Los Angeles
It happens at once, a flood of humiliation. I’m a late-night punch line. I’m a tabloid tossed over chicken cutlets and eggs in a shopping cart. A crude angle of my body. A frame on a balcony with someone I love.
I hide out at Sonny’s house. The huddle of paparazzi grows outside the gates. I’m expecting a call from Lyle and Pat: Lolli is dropping me, they’ll say. No second album, no sessions with Axel Holm in the fall. That day in Venice, after Axel said he wanted to work with me, I watched the sun shiver over the ocean and thought I’d finally arrived.
But Sonny says Lolli is very happy. In fact, I’ve reinforced my own image. This is who I am, who I’ve always been. Being called a slut and a whore won’t impact my career. Haven’t I been called these things already? Notoriety is preferable to obscurity, hon. This is America’s favorite kind of foreplay.
On my bed, the mattress springs clench under his weight. He continues, “In the meantime, you can’t stop working. You have six days to learn choreography, Amber.”
“You also won’t get your money if I sit in bed.”
I turn away from him and start to cry.
Because I have no self-control, no discipline, I seek out ETA chatrooms on Sonny’s computer. I know what the tabloids are saying, but I want something uglier, something with even sharper teeth.
Ladytune4: Wes never even liked her, but she came onto him so hard that eventually he gave in. I don’t think he would ever betray Gwen like that. Amber wanted to be famous, and her album wasn’t doing that well, so she knew she had to use Wes to get ahead and maybe she thought if she slept with him he’d do a song with her or something.
Hotdg78 has entered the room.
Cdd4: Amber is so ugly I threw up in my mouth when I saw the pictures
Cam4ever23: Using Wes is really gross she knew she had a dead-end career and Wes was way more famous than her. I wish she would just go back to wherever she came from, wherever the fuck that is. No one cares about you!!!!
GaryN: My cousin went to high school with her in New Jersey and says she was always a huge slut
Cdd4: Just die Amber thanks ☺
Soccrlover912 left the room
Hotdg78: She looks like a slug and a beaver mated.
FLgirl9 has entered the room
FLgirl9: hi
Sexyboyzluvr: no I think she looks like a dog, a fat dog.
Hotdg78: amber ruined everything ☹☹
For days, I am sick. Nausea is the only feeling that lasts. I fill the bathtub and sit there, knees against chest, until I’m purple and pruned and shivering. I turn the lights off in every room. I wonder, what percentage of people in the world have to think you are bad to make it definitively true? Does immorality travel like blood through water, slowly reddening the liquid until it is forever stained? Can the water ever be clear again?
I turn inward until I’m convinced it would be better to die like this internet person wants. Or, not to die—to disappear into a void and then reappear as someone new. Isn’t this also a form of death? My promise to Gwen to lie low, to be careful, was made by an idea of myself. How many of these do I have? Hundreds. They are stacked inside my head, these paper girls, all patient, selfless, capable of restraint.
“Five, six, five, six, seven, we’re holding here on seven, and eight. And one, two, three, four, five, six, hold seven, and eight. Can we pick up the speed, Amber? And one, two, three, four—”
“Can I have a second?” Waves of nausea curl and break inside of me. The world is foul.
“Fine,” says Alicia, my choreographer. She’s got cropped black hair and sleeves of tattoos on both arms, muscles that look like sand dunes. “Gloria, Tiff, can we rework the chorus section again, while Amber’s gone?”
I sprint to the bathroom and heave, but my stomach offers only yellow acid. I try calling Wes. No answer again. So I slump against the cold tile by the toilet, and in my head, Sonny’s voice is cruel. Oh, honey, he says. You thought you would be remembered for your derivative music? You thought you would be taken seriously the way Gwen and Savannah are? Oh, little fool. Didn’t you know? This is all there is for you.
I dial Gwen’s number. She doesn’t pick up. I dial again and again. The fourth time, sounds pulse in the background. She doesn’t say anything, but I can hear her slow, calm breathing.
“Gwen,” I cry. “Please. I know you’re there. Please just listen. I’m so sorry.”
No response.
“You told me to look at myself, and I am. I see everything. I know why I did what I did. I need all this proof I deserve love. I need so much proof from so many people, just to believe it’s real. Maybe I’m this hoarder of people to love me. I’d do anything. It was so wrong to lie to you. To put Wes before you. He’s not even calling me back.” I pause to collect myself, blinking away tears. “I’m so sorry. I need you. I need you always. I wouldn’t even have this career if it weren’t for you. You pushed me when I was afraid, and I had no idea why you would do that. But now I understand, I think. It’s because you know you’re so talented, there’s room for you and for anyone else. That’s rare confidence, confidence I don’t have, and I should have thanked you. And now I’m so alone, Gwen. I’m so alone. And I need you. I can’t do this without you.”
The harsh bathroom light feels accusatory. What has my friendship ever done for her? All I did was take.
