Through His Eyes

by Emma Dibdin

  ‘You and everybody else, I guess,’ Brett says solemnly, as though the burden of his music’s success weighs heavily on him.

  ‘It’s so fucking good, right?’ Skye yaps, and grabs two champagne flutes from a passing waiter, downing the first immediately like it’s just more water.

  ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to drink?’ I ask quietly, while Brett appears distracted by his phone. It’s never been entirely clear to me how sobriety played into Skye’s rehab programme, but every time I’ve seen her up until now she has been markedly drinking mineral water.

  ‘It’s a great idea,’ she replies.

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree quickly, not wanting to rile her. ‘So… so you guys are…?’

  ‘Still going strong,’ Brett says lazily, an arm snaked around Skye’s waist.

  ‘That’s great.’ Everything I say rings hollow and false, like I’m a stand-in for this role of Cannes Partygoer With Celebrity Friends. But there’s also a part of me that knows whatever I can get out of them will make a good story, even though whatever they say now can only be used on background. ‘I know I should know this, but how did you guys first meet?’

  ‘Through her dad,’ Brett says, and gives a kind of half-laugh, as though acknowledging an in-joke.

  ‘Oh, Clark introduced you? That’s funny,’ I say, too heartily, because it’s not that funny unless you know that Clark hates Brett.

  ‘Yeah. Her dadager,’ Brett replies in his drawl, and I try to understand what he just said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, like a momager, only he’s her dad.’

  Skye glares at him, but Brett’s already looking elsewhere. ‘Carl!’ he yells, and bounds across the room right into a bro-handshake with a bearded hipster type, who’s only slightly less underdressed than Brett.

  ‘Guess he found a friend,’ I say to Skye, trying for jokey, but she is not in the mood. ‘So what did he mean by that?’

  Skye murmurs something in response that I can’t hear, her body coiled like a spring.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How did you pull this off?’ she says then, her tone completely changed. Now she’s furious. ‘You just appeared in our lives like you’ve always been a reality, but the thing is you have not. Groupies don’t usually hang around for this long.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘You inserted yourself at some point and I want to know how you did it, and how I can un-insert you.’

  This whiplash turn leaves me stunned. I have no idea what to say, which is not a new experience when it comes to Skye, and yet nothing about her is familiar. For the first time, the girl in front of me resembles the girl I always imagined her to be.

  ‘I don’t even know who the hell you are, but you’re in every room,’ she goes on, more quietly. ‘It’s a little creepy, to be honest. You just happened to show up on the worst day of my life, and then you just hung around like a curse. Hey – maybe that’s it. Are you a curse, Jessica? Because things have been increasingly fucked up lately, and now that I think about it the common thread is you.’

  ‘Things were fucked up long before I came in to the picture,’ I tell her. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous that he brought me here, and not you.’

  There’s regret, somewhere deep in me, as soon as I say it.

  ‘Skye, wait—’ I try to hold on to her but she’s gone, floating away through the crowd, and drawing attention to myself with her is not an option. So I keep an eye on her from afar, watch her fold herself into Brett’s arms so tight it’s like she’s trying to hide inside him, all while he’s looking away across the room, barely acknowledging her. I watch her almost lose her footing as she leaves the bar, half-supported by Brett, and try to shake off dread.

  18

  Los Angeles feels strange to me after we return from France, and it takes me longer than it should to admit that the problem is Studio City. Though it’s technically better located for the places I need to be, it feels more remote than my old neighbourhood ever did. Running in Fryman Canyon is nothing like the greenery of the lake; it’s bone-dry up there, the trail steep and dusty and fully exposed to the elements. Now that it’s spring, the sun beating down makes it hellish to run at any time of day other than the crack of dawn, or soon before sunset. Both of which are times I spend with Clark, or at least hope to.

  He spends every other night at my apartment, sometimes more, but I never know in advance. One night I was out for a sunset run and missed him; when I got back to the trailhead I had a text from him telling me as much, and though I had no idea he was coming I still felt guilty, as though I’d let him down.

