Famous

by Todd Strasser

  San Diego Union-Tribune

  UNIDENTIFIED TEEN DIES IN HOSPITAL Mexican authorities reported today that an unidentified male teenager died yesterday at General Hospital in Tijuana as a result of what doctors said was botched plastic surgery performed at an unlicensed cosmetic-surgery clinic.

  Authorities believe the victim, whose age was estimated at between fifteen and eighteen, is an American. They are asking the public for help identifying him.

  Doctors reported that the victim was brought to the hospital emergency room by an unknown person who told a nurse the man had gone to the Tijuana clinic for calf implants. The person then fled before police could question him.

  Doctors said the victim died from gangrene caused by a massive infection. No identification was found on the body, and no further information was available.

  MAY OF TENTH GRADE, NYC

  YOU LEARNED OF WILLOW’S DEATH WITHIN MINUTES OF IT HAPPENING. But it will be weeks before Avy’s parents report him missing, and another month will pass before he is identified as the nameless young man who died of an infection in a Tijuana hospital.

  The news of Willow’s murder was broadcast, tweeted, blogged, and printed everywhere. Fans around the world held candlelight memorials. Dozens of video elegies sprang up on YouTube. Movie stars, politicians, and others were quick to grab the spotlight to bemoan her passing.

  The news of Avy’s death will come in a phone call from a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Tennent’s. She will tell you that Mrs. Tennent would like you to attend her son’s funeral.

  You will see Nasim at the service. Back in late March, when you returned to school after spring break, numerous “friends” were eager to tell you that Nasim had started seeing Shelby Winston. And then Nasim confirmed it. Of course you were hurt, but, to be honest, by that point not completely surprised. It wasn’t only because he’d sent one short e-mail over spring vacation. Really, you’d sensed for a long time that you were losing him, and even while you tried to patch things up, you were preparing yourself for the worst, especially after you got the feeling something might be up with Shelby.

  I mean, is it completely bent to think that at least it’s Shelby you lost to and not some “lesser” female? And, while it would have been much better to have heard about Shelby from Nasim himself rather than from other people, what’s done is done. You will feel hurt and angry, but deep down you also know you have to blame yourself as well. Like Nasim intimated the night before you left for LA, maybe if you hadn’t been so obsessed with your career, things would be different.

  Except for a few of Avy’s cousins, you and Nasim will be the only young people at the funeral. Even though Avy and Nasim were friendly, they were never really good friends, and seeing Nasim at the service will both sting and remind you that he is a good person, the kind of person who will come to a funeral even when his presence is not expected. School has ended for the summer, and many of your classmates will be off to summer homes, or on teen tours or family trips to faraway places. Most of the small crowd at the church will be family and friends of Mr. and Mrs. Tennent’s. You will wonder how many of them really knew Avy.

  You and Nasim will not sit together, but after the ceremony you will find yourselves standing near each other on the sidewalk, watching as family members get into black limousines to follow the hearse to the cemetery. The burial itself will be private, for close relatives only, so you will be spared falling apart when that polished dark brown mahogany coffin is lowered into the earth.

  The hearse and limos will pull away and meld into the traffic, leaving you and Nasim on the sidewalk. It will be the first time you will be face-to-face since he told you he was seeing Shelby, and you’ll be filled with turmoil and contradictory emotions. You’ll want to tell him how angry and embarrassed you were at having to hear about Shelby from others, and at the same time you will be tempted to suggest getting a cup of coffee and catching up, yearning, really, to tell him how much you miss him. But will be too late for that.

  “How are you?” Nasim will ask.

  You will shrug. What will there be to say, really? About Avy? About you? It’s all changed.

  “And you?” you will ask.

  He’ll hang his head and look down. “I’m . . . sorry for the way things turned out, and that you heard from others before I had a chance to tell you myself.”

  Your insides will wrench. Yes, you will think, that is exactly what you wanted to hear, only now that he’s told you, it only makes the hurt of losing him worse. Such a handsome, honest, charming guy. So straightforward and unpretentious. You will feel a catch in your throat. “I really have to go. See you.”

  You will hurry away down the sidewalk, glad he can’t see the tears running down your face.

  “I’LL TELL YOU WHAT I FOUND OUT,” CARLA SAID. “BUT YOU HAVE TO swear you won’t repeat it to anyone.”

  We were in her office. It was early evening and the phone had stopped ringing. Outside it was still daylight. The days were growing longer.

  She exhaled a plume of smoke into the air. “It was a setup. Aaron Ives was behind it. He wanted those photos out there for the world to see.”

  This makes less than no sense to me. Willow was Ives’s biggest client. She was his meal ticket, and probably the only reason he ever got to be as powerful as he was. Had those photos come out, Willow would have violated her contract with the movie company. She would have been tossed from The Pretenders. It would have been the end of her career and Aaron’s as well.

  Carla saw the confusion on my face. “Aaron was through with her. He knew she was finished.”

  “But she had The Pretenders.”

  “It wasn’t enough to salvage her career. If the movie was a hit, it might have prolonged things for six months or a year, but basically she was done. Too old for the kids. They’re ready for someone new. And I don’t have to tell you who that is.”

  Everyone knows Alicia Howard took over Willow’s role in The Pretenders.

  “But even if that’s true, it still doesn’t explain why Aaron wanted to short-circuit Willow’s career,” I point out.