I press my forehead against the wall. My voice is wavy from crying. “Please. I don’t know what you’ve read or what you’ve seen. Just, please, if you ever want to talk, you can call me, and I’ll pick up. I miss you so much. I’m all alone. There’s no one here for me.”
“Amber, stop.”
I’m so relieved I close my eyes and start shaking. In the dark I’d been stretching my hand out but there was nothing. Now I’ve touched a door. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“Do you think you could come over?”
“I’m at the studio right now,” she says. “I need a few hours, okay? You know how I need to keep working when I’m stressed. Just give me a few hours. Everything will be okay.”
When she knocks on Sonny’s guest room door, we both melt down. What is there to say at first, other than I wasn’t whole without you?
She folds beside me on the bed, placing her chin on my shoulder. “I know I can be so cold,” she says softly. “I shouldn’t have cut you out of my life like that. But I was so angry, I had to punish you. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, if I acted that way.”
“There isn’t anything wrong with you. I’m sorry if I made you feel like there was.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry. If I made you feel less than me, I want you to know you’re not. In a lot of ways, I think you’re stronger than I am. Just don’t lie. Whatever it is, I’d rather know.”
“Okay. Do you hate me?”
“I could never. You’re my best friend.”
Hearing this makes me cry even harder. For a few moments she’s quiet, combing my hair with her fingers. “You aren’t what they’re saying you are.”
“No, I am, actually. And we could have been way more careful.”
“Some random guy followed you to the opposite building. There’s no way you could have known. The press thinks they have a right to us. If we complain about it, they say we asked for it.”
“I just feel so young,” I say. “I feel so stupid.”
“We are young. We are stupid.”
“I know. So what they’re saying about me is true.”
“Amber, if you were in college and hooked up with some guy, if it was Wes or whoever, it wouldn’t fucking matter. It just wouldn’t matter, okay?”
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“Me? I mean, my publicist says the press is really one-sided right now.” Her hand returns to my hair. “You know I can’t say anything right? I wish I could.”
“Yeah, I know. I get it.”
A tear travels slowly down my chin, falling onto her hand. I turn around to face her. “I need something else. I hate to ask you. I haven’t told anyone, you’re the only person.”
“What is it?” She scans my face. “You’re scaring me.”
“I need a test.”
“Like, a pregnancy test?”
When I nod, panic flits through her eyes. Then a glazed expression settles; she has tightened all the emotion inside herself. Somehow she has the ability to tell her emotions where to go and when to surface. “Are you late?”
I say yes. A few weeks. And I’ve had strange peachy stains in my underwear. Finally, I’ve said what my body knows to be true, what it’s been forcing me to acknowledge.
“What does Wes think?”
I shake my head. “Haven’t talked to him.”
“What? Why?”
“He won’t answer his phone.”
She scoffs. “Look, it really could be nothing. I’ll ask Tammy to buy the test and bring it over here. Okay? We’ll check, just in case.”
“Thank you.” I close my eyes, sinking into her warmth, her composure, and think this is what a mother is. She is a mother to me, and sometimes I am to her. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
In the bathroom, the drip of water taps against plaster. Gwen’s arms are folded across her chest. We are tightly packed, our bodies pushed up against the door. Tammy shows us a cut on her leg from hopping Sonny’s fence.
“There are so many cameras out there,” she says.
Gwen inspects the scrape. “You okay?”
Tammy waves her off, saying she’s fine, then she pulls an inoffensive pink box out from her purse.
I pee on the little stick, then set it down on the sink.
“Don’t think about it,” Gwen insists. “Let’s just wait. No point in being anxious twice.”
“Have you ever taken one before?” Tammy asks me.
I nod. “Once, in high school, but I was being neurotic. We actually used a condom, but I was nervous anyway.”
“The only one I’ve ever taken was when I was pregnant,” Tammy says. “The second line was fainter than I thought it would be. It was like, ‘Hi, I’m barely here, inside of you. Surprise!’ ” She squeezes my hand. “And by the way, I don’t regret anything. I couldn’t afford a baby. Couldn’t dance on tour with a kid.”
“How old were you?”
“I was sixteen, I think. Sixteen or seventeen. Just starting out.”
I blink at her wordlessly, unsure what to say. This feels like an intimacy I don’t deserve. Before I can speak, she calmly indicates the stick. “Should be time now.”
I ask Gwen to look for me. She reaches, slowly, so slowly. The world tips over. She sees the result, absorbs it, then sets it down in front of me. “We should take a few more, just to be sure,” she says. So we do. I don’t process the movement of my limbs, I just pee on the sticks, and when they are all lined up, I sit on the lid of the toilet with my head in my hands. A baby coalesces in my mind. A baby like fruit, soft and plump. Then it cleaves apart, only slivers of an idea.
Tammy asks if Maura, Gwen’s assistant, can make an appointment. Gwen shakes her head. “That might make it look like the appointment is for me. Amber, you need to tell Sonny. There’s no way Lolli hasn’t handled something like this before.”
