sex.lies.murder.fame.

by Lolita Files

  “No, Darren,” she’d cried, “that’s not true. I love you. I don’t want anybody else but you.”

  “I’m not stupid, Brookie. As soon as I’m gone, you’ll be pushed up with the next man. Who is it? Tony? Dennis? I’ve seen how you look at my boys. I see how you flirt. Maybe I should just break this off now.”

  “Darren, don’t do this!”

  He had watched her tears, knowing how much it hurt her for him to suggest she could ever be unfaithful. He had been her world. Darren was handsome, highly intellectual, from an excellent family, and the president of his fraternity. He had been a perfect match for her, she believed, and she wanted nothing more than to start a life with him and pop out as many babies as he wanted. She’d given her virginity to him. She had prided herself on that. She’d only had sex with one person, and that was the way she wanted it to be.

  As she tried to defend her love for him, Darren had walked off, disgusted by the thought of what she might do, and she had chased after him, begging.

  “Please, Darren! I love you! I don’t want anybody else, I swear!”

  He had stopped, but he didn’t turn around.

  “Prove it.”

  Six hours later, she was in a three-way. Darren, her, and a stranger, a stripper from some skanky Atlanta gentlemen’s club. The woman did unspeakable things to Brookie, with objects, toys, some sort of egg-shaped thing, and some kind of vibrating business with ears like a rabbit. Darren had done things to the woman. Brookie watched them fuck, frightened, horrified, but obedient, determined to prove her love. Then Darren did things to Brookie while the woman watched. Then the woman joined him and Brookie. It was a nasty, messy scene.

  She’d done her best not to cry. She wanted to prove to Darren she would do anything for him, and this, he said, was how she could do it. They were at the Westin in Buckhead. When it was over and the woman was gone, Darren held Brookie as she lay violently shaking, fighting against tears.

  “Now we have a secret together,” he whispered. “We can’t be broken. We have something that’s just between the two of us. This is the kind of thing I would only want to share with my wife.”

  “You mean you’d want to do this again?”

  “No,” he said, hugging her tight. “Never. I didn’t do this because I wanted a three-way. I did it for us. I needed to know we were solid. I needed to know your word was your word.”

  He kissed her forehead.

  “I know that now, and I love you for it, Brookie. I love you so much. As soon as I’m done with this internship, I want to get married right away.”

  And he had gone into the bathroom, run a hot, sobering bath, come back into the room, and carried her lovingly to the tub. He had bathed her, caressed her, cared for her, until she understood why he had done what he had to do, had forced her hand this way, and she realized that she would have done it again, again and again, a million times over, if it meant keeping Darren.

  But Darren was gone. The Japanese girls got him.

  She couldn’t lose another man. Not after the kind of humiliation she’d gone through just to try to keep one. She had to make sure Miles was hers, and she wouldn’t do it with three-ways. She would do it her way, with one-on-one heterosexual sex, once she could get her head straight.

  She would learn to satisfy Miles, even if it meant having to suffer through therapy.

  She would make him happy.

  This time she’d win.

  What worried her was Sharlyn. How could she, Brookland Ames, compete with such a superstar? The only advantage she had over Sharlyn was age and a different kind of beauty. And Miles’s attention, which she couldn’t lose, no matter what. She forbade him from having any more sexual relations with Sharlyn. She couldn’t lose another man again. It would kill her. She knew it would kill her for sure.

  Sharlyn Tate was a snacker. The whole time she was writing, she would snack, snack, snack.

  That was the way, Brookie had realized. She would feed her boss those nasty foods, those killer foods, the type of stuff she knew Miles couldn’t stand, but his wife was apparently weak against. Those foods sickened Brookie, but she knew how to prepare them with expert skill. This was the cuisine of her mother, her grandmothers, and all of her aunts. Deadly sustenance. That’s what she would give her.

  And Sharlyn Tate would grow fat and ugly. She was too distracted to stick with a trainer and too vain to submit to undergoing lipo. She’d turn into a cow, and Miles would hate her, and there would be no threat of him ever leaving Brookie again.

