by Emma Dibdin
‘Clark?’
‘I love the guy, but I wouldn’t trust him further than I could throw him. Do I want to put him in a picture? Any time. Do business with him? All day long. Do I want him dating my daughter?’ He gives a meaningful shrug.
‘It’s good that you’re aware I’m young enough to be your daughter.’
‘Funny.’
‘How much longer do you think you can get away with this?’ I ask him. ‘It was pretty clear this wasn’t a first-time thing for you. You had a routine.’
‘How many movies you think you’ve seen in your lifetime? Ballpark figure.’
‘I’m not playing whatever game this is.’
‘Come on, humour me. How many?’
‘Probably a thousand.’
‘A thousand, sure. Shoot for the stars. Out of those thousand movies, how many do you think had my fingerprints on them?’
‘You really are a narcissist. You’re not that powerful, Scion was not the only production company in Hollywood.’
‘That’s not what I asked. I’m talking about the invisible hand, the forces that actually make things happen, which you’d know if you ever bothered to get to know this business. A call I put in for someone. A writer whose script I put at the top of the pile. That tentpole director who got his first break with Scion. You think you love Hollywood? Hollywood was built by men like me. Men like me are the world.’
‘Men like you are a dying breed.’
‘I don’t know why you’re getting testy. I’m the one telling you the truth. Look, I’m not a perfect guy, but I’ve always tried to be honest. I’m just trying to look out for you when I say Clark is not a saint.’
‘And you are?’
‘You know what it is?’ he says, completely ignoring me. ‘I figured this out a while back – actually, when he bailed on my movie to go do that astronaut thing. The thing with Conrad is he’s the most fun guy in the room, you’ll have the best time with him, and then you’ll leave and think… I have no idea who that guy is. That’s all actors, in a way, they’re shapeshifters. But him? All the time I’ve known him, I’ve just never sensed a genuine person inside of him.’
‘It’s interesting that you’ve changed your tune since he cut ties with you.’
‘Cut ties? Who do you think’s putting up half the capital for High Six’s first feature, sweetheart?’
I falter. Trying to remember, now, exactly what Clark told me about the financing deals he’d made at Cannes.
‘He would never take your money. Not after what you did to me.’
‘You want to see the documents?’
He still hasn’t admitted to anything, and I know I’m going about this wrong. I was supposed to get him to say something damning about himself, not Clark.
‘Look…’ I say more softly, moving closer to him, ‘I don’t want to talk about Clark. I just want to know whether the only reason you agreed to an interview with me is because you wanted to sleep with me.’
‘Sleep with you?’ He frowns. ‘Where did you get that idea?’
‘Are you joking?’
‘California’s a two-party consent state.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘That recorder in your bag. What is it, your iPhone? One of those old-school tape recorders? Whatever it is, it’s useless, because I do not consent to this recording.’
He doesn’t grab for my bag, doesn’t even bother looking down to confirm whether he’s right. He knows he is.
‘I hope you see the irony in your giving me a lecture about consent laws,’ I say. For the second time in as many minutes, trying to appear unfazed.
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ he says blandly. ‘But I’m sorry Conrad did such a number on you. He’s a tough man to say no to.’
I’m so angry it’s making me close to dizzy, fists clenched hard enough to leave nail marks in my palms, probably. But what was I really thinking, coming here hoping to score a desperate last-ditch scoop? This is not how stories come together. This is not what journalists do.
I turn away from Schlattman, resisting the urge to smash my glass into his face, and head for the door. But it’s blocked by a crowd of partygoers with eyes locked on their phones, oblivious to the fact that they’re in my way.
‘Excuse me,’ I snap, trying to force my way through, but finally I realize this is the kind of gaggle that forms around one specific piece of information, something so shocking that people instinctively band together. I pull out my phone, and the push alerts are already stacked up high.
Amabella Bunch Dead At 27 – Report
Amabella Bunch has died at twenty-seven years old.
Police were called to Bunch’s Valley Village apartment Tuesday afternoon, after she failed to appear for work on a sponsored content shoot. The LA County Coroner’s office has confirmed that Bunch was pronounced dead on the scene at 2.30 p.m. A cause of death has not yet been determined.
A source close to Bunch said that friends had been growing concerned about her for weeks, in the wake of her breakup from actor Clark Conrad, and her allegations of domestic violence against him.
‘She was really getting desperate,’ the source claimed. ‘Certain people had made it impossible for her to get work, just blackballed her all over town to the point where she couldn’t make rent.’
Bunch worked regularly as an actress, model and social media spokesperson, and recently launched SlayToday, an online lifestyle coaching brand.
More to come…
21
I feel raw, my chest hollow and my limbs unsteady. My fists are clenched hard, as though without holding on to myself I will scatter and evaporate, and all I can think about is that afternoon I sat with Clark in his living room, strategizing over how to spin Amabella’s accusations, how to minimize the damage. How to minimize her.
I have a text from Faye that just reads ‘omg’. Uncharacteristically brief, and I can sense in her three letters the same creeping, hot kind of shame that’s paralysing me. I read every single near-identical article one after another, as if in a trance, re-reading until the words grow fuzzy.
