by Amy Lloyd
‘No! No, I just thought I recognised her.’
‘If she was there, wouldn’t she have come up to me? Seems kind of weird that she wouldn’t.’
Sam agreed, though she was almost certain it had been Lindsay. She let it drop and continued scrolling through the pictures of them both. She felt stupid for asking. For a while she managed to stay in the articles but the temptation to scroll down to the bottom of the screen proved too great. Soon she was crying.
‘What’s wrong now?’ Dennis asked.
‘The things people have been saying …’ She turned the computer towards him. ‘Look at this.’
‘“Wow, he’s hot, no offence but he could do better …” That’s not that bad.’
‘Yes it is! Look at this one!’
‘“W-T-F—”’
‘It means “What the fuck …”’
‘“What the fuck is he doing with her?! He could murder my vagina!!” What does murder my vagina mean?’
‘It means they want to fuck you and they think I’m too ugly for you!’
‘And it bothers you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Maybe you shouldn’t read this stuff, then.’
Sam buried her laptop in the bottom of her bag along with her phone, feeling exposed, judged, just as she had when she read the posts about her on the message boards after they’d got married. It was as if the moment she’d married Dennis she’d agreed to be scrutinised mercilessly and always compared to the man by her side. It was a deal in which she could never be evaluated favourably, no matter what people thought of Dennis. That burden felt suddenly heavy and she wondered why she had ever thought this would be easy.
When the phone rang Dennis answered with his full name and told the operator to put the person through, his voice high with a happiness Sam wished she could make him feel. When he’d hung up he told Sam to get ready: they were going to meet Jackson and the manager he’d recommended in the bar downstairs. While he checked himself over she stood behind him. He took off his glasses and Sam stared at him in the mirror, at the flecks of gold and green in his blue eyes. She thought of kissing his neck but did not.
Downstairs, in the empty hotel bar, Jackson greeted them both, introducing them to a man named Nick Ridgway, who was almost as tall as Dennis but softer, his belly too big to button his suit jacket.
‘First off, congratulations!’ he said, slapping Dennis’s arm. ‘Fantastic news, fantastic. A lot of people out there have been rooting for you. I’ve been reading about it all day. You’re one popular guy right now.’
‘Thank you,’ Dennis said.
‘I’ve known Jackson for many years and I was really flattered he’d recommend me to you, because I know how much he cares about you and your situation. I just wanted to have a chat with you today to see what kind of things you’d like to get out of a manager and what I think I could offer you.’
Dennis explained he didn’t have any specific plans, but that Carrie had said people might want to interview him. Nick laughed and told him he was being modest. He threw out a list of people who were lining up to talk to Dennis, and read some of the messages left at reception.
‘They’ve been screening calls from everyone so you could have your privacy while you adjust to things! How’s that going, by the way?’
‘I’d quite like to go out sometime today …’ Dennis said.
‘Have you seen it out there? There’s a crowd of fans and journalists! By all means go out but have a strategy and right now I wouldn’t talk to anyone! Give nothing away for free. I’ve been looking at the reaction to your case, and we need to capitalise. We need to start working on building your brand.’
‘My brand?’
Jackson and Nick explained how Dennis needed to market himself in a certain way to maximise his return on this situation.
‘In a settlement you’ll get a million, couple of million, I guess. If you play this right, do the media, write the book, market yourselves as a couple, too, I really think you could get upwards of ten million out of this. You know, if that’s the way you want to go?’ Nick leaned forward, his belt buckle digging into his belly.
Dennis agreed that it was, and they discussed what he might expect to happen over the upcoming days. Nick told them both to pose for pictures if people stopped them and to give them a simple but unrevealing quote: We’re very happy or We’re enjoying this new time together.
Dennis held Sam’s hand, and she moved her thumb in circles inside his palm, feeling the room rock her gently. She stopped listening to what was happening around them, sleepy with pleasure. Then Dennis stood abruptly.
‘Get that cell phone set up. You’re going to need it!’ Jackson told them as they left.
