The Trouble Boy, page 23
Because of the controversial nature of the premiere, Jamie had been apprehensive about accepting the invitation, but ultimately his love for gossip got the best of him. I picked him up at his office on Wall Street in a car Cameron had ordered for me.
The scene at the Ziegfeld Theater was a madhouse. Because of the accident, there were twice as many photographers on the red carpet as usual. In addition to the Italian-American group, a coalition of nightlife workers was striking to protest Jordan’s behavior towards the bouncer. Police barricades were keeping the protesters on one side of the red carpet, while the press was sequestered on the other side. I later found out that Lola had been confused about whether to attend the premiere or to show solidarity with the bouncers and doormen who let her in free everywhere in the city. She ultimately decided to hang out with them and then slip into the screening at the last possible moment.
When our car arrived, the driver opened our door and Jamie and I stepped out. “They’re fine,” said a woman with a headset, and we were waved onto the red carpet.
“Toby!” a photographer shouted, and I turned around.
A flashbulb exploded in my face.
“Toby, one of you alone!”
A dozen more flashes went off as Jamie stood there, stunned like a bunny.
“Come on!” I said to him, grabbing his hand.
Near the entrance were several local television reporters, plus crews from E! and Entertainment Tonight.
“Toby, do you have anything to say about the recent accident?” a reporter shouted as she waved a mic in my face.
“Was it really an accident?” another said.
“No comment,” I said, waving them all away.
I had always wanted to say that. I just wished it didn’t have to be in this context.
I pulled Jamie farther up the red carpet and through the theater’s double doors. Once inside, we were safe.
Ariana was on her way out. “Toby, I’m so glad you could come!” she said.
“We just got mauled by photographers.”
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry! We should have had an escort for you. I promise it won’t happen again. It’s fine in here; we’re not letting in any walk-throughs.”
Jamie and I took two glasses of champagne and found our seats, fifth-row center. The theater was filling up, but the seats next to us remained empty. That figures, I thought. We’re like the plague to these people: no money, no connections, no power.
Just as the lights were going down, there was a commotion at the back of the theater. Everyone turned around as Jordan entered with her co-star. She walked down the aisle and stopped at our row. The two of them slid in.
I stood up to greet her. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and her eyes were ringed with kohl.
She gave me a hug and a kiss, as if we were old friends. The combination of her makeup and perfume smelled like plastic.
I felt like all eyes were on us as we sat down.
“I don’t believe you,” Jamie said to me.
After the movie ended, Ariana came rushing down the aisle. “Toby, there are some people I want you to meet.”
She introduced me to the film’s producer and to Jordan’s costar. “Toby is a fabulous up-and-coming screenwriter,” she said. “You really should read his work.”
The producer looked at me suspiciously. “Are you repped by anyone?”
“Sherry Merrill,” I said.
“Sherry and I go way back,” he said. “Have her give me a call. Nice to see you.”
I ran into Sonia in the lobby. “Have you been hiding from me?” she said.
“No!” I said. “Where have you been?”
“Mostly telling reporters we have no comment on the accident. Are you coming to the party?”
“I don’t know. Those reporters were pretty scary.”
“Come with me,” she said, dragging us away from the crowd. The three of us escaped through the rear of the theater. We found ourselves on the next block over, free from the crowd.
Sonia hailed a cab.
“Why haven’t you returned my phone calls?” she asked after we had piled in. “I’ve left you several messages.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Toby, don’t fuck with me. I know something’s going on.”
Jamie looked at me suspiciously.
“Nothing’s going on!” I said. “Things have just been crazy.”
“I’ll take you to lunch. Tomorrow. Balthazar.”
“Are you joking?” Even on her PR salary, Sonia never shelled out for expensive meals.
“I got promoted yesterday. Ariana gave me an expense account.”
“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow. But for now, let’s just try to enjoy ourselves.”
This was something my mother used to say when my father and I were arguing at the dinner table. It seemed like ages ago.
Sonia also knew of a back entrance to Flash, so we were able to bypass the throngs of reporters and photographers who had followed the crowd to the club.
“This place still sucks,” I said, remembering my review.
“I know,” she said. “But don’t quote me on that.”
“Don’t have anyone to quote you for,” I said. “I’m just a film industry whore.”
“You should be freelancing,” she said.
“So should you.”
She sighed. “I need to wait until all this crap dies down.”
Ariana beckoned to me from the VIP area. She seemed a little tipsy.
“Someday,” she said, “you’re going to have a premiere just like this one.”
“I can’t wait,” I said.
“Jordan just had the most brilliant idea. You know she hasn’t been giving interviews since the . . . you know.”
“Crash?”
“Right. But she’d like to give one to you. This could be major. I can call someone at Entertainment Weekly who will print it.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Toby, this is the chance of a lifetime! She’s not giving interviews to anyone else!”