  She would learn how to have sex with Miles. She had to.

  Because she couldn’t be alone.

  There was no way she could ever be abandoned again.

  Fiyah made

  …the video.

  They had already cut the song in the studio, a clever ditty simply called “Book.” Penn had cowritten it with On Fiyah. It was a catchy tune that would blaze throughout the summer.

  The Calvin Klein billboard had been up in Times Square since March. People were already stopping Penn about it. Girls were making public displays of themselves. A few had flashed him, right there on the street.

  The song was out a month before the video hit. It was already in heavy rotation on the radio and On Fiyah had already worked the remix, which had become a club favorite, the kind of song that got asses on the floor the second people heard the first beat hit. After a while, the song was like air. There was no getting away from hearing it pour out of every car, truck, and stereo system across the U.S.

  The video shoot took place on the Universal lot in L.A. Brett Ratner directed. A host of people mentioned in the song came through and made cameo appearances. The A-list chicks hit on Penn. So did a couple of A-list guys.

  “…and …action!” Ratner barked.

  The beat dropped and Fiyah strutted around, mugging for the camera, Penn at his heels, mirroring his moves.

  “Not Penn and Teller…”

  Penn and Teller, the satirical magic team, stood against a vivid white background, fighting against a giant hook that was trying to snatch them off.

  “Not pen and paper…”…close-up of a gold-tipped Montblanc fountain pen touching down on vivid white paper…

  “This ain’t your regular…moneymaker…”

  “No, I ain’t Justin…”

  The real Justin Timberlake mugged for the camera.

  “No, he ain’t Mark…”

  The real Mark Wahlberg stood wide-legged, arms crossed, in front of his original Calvin Klein ad, wearing a T-shirt that said ORIGINATOR.

  “It’s the original Wonder Boy rockin’ the charts…”

  The verse went back and forth, on through to the hook, which was…

  “And yo, check it out, you gotta get the Book.”

  The scene moved to night in Times Square, with Fiyah and Penn busting moves on a huge stage. Penn’s Calvin Klein ad was lit up in the background.

  “Get the look!” a huddle of celebrities shouted.

  “Get the Book!” the masses packed in Times Square shouted in turn.

  “…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand cut!” Ratner yelled.

  People took their advice.

  The pre-orders on Amazon had passed the one million mark, even though Book wasn’t scheduled for release for another four months.

  Even though people had no idea, other than the Kafka connection, what it was about.

  The video debuted at number ten on TRL the second week in May.

  A week later, it was number one.

  Penn Hamilton—Calvin Klein guy, Defibrillator drinker, iPod hawker, star-fucker extraordinaire—was on top of the world.

  “Yo, Fiyah, can I ask you a question?”

  “What’s up?”

  They were sitting on a couch in an editing suite at R! OT Studios in Santa Monica, watching the colorizing guy adjust the tint on the video. Brett sat next to the guy at the boards. On occasion, On Fiyah would give his approval or disapproval of the direction they seemed to be taking the edit.


  “I was just wondering…”

  “Speak.”

  “What made you call me ‘the original Wonder Boy’?”

  “That’s some clever shit, right?” Fiyah said with a grin. “See, that’s one of those things I figured people would either get if they get it, and if they don’t, they’ll just think I’m calling you a superkid. And it’s catchy as hell. People are gonna start calling you that.”

  “They already are. How’d you come up with it?”

  “From that movie Wonder Boys. It was about writers and shit, you know, and I always liked that movie. Tobey Maguire and Michael Douglas was Wonder Boys, you know, smart cats who was, like, geniuses with the word at a early age and shit—”

  “Yeah, I saw the movie.”

  “But they was fucked up and shit. Tobey was trippin’ all through the movie and Michael Douglas’s shit was all fucked up. They weren’t exercising their powers right. But see, now, you…you look good, write good, dress good. That’s the ticket. You working it in every direction, baby.”

  “You think so?”