“Lolli is going to drop me,” I say through my hands. She tactfully ignores this.
“Do you have cash on you?”
I raise my head. “Cash? No. Why?”
Our lives are handled by others; we don’t ever have much cash on hand. We are ferried from city to city, recording studio to radio station. In this way, and in many other ways, we are like children at their parent’s knees, pulling at fabric, asking for change. Sonny handles all my business interests—the negotiation of contracts, the endorsement deals, my cuts from royalties and mechanical rights. I only have the debit card he gave me. Though I can buy whatever I want, technically, he sees all my statements.
“For the abortion,” Gwen clarifies.
And I realize I don’t know the true cost of things.
“I didn’t know I had to pay,” I admit.
“Of course, you have to pay. This is America.” She crosses her arms. “After you tell Sonny, you need to call Wes. He should know before you make any decisions.”
I shake my head. “I’ve already decided.”
Even so, I try Wes again. This time, it goes through, but it’s not his voice on the other end. It’s Axel Holm’s. Higher than Wes’s, more polished. “Hello?” he says. “Wes can’t talk right now. He’s in the vocal booth.”
“I thought he was in Asia.”
He’s clearly annoyed at the interruption. “The boys must rerecord here first, or else the album will be turned in late. We are very busy.”
“Can you tell him I called?”
He pauses on the other end. “I will.” Then, to someone next to him: “Yusuf, can I hear that again?” To me: “Goodbye, Amber. Talk soon.”
Sonny ends up driving me to a Planned Parenthood in Reno in between tour stops. Gloria wanted to come, too—I told her where I was going in hushed tones on the tour bus—but Sonny said no. It has been a week since I took the test. As the van whips along the freeway, the land flat and sterile, I feel like we are driving against creation itself. Billboards ask if I’m going to hell, whether I want to find God. And every second the baby is growing larger inside me.
We’ve signed up for the earliest appointment at the clinic in the hope that it’ll be relatively empty, and it is. Just in case, I wear one of Wes’s baseball caps and a pair of Sonny’s reading glasses that blur my vision. As he signs us in, no one seems to recognize me, and I sink into the plush seat, wondering if the receptionist thinks Sonny’s the father or my father.
I don’t look at the sonogram during my ultrasound, just my hands clasped in front of me. A kind nurse sticks an IV in my arm, puts me under, and when I wake up, I’m in a waiting room, and the baby is gone.
Back in the van, I clutch pads for the spotting and ibuprofen for the pain in my lap. Sonny taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “You’ve become like a daughter to me, hon. Your mom trusted me to take care of you. I’m just glad you told me.”
I stare out the window and force a smile.
“You okay to perform tonight?” His voice doesn’t tilt up at the end, like it should with a question.
I tell him I’ll be fine.
He doesn’t say anything else as the pad in my underwear fills with blood and cramps wrap their hands around my uterus and pull. The nurse told me I could return to normal activities after, and this is a normal day: pulling the microphone closer to my lips, looking out into the roar and the light and the faceless heads. The crowd has no idea; my job is to make sure they have no idea.
A few days later, Wes returns my call in the middle of the night. When I pick up, we sit in silence together, my breaths responding to his.
“I’m so sorry,” he finally says. “It’s been busy here.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“I’ve heard.”
I stumble over my words. “Two girls. Cool. Good for you. I’m the one who broke you two up. Everyone hates me. Everyone wishes I was dead. Some of your fans are saying I should just roll over and die.”
“They don’t know us,” he says. “They thought Gwen and I were dating for, like, an entire year. It doesn’t matter. It will all go away.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself, too, though.
I say at least we can be together for real. Silence on the other end.
“SMG doesn’t like the idea of us right now. Maybe when things settle down.”
“Maybe,” I repeat, my voice hollow.
“What do you want me to do? Honestly, what can I do? Because I feel like I’m in an impossible situation right now. They’re telling me one thing, they’re over here saying it doesn’t look good for me to be with you. I’m sorry, but that’s really what they’re saying. And then I feel like a piece of shit for listening to them. I don’t know what to do.”
“Listen to them. It’s okay. It’s done.”
His voice breaks a little. I can’t tell if it’s our connection or not. “Please don’t say it that way, Amber. I love you.”
“Why?” I really do want to know.
On the other end, he sighs. This is when it starts to sour, when the plush skin begins to bruise. This night. When he tells me why he loves me and the answer doesn’t please me and we fight about the reasons you should love someone, as if such things can be counted on one hand. When I tell him about the abortion and he’s silent on the other end for a long time. This is the night I cease to be an outline of a person, and he’s forced to color inside me for the first time.
He starts crying. A guttural, strange sound I’ve never heard before. He says he can’t believe he didn’t answer the phone. And as I listen to him, I’m thinking, we’re finally here, inside of each other, aren’t we?