This is how it starts.
It’s the end of a very long day, one of those craptastic ones where you wish you could just fast-forward past the bad parts, like your life’s something you’ve DVRd, and the bad parts are the commercials. Only it’s late-night-TV wall-to-wall commercials, and that ShamWow!® guy has bought all the airtime.
The day begins at 5 a.m. I’m up this early because I’m shooting a commercial for my new perfume, Fabulous by Amber Sheppard.
Seriously. That’s what they made me call it.
Fabulous, I ask you?
Does anyone look at my life these days and think, Fabulous?
So it’s 5 a.m., and I couldn’t sleep last night because I can never sleep when I have to get up at 5 a.m., and the driver waiting for me outside my building is not the usual nice, reliable Dave who doesn’t think I’m ridiculous for needing a driver, like this guy seems to.
As if I need the judgment.
As if I haven’t been judged enough.
But this guy is all judgment, from the up-and-down sweep he does of me—still in my pyjamas and sneakers, hair unbrushed and no makeup—to the way he slams the door after I climb in, hesitating long enough to let me know he thinks I should’ve closed it myself.
This guy is clearly in the wrong profession, but I get a sense of where his attitude might be coming from when he moves a magazine off his seat in a way that’s sure to catch my attention.
It’s the new People, me on the cover. I seem to be driving drunk, not because I was, but because they caught me at a bad moment, at an intersection, when I closed my eyes for a second. But my hair’s a mess, my mascara’s running, and the way they framed the shot, I seem to be passed out. And the fact that I haven’t had a drink in two years and twenty-seven days, well, no one’s going to believe that, right? Not even if I show them the chips I have to prove it.
Not when they have the photo evidence to the contrary.
I know well enough by now not to act guilty simply because other people think I should, so I give the driver a defiant look in the rear-view, lay my head back, and close my eyes.
Go ahead. Take a picture. Tell the world you drove a drunk and dishevelled Amber Sheppard to some gig at sunrise.
I don’t care.
Just let me sleep until I get there.
The commercial’s being filmed about an hour outside the city in one of those steam-and-pipe factories that always get used for foot-chase scenes in the movies. In fact, this is what the script for the Fabulous by Amber Sheppard ad spot calls for; someone chasing a desperate me through a factory.
“So they can catch me and smell my perfume?” I asked at the creative meeting.
“No,” said the director after a moment of shocked silence—how dare I question his vision? “It’s an ironic metaphor. Because you’re hunted, you’re prey, but you’re still—”
“Fabulous. Right. I get it.”
I’m pretty sure the whole thing is neither ironic nor a metaphor, but nobody ever appreciates it when I point out that sort of thing. So I keep quiet even though I think it’s a dumb idea, overdone and obvious. But I don’t have much say in these things anymore, as my agent, Bernard, is fond of reminding me. I’m lucky they wanted to take a chance on me. Lucky I can still find work, even if it’s in a crappy, bad-ironic-metaphor-that’s-neither-of-those-things commercial for a smells-like-a-mix-of-dandelions-and-maple-sugar perfume.
Lucky.
I can feel the buzz, buzz of my phone through the fabric of the bag sitting next to me, little electric shocks that have me Pavlovian-reaching for it, though I know I shouldn’t. Only two people would be texting me at this hour: Bernard to ask me why I’m [insert expletive of your choice] not on set yet, and a man whose texts I shouldn’t return.
I reach inside and wrap my hand around the phone anyway, breathing in and out slowly, trying to fight the urge to check it. It double-buzzes again, and with my heart pounding, I pull it out and sneak a peek at the preview bar floating on the screen.
It’s Bernard.
Where the fuck ru? his text reads when I open it.
Some people are so predictable.
Bernard is waiting for me at the factory’s spray-painted industrial door. He’s illuminated by a set of bright arc lights. There’s a beehive of people behind him, bustling about with camera equipment and set dressings.
Keep Out, someone’s scrawled on the door in bright yellow spray paint, and I want to obey.
“Wild fucking night?” Bernard asks, his voice a rasp.
Fifty, short, and foul-mouthed, Bernard’s the best in the business and the only reason I still have any work. He’s been my agent since I was seventeen. I know why he took me on then—my career was all shiny and bright, and I hadn’t yet fulfilled the predictions that I’d end up as an E! True Hollywood Story in the “Child Stars Gone Wrong” week. Why he’s still around after I’ve fulfilled that promise (and more) is something I’m too nervous to ask him. If I start questioning his presence, he might wise up and leave.
“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.
“We’re wasting dollars.”
“I’m five minutes late.”
He shakes his head. His skull shines through his shortly shaved hair. “How many times do I have to tell you? You gotta be fucking early so no one says you’re late.”
“Okay, Bernard.”
My phone buzzes again. My fingers itch to reach for it.
“Hair and Makeup is waiting for you.”
I meet his grey eyes. “I’m on it.”