A representative for Conrad denied that the actor had played any role in blacklisting Bunch, and released the following statement: ‘Clark Conrad is deeply shocked and saddened by the news of Amabella’s passing. While their relationship was brief, it was sparked by deep respect and fondness on both sides. It is Clark’s greatest hope that Amabella has finally found some respite from her troubles, albeit under the most tragic of circumstances. He sends his deepest condolences to Amabella’s family and friends.’
‘I didn’t expect her to live in the Valley.’
This is the first thing that comes to me when Faye and I talk on the phone. As soon as I say it, it sounds absurd, but it’s true. ‘I thought she’d have more expensive tastes.’
‘She was kind of a hustler, I think. She came from nothing, parents were super-poor, she basically got on a bus to Hollywood when she was seventeen from farm country. They were saying that on the radio.’
I don’t say anything. I don’t want to hear this, and yet I know I deserve to be confronted with Amabella’s backstory now, to have to reckon with her as a human being.
‘Where are you?’ she asks me. ‘Do you want to come over?’
‘I’m just walking home,’ I lie. I’m actually at the lake in Echo Park, trying to find the calm it used to bring me. It’s on the verge of getting dark, the last laps of orange sunset fading behind palm trees, but there are still people around, children playing on the grass banks of the lake, a few boats on the water. I can surround myself with life here, for a while.
‘You think what they’re saying is true? About Clark blackballing her?’
Faye does not know about Clark and me; there’s no way she could hide it this well if she did.
‘I think it might be.’
‘I still just don’t buy her whole story. I’m sorry, I know that’s garbage-y of me to say now, but I don’t! It kind of seems like she tried th
is ploy to get money out of him, it didn’t work, it totally backfired on her and she spiralled. Is that terrible?’
Maybe I was wrong. Faye isn’t shellshocked in the same way I am, she’s just wondering how long she has to be tactful before going back to the same old schtick.
‘I have to go,’ I tell her flatly, and hang up though I know that I’m being unfair. Faye doesn’t know what I know; she has not spoken to Carol or Susan or Skye. She has not heard Ben Schlattman talk about the lack of ‘a genuine person’ inside of Clark. She has not seen Clark’s whole demeanour change, like something in him has disintegrated, like the mask has slipped. No one in the general public has heard or seen any of this. And so, within days, the general public will do the same as Faye; they will revert to remembering Amabella as a dumb blonde, a trophy girlfriend with easy-to-mock ambition, a joke with an unexpectedly brutal punchline.
Trying to sleep is absurd. I lie in bed, close my eyes, reopen them seized by the urge to check Twitter again for new reactions, to Google Amabella’s life story now that Faye has opened that floodgate, or to look at Clark’s number on my dial screen for minutes at a time and not call. He has not called or texted me, either, and the significance of this is unmistakable. I want to see him, desperately, and yet I don’t dial.
When I finally fall into twitchy sleep, I dream of the hotel courtyard from this evening, but larger and more industrial like a studio lot, vines growing over warehouses and trailers instead of trellises. There’s a swimming pool in the courtyard’s centre, and in its cerulean-blue water floats a female body, blonde hair haloed in the water. I try to move over towards her, but my legs are leaden and I’m blocked by the party crowd, all of them oblivious though I’m trying to warn them that there’s a girl and she’s not breathing, I’ve seen this before and she needs help. She’s already dead.
My phone is ringing, jolting me wide awake with my heart pounding so hard I can feel it move. It takes me a minute to remember how to work my phone.
‘Hello?’
Silence. I glance at the number – an unfamiliar one, 323 area code – but some bleed-over from my dream makes me sure.
‘Skye?’
I hear her inhale, and know for sure.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I cut her out,’ Skye whispers, hoarse with tears.
‘What? You mean Amabella?’ Of course she does. Amabella was with Clark in every single photograph taken at the hospital, and I never considered the possibility that she was actually there for Skye, not for exposure.
‘I stopped taking her calls, her messages. Unfollowed her on everything. And I did that fucking Instagram post calling her a liar…’
She doesn’t say because he told me to. She doesn’t need to.
‘It’s not your fault. Where are you right now?’
Silence.
‘I’m thinking of leaving town for a few days, just to get away for a while,’ I tell her. ‘Get some space. You should come with me, we could take a train somewhere—’
She’s gone, the dial tone confirms, and when I try calling back there’s no answer.
I see myself as if from above, inside this glass box of his. Lying in the bed that he owns, looking up at the ceiling he owns, behaving just like something else that he owns. And then I start packing. Half my things are still in storage; it felt wrong to bring too much with me when Clark moved me in here, as though clutter would kill the fairy tale. But maybe I knew I wouldn’t be staying long. Fairy tales are short, and the authentic ones end badly.
I keep trying Skye every ten minutes as I fill laundry bags with clothes, unable to stop thinking of how she chose to call me, how she must have seen me at least fleetingly as someone who could help her, how she may finally be ready to get away from him.
At the sound of movement, I freeze, my arms full of dresses. I see him outlined in the doorway, a silhouette, his features in shadow.
‘I didn’t know you had a key.’
