I didn’t see B for the rest of the day. She had told me she wanted to stay unreachable and I forwarded the message to Julianne. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to shut the world out, a day after vomiting all over it. I sat down and looked at the upcoming scheduling, the month was going to be rather quiet, she had a few meetings booked about upcoming roles, a short interview with Vogue on her dress sense and one appearance at some celebrity fundraiser for green energy. I wondered how long she would feel like hiding from the spotlight, would we need to cancel everything or would she walk out of her room like a new being, ready to forget about the whole thing and start anew? Despite working closely with her for years, I couldn’t really know, because we had never faced this kind of pickle before. Not that she was easy to read from the start - she would better be described as an emotional tsunami. When she was happy, she was phenomenal to be around, and when she was sad or angry, difficult was an understatement. With B, everything came in extremes and you had to take the good with the bad.
I poured myself a glass of wine and contemplated possible causes for her recent destructive behavior. I spun around in my leather chair and sipped the lukewarm liquid and let it fill me with goodness. Wine had become such a passion over the years, a passion I desperately hoped to turn into a dream one day, opening my own wine bar. I put a slice of brie cheese in my mouth and thought back to brighter days. It was hard to pin down exactly what had happened to B since I entered her life, maybe things had just caught up with her? She sometimes complained about the industry and how she had been pinned into one category of roles and films and how frustrated she was with never being able to show her true range, but it was difficult to see her career as bad enough to make her feel like a train-wreck. Surely there must be something more, something deeper.
There were her parents of course. Her “unloving” (B’s wording) mother Katherine who had pushed her to the top, taken a slice of the cake and then left her there and who only seemed to have harsh words for her own daughter. And her father who had gone away when B was three years old, leaving a big dent in her upbringing and making her seek the approval she could never get because of his death in a car accident, six or seven years ago. He had been a painter who had gotten tired of diaper-changes and screaming and decided to move to France and become a full-time - but never famous or successful - artist. B had been left with her troubled mother and it must have made its mark, although for some reason she wouldn’t admit it to herself. She was strangely too proud to seek any kind of counseling or therapy and her stubbornness had, to my mind, proven to be mentally costly. For all of us.
So parents, career troubles and fading fortunes in her marriage - not a cocktail to celebrate with. The marriage problems could probably be traced to one big thing, her reluctance to bring a child into the world. Her husband had been on her for years and tried all his might to convince her, but to no avail. Although she was emotionally rather unstable, at the same time she wasn’t easily swayed.
There were, to summarize, many reasons B’s boat was rather rocky and maybe the vomit incident gave it its final push and tumble.
***
Interlude
Before I forget, it might make sense to mention how I became such a wine nerd. It will prove relevant, so bear with me (but if you hate back-story you can skip it).
In my happy and worry-free 20s, my best friend Cesar and I decided to go on a European road trip, driving through several cities of Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and Germany in an old, yellow Mercedes which we bought second hand outside Hamburg from a fat and mustached man for next to nothing. We had saved up for years, me working for my father’s building business and Cesar setting up basic websites for small companies, something he called “computer whoring”.
It was during our stop in Italy that I had my first date with a beautiful wine. I was mostly a beer drinker then, at least in the capacity a young man in D.C. could get a hold of the stuff (21-year-age limit). I didn’t really know anything about wine and the few glasses I’d tried were sour and vinegary. But when we reached the region of Tuscany and our ugly and battered Mercedes broke down just outside the city of Sienna, this changed forever. While we had our car in for repair with a guy in dusty blue coveralls who just couldn’t stop smoking, we rented an ugly old room with moldy curtains in the first cheap little hotel we could find and hit the streets.
Sienna is a time machine. It’s like you walked straight into medieval times with its narrow cobblestone streets and leaning brick buildings and the feeling of history is so strong you wouldn’t be surprised to see a knight in shining armor pass you on the street. We decided to enjoy it Italian style and ordered a platter in a small restaurant on a side street, but the waiter didn’t have anything besides the yeasty local beer, which we didn’t like, so he recommended a bottle of Tuscan wine. I remember the first sip like yesterday, it hit my taste buds like lightning and filled my whole being with a sense of, I don’t know, romance? Lust? Desire?
It was simply love at first taste.
We ended up finishing the bottle and then another and the owner seemed so happy to have us there he gave us a tour of his wine cellar and started explaining the differences between certain wines and grapes and although my head was starting to get sore, I sucked most of it in like an anteater.
So that was how the dream was formed to have my own wine bar, or enoteca as the Italians call it, a place where customers and other wine enthusiasts can relax in comfortable chairs, enjoy an exquisite glass of wine and listen to some soft live jazz or a classical violinist pouring his soul into a Bach partita. A haven for the cultured.
Yes, you could say I’m a bit of a snob.
***
The alarm clock woke me at half past six the next day. I stared at it with incredulous eyes, trying to figure out how it got there so fast and why I had a feverish burn inside my head. It didn’t take me long to realize the culprit was one glass of wine too many. That Brunello was simply far too good for comfort.