Back in the room they opened the iPhone.
‘How do I turn it on?’ Dennis asked, turning it over in his hands. Once it lit up, he prodded at the screen, holding his finger down too long, clumsy, highlighting things, closing pages. Finally he became frustrated and handed it to her. Together they created his first email address, [email protected] and took his library card, aged dollar bills and the cheque out of his old wallet and put them into a black leather Dolce & Gabbana one. Sam tapped her number into Dennis’s phone and got her own back out of the bag. There had been more missed calls, and a few more emails. Work had called. She told him to call her so she had his number.
‘How do I …?’
Sam smiled and guided him through it.
She showed him the internet, and explained Twitter, Google, blogs, YouTube, apps. She enjoyed how closely he leaned in to look at the screen and how he looked at her when she showed him something that impressed him.
Dennis tweeted for the first time. ‘Hi’, he wrote, and eight thousand people retweeted it. Sam sighed. Her most successful tweet had had seven likes and three retweets and she’d thought it was cutting-edge satire. They read about themselves on Huffington Post and they took a selfie, Dennis sliding his glasses off and looking seriously into the lens. She took an eyelash off his cheek and tried to kiss him when he said, ‘Can you show me the loggers thing?’
‘Bloggers!’
‘Whatever.’ He stared at the screen and Sam tried to find a blog about him. It didn’t take long to find someone who thought he was obnoxious. ‘What does this mean?’ he asked.
‘Right,’ Sam exhaled. ‘“Cis-gendered” means you’re a man who was born a man. “Hetero-normative” means you’re, you know, straight. “White-male privilege” means – why are you laughing?’
‘It’s funny!’ He took back the phone and tried to scroll down. ‘How do I go to the bottom? To lower?’
She showed him again how to stroke the screen, that he didn’t need to press down. She felt a band tighten around her skull. Suddenly it seemed as though she’d spent the whole morning teaching him how to ignore her.
‘Wow,’ he said when he reached the end of the blog post, ‘this girl really hates me.’
Sam stood and rubbed her eyes. ‘Before we meet Jackson and everyone for the interview, can we go to the pool or something? I feel like I need some fresh air.’
Fifteen
At the pool, people recognised Dennis straight away. Most looked for a beat too long, then turned and spoke in whispers that made Sam twitch. Dennis shook hands with people who came to say congratulations and posed for a couple of pictures. Some girls moved their towels off a pair of sun loungers for him and he pulled his shirt over his head and left it there. The sun dazzled Sam and she shaded her eyes watching the surface of the water glitter in the light. Dennis leaned down to feel the heat of the stone patio with his palm before walking into the pool.
In the movie, she thought, he’d dive. Instead, he was awkward in the water, each stroke producing a noisy splash as he powered boisterously from one end to the other. Against the side he stopped and breathed heavily, beads of water rolling over the contours of his muscles. Finally he took his glasses off and left them on the edge of the pool before diving under and emerging in the shallow end.
>
That evening, as they got ready for dinner and an on-camera interview with the crew, Sam saw Dennis’s pale skin had turned a hectic red.
‘Maybe we should have worn sunscreen,’ she said, rubbing lotion into his skin. She did it awkwardly, with the tips of her fingers, sensing the tension in his back as she did so. How long had it been since he was touched like this? She felt a degree of power, which surprised her. He sucked in his breath at the cold between his shoulder blades. ‘You’re just not used to the sun any more,’ she said.
‘You think?’ Dennis said, shrugging her off.
They left for dinner with his skin still greasy with cream. His mood was dark and he hissed in pain as Sam brushed his arm when she pressed the button for the elevator. But when Carrie, Jackson and Patrick greeted them in the lobby he lit up. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘My first sunburn in twenty years!’ He rolled up his sleeve to show them and they winced in sympathy.
They’d booked a table in one of the hotel restaurants, in a room lit a soothing blue and with a pianist in the far corner. Although the others were sharing a bottle of wine, Dennis only wanted sparkling water. When Sam looked at the wine menu she felt him watching her and decided she would stick to Diet Coke.
