for Daniel Pendergrass
(29 January, 1976 – July, 2011)
who once wrote: “Beauty is a single tear, shed for someone dearly missed.”
Hope you found your happily ever after, old friend. As long as I can hold a pencil, I won’t let the world forget about you.
The morning sky was gray and a couple of hot air balloons dotted the skyline like bubbles suspended in Lucite. I took a deep breath of chill air and began my run, feeling the usual catch in my knee for the first several paces and the jolts through my legs as my shoes hit the pavement. My cheeks were soon rubbed raw by the icy air moving past and my breath was ragged for the first twenty paces. Then I hit my stride and everything fell into a rhythm. The sun lit up the eastern horizon, creating a halo of light over the Sandia Mountains. It was good to be home in Albuquerque, with its dry desert air and broad, flat sky. Brown, open fields stretched on either side of the road.
I reached the corner, cut across the road, turned right, and made my way along the uneven shoulder, gravel crunching under my feet. More cold air pumped into my lungs as I pushed myself faster, as if by running I could escape the insanity of the last twenty-four hours and just be me, plain old regular Chloe.
My mother’s phone message had arrived last night. When she’d called, I’d stared at my phone, chewed my lip, and felt bitter guilt pool in the pit of my stomach as I hit the “Ignore” button. The picture of her that popped up showed her with her bright pink, glossy lips pooched out and her eyes shut to show off blue glitter eye shadow. Her fake lashes lay curled against her cheekbones.
“Hey sweetie,” came her voice in the message. She was subdued, which could only mean one thing, that she had something awkward to tell me. “I’m just calling to see how you and… things are. I know you don’t need your old mother snooping around in your business, but I hope everything’s all right. I love you.”
I’d deleted the message and tried not to stew about it. It was possible, I reasoned, that she just wanted to know how my studies had gone, or what my graduation ceremony had been like, but questions about these wouldn’t qualify as “snooping.” No, she wanted to know about my personal life, which meant she’d read something in some tabloid, somewhere, that said Jason was cheating on me.
He wasn’t. Even if I was new to the whole media insanity that surrounded my movie star husband, his family wasn’t. I was staying with his sister right now and she would skin him alive if she had the least suspicion that he wasn’t treating me right. The rumors didn’t bother me because I thought they were true. They bothered me because they just wouldn’t quit. They permeated every aspect of my life these days. A few months ago, I felt like I could just let them slide off me, but I hadn’t realized how relentless the onslaught would be.
As I rounded the bend, I looked back over my shoulder and saw a white sedan pull off the side of the road and into the far lane. It took a conscious effort to suppress the shudder that went through me. It was one car. Just because it went the same direction as me didn’t mean it was following me.
But the car didn’t accelerate or zip past. Instead it went slow and matched my pace. The morning was still too dim for me to get a good look at the driver. I saw the suggestion of a silhouette against the dark interior. A man, perhaps? A glint on something that could have been a camera, or maybe a phone. The window rolled down and a flashbulb went off.
Eyes on where you’re going, I thought. With this person taking pictures, the last thing I needed to do was trip and break my neck. I’d lost my rhythm and my breathing came in desperate gasps. I forced my chest to expand, drawing in another lungful of air, now tinged with the scent of car exhaust. I breathed out, stretched my legs to lengthen my stride, and tried to act casual.
If paparazzi were following me, though, and coming all the way to Albuquerque to do it, then a major story had broken. I wondered how many people had seen it, and how many of my friends now wondered if I was about to get a divorce.
The length of road I ran along still didn’t have any houses or businesses along it, only broad flat plain covered in dry grass that was so wide open that I could see clear to the other end of the city in the west. Up ahead, though, was a gas station which promised some cover. Photographers didn’t usually follow people inside such places, I’d found, but would wait until one exited again. Maybe I could call a friend to come get me, only at this hour that would mean waking someone up.
That stupid car followed me all the way to the gas station, its quiet motor chugging softly as it paced me. There wasn’t any other traffic to honk at it or to stop and ask if I were okay. Surely in Albuquerque people would do that if they saw a lone woman chased by a car. That image gave me chills.
I glanced back and slowed my steps as I reached the edge of the concrete pad, on which stood the gas station and convenience store. Sweat had soaked through my shirt around my neckline and underarms. Great. Just what the whole world wanted to see, I was sure.
My pulse throbbed in my ears as I walked past the fueling bays and crossed over to the convenience store, which was a twenty-four hour place and therefore open even this time of the morning. I shot a glance back at the car and saw it pull into a space, its passenger side window down. With the light behind it, I could now clearly see the shape of the driver and his hand, extended, holding a camera.
Time to get inside.
When I hauled the glass door open, though, the first thing I saw was the current issue of Entertainment Weekly with a picture of Jason and Gigi Malone on the cover. Gigi had her blue eyes wide and innocent and bit her lip for effect. She wore a business suit, while Jason stood behind her in a gray t-shirt that stretched over the contours of his biceps. His blue eyes were slightly narrowed and gazed out with smoldering intensity. His dark hair was longer than he wore it now, and with one hand he’d reached around Gigi and was unbuttoning the top button of her blouse. A swirling tattoo snaked up his arm. They’d added the tattoo digitally when someone at the studio decided it would give him greater sex appeal.