After a quick shower which did little to mitigate the pain in my membrane, I headed downstairs, desperate for my morning espresso.
There was a shaking sound coming from the kitchen, slosh, slosh, slosh. Slosh, slosh, slosh. The sound was quickly explained by me laying eyes on A, jerking a plastic red protein shaker.
“Morning,” he said, in a somber voice which was unnatural to his usually bright and cheerful self.
“Morning. You sound down?” I mumbled. Too early. No coffee.
“We had a huge fight last night. Huge. She took a suitcase and left.” He stopped shaking his drink and studied the content, which had become a grey-brownish soil. I wondered how the protein people could call that chocolate when “sewage” seemed more apt.
“Oh, that bad?” I said, not feeling too surprised, as it wasn’t the first time B had made a dramatic exit and gone to spend the night at a friends’ house. It was an obvious attempt to elicit emotion from A, but she had complained that it only seemed to work for a day or two and then he went back to being the frosty caveman again.
Who said love was easy?
“My guess is she’s with Katie, but I’ve no idea really. She refuses to pick up her phone.” A put the shaker against his mouth and let the foul liquid run down his throat. I looked away briefly and thought he might be right, Katie always had a good ear for B’s problems, meaning she agreed with pretty much everything the movie star said or felt.
A made a disgusting swallowing sound and said, “Can you do me favor and check if she's okay? I was a bit tough yesterday, said some things I regret.”
“Well, that happens in a fight, I guess. What did you say?”
“I told her she was a selfish, alcoholic psycho with major issues. And I told her I’m soon giving up on having kids, I’m turning 40, it’s already quite late to start a family.”
Bringing up the old our-fantastic-genes-force-us-to-procreate discussion after B’s social disaster wasn’t the best timing, but you couldn’t really bla
me him for hearing the clock ticking. Extending the family was the natural next step, together with divorce of course. I thought they had reached some kind of tipping point where relationships either made it or broke it. I had seen it before with friends, but never gotten as far myself.
“Can you please make sure she's okay? I really have to go now.” A gave me a look that said he knew I would say yes, after all, it was my job to be the yes-man. I was paid for it.
“Sure thing,” I said and thought how strange it was to have another man ask you to manage his marriage. Being a relationship middleman was never in my contract, but it became a vital part of my job the last year of my employment. Question was, was it possible to save it? At that moment I thought it wasn’t very likely.
“You’re the man, Darryl. I don’t know what I would do without you. I'll call you from New York, okay?”
And as A left to finish his packing, I turned on the espresso machine, letting it slowly chug out a thick, luscious brew. I took my first sip and thought that I didn’t know what he’d do without me either.
***
A marriage without fights can’t be a healthy one, but when the fights outnumber the moments of peace, you’d probably start to wonder what the hell you’re doing.
The Johnsons had reached this stage and therefore I wasn’t shocked not to hear from B for the whole next day. She had gone to hide from agent Julianne, the paparazzi, her marriage struggles, her mother, her disappointing career, yes pretty much everything that upset her. It wasn’t the most mature thing to do, but you can’t go around being mature all the time, right?
So I figured I should let her take her time and not chase her. Besides, it gave me well-needed break from work. I hadn’t had much time off the last two years and a heavy tiredness had started to creep into my bones.
But after almost two whole days of rest without a word from B, I started to wonder and sent her a text. No reply. I gave her a call. No reply. I gave her another call a bit later. No reply. The feeling that something was wrong had started to infiltrate my brain like a small but pounding headache. I actually ended up calling Katie, Alice, her mother Katherine, everyone I could think of, but no one had heard from her.
I deliberated calling A for a moment but decided it would just worry him and ultimately piss him off. He was directing a movie for the first time in his career and it was not the best time to disturb him.
But how do you locate a missing celebrity? There are surely no phone apps for it and if there isn’t a phone app, then what? A thought hit me that I should call the police, but somehow it seemed too dramatic, too soon. It could still just be stubbornness, maybe she was holing up in a hotel somewhere in the city, eating buckets of ice cream and watching Sex and the City?
I heard a pling sound from my Macbook. My best friend, IT-genius and European tour travel buddy was writing to me on Skype. I hadn’t talked to him in a week so it was a welcome distraction.
“Yo,” the message eloquently read. Cesar wasn’t elaborate with words, he preferred to get to the point quickly and his speech was often infused with slang and profanity. He was a super-intelligent and baby-faced goofball with a Rastafari hairstyle and I feared he’d never grow up. He had inherited a small loft in New York and worked for a mobile game developer. This was taking the easy way out for Cesar, who probably had enough computer skills to work for NASA and could hack pretty much any website out there. But hacking websites was not the best way to make a living as he had learned from experience. And police.
“Hey,” I wrote back.
“What’s up?”
“Panic mode. B is missing. They had a fight two days ago and she took her bags and left. Nobody knows where she is.”
“I could see that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I read about her vomit. Anyone would run away from that sort of thing.”
“You can say that again,” I wrote and put a sad smily at the end of it.
“If you want I can try and trace her. All I need is her credit card details.”