  ‘You have to give me some notice,’ I told him later. ‘I have a life too, you can’t just expect me to sit around here in the hopes that you’ll show up. I never know what your schedule is.’

  Hearing myself, it’s unnerving how fast I’ve already settled into the role of the nag, when I should be the fun, footloose young girlfriend. But Clark agrees with me, apologizing sincerely for being so unpredictable. ‘Things are just all over the place right now with the company,’ he says ruefully, and of course, this makes sense. His name is now fully out of the headlines, with only the odd trade writeup about his plans for High Six, and this new lease of life has only galvanized him to work harder than ever.

  For me, though, work is no longer going well. My two-week absence in Cannes feels like it has cost me; I let things slide while I was there; leaving emails unanswered, pushing deadlines back. Editors who were pitching me a month ago are now not responding to my emails, while those that do respond no longer seem to want copy in the traditional sense; one asks if I have any experience writing quizzes. Another wants me to write scripts for videos.

  And so when David from Reel calls me, I scramble to answer so fast that I almost drop my phone.

  ‘Listen, have you heard any of the scuttlebutt that’s out there about an LA Times exposé?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lot of people are saying there’s more to come on the Conrad story, more accusations, and that the Times has a big piece in the works.’

  I take a heavy breath.

  ‘He certainly knows about it,’ David continues offhandedly. ‘His lawyers have been going back and forth with them for a while, so we’re already late to this game, but we need to start digging into this. Especially in light of the profile we published – if it turns out that this guy is bad news, we really need to get out ahead of it.’

  ‘He’s not. Whatever this is, it’s just more Amabellas who see an opportunity for a payday.’ Hearing myself, I add, ‘At least, that’s my hunch.’

  ‘Look, this is a courtesy call. I just wanted you to know that this might be coming, since you’ve really been owning the Conrad beat lately.’

  Am I imagining the implication in his tone?

  ‘We have a reporter on this. Amanda Heston, she’s a real pro and she’s been digging into Conrad’s past, trying to get these women to go on the record—’

  ‘Wait, you’re trying to build a story about these allegations against him? A takedown?’

  ‘We’re trying to report the truth. Which is what we do. I know you’re a fan of this guy, and who isn’t, but some of what’s being said is… rough.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’m not really at liberty to—’

  ‘Just in broad strokes. Is it recent stuff? Or further back?’

  ‘Nobody knows exactly how many sources the Times has, but it is multiple women, at least two of them are claiming to have had extramarital affairs with him that turned nasty, and there may have been sexual misconduct on set.’

  ‘On set? That’s insane, Clark is a complete professional, he’s known for it. He’s the guy who learns everybody’s name on the crew, pays for catering trucks, mentors younger actors…’

  ‘Who are you trying to convince?’

  He’s right to ask.

  ‘Well, if you want Clark to give you a comment on t
his, he’s not going to speak to anyone but me.’

  ‘We’ll get a statement from his lawyers if that’s the case. This is not just about him any more, it’s not a profile, it’s actual journalism.’

  ‘I know.’ I try to keep my voice steady, try not to immediately snap back. I don’t deal well with being patronized. ‘I just think I can bring something to this story, if you’ll let me co-report it.’

  ‘What’s your plan? You’re gonna go and talk to ten sources about how great he is? How he’s never done anything to them? We can’t run that – what we can run are specific allegations, and corroborations of those allegations or denials of those allegations. General character stuff is meaningless.’

  ‘If you tell me exactly what the allegations are, then I guarantee you I will get you something you can use. I have access to more than just him.’

  ‘Look, you’re not his defence counsel: you’re not going in trying to clear his name. Assigning a feature writer to something like this, it’s unorthodox, it’s not how we usually work. Never would have happened five years ago, but all the lines are blurred now, nobody’s got a clear job description any more.’