‘How are you enjoying yourself, Dennis?’ Patrick asked.
‘I’d really like to go out sometime. Around. I don’t know.’
‘Must be pretty overwhelming,’ Carrie said and everyone murmured in agreement.
‘We’ve been looking at the internet,’ Dennis said.
Carrie laughed. ‘You’re going to have to be more specific, Dennis.’
‘At what people are saying. You know – comments.’
‘Oh man, don’t look at the comments,’ Patrick said.
‘Why?’ Dennis asked.
‘I have to admit, I’ve been looking,’ Carrie said, taking out her phone, flicking through with one thumb, still moving risotto from her plate to her lips. Sam forgot it could look so easy. ‘Have you seen Twitter? Most of it’s OK but …’ She started to read aloud: ‘“Where are the white filmmakers getting black men released from Death Row? Hashtag white justice.”’ There was an uncomfortable laugh. ‘This shit is trending now. I lost, like, an hour of my life to this earlier. I mean, I guess they’re right but what can we do?’
Dennis put down his fork, the blood from his steak soaking into broccoli. ‘I know. It’s like it’s a bad thing to be a white male right now.’
There was a pause, exchanged looks, and the table exploded with laughter. Sam was first frozen in horrified embarrassment but eventually it got to her too, and she joined in.
‘Oh my God, you sound like my grandpa.’ Carrie leaned across and held Dennis’s wrist, ‘But, like, seriously: don’t ever say that in public, OK?’
Dennis nodded, confused, a new redness to his cheeks on top of the sunburn.
Back in their room, the crew set up the camera and a light, positioned the chairs in front of the drawn curtains. Carrie powdered Dennis’s face with some of Sam’s make-up, and angled the light to try and make him look less pink. She and Patrick had decided to interview Sam and Dennis together first.
‘What’s it like to be together so suddenly?’ Carrie asked.
‘Surreal,’ Sam said, holding Dennis’s hand, the arm of the chair digging into her elbow.
Dennis nodded. ‘Yeah, surreal.’
‘It’s like … getting to know each other all over again.’
‘Right, yeah.’ He squeezed her hand.
‘I didn’t realise how much he’s missed, being in prison. We’ve spent a lot of time today just looking at the internet, learning to use a computer and a touch-screen phone.’
‘I didn’t even have an email address.’
‘You don’t realise how much has changed until you have to explain it all.’
‘It’s going to take a lot of getting used to. But Samantha, she’s so great, she’s patient. I’m so lucky.’
When they were being observed they really existed, Sam thought. They were the couple she wanted to be. He was vulnerable and she was caring. She wondered if they were always like this and she was too caught up in herself to realise it.
Then it was Dennis’s turn on his own. They moved the empty chair so that he would be in the centre of the shot and Carrie smiled warmly before she started the interview.
‘How does it feel to be a free man, Dennis?’
‘Uh, it’s … overwhelming, I’m overwhelmed by everything.’
‘Can you tell us about what it’s like to adjust?’
‘Right. It’s difficult to adjust. I hadn’t slept in a couple of nights because I was moved from Row so suddenly. I knew there was a chance I’d be released. I’ve been sleeping in the same place for twenty-one years, and I was used to the noise of it. Then I was here, in a different bed. It was so quiet in the hotel room last night I couldn’t fall asleep for a while. I’m used to the noise. The bed was so comfortable I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Last night we had a party and I was up late and that made me sleep until nine which is something I haven’t done in a long, long time.
‘I’m a little disorientated, I guess you could say. Part of me wants to go out, anywhere, to the mall or something. And part of me can’t figure out what I would do when I get there. Some people have given me cheques but I can’t cash them, because I don’t have a bank account. I can’t drive, I never got my licence. There are so many gifts in this room, everything I need, but I don’t know how to use a lot of them.’
Carrie asked him about what he’d missed most while being in prison; they talked about food and clothes and the gifts he’d been given. Then Carrie became serious. ‘Do you have any anger or hatred towards Wayne Nestor?’
