I guess I didn’t answer the second question, did I? Why was I going to see Connor when I had a maybe fiancé? And also: Why was I going to see Connor when I’d promised myself I wasn’t ever going to see him again? Why couldn’t I stop loving him despite everything?
These are heavy questions. I don’t mean heavy like “that’s heavy,” said in a stoner voice. I mean heavy like weight. And that last question’s been weighing me down almost since I met him.
I’ve never really known how to answer it. I mean, how do you explain breathing? Okay, I know there’s a scientific explanation, but if you stop the average person on the street and you ask them how the body knows it needs to breathe every few seconds, even when it’s asleep, they won’t be able to explain it. Not really.
Autonomic response. Something that occurs involuntarily or spontaneously. Something you can’t help. Something necessary. But if you break through that hard-wired barrier, if you start thinking too hard about breathing, then it can just stop. The only way it works is when you don’t think about it.
That’s what it felt like with Connor and me. That I didn’t have any control over it, and that even if I tried to, I might end up not being able to breathe anymore.
And that’s no way to live.
So the only answer I have after years of therapy and avoidance and asking myself, Why? in the middle of the night is this.
There are people in your life that are in your life whether you want them to be or not. Like family. Like skin. And for someone like that, you show up when they call. Even if you know it’s a bad idea. Even if you know it will end badly, you show up eventually.
So that’s what I was doing, out there on that ridiculous plane, on the runway. I was letting Connor know that even though we hadn’t spoken for six months, I was still showing up for him when it mattered, that he was still a part of my skin.
But now I know that he didn’t ask me to go to him because he really needed me. When he waggled his fingers as I was following him towards his suite and God knows what else, I realized he asked me because he knew he could get me to show up eventually. That he used our code, our special signal, without it meaning anything.
So I left, and he died, and now part of me is dead too.
But I showed up when he asked, even though I shouldn’t have.
Even though it was bad for me.
I showed up, and he died anyway.
“So,” Olivia says after she’s given Danny and me exactly five minutes alone. “What’s the plan here?”
I wipe my hand across my eyes, smudging the mascara Olivia insisted I wear.
“Why do we need a plan?”
“Seriously, Amb?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, first off, there’s Rule Number Three of Being a Super Famous Person.”
“I’m not sure I remember that one.”
She rolls her eyes, as if she’s told me a thousand times, which maybe she has.
“Get in front of the story.”
“How do we do that?”
“Simple. Hold a press conference.”
“A what?”
“A press conference. So you can answer everyone’s questions instead of letting the rumour mill answer them for you.”
Danny rubs small circles into my back. “I think that might be the way to go. They’re never going to leave you alone unless you answer them.”
Olivia’s eyes narrow with her what-do-you-know-about-it? look. Although she brought him here, Olivia is not Danny’s biggest fan. Then she realizes he’s on her side.
She smiles approvingly. “See, Danny agrees. It’s the way to go.”
“Maybe you two should do it then.”
“No one wants to talk to us, Amb.”
“That’s right,” Danny says. “Just listen. They’re asking for you.”
He turns the knob on the stereo so the music’s all the way off, and now I can hear it clearly. That drumbeat call.
Am-ber. Am-ber. Am-ber.
Another summons I’m going to have to answer, eventually.
The press conference takes place the next day at the Ritz-Carlton, Olivia’s theory being that some of the hotel’s respectability might wear off on me. Accordingly, I’m dressed in the most conservative outfit I’ve ever worn: a black shirt-dress with a cleric’s collar made of stiff fabric. It feels like a constant reminder to behave, but I feel so sick and weak and sad, I don’t need to be reminded. I just have to get through this day, this hour, this minute, this second.
This second.
Danny stands with me in the wings while Olivia lays out the ground rules to the standing-room-only crowd: Amber can refuse to answer any question she wants. Amber will take only one question from each of the twenty people who were lucky enough to get a numbered card when they put their hand in the bingo wheel that she found I don’t know where. We will be nice to Amber or we will be asked to leave and we will be placed on a list that no one wants to be on. That’s right, Olivia’s shit list.
I’ve actually seen this list. You do not want to be on it.
“Do we all understand the rules?” Olivia asks.
“Yes,” comes the low chorus.
“All righty then, let the twenty questions begin.”
Twenty questions is Olivia’s favourite game. Downtime on the set, travelling places, any moment of silence is at risk of being filled by Olivia’s insistence that we guess what she’s thinking of in twenty questions or less.