Even in a picture, his gaze brought me up short. I looked back at the white car and saw another vehicle pull into the station and park next to it. Two cars at this place at this hour? I ducked inside, only to see what was on the rest of the magazine rack.
Photo after photo of my scowling face burned into my retinas. “Trouble in Paradise?” said one headline. “Jason Vanderholt’s Leading Lady No More!” “Yes, Jason, You Can Do Better!” “How Did She Ever Turn Jason V.’s Head?” “Still Working the Backup Plan?” That last one was under a picture of me wearing my backpack, on my way home from classes.
It was official: according to the media, Jason and I were through.
The door chimed behind me and I made myself walk. A picture of me reading the headlines would just be too perfect, so I ducked down an aisle devoted to a hundred different flavors of beef jerky and headed for the glass fronted refrigerator in the back while I tried to collect my thoughts. I had to get home and get ready for work in a couple of hours. Calling someone seemed like an overreaction. This was my life now. I was famous by association, and I couldn’t hide from that forever. What I needed to do was just walk out, head back to the house, and ignore that stupid car.
But a glance out of the corner of my eye let me know that the person who’d followed me in was a burly, sullen looking man who stood just inside the door, his arms folded across his chest. He didn’t seem like a photographer, and I wished he did. That carriage and the way he looked the room over screamed out that he was casing the store. The last thing I needed right now was to be caught up in a holdup. When I looked over at the person working the register, I saw it was a young woman, likely not even out of her teens. She read a magazine, completely oblivious to the threatening figure in the
doorway.
In a play for time, I grabbed a bottle of water, its smooth plastic cool against the palm of my hand, and headed up to the counter, only to remember that I didn’t have my wallet on me, just a credit card, and on that credit card was my married name, Chloe Vanderholt. People seemed to think it was an odd decision for me to take Jason’s last name (and yes, he used his real name for his career), but my maiden name, Winters, belonged to my absent, married-to-another-woman father and the half brother who once tried to kill me. Much as I hated the harassment that came with being a Vanderholt, I was happy to be a Vanderholt. I just wished I had a secret identity I could whip out in a situation like this.
I glanced back and saw the guy was on his way over to join me at the counter. With my thumb, I turned my engagement ring around so that the seven carat stone rested against my palm. It was a stupid thing to wear on a run, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave it at my sister-in-law’s house. It was worth nearly as much as said house.
The guy was right behind me, now, out of my line of sight. I fumbled my credit card out onto the counter and the girl picked it up, swiped it, glanced at the back, then froze. Her hazel eyes registered shock as she looked up at me.
I took a deep breath. I could handle this.
“Are you related?”
“To?” I played dumb.
“Jason Vanderholt.” She said it like I must be a total idiot not to know his name. I wondered if she were from out of town because it was well known around Albuquerque that the Vanderholts were local. Jason visited all the time. That was how he and I were able to have a relationship while I was an undergrad at the University of New Mexico.
“Vanderholt’s my husband’s name.”
“So are you related to him by marriage?”
I shrugged as if I didn’t know or much care. “Maybe.” I scrawled my signature on the receipt and slid it across the counter.
The man behind me shifted his weight and cleared his throat. I sensed, before I saw, him start to sidle around me and I backed away from the counter, turned, and made a break for outside.
“Chloe,” he said.
I skidded to a stop and my hands hit the glass of the door, hard.
The girl behind the counter screamed.
The guy began to laugh and readjusted his baseball cap, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement.
“Jason, what are you doing here?”
“I was trying to find you, but you seem to be avoiding me.”
The girl’s mouth had dropped open and her gum had fallen on the counter. Red faced, she cast around for a napkin to pick it up with.
“You are getting way too good at that tough guy act,” I scolded, crossing back over to him. It was a trick he’d perfected, looking like someone you did not want to make eye contact with.
“Did you seriously not recognize me?”
“I thought you were going to rob the store.”
He cracked up and slipped an arm around my waist.
The girl behind the counter stared wide-eyed at the two of us.
“I don’t know what this is about us only ‘maybe’ being related by marriage,” he said to her, holding up his left hand and tapping his wedding ring with his thumb. “The guy who did our ceremony seemed legit. I’m pretty sure this is my wife.”
“You… you’re…”
“Jason.” He held out a hand, which she didn’t take. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Really?” squeaked the girl. “Can I um… get your… uh…”
“Got anything to sign?”
She fumbled around and finally located another napkin. Jason signed it and she stared down at the squiggle of ink as if it were a magical incantation to turn lead to gold, which at least distracted her enough that we could leave gracefully.
As soon as we stepped out the door, the guy in the white sedan got out and began to shoot pictures of us. I kept my arm firmly around Jason’s waist as we went to the car, though I knew I scowled. The press would no doubt find a way to use these pictures to add more credibility to the rumor that he and I were done as a couple.