He’s always rung the bell every time he’s come to see me, maintaining the illusion that this place is actually mine.
‘Of course I have a key. What are you doing?’ he asks, eyes on the laundry bags.
‘I’m moving out.’
‘Why?’
‘This arrangement was a bad idea. I should never have let you give me an apartment – although I really appreciate it. I’ve loved being here.’ I hear myself placating him. How early do girls learn to do this? How early did Skye learn it?
‘I don’t want you to go.’
‘You didn’t answer my calls earlier. I wanted to check if you were okay, after the news.’
‘I’m fine.’ He’s moved forward enough for me to see him now, his face a mask, as though nothing of consequence has happened.
‘Are you? Really?’ I ask. ‘Because I’m not, to be honest. I feel awful for her.’
‘Me too. She was always a little bit unsteady, you know, and she told me that she’d struggled in the past, but she really seemed to be doing great while we were together. I just hope she’s found some peace now.’
A modified version of his press statement. How fitting.
‘It just must be a lot to deal with, after Skye. Even for me, the two things in combination feel overwhelming, so I can’t imagine how you feel.’
He doesn’t say anything.
‘Have they confirmed the cause of death yet? The report that I read said it was an overdose, but…’
Nothing, still. The more silent he is, the more I want to needle him.
‘Did she really commit suicide?’
‘What are you asking?’ He keeps walking towards me, and my back is at the wall now. ‘If I had her killed?’
I laugh, a nervous involuntary reflex, and he laughs too, but this is not a moment we’re sharing.
‘No. Of course not. You just had her career killed.’
‘Her career?’ he spits. ‘What career? You of all people never missed an opportunity to laugh at that.’
And it’s true. I never missed an opportunity. Once Amabella’s allegations were far enough in the past that I felt bold enough to joke, I was positively elated by it. I showed Clark clips of her terrible YouTube original series, and her SlayToday website, neither of which he had seen before, and we were in hysterics. It was so easy to laugh at her.
‘You’re right. But I feel horrible, and you feel nothing. Her being dead makes things a lot easier for you. Did you get your friend at the The Daily Reporter to buy exclusive rights to her story, and then bury it?’
‘What are you babbling about?’
‘Shelly Brook.’
He flinches, his face actually flickering like an old movie projector switching between film reels.
‘I know about her, and Karen Daniels, and Bridget Meriweather.’
‘Are these names supposed to mean something to me?’
‘Just tell the truth for once.’
‘You’re naming people who’ve had their knives out for me for years. When you’ve been in this business as long as I have, it happens. People want a piece of you, and they’ll tear it off if they can’t get it otherwise.’
‘It was you who leaked the truth about our relationship to my editor. Right? Once you decided I wasn’t on your side any more, you wanted to discredit me. I’d served my purpose.’
‘You sound paranoid.’
‘You’re the one who’s claiming that four separate women have grudges against you for no reason. Not to mention Skye.’
‘Do not bring my daughter into this.’
‘You’re going to drive her insane if you go on like this. Managing her, keeping her like a pet, making her date creeps like Brett Rickards just for the exposure.’
‘What has she been telling you?’
‘She hasn’t told me anything. She won’t speak an ill word of you, and that’s not normal.’ I’m working this through in my own head as I’m saying it, realizing just how true it is. ‘What teenager doesn’t have a bad word to say about her dad, ever? You’ve cowe
d her into idolizing you.’
‘I made a real miscalculation inviting you into our lives. I thought you’d help her, but you’ve just encouraged her worst instincts.’
‘She’s nineteen. She doesn’t need to be curated, she needs a life of her own, not a wing of your house.’
‘You want me to send my suicidal daughter out into the world to live with strangers.’
‘She’s not suicidal. She’s fucked up because you’ve controlled her entire life, and you’ve made her believe you’re the only person who loves her or understands her.’ The full weight of just how badly I misjudged her is crushing, now. Slitting her wrists in a house full of press was not a grab for attention, but a cry for help. She was trying to expose him to the world, maybe unconsciously, maybe hoping that I was an ally instead of just one more myth-maker for her father.
‘And you’re terrified of letting her out into the world in case she spills everything, in case she ruins your whole golden family charade. But it’s already ruined. Let her go.’
‘What will happen if I don’t?’
‘Then I’ll find a way to publish what I know.’
We both know that this is likely an empty threat; I have evidence of nothing and no editors who will take my calls.
‘And what exactly do you know?’
‘That you didn’t just have an affair with Bridget. You raped her, and nine months later she had Skye, and less than a year later she was dead.’ I exhale all of this like a breath I’ve been holding for days.
‘What?’
He looks caught off guard, and for a moment I doubt myself. Carol could have been lying.
‘Is it true?’
‘Of course it’s not true. How can you even ask me that?’ He sounds genuinely wounded, but something in me does not give. I do not believe his performance.
‘You’re lying.’
‘My God, you’re a piece of work, aren’t you?’ he says then, in mock-wonder. He’s almost pressing me into the wall now, and maybe I want him to. Maybe I want to tip him over the edge. ‘Always hungry for a narrative. Real plot twist, the way you’ve turned me from your hero into your antagonist. I assume your only source for this is my ex-wife?’