I knew this interview would be a big one, far bigger than the profile of Jordan I had written in December. But there was no way I could do it. It had “conflict of interest” written all over it.
“I’m going to have to pass,” I said. “But how about someone else? Do you have any other interesting clients?”
“Let’s see. How about Miles Bradshaw?” The director rarely gave interviews. When he did, it was only to top-notch publications: Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Playboy.
“It’s a deal,” I said.
The next morning, the Post uncovered some more dirt on Jordan. The reason she didn’t have a U.S. driver’s license, they revealed, was that she had crashed into a tree while driving drunk after a house party in London. “Gardner a Double Fender Bender,” read the headline. There was a picture of Jordan drinking a Cosmopolitan.
Cameron was out the entire morning, so I was free to attend to my own business, not that it made a difference anymore. Ever since the accident, he had been treating me like a partner. He didn’t ask me to make his protein shakes, he placed his own calls, and I even saw him trying to figure out the copy machine. I was becoming obsolete. I worked on the Lola screenplay for most of the morning.
At one, I met Sonia at Balthazar, where she had already tucked into half a bottle of Pellegrino water.
“Order whatever you want,” she said. “According to my expense report, this is lunch with a client.”
I wasn’t very hungry, so I ordered a salad.
Sonia had chosen a banquette in a back corner of the restaurant. It wasn’t busy, so we were surrounded by empty tables.
“So are you finally going to tell me what’s going on?”
I had avoided this meeting, this conversation, all week. I didn’t know if I could lie to her. Sonia could identify a liar at three o’clock in the morning while on a drinking binge, especially if it was someone she knew.
But maybe I didn’t have to lie. I could tell her the truth, and she could advise me on what I should do.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ll be the only person who knows about this, and you can’t breathe a word of it to anyone. This could fuck up a lot of people’s lives, including mine, if it got out.”
I told her exactly what happened.
She listened, silently shaking her head at my tale.
“The whole thing doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “It was too unbelievable that it was an accident. You don’t just back into a crowd at that speed without hitting the brakes unless you’re really trying to hurt someone.”
“I know,” I said. “I wish someone would come to that conclusion without my help.”
Our food arrived.
“I suppose it would be wishful thinking that Jordan might confess,” Sonia mused before taking a bite of her salad.
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.
“What you need is a good lawyer.”
“Jamie gave me a number.”
“Call him. Make sure you didn’t commit perjury. You didn’t take an oath, did you?”
I said I didn’t.
“Good. So in your testimony, they can’t get you for that. But you should still have a lawyer to work all that out.”
“I can’t give testimony,” I said. “I’ll be a social pariah. Ariana will never speak to me again, I’ll get fired from my job. Things are finally starting to happen for me. Cameron is setting up meetings, he’s asked me to write a screenplay. People are paying attention to me instead of treating me like some kid.”
“Toby, people will pay attention to you. You’re extremely talented. But sometimes you’ve got to wait your turn. It’s bullshit that this culture has decided you have to sell a screenplay at twenty-two, write a novel by twenty-five, and win a Pulitzer before thirty. You’ve got your entire life ahead of you to do all that stuff.”
“I just feel that as soon as something good comes along, I get it taken away from me.”
“Toby, that’s not true. You’ve got to consider the more important issue here. Someone died. People are still in the hospital because of what she did.”
“It’s so easy for you to make these pronouncements,” I said.
“This doesn’t affect you or your job. I mean, will you quit working for Ariana? You don’t want to be working for someone who played a part in all this, do you?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t. I will need to quit, that’s true. But let’s worry about that when the time comes, okay?”
“Right,” I said, sitting back in the banquette. “When the time comes.”
“Kiddo, you’re not getting something here. There’s a bigger issue. Bigger than you or your career.”
“What’s that?”
“The point, Toby, is that I know you’re better than all this. You’re above getting sucked in by them, sucked into their world. I know you’re going to succeed, but you’re going to do it on your own terms, not theirs.”
“But what if people find out I was doing coke with Jordan and Cameron?”
“Toby, in the grand scheme of things, you could be shooting up and no one would care. So you did a few lines. It’s not the same as killing someone.”
When I got back to the office, I knocked on Cameron’s door.
He motioned for me to close the door behind me and take a seat. My legs were shaking. I hoped he wouldn’t notice.
I told Cameron I thought we should tell the police what really happened. “It’s not right that all those people were hurt, that someone was killed, and she gets away with it.”
“Toby, she’s not getting away with anything. Jordan is going to have years of legal trouble ahead of her.”
“I think we should tell them exactly what happened, exactly what we saw and heard.”
“We tell them her foot slipped and the car went out of control. That’s what I saw.”
“Cameron, you know that’s not what happened.” I remembered he had joked that she should “give the bouncer a little tap.” He didn’t want to be seen as an accessory.
“You’re going to tell them what happened, right down to your doing blow in the men’s room?”
“You were doing it too,” I said.
Cameron got up from his desk and started pacing around the room.