  “Hell yeah. Now all you need is a clothing line.”

  “You know, I was thinking about that. I was going to ask you about it.”

  “Seriously?” Fiyah said, turning toward him. “What would you call it?”

  “Scribo,” Penn said.

  “Screebo? What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s Latin. Spelled with an i. It means ‘I write.’”

  “Scribo,” Yah said, thinking about it, nodding his head. “That’s hot. It sounds kinda hip-hop. I could see people rocking that shit.”

  Penn liked this guy. He had a keen eye for business and he spoke his mind without hesitation. On Fiyah thought like he did. They were branding birds of a feather. Big men with big ideas and big plans on how to turn those big ideas into big realities.

  Except Penn would be bigger than Fiyah.

  For sure.

  Beryl had found her dress. Well, not exactly found it. It was going to be made.

  By Vera Wang.

  The designer Zac Posen reintroduced them. Beryl had met her once before at a launching party for the wedding book Vera did a few years back. Beryl told Vera of her plans. It was all very secret for now, she’d said. There was plenty of time.

  Vera was in. Besides, she’d been thinking of doing another wedding book. Perhaps a series of them. Beryl could return the favor.

  Getting Defibrillators was no longer an easy thing.

  Customers recognized him as he stood in line. It happened all the time. People boldly sweated him now. All kinds of folks were coming out of the woodwork. Old classmates from Choate, people who’d never spoken to him at Columbia, friends of his parents who’d forgotten about him once Dane and Liliana died in the plane crash. They were everywhere. Like rats, they were.

  Tabloids and gossip columns began pairing him up with people. Scarlett Johansson. Angelina Jolie.

  “I’ve never even met Angelina Jolie!” he laughed the first time he saw it mentioned in Us Weekly. Beryl had been bothered by it, but what could she do? It was the backlash of growing fame.

  “Would you ever want to be with Scarlett Johansson?” she asked him one night when they were in bed.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, thinking that he certainly wouldn’t mind being in Scarlett, now that Beryl had brought up the subject.

  “But she’s beautiful and you’re going to be shooting that new Calvin campaign with her. How do you know you won’t fall for her?”

  “Because I’m in love with you,” he whispered, holding her close. “And stop with the knee shaking. You’re such a worrywart. I’m where I wanna be, and it’s not with Scarlett Johansson.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “Is my body good enough for you? Is there anything you’d change?”

  “Yes,” he said, “there’s something I would change.”

  She stared at him, stricken.

  “What? My nose? My breasts? Is it my hair? I can always change my hair.”

  Penn watched her ramble nervously.

  “I’d change your mouth,” he said.

  She clasped her hand over her lips.

  “What’s wrong with it?” she said, her words muffled. “It’s my teeth, isn’t it? Should I have them fixed?”

  “No. It’s your lips. They’re always flapping. You need to relax. Be quiet. Everything between us is fine.”

  Websites and blogs had begun to pop up all over the Net. The most popular one was called SoccerMomsforPenn. Dot-com. They had become the most vocal group among his growing fan base. He was the object of lust for desperate housewives all across the country, with many of them posting their fantasies daily. (Another site, a bit seedier—www. Milfs4Penn.com—offered even raunchier fare.)

  An ex of his from Columbia started a blog called I Fucked Penn Hamilton (dot-org). (I Fucked Penn Hamilton dot-com had already been taken, but whoever owned it hadn’t put up any online data as yet.) The IFPH dot-org site received thousands of hits, mostly from women who wanted to know what it was like to be with him. The girl who ran the website encouraged others to write in with their own accounts of having been at Penn’s sexual mercy. Penn’s ex from NYU, the one whose mother had won the lottery, was one of the most frequent posters on the site. She’d had an emotional breakdown after dating him, and she listed all the gory details of what came along with it, including photos of cuts she’d made on her body to purge herself of the pain. Another woman boldly exposed her naked chest. There were three scars across her breasts, like small raised splashes. Burn marks, she wrote, compliments of Penn’s evil semen.