My heart stopped for a minute. Why hadn’t I thought of this? She must have made some kind of transaction in three days and it might at least give me a clue. On the other hand I didn’t feel comfortable giving out her credit card number to one of the most money-horny people I knew. He was my best friend, but Cesar and money was always a dangerous equation.
But then again, what choice did I have?
“Okay, wait and I’ll give them to you. Don’t lose them or use them for something else, okay?”
“Of course not. And send a text message. It’s safer.”
Luckily, I had her card details in an old e-mail which she had sent to use in case I needed to buy something online. This was before they gave me my own expense card which gold-ish sheen I treasured and admired greatly.
I felt a second of regret before I pushed the send-button. “How long does it take?” I wrote to him.
“Not too long. Give me an hour and I’ll call you.”
“Thanks, man,” I wrote and headed down to the kitchen to make a sandwich, hoping my decision wouldn’t prove costly.
Down in the kitchen I found Elena cleaning the floor. She had her permanently disappointed facial expression on and I knew she wouldn’t try to start up a conversation. She rarely did. I silently wondered what her plan was, she was nearing 60 and was still working as hard as ever. I didn’t know much about her, only that she came from small-town Russia with her son twenty years ago and that he was struggling to find a job as an actor (and enjoying the LA party life a little too much), while she was making floors shine in already successful actors’ homes. It was maybe not what she had imagined when she came here, but I wouldn’t know, as we had never talked about her feelings. Her skinny and veiny body did all the talking as the broom squished across the marble floors.
I took a bite out of my ham and cheese sandwich and pretended to read the newspaper, while I was really too anxious to focus on anything. I wanted Cesar to call me and tell me where B was so I could move on with my life and do other things. It was while sitting at the kitchen bar that I realized how much I cared about her. I always knew we had a bond, a friendship, some kind of chemistry, but my feelings had never been tested like this before. One minute I wanted to quit and the next I felt so sorry for her, that it felt like I could never leave her.
So it was with a sinking feeling in my stomach that I heard the phone vibrate on the table. The display read “Cesar”. I jumped on it like a cat on a light reflection.
“What have you got?” I burst out.
“Not even hello? LA broke your manners, dude. Anyway, her last transaction was at a restaurant, a La Rosetta. In Rome.”
“In Rome?!” My mind went numb for a second. This was apparently trouble on an international scale.
“Yes, the two previous transactions also happened in Rome. So my guess is that's where she is, unless someone stole her credit card.”
“Oh, shit!” Cesar exclaimed, before I got the chance to reply.
“What? What is it?” My heart was now ready to unleash itself from my chest, which was far from my usually quite a cool character.
“Crazy lady spent 1300 dollars. 1300 dollars in a restaurant!”
I sighed a breath of relief, “Believe me, on this level of fame, it's not that much.”
“Are you kidding? That's almost a month’s rent and I live in New York.”
“So you're positive she's there? In Rome?” This was a new level of B’s spontaneity, so I had to make sure.
“I bet you 500 dollars.”
“If you’re right, I’d owe you big time. This is nuts. I have to call her husband now, thanks for being the C in CSI.”
“CSI is some bullshit.”
It was a shame I couldn’t stay on the phone with Cesar, because we hadn’t talked in a while, but I had bigger fish to fry and husbands to call. It took about ten rings before A picked up his phone. He didn’t strike me as over-eager to hear about where his wif
e went, but maybe it was my imagination.
A didn’t have even a hint of a clue of why B had decided to visit the capital of Italy. She had been there only once before, two years ago for a cover shoot, he remembered, but he didn’t know anything beyond that. Then he said something which hit me hard.
“You have to go.”
“What?”
“You need to go to Rome and talk to her, Darryl. I can't do it, I've got a movie to finish. And you’ve got this friend of yours to help you too. It’s the only solution.”
“You seriously want me to fly to another continent and track her down? I’ve called her like twenty times, she’s not answering. It’s not going to be easy, because she obviously doesn’t want to be found.”
“It's the best we can do. I'll pay you extra, whatever you need. I really need you to do this, you seem like the only one who can talk some sense into her.”
It's not great when your husband thinks the only guy who can talk to you, is some other guy, in this case me. But I knew he was right. If anyone had a chance of reaching out to B it was yours truly and that’s why I couldn’t give him no for an answer either. And not only for his sake, but for B’s sake and mine, as I was genuinely worried about her.
Not that Rome was the worst place to go celebrity hunting either.
I packed my bags as fast as I could, checked the flights online and bought a last-minute ticket with my glimmering expense card. It was going to be one impromptu trip, but I have to admit I was a bit excited to go to Rome a second time. I thought it might be the break I needed, even if it was going to involve some kind of detective work. I ran down the shining marble staircase and at the end I almost bumped into Elena.
“See where you going,” she muttered in her sour voice.
“I’m flying to Rome. B is there. Why I don't know.” I burst out.
Elena shook her head and sighed, “I know she run away. Her husband never home and she drink like animal. Not happy relationship.” She stabbed a finger at me like I was responsible for the whole thing. This was as animated as I’d ever seen her.
Hollywood Ass. Page 4