Irish boy was grinning, his face bordering on a smirk, the two older men seemed impatient and the mafia guys looked as if they’d fit me with concrete boots if I didn’t get on with it.
The Irish guy leaned in. “Do you want me to save you?” he said in that wonderful voice, his breath warm in my ear. I felt like kissing him then. The desire came that quick.
“Um, sure,” I said, not clear what he meant. Not caring.
He leaned even closer, so the suede lapel of his jacket brushed against the skin at the scoop-necked opening of my dress. I was wearing one of my own designs, a fifties-inspired number with a high waist, and I wondered if he thought it attractive.
“I’ll give you a wee one,” he said, “and then you can tell them.”
I can no longer remember the beginning of the joke. Something about a priest in a rowboat. I was too aware of the nearness of him, too focused on that warm, smooth voice. Then there was a staccato of sounds like quiet gunfire and everything went white, white, white. It took me a moment to realize it was cameras flashing. In the next moment, the Irish guy was jerked away by one of Lauren’s bodyguards.
“Can’t you leave me alone?” Lauren said as she licked her lips prettily and shook her hair away from her face.
The photographers got a few more shots before the bodyguards grabbed Lauren, too. Within seconds, the pack of photographers was running after the group, leaving Bobby and me alone.
“Welcome to Hollywood,” Bobby said.
I laughed at the commotion. “What was that?”
“Paparazzi,” Bobby said. “Par for the course. I bet Lauren leaked where she would be.”
“She’d do that?”
“Lauren? Oh, sure. C’mon, let’s find Trent.” He took my arm and led me toward the bar.
“So, who was that Irish guy?”
I tried to sound only mildly interested. Bobby and I had fooled around once in grad school and since then we didn’t often talk about the people we were sleeping with or the ones we wanted to sleep with.
“Some actor. Declan something. He’s in her new film, so they’re dating now.” Bobby made air quotes with his fingers as he said the word dating. “She had to do something to deflect attention from that rapper business.” He named a rapper who Lauren used to be involved with, someone who was now in prison for drug trafficking and murder-for-hire.
By then Bobby’s eyes were darting around the room, looking for Trent, bored already with the topic of Lauren and the Irish guy. So I dropped it. I’d never see him again anyway.
I’m a minor celebrity now.
A minor celebrity should be distinguished from a true-blue-can’t-shop-for-Tampax-without-a-photo-being-taken celebrity. That’s not me, thank God, not anymore. I couldn’t stand the constant staring, the feeling that you always have to look presentable when you stop at a gas station. A minor celebrity, in contrast, is someone who gains notoriety for something quite small or, rather, on the coattails of someone else. In my case, I suppose both of these are true.
Only occasionally does anyone recognize the minor celebrity on the street, but once introduced at a party, people respond with, Oh, I know you. I read about you in People magazine. And suddenly others at the party who’ve heard the comment turn to catch a look at you, and the buzz slips through the party like smoke. Soon, people are watching how much salmon mousse you put on your cracker, whether you’re getting blotto on that red wine.
My celebrity status has been good for the sale of my designs, certainly. All my clothes with my diamond circle logo (some of them with real diamonds now instead of CZs) are moving fast. Still, I was never one of those people who worshipped celebrities, probably because I didn’t need it. I’ve always had at least a vague sense of who I am, where I’m going, what I want to do with the next minute of my life. This trait made me something of a freak when I was younger, one of those girls who was bored by the cliques in school, the sharing of nail polish and the double-dating for dances. I was more interested in reading the novels and short stories my parents left behind or making skirts from old tablecloths.
It’s not that I didn’t have friends throughout my life. There was Bobby. There was Margaux and the girls here in New York. And of course there was always Emmie, my godmother, who’s cared for me since I was a kid.
Anyway, I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that, relatively speaking, I had it together. I knew myself, my life, my place in it. So if you’re looking for a story about a poor neurotic girl who finally turned her life around, this isn’t it. This is about how I met Declan McKenna, and how my world went spinning.
chapter 2
As it turns out, the next place I saw Declan was in the National Enquirer. I knew the paper, of course. I’d seen it in the grocery store, but I’d never bought it, never thought I’d buy it.
The first of many phone calls that day came from Bobby. He was already at his L.A. office at 7:00 a.m., and he was going through the trades and all the papers, looking for mentions of his clients like he did every day.
“Kyr,” he said when I answered. “Go get the Enquirer, and call me back.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
“Forget it,” I said. “I’ve got a job this morning, and I’m already late.” I was working for a few temp agencies at the time, doing meaningless, thankless jobs in places where no one wanted to get to know you, since you’d be gone in a few days anyway. The meager, occasional cash from my designs couldn’t sustain me, not in a city like New York, nor could the modest payments from the fund my parents had set up.
“Pick it up on your way,” Bobby said. “Trust me.”
And because I did trust him, I bought an Enquirer at the corner newsstand before I caught the subway to a marketing office in Midtown.
“Okay,” I said, calling Bobby from the copy room of the office, where, thankfully, you could call long distance. “What am I supposed to look at?”
“You didn’t find it?”
“Jesus, Bobby, I’m working,” I said, as though an entire corporation of employees waited for the decisions I would make that day.
He sighed. Bobby was a great sigher, a habit that had grown more pronounced since he’d become an agent. “Page twenty-four.”
I put the paper on the copy machine and flipped toward the end, ignoring stories about Cher’s latest surgical misadventure and a two-headed baby born to an ex-Bay-watch star.
“Oh my God,” I said when I found it.
“You’re famous,” Bobby said.
There, in grainy black and white, was a photo of me and the caramel-voiced Irishman. Our heads were close together, the blackjack table in the background. My fifties-style dress gave the photo a timeless quality. The Irishman and I were making what looked like secret smiles. In fact, from the angle the picture was taken, it appeared as if we were about to kiss.
Above