Is that the endgame here? Twenty questions and the world will know what I’m thinking?
Danny puts his hand on the small of my back. He whispers, “Good luck,” and leads me towards the simple table that sits on the stage. He and Olivia take seats on either side of me as the flashbulbs blind us with bright bursts of light.
“Question one!” Olivia barks.
A guy in his early forties who’s been following me around for years stands up.
“Hey, Mike.”
“Hi, Amber. I’m very sorry for your loss. We all are.”
I feel Danny stiffen beside me. Letting him come was a mistake, but it didn’t feel as if there were any other option when we discussed it briefly this morning. I mean, how do you leave out the guy you’re supposedly engaged to from your grief about the guy you were trying to forget when you met him? Besides, his absence would just be something else for the press to speculate about, which we both knew without having to say it.
“Thank you. I . . . thank you.”
“This has clearly been a big shock and a national tragedy. Everyone wants to know how you’ve been handling things, but can you tell us how you first found out about the crash?”
I close my eyes for a second, remembering the flash of images on the TV screen that were so hard to decipher and impossible to comprehend. “I saw it on television, actually.”
“Question two!”
“Chris Butler here from ATV. We know you were on Connor’s plane briefly, and that there’s a video of you jumping off it that was filmed by one of the passengers. Why did you go see Connor that night?”
“Because he asked me to.”
“Three!”
“Connie Hayes from Starlet magazine.”
“I remember.”
“Yes, um, well, anyway. This must have been a tough couple of days for you.”
“Was that a question?” Olivia asks.
“No, um, sorry. Amber, coming back to the video of you jumping off the plane, what made you do that? Why were you in such a hurry to get off that flight?”
“I left because . . . I left because it wasn’t a good scene for me.”
“Because of the drugs?” a red-faced kid asks. “Is that what you mean, Amber? Was Connor doing drugs that night? Did you?”
Olivia leans towards her microphone. “We are supposed to wait until our number’s called! Four!”
“I am number four,” he says, his face now beet red. He looks younger than me.
“Last chance, people. Anyone else breaks the rules, this show’s over. Proceed.”
The red-faced kid tries again. “Was Connor doing drugs that night?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Five!”
“Come on, Amber. Fess up,” Mike’s wife—Janice, Janet?—says. “You jumping off that plane isn’t the only video from that night. Or are you telling us you haven’t seen the footage that clearly shows Connor was drinking and using that night?”
I close my eyes. I know what she means, because one of those Orange Spray Tan girls was filming us, and it’s been all over the Internet. The video starts a few minutes before I got on the plane. There’s the big bowl of white powder, then Connor’s head bent over the table. It captures his look when he raised his head and saw me arrive. Then I walk into the shot. The camera closes in on my face. It’s filled with a look of longing.
“Do you really expect us to believe Connor wasn’t doing drugs that night?”
“Who said that?” Olivia growls, snapping me out of it. She really missed her calling as an elementary school principal. “The perp better identify himself right now or we are done here.”
I put my hand over my microphone. “‘Perp’? Livvie. Come on.”
“Rules are rules. I’m going to count to three. One . . .”
“Okay, okay,” says a guy named Johnson, I think, or at least that’s what I’ve heard him called. It might also be a reference to his, you know. He’s always trying to sleep with his prey, and sometimes he succeeds. “It was me.”
Olivia crosses her arms. “We’re waiting.”
Johnson grumbles something I can’t quite catch and stands. Everyone watches him as he shuffles towards the door. A couple of his competitors are smirking. Of course, he can now go file his story before they can, but I’m not about to mention that to Olivia.
“Six!” Olivia shouts when the doors clang shut behind him.
“He was six,” Mike says, pointing over his shoulder.
“Seven!”
A woman who’s sitting directly behind Mike coughs nervously and stands. As my eyes connect with hers, I realize two things simultaneously: I’m looking at Katie Sandford, and I’m not going to like the question she has to ask.
“Hi, Amber.”
“Hi, Katie.”
A low murmur of recognition rumbles through the room. I met Katie in rehab, and she was “famous” for a bit herself after we got out.
Katie twists her chestnut hair around her finger. Her eyes are wide and clear. Sober.
“Quiet!” barks Olivia.
“I’m really sorry about Connor,” Katie says.
“I know. Ask your question.”
“I didn’t want to do this.”
“Just ask, okay?”
Her shoulders rise and fall with indecision, but she gets it out anyway.
“Who’s the father of your baby?”