‘Is he the guy who actually killed the girl?’
‘He killed Holly Michaels, yes.’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Why?’
‘Anger isn’t productive.’
‘Do you think it’s good her real killer is finally brought to justice?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you say that?’
‘Say what?’
‘That it’s good her killer is finally brought to justice. For the camera.’
‘Oh, yeah. Sure. It’s good the real killer is finally brought to justice.’
‘What are your plans? Do you think you’ll turn your long incarceration into something positive?’
‘My manager said we can probably capitalise on it.’
‘No, I mean … Will you be campaigning? Will you work with any groups?’
‘For what?’
‘A reform of the justice system, abolishing the death penalty.’
‘Oh. No, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with capital punishment, just so long as the guy actually did it.’
Carrie waved her hand. ‘Cut, cut. Dennis, I can’t tell if you’re being serious.’
‘I am serious,’ he said, frowning.
‘After all that you’ve been through, you honestly think the death penalty is a good thing?’
‘Not a good thing …’ He thought about it. ‘It’s necessary, isn’t it? I’m not saying it’s good.’
‘Oh, Dennis.’ Carrie sighed. ‘What are we gonna do with you?’
Sixteen
The crew left early the next day and it was finally just them, Sam and Dennis, learning what it was like to be together. They filled out forms to get Dennis a bank account, everything complicated by his missing life, the fact he had no previous addresses, no current address for that matter, no history. They cashed the cheques he’d been given and they were desperate to go out but didn’t know where to go, or what to do. So Sam booked a car to take them to the Florida Mall, where they wandered with their fingers knitted together, Dennis posing for photographs when people asked. Others turned and took pictures as they passed by, arms extended, Dennis looking confused until she explained they were taking selfies.
Magazines interviewed them as a couple and Sam kept a copy of every piece, tuc
ked in her suitcase to stay flat. Dennis signed a six-figure advance with a publisher for two books, one autobiography and one compiling his writings in prison, including the letters between Sam and himself. Sam agreed, but cringed at the idea of people reading her letters. They’d picture her, mousy and pale, alone in her dingy house, pouring her heart out to a complete stranger, she thought despairingly.
She googled her name constantly and pored over the comments sections. Some people questioned why a man like Dennis would ever love a woman like her. They used words like fat, ugly, basic, groupie. Others asked why any normal woman would want a man like Dennis. They said she had what was coming to her. They said she deserved it.
It hurt. Each comment rubbed away another layer of her until she was raw.
But when she cried, Dennis held her, and when they were out he linked his fingers with hers and he kissed her, his lips cold from the iced water he sipped constantly. He didn’t say it but she knew he wanted to show people he did love her. And she thought that was all she needed; it would make up for everything else.
Once he had his ID, Nick booked Dennis for interviews on the late-night TV circuit, and told them both to prepare to spend the Christmas season in New York. There was also talk of another movie, based on Eileen Turner’s book, When the River Runs Red.
‘Jared Leto’s going to be you,’ Nick told Dennis.
‘Who?’ Sam showed him a picture on her phone. ‘He doesn’t look anything like me.’
‘They’ll dye his hair! He’s going to totally inhabit the role. He’s going method so he wants to spend some time with you, observe you, learn what makes you you.’
‘Method?’
Sam explained.
‘Absolutely not,’ Dennis said. ‘Seriously? No.’
One evening he stopped outside the window of a jewellery store and told her to pick a ring, any one. ‘I never got to buy you one,’ he said, his hand on her lower back. Sometimes she felt dizzy from how happy he could make her.
Other times he was difficult, dark moods that swept in suddenly and made him quiet and inaccessible. They were together almost all the time, except for when Dennis was in the gym, or on the rare occasions one of them went for a walk or a swim by themselves. The hotel room became more and more cluttered, their whole lives packed into one space. They bickered and sniped and then spent silent hours lying still, loosely entwined, unsure what they were supposed to do or how they were supposed to feel.