“Toby, I’m not making claims about people driving under the influence. If you tell the truth, Jordan’s lawyer will cross-examine the shit out of you and declare you an unreliable witness. Everyone. will think you’re a druggie.”
“I am not a druggie,” I said, though now I felt like the one who was lying. But I wasn’t. I was a recreational user. I knew, though, that the recreation had to stop.
“That’s not what her lawyers are going to say,” he said, smirking. “Actions have consequences, Toby.”
He sat on the edge of his desk, looming over me.
I wanted to kill him.
“Look,” I said, “I don’t want to get Jordan in trouble, either. But it’s a matter of right and wrong.”
“What’s right, Toby,” Cameron said, patting me on the back, “is to keep the whole thing to yourself. Believe me, it’s for the best.”
An assistant from Ariana’s office called to say they had scheduled the Miles Bradshaw interview for the following week. Bradshaw was currently in the middle of writing his next film, so it was a hot story. He had also just separated from his wife of fifteen years.
“We’ve been pitching it to a few key places. Editors at both Rolling Stone and The New Yorker are interested.”
“I think The New Yorker would be a better place for it,” I said, trying to sound casual.
“We’ll see what we can do,” she said.
This was fabulous, having someone do my bidding like this. This was what it was like to work inside the publicity machine.
That evening, I met Donovan and Jamie for drinks in the meatpacking district. Donovan had picked one of those new places without a sign outside, and he had failed to give me the exact street address, so I had some trouble finding it.
Two cell phone conversations later, I arrived at the dark, clandestine lounge. Donovan ordered me a drink.
“Let’s talk about your birthday,” Donovan said to me.
“May seventh, right?” Jamie said.
“So how are we celebrating?”
“I don’t want to do anything,” I said. “Not with everything going on right now.”
“Bullshit. Of course you’re doing something,” Donovan said. “Besides, I know Brett, Alejandro, and David are really concerned about you. They hardly ever see you anymore.”
“I haven’t been in a very social mood lately.”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to have a dinner party?” Jamie asked.
“That was several months ago. That was before all this happened.”
“We’ll arrange everything,” Donovan said. “Just give us a guest list of all your friends, and we’ll take care of it. Does the Saturday before the seventh sound good?”
“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”
On Friday, I skimmed over Page Six, as Cameron had instructed me to do every morning. There was a blind item near the bottom of the page: “Which screen bombshell denies she was on drugs during a recent accident but was actually high as a kite? Sources say she was seen entering and exiting the restroom numerous times that evening and was doing more than just powdering her nose.”
As I started my daily routine, I prayed Cameron wouldn’t see the item.
At quarter past ten, he called me into his office, waving the Post in front of me.
“Have you been talking to anyone?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Look at this. How did they know about this? Did one of your friends call Richard Johnson?”
“My friends don’t even know what happened,” I said. “It could have been anyone. A waiter, other people at the party . . .”
His face softened. “I guess you’re right. Hey, I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to call you in like this.”
I was convinced Sonia had told someone. Was she trying to force me to tell? Whatever I ended up doing, I wanted it to be my decision.
I instant-messaged the link to Sonia, adding, “What do you make of this?”
She immediately shot back a reply. “It wasn’t me,” she wrote. “I swear.”
That night, I had dinner with Jamie and Donovan. They had also seen the blind item.
“Is it true?” Donovan said.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I couldn’t tell if she was high or not.”
“Oh, come on,” Jamie said. “You must have been able to tell.”
“Seriously,” I said, “I couldn’t tell.”
After dinner, as we stepped out onto the sidewalk, the decision about whether to talk weighed heavily on my mind. It was like being in the closet again, except this time I had the option of staying there.
13
Ariana had started sending party invitations directly to my apartment, a sign that she now regarded me as an individual, not just as Cameron’s assistant. Three more invitations had arrived since Wednesday: one to a film premiere, another to a club opening, a third to a private dinner for a fashion designer.
I should have been excited, but instead I wanted to flee. I wanted to leave the city. How far would I have to go in order to avoid testifying?
On Sunday, I went for a walk through Washington Square. The sun was blazing, and the park was packed with college students. I imagined that life for them was so much more clear, so much less complicated. There were fewer tough decisions to be made. But I knew I wasn’t in college anymore.
By keeping quiet, I could have everything I had ever wanted: connections, contacts, a writing career. But it felt like fraud, like I was as bad as Jordan herself, foot on the gas pedal of that car.
I needed to come back to center, back to some point of certainty. I bought a copy of the weekend Post at a newsstand and started flipping through it. One of the lead stories was the memorial service for Stacey Davis, the girl who had been killed in the accident. I had avoided all mention of her and her family until now. There was a picture of her parents and a recent photograph of her. Nearby was Jordan’s mug shot from the night she had been arrested. I looked back and forth between the photos, and realized there was only one right thing to do. I had been so foolish. There was no decision that had to be made.