  David’s prone to do this, I’ve learned, veering off into tangents about the state of the business, and in this case I think it’s in my favour.

  ‘I’m not biased. I know it seems that way, but honestly I’m just fascinated by this guy, whatever the truth turns out to be. Like I said, my hunch based on the time I’ve spent with him is that this doesn’t add up, but I haven’t read the allegations. If you’ll send me the details, I can start working. And if there are any people Amanda hasn’t had time to contact yet, or anyone who’s refused to talk to her, it can’t hurt for me to try. Right? I mean, she’s an amazing reporter, but I’ve heard her style can be a little aggressive.’

  This is true, and I give silent thanks to the loose-lipped freelancer I sat next to for two months in a co-working space, who loved nothing more than to talk shit about other media people. She was from New York, where she clearly had more of a circle, and having moved west she was in search of a crew to gossip with. Amanda Heston’s pushy, take-no-shit style was of limited interest to me back then, but for some reason that piece of information hunkered down in my brain until now, when it’s become useful.

  I hear David sigh, and say ‘Yeah’ in a drawn-out, deliberate way.

  ‘So… is there anyone?’

  ‘Do you remember Shelly Brook?’

  Her face instantly comes to mind fully formed; feathered blonde hair, delicate pixie features, a regular for the first three seasons of Loner as Clark’s morally principled love interest Alexis. She left the show midway through season three, in a plot turn that never made much sense – having finally declared her love for Loner after two seasons of star-crossed back and forth, the character abruptly had a change of heart and moved away for a new job. I’d never much cared about their romance, but a lot of fans were furious. Though the official line was that it was a ‘mutual creative decision’ between Shelly and the producers, the whispered truth was that she was impossible to work with, had demanded equal billing with Clark, regularly showed up late to set and did not know her lines.

  ‘Yeah, I remember her. Can’t remember the last thing I actually saw her in.’

  ‘Right, she dropped off the map. I’m hearing that she has allegations – that the real reason she left the show was Conrad. I don’t know the details, but it was all hushed up at the time, and she’s completely stonewalling Amanda.’

  ‘I can try, if you give me her details.’

  Now I’m intrigued. I want to know why Shelly Brook – who at one point had all the makings of a rising star – disappeared, and I want to know what she has to gain from telling a story like this about Clark. Maybe she would open up to me if I approach her as a fan of the show first, not a reporter; someone who always wondered what happened to her.

  ‘Who else do you think you can get?’

  I pause. The thing is that I’m fairly certain I know where Carol lives. This information is not available by Googling, but Clark said something offhand that has stuck in my mind, when I asked him what Carol does now in New York. She has not taken any new acting roles in more than a year, which has been noted in press coverage.

  ‘Lives the good life, as far as I can tell,’ he’d replied, his casual tone barely masking bitterness. ‘Got herself a great Manhattan apartment in the centre of everything, luxury building, a Whole Foods on the ground floor.’ He’d stopped short of saying that she’s paying for it with his money, but the implication was clear.

  There are not that many Manhattan apartment buildings with a branch of Whole Foods on the ground floor. It takes less than five minutes of Googling for me to narrow it down to one.

  ‘I think I can speak to Carol Conrad,’ I tell David, who does a poor job of hiding his scepticism. ‘I know that the allegations aren’t about her, but if people are claiming there were affairs, she can address that directly. And I don’t think you can be married to someone for two decades and not know if they’re abusive.’

  ‘You’re overselling. It’s fine, you can go after this, but strictly on spec. It’s still Amanda’s story first, and if you don’t get anything of value, we won’t use it.’

  Within minutes of hanging up, David sends me an encrypted email with three names – the women accusing Clark: Shelly Brook, plus a costume assistant, and a woman whose profession is almost impossible for me to find online, until deep in the bowels of IMDB Pro I find her name listed as an intern on the second Reckless movie. While I’m assembling a quick Google collage of these women’s lives, in another tab I’m booking a flight to New York. Carol, Shelly Brook and the intern, Karen Daniels, are all based there from what I can tell online, and flying there makes more sense than anything else, not just because I’m restless.