  Other girls wrote in about equally dark things. Penn’s penchant for rim jobs (getting them, not giving) came up. Beryl had been terribly bothered by it all. She didn’t even know what rimming was.

  “It’s analingus,” Penn said, stretched out on his couch.

  “Huh?”

  “Ass licking, babe, ass licking. I can’t believe you’re even talking about this.”

  “So that’s what this means?” she asked, turning red. She was sitting at his computer, her back to him. She scrolled through the web pages she was reading. “These women are saying you like having your ass licked?”

  “You’d know better than anyone. You’re my girlfriend. Have I ever asked you to do it?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then drop it, babe. It’s ridiculous.”

  “But Penn,” she complained, “there’s hundreds of them who’ve written in. Have you really been with that many women?”

  “C’mon, babe. It’s the Internet. People make up things just so they can feel important.” He was channel-surfing. He landed on Comedy Central.

  “But one of them described you perfectly,” Beryl said, turning around in her chair to look at him. “She even mentioned the kinds of sounds you make when, you know, when you’re doing it. And she was accurate. You do make those sounds.”

  Penn gave her a stern look.

  “I wasn’t a virgin when you met me, babe. You knew that. I thought we weren’t going to go through this kind of stuff anymore. You’re the one who warned me that people would start talking about me once I began to get more press. You said they might lie in the absence of having total access to me. They’ve already dug up photos of my parents. They’ve been writing articles about my dad, talking about his days at the U.N., interviewing his old colleagues, showing pictures of the wreckage of their plane. I wanted to keep that stuff private, it’s my personal life, but I can’t. Some of the things I’ve been reading about my mother aren’t even true. People have been saying she was difficult and high-strung. That she was a diva with excessive, extravagant tastes. She was a lot of things, but not that. She liked nice stuff, but she was never excessive. Her friends loved her, my dad worshipped her, but the media’s been twisting it all. She’s dead, but that doesn’t stop them from fabricating lies.”

  Penn couldn’t believe he was defending his mother, but it was a convenient subject to hide
behind to deflect Beryl’s probing.

  “So you haven’t been with all those girls?” she asked. Her right knee was shaking.

  “I’m saying I’m not going to keep answering questions like that,” said Penn. “If I do, you’ll never stop asking them. They’re pointless. I’m with you now. You’re the woman I love. Everything else is irrelevant.”

  Beryl was sullen. He went over and knelt beside her.

  “You understand that, don’t you?” He grabbed her hands, his hypnotic eyes searching hers. “I love you. Just you, babe. There’s nobody else for me, no matter what you might read on a blog or in a magazine or on Page Six. You got that?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Good,” he said, kissing her palms.

  “Penn?”

  “Yes, babe.”

  “Do you like…rimming? Is that something you’d like me to do?”

  “Babe!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”

  And that had been it. She stopped bugging him, even though the online fascination with him increased, as more and more people began to chatter about Penn sightings, Penn myths, Penn the man.

  He ran into his share of cloying people every time he stopped in Starbucks. He’d met more of them than he had real literati. He knew that would come in time, but for now, it was mostly coffee and rats.

  He never had to pay for beverages and snacks at Starbucks any more. All he had to do was flash a special card. He could hear the whispers around him now as he waited in line to get his fix at the Starbucks near Fiftieth on Sixth.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Definitely.”

  “He is so fucking gorgeous.”

  “Look at that cleft.”

  “I’m gonna go over and say something to him.”

  A finger tapped his shoulder.

  He turned around to see a man, an important-looking man, smiling at him.

  “Penn Hamilton?”

  “Yes?”

  “Harold Gersh. Brecker Books.”

  He was a big guy, solid build, six two, six three, slightly balding, mid- to late fifties. He could have easily been a politician or a Hollywood mogul. He had that kind of look. Like somebody with power. Lordly yet accessible, spiffy, sleek. Penn knew him at once. Gersh was mythical for his ability to turn books into hits. Authors loved the man, and his editors were brutally loyal.