“You’ve got to murder this today.”
“I’ll die for it.”
“That’s my girl.”
The next twelve hours are an assembly line of pain.
Hair made “fabulous” and then dishevelled. Ditto makeup. A diaphanous gown is draped and cut so they’ll probably have to CGI over parts of me to be able to run the ad on TV. There’s steam and smoke and the Ironic Metaphor Director screaming, “You’re not scared enough! Stop looking like you know you’re going to survive. Put your life on the line.”
As per the conditions of my insurance bond, I am never left alone, not even to go to the bathroom. Especially not then. If I so much as ask for a tissue, I can feel a roomful of eyes staring at my nose, searching for traces of powder, for evidence of failure, weakness.
All of which makes me want to fail, to be weak.
My phone keeps buzzing. Every hour, three minutes past the hour, a secret code, like ringing two times before you hang up.
I resist, I resist, I resist.
We wrap around six p.m. I’m shivering and exhausted and beyond knowing if I’ve done enough, but after Bernard and the director have a quick consultation, they declare themselves satisfied and I’m released.
Now I’m allowed to be alone. I stand under the fizzing spray of the dirty, makeshift shower they set up in a corner of the bathroom behind a plastic shower curtain that affords no privacy. The water’s lukewarm and it doesn’t help dispel the deep chill that’s taken root in my bones. Or the itch, the bloody itch, to check my phone and confirm what I already know.
I turn off the shower and wrap myself in a fluffy, white bathrobe, the only fabulous thing I’ve seen all day. The buzz of my phone shivers through the floor and my will dissolves.
There are twelve unread texts from his number today. Two months full of them behind that, less regular but persistent. We haven’t spoken for six months. I haven’t returned any of his texts.
But today’s texts all say the same thing:
Babe, renkonti min . . .
Babe, renkonti min . . .
Our secret, private language adopted years ago as a joke. As a code it was easy to break, but that was never the point of it.
What’s important are the words. Because we agreed long ago to only use them when we mean them.
Meet me, baby . . .
Meet me, baby . . .
The last text has a location and a time: an airport forty-five minutes away, where I need to be an hour from now. For what, the text doesn’t say.
But he used our magic words, and so I change quickly back into my pyjamas—the only clothes I have—and slip outside before anyone can stop me, directing the Judgmental Driver to take me where I shouldn’t go.
The volume of paparazzi at the airport almost makes me ask him to turn around and leave.
Almost.
Despite his obvious reluctance, the Judgmental Driver pushes the town car through the crowd slowly, edging the paparazzi out of the way. The tinted windows keep me anonymous, for now. But like hunters on the prowl for big game, they can sense their prey. They’ve been waiting for hours, and they want what they’ve come for.
They’re about to get more than that.
A security guard steps out to stop us at the gate to the private airstrip. The Judgmental Driver lowers the window and tells him my name. The guard’s eyes go round. He knocks on my window anyway, wanting proof. I lower it enough so he can see me. My black hair, my trademark widow’s peak, my sure-to-be-bloodshot green eyes. I couldn’t look more the part I’m about to play if I tried, and he nods us through quickly.
Not quickly enough, though, as one eagle-eyed pap screams my name, half in shock, half in victory. Arms go up, bulbs flash, shutters snap, and only the security guard’s hand on the holster of his Taser keeps the crowd from leaping on the car like it’s a lone deer that’s wandered away from the herd.
My hands are shaking and my heart feels like it’s going to explode. My mouth fills with the taste of formaldehyde and smoke and pain.
But I don’t tell the driver to turn around.
I don’t say anything.
He stops the car as close to the private plane’s stairs as he can. I open the door before the engine cuts and bolt up them. A flight attendant in a 1950s uniform grabs my arm on the top step, pulling me through and shutting the cabin door behind me.
I catch my breath, taking in my surroundings. The inside of the plane looks like it’s been dressed for a bad rap video. Two massive bodyguards in black T-shirts are spilling out of their seats, sweeping the room with menacing gazes, as if someone might be thinking of making an attempt on someone else’s life. Four or five girls wearing skimpy skirts and plunging necklines, and sporting orangey tans, are draped over various members of his entourage. Bottles of Crystal are strewn across almost every surface. A bass line booms from the speakers. There’s even a bowl full of a powdery substance sitting on a glass coffee table.
A black-haired head is hunched over the table, just finishing a line. He straightens up, holding his nose in a practised pinch. He shakes his shoulders and looks me in the eye.
Connor Parks is five feet away from me.
And I’m shaking.
He smiles that slowly drawn smile of his and beckons me with a flick of his hand. I shake my head slightly. Looking like it’s no big deal, as if we can’t hear the shouts of the crowd outside, as if their flashes aren’t stuttering through the windows, as if everyone in the room hasn’t stopped to watch, Connor rises, crosses the room, and stands in front of me. Waves of love, longing, sadness, and hurt crash over me. I’m re-feeling every moment we had together over the last ten years, from that first rush of crush to the final, final separation we had six months ago when I finally moved all of my stuff from his house.