Jason opened my door, and once he’d gone around and climbed in the driver’s side he turned to me and said, “So are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“You seemed real unhappy on Skype last night.”
“I didn’t mean to drag you away-”
“From my ever so meaningful press junket? I would’ve come last night, but my last interview went so late.”
“Jas, when I said maybe we should spend more time together, I didn’t mean that you should take time off your job.”
“What did you mean, then?”
I looked down at my hands. “That maybe I shouldn’t even start mine.”
“Your job?”
“Yeah. I mean, maybe this is just a bad time and-”
“No way.”
“It’s fine. I can-”
“It is not fine. There is no way I’m going to take your dreams from you.”
“I love you, all right?” I said. “And I want this to work.”
“What to work?”
“Us. Our marriage.”
Here we were, arguing in a parked car while that stupid paparazzo fired away. I didn’t want to take this argument back to his sister’s house, though.
“You think that’s in danger of failing?” he asked.
“You’ve seen the headlines.”
“Oh, gimme a break, Chloe. Those are tabloids. They make all kinds of stuff up. Nobody takes them seriously.”
That, I knew for a fact, was not true. Jason’s fans took these rumors very seriously. They were all reading the articles and dreaming up how they’d catch his eye once he’d offloaded me. But these thoughts just made me depressed, which made me look depressed, which only upset my husband more. I tried to think of a way to change the subject. “Thank you for coming out but-”
“Are things between us… in jeopardy?”
“No. No. Definitely not-”
He reached across the console and pulled me in for a kiss, his lips slightly dry against mine, the scent of moisturizer on his skin.
I leaned in, pressing our mouths more firmly together and put my arms around his neck. Let the paparazzo get a picture of this.
“Chloe,” Jason whispered, “I’ll take the whole day off. As many days as you-”
I shook my head. “I don’t want you to do that.” The press would read all kinds of meaning into that.
“Well I don’t want you to quit your job, so decide. Do you need me here? Just say the word.”
I shut my eyes and my next breath sounded suspiciously like a sob.
“I take that as a yes,” he said.
“No. Jas, don’t. I’ll be all right. I’m still getting used to all this, and I’m sorry that I don’t have thicker skin.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. I didn’t mean to make you go through all this trouble-”
He kissed my cheek, then my lips again. “It’s no trouble. I’m sorry my schedule’s been so packed.”
“No, it’s fine.” I rubbed the back of his neck with my thumb. We’d had a short courtship, by modern standards, so the projects Jason was working on now were ones he’d committed to before we’d ever gotten together. Part of why we’d married when we did was to have the wedding and honeymoon out of the way before he shot two movies almost back to back. He’d been in Mexico shooting the first one for three of the six months that we’d been married, and had had press obligations for much of the rest of the time. Unlike most of his colleagues, he was still bankable in big budget blockbusters and had a solid fan base who saw everything he was in, no matter how shoddy the script or direction. In order to keep things this way, he had to pay his dues to his public. I certainly wasn’t going to ask him to take a break while other actors’ careers hit the skids as the after-effects of the Great Recession rolled on.
And while he’d been shooting films, I�
��d finished my masters in forensic science. It’d been an intense year of studying, both before and after the wedding, so between my commitments and his, we hadn’t had much quality time together.
He looked me straight in the eye and said, “You sure you don’t need me to rearrange my schedule?”
I shook my head and forced a smile, “If I put off starting work-”
“No.”
I wanted to raise my voice and demand he let me finish a sentence. We were talking in circles because he wasn’t even listening to me, but we didn’t have time to escalate this fight. In a couple of hours I’d be in the lab and he’d be back in LA. Besides that, he thought he was being nice by staying firm on our decision that I take this job with the Albuquerque Police Department. After all, it brought us back home again and let me work with some of the people who’d saved my life when I’d been a victim of crime, over a decade ago. As stubborn as he could be when he wanted something, he was downright intransigent if he thought I wanted something. The fact that he’d ditched his schedule and flown out here in the wee hours of the morning proved that.
I pushed all my irritations to the side and took a moment to take in my surroundings. We were in his Prius, his old car that he kept at the airport while he was out of town so that it’d be there waiting for him whenever he flew in. I’d wanted this car as soon as we knew we’d be moving here, but he’d insisted I get a new one, because I suppose a new car is the kind of thing most people want. I loved the Prius, though, it was the car he’d driven all the time we were dating. Sitting in its driver’s seat gave me a giddy sense of dislocation, a tangible reminder that I’d married the amazing, gorgeous guy who’d driven me home from dinner that one night and begged for a goodnight kiss. I still planned to swipe this car from him, but that was another battle for another time.
We could talk and bicker over the phone or Skype. I looked up into his eyes again and found his gaze fixed on me, intent as ever.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“You weren’t at Jen’s but your car was. I figured you hadn’t gotten far. Then I saw you being stalked.”
Nobody's Damsel Page 1
