightie, aren’t you?” he said.

  Then he sliced off the tip of her right index finger.

  As a kid, Destiny had once grabbed a frayed electrical cord attached to a fan. The current had thrown her across the room, and that’s what this was like—this forceful, mean pain shooting all the way up her arm, all the way down her back. Blood gushed out of her finger, and she bit her lip, closed her eyes. Don’t scream, don’t scream or he’ll kill you. . . . She felt the tears pushing up against the backs of her eyeballs and she wanted to weep, to call for her mother. Her nose was running and her whole body was shaking, but she kept her mouth clamped shut.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Now I want your autograph. On that wall.”

  He let go of her hands, and her knees gave way. The floor rushed up at her and hit her in the side of the head and she lay there, her eyes closed, her whole arm throbbing into that bleeding finger. . . .

  “Get up,” he said.