I reach out to steady myself, my hand finding his warm forearm.
“You’re here,” he says.
“I’m here.”
“I knew you’d come.”
“Oh?”
Now I am acting to save my life.
“Temptation, baby. Never your strong suit.”
He takes a step towards me. He smells like chemicals and Crystal and the worst idea I’ve had in a long time.
“Connor—”
The plane’s engines start and drown out my words.
“We’ve begun taxiing to our runway.” The captain’s voice replaces the thumping bass. “Please sit down, put on your seat belts, and turn off all electronic devices.”
Two of the girls start to giggle. One of them is holding her phone awkwardly. I’m pretty sure she’s recording The Reunion of the Decade, or whatever this disaster’s going to get called in the Twitterverse as soon as she uploads it.
“We should sit,” I say.
He shrugs. “Come on back.”
He turns without waiting for me and I know where he’s headed—the luxury suite he had installed at the back of the plane when he bought it with his Young James Bond money.
The flight attendant starts to push people gently into their seats. The skimpy girls laugh as they tighten their seat belts.
And me?
I drop my bag to the floor and I follow him.
Like I always do.
Like I’ve been doing my whole life.
The plane lurches and bumps over the tarmac away from the popping flashbulbs. I walk unsteadily down the aisle, my eyes fixed on the back of Connor’s neck.
“Please take your seats,” the captain says again.
The engine’s whine starts to hurt my ears, like a dog whistle.
Connor opens the door to his suite and waggles his fingers at me behind his back. He thinks he’s being cute, his little victory symbol, his professed certainty that I’d come, that I’m still at his beck and text.
Well, fuck that shit.
“No, no, no,” I say, to myself, to him, to our audience. “I can’t.”
His shoulders tense, but before he can say anything, I turn on my heel and stumble away. I feel woozy and exhausted, like a riptide has me in its grip and I’ve been fighting it for hours, but I keep kicking.
I have to.
Though it must be against regulations, the door to the cockpit is half open. I lean against it in relief and collapse into the tiny room.
“What the hell?” the co-pilot says, swivelling in his seat.
“Let me off.”
The pilot glances at me over his shoulder. “No can-do. We’ve been cleared for takeoff.”
“I mean it. Please. Let me off.”
“You can get off when we stop to refuel in Miami.”
“Wait. What? Where are we going?”
“The Bahamas.”
“I can’t.”
“Just take your seat, all right?”
“No.” My brain’s whirring. “I . . . I don’t have my passport. You have to let me off.”
He sighs. “Christ.”
“And,” I continue, feeling desperate, pushing my luck, “if you don’t, I’ll tell customs about that little party that’s going on back there.”
His eyes narrow. “Get her the hell off my plane.”
The co-pilot unbuckles himself and grabs me by the arm. The plane shudders to a stop as he releases the airlock. The stairs spill out into the night.
“Don’t dally,” he says, his voice gruff. “Move away from the plane quickly. The jets are on.”
“Thank you.”
I grab my bag and I’m down the stairs before they’re fully deployed. I jump from the last step. The soles of my shoes slap against the concrete. I run towards the grass strip that divides this runway from the next. I trip over a light encased in the edge of the concrete and land on my hands and knees. The grass is wet with evening dew.
“Amber!”
I turn to face him. Connor’s standing in the airplane’s doorway looking, for once in his life, shocked. The co-pilot’s trying to pull him away from the door as the stairs slowly rise.
“Amber!” he screams again, but I don’t move. It takes everything I’ve got, but I hold fast to the damp grass, breathing in the cold night.
The door seals his last cry and the engines rev. The plane is moving, faster, faster, tipping up and into the sky, and I’m free.
Alone in the dark in the middle of an airfield.
But free.
I get to my condo two hours later. It took me an hour of wrong turns to make it to the parking lot next to the hangar. The paparazzi I was half counting on to drive me home were long gone by then, off to sell their photos. But Connor’s vintage BMW was still there, a spare key attached by a magnet under the front left wheel, as I knew it would be because he’s always losing his keys.
When I get close to my building I realize I don’t have my garage pass and I can’t remember the combination, so I circle a couple of blocks till I find street parking.
One of Connor’s baseball hats is sitting on the passenger seat. I tuck my hair up into it, just in case someone’s staking out the back entrance to my building. All I need is a picture of me, in grass- and sweat-stained pyjamas, stumbling into my building in what will look like the dead of night, though it’s only a little after ten.
I let myself into my place, feeling as if I could sleep for a week. My clothes fall like bread crumbs marking a path to my bedroom. Naked, I crawl under the covers as a terrible case of the shakes clutches me.
I pull the duvet over my head, sobbing into the soft blackness until my body gives out.
And when I wake up, Connor is dead.