  Carla gazed at me with a knowing smile. “What does Alicia Howard want more than anything in the world?”

  That gave me pause. “A platinum album? An instantly sold out music tour? A top-rated TV show?”

  Carla raised an eyebrow, as if to say, What else?

  Then it hit me. “The Pretenders? You mean, Alicia wanted the role, and Aaron Ives needed a new superstar to replace Willow . . .”

  Carla nodded. “It was simple. If he could get Alicia the role, she would sign him as her manager.”

  I’m stunned into breathessness. The manipulation . . . the heartlessness . . . the cruelty of it . . . And to think that I was so worried about hurting Willow’s career for my own advancement, when Aaron Ives probably never thought twice about sabotaging her so he could sign Alicia.

  “No, not unbelievable,” said Carla. “Just another day in show business.”

  But there was something else. “Why would Rex—”

  Carla chuckled devilishly. “It’s funny how everyone thinks that just because you get to be a famous rock star for a while that you must be rich. But it’s amazing how fast you can burn through five or ten million. Rexy bought the dream. The big house, the hot cars, diamond baubles for his best girls, the drugs and other party favors for himself and his entourage. And, of course, he never expected to get hit with two major lawsuits for unfinished albums. But before he knew it, not only was he broke, he was a couple of million in debt.”

  My insides twist at the implications. “And that’s when Aaron Ives came into the picture?”

  Carla nodded. “I imagine that in return for those photos, Rex’s legal problems would have been resolved, a new band would have been formed, and a concert tour planned. He’d be a rock star again instead of a has-been.” She toyed for a moment with her pen, then gazed searchingly at me. “There’s only one thing I don’t understand. How did Willow find out about t
he photos so quickly?”

  I could tell by the way she looked at me that she thought I knew the answer. And I did. Willow knew about the photos because Rex confessed to her. That’s where he went when he left me in the kitchen on that clear, sunny afternoon. And why did he tell her? The only answer I could think of was both the sweetest and the saddest—in that moment of clarity he’d realized he truly loved her.

  My heart sinks with sad irony. Poor Rex. By the time he woke up and did the right thing, it was too late. What a story that would make. It would be huge. A modern-day version of Romeo and Juliet.

  “Any idea?” Carla asked.

  I shook my head. “Not a clue.”

  She nodded slowly, as if to let me know she didn’t believe me but that she accepted I had the right not to tell her. “So, I’m just curious,” she said. “What did you do with those shots?”

  I gazed up at the office wall, at the photos of all those famous people. Some famous for their talent. Some famous for their hard work and diligence. Some famous for outrageous acts and wanton flouting of the laws and conventions. Some famous merely for being famous. What was the one thing most of them now had in common? They’d been forgotten. Their moment had passed. They were no longer stars. You could call them has-beens, but to me that felt mean. Mostly they were part of an infinitesimal group of people who had, for a brief time and for whatever reason, experienced something rare—real fame. But now they were just everyday people again. Davy once asked me if I thought it was better to be a has-been than a never was, but maybe it doesn’t make all that much of a difference. In the end, people are just people, and the only things that matter are whether they are good or bad, loving or unloving, loved or unloved.

  I realized that Carla hadn’t said a word. She was gazing at me with a strange expression. “The shots on your camera?” she repeated in case I’d forgotten.

  But, of course, I hadn’t forgotten. I would never forget the crooked, unfocused images—the mirror lying face up on the table. The uneven lines of white powder. Willow’s reflection—her eyes squeezed shut, bent over the mirror with a rolled-up bill pressed to her nostril.

  “Erased them,” I said.

  There is a boy who is confined to a wheelchair. He cannot speak or make coherent gestures, but he is smart enough to make his feelings known. Most of the time it takes very little to make him happy. Just the attention of someone who cares about him, and perhaps a chance to go outside and feel the breeze on his skin and look at the clouds.

  He has an older sister who is, in many ways, your typical, self-absorbed, uncertain and searching teenager. But maybe she’s been lucky. She’s learned something at an early age that many people may never learn.

  It is an unusually crisp, clear afternoon in New York City. The sky is blue except for some cottony white clouds here and there. Thanks to the bright sunlight and the clarity of the air, everything seems to be in extra-sharp focus—the feathery white edges of the clouds against the blue sky, the individual green leaves on the trees, even the cables that support the George Washington Bridge.

  The boy’s sister pushes him along a path in Riverside Park beside the Hudson River. She stops beside an empty bench and positions the wheelchair so that they can sit beside each other. The breeze lifts his fine hair, and the sun warms his face. They look out at the river, where a red and white tugboat pushes a barge upstream, and a small sailboat with a white sail tacks this way and that. The boy raises and drops his head in a way that makes his sister think he is trying to feel the breeze on every part of his face. She leans forward and turns to look at him. There is a crooked smile on his lips. He is overjoyed to be there, and to be with her. She places her hand over his and squeezes.

  She can frame the shot in her mind. The two of them, the bench, the green trees behind them, the river before them, the clear light, the blue sky, the puffy white clouds. A beautiful shot, a singled-out moment of value to no one but them, an event that no paparazzi would ever bother to cover, concerning a young man hardly anyone knows.

  But there will be no story about this moment, no photographs. No one except the two of them will ever know.

  It is the best thing she can do.