  What I told David doesn’t really make sense, and we both know it. A statement from Carol in support of Clark – ‘During the years of our marriage, he was never once violent towards me’ – would be a valuable addition to the story, but it won’t be enough to turn things in his favour if the other allegations pan out. But I imagine it. Finding enough information to kill this story once and for all, clear Clark’s name, expose the accusations as lies. I imagine forever being the woman to whom Clark Conrad owes his reputation.

  ‘I’m going to New York,’ I tell him over dinner, ‘for work.’ Daring him to ask what for, why now, can he come with me. Something has shifted since Cannes, there’s a new lack of urgency in our dance, and though I tell myself that this is normal and the honeymoon phase of any relationship can’t last for ever, it feels abrupt and deadening. When he invited me to dinner this evening I expected him to follow up with a venue, a time, some kind of surprise, but instead he just emailed: ‘You pick a place, whatever works’.

  If he wonders about my New York trip at all, he doesn’t show it.

  ‘Sounds good,’ is all he says, frowning down at the leather-bound wine menu. ‘I’ve got to get back there myself sometime soon, always love a Manhattan break.’

  ‘I’ve never been before.’ This is not technically true; when I was seven, before my parents’ marriage became an incident spoken of only in hushed tones, we took a family holiday to New York. I remember seeing the Twin Towers stretching up endlessly into the sky, standing at their base and looking up at them vanishing into the morning fog, trying in vain to imagine the mechanics of even beginning to build something like this. I remember asking my father how it was possible, how anything could be so tall without toppling, and though I don’t recall his response I know that it was terse and impatient. Then again, this may all be a false memory; when I once asked my mother if we had any pictures from that day, she insisted that she and I had visited the Towers alone, that my father was elsewhere that day, maybe in a bar, maybe in a stranger’s bed. She likes to write him out of our history, just like she cut him out of every picture in our house, save for one single photo I managed to save before she
got to it. I don’t even know where that photo is, now.

  ‘Let me know if you want any recommendations,’ Clark says. ‘I can live vicariously through you.’

  ‘Or you could just come with me,’ I say casually, as though the thought has just occurred to me.

  ‘I wish,’ he sighs, taking my hand without looking me in the eye. ‘As it turns out, this whole starting-your-own-company business is actually… well, business. You should see my calendar, it’s just a nightmare of different coloured blocks, each one of them spelling out some other thing I don’t want to do. They’re fast-tracking the Loner reboot, so that’s going into production a lot sooner than I anticipated. Also – you’ll like this. They’re making me get on Twitter.’

  ‘What? For the reboot?’

  He grimaces, and I laugh and just let him talk, because the more he talks in that earnest, faintly bemused way I’ve come to love, the easier it is for me to avoid thinking about the other shadow looming in my mind. These new allegations, whatever they may be, are nothing more than a problem to be solved. When I’m away from Clark for too long a kind of sickly instability begins to creep in, but when I’m with him I have never been more certain of anything.

  ‘You’re a good man, Clark Conrad.’

  It comes out of nowhere, this misquoting of a famous phrase, and I laugh at myself right before he does, and then he kisses me, and we melt into the evening like nothing was ever wrong. Because nothing was.

  I wake up in his arms the next morning and lie perfectly still for as long as I can stand, committing to memory the feeling of his body pressed against mine, his arm slung over my waist, his hands on me. This memory is what will sustain me through whatever comes next, and whatever I have to dig through in New York. He can’t know what I’m doing for him, not yet, but once it’s done there will be no more room for distance between us.

  19

  The city looks strange on the day I leave, as though I’m seeing it through a filter, the sky a sickly orange-grey. It takes me a while to comprehend after opening my curtains, overcome by a surreal feeling as though I might not have woken up at all, might still be in a dream where the world is bathed in this nightmare lighting. As it turns out, it’s smoke.