by Tiana Laveen
Who the fuck does he think he is talking to?! Crazy ass son of a bitch! Instead of losing her cool, she took a deep breath and tried to reason with the nut.
“The media? The media can help you. We’re not your enemy, Mr. Starr. You agreed to this interview and now you’re fighting it. To me, that’s what’s wicked stupid.” She crossed her arms over her breast. She didn’t even know what ‘wicked stupid’ meant; must’ve been a Boston thing. “Stop getting emotional, being sensitive and silly, and just answer the question.”
So much for not losing her cool. He’d gone and done it. First the dismissal of the film crew, now this.
“I’d kick you out, but I’m bored.” He yawned. “You’re not that good at your job.”
“You’re diverting… anything for an excuse for this to not go smoothly. Right now, you’re your own worst enemy.”
“Is this the part where a faded rainbow comes flyin’ out the sky and the TV screen reads, ‘The More Ya Know’? Get tha fuck outta here.” He waved her off, and all she could do was roll her eyes. “I don’t want to answer any personal questions about my family. This has nothin’ to do with them.”
“I wanted to know about your parents because—”
“Well then you’d have to talk to them directly. I don’t see Peggy around here. Peggy! Yo, Ma! Where are ya?” His eyes darted about the room, pretending he was looking for the woman. “Naaaathan! I don’t see your ass either. Are you hiding in the pantry closet? Dad! Come out, come out wherever you are! Heeeey, parents of mine! Are you here to do an interview with Ms. Poison Ivy? Hmmm, I don’t seem them, Ivy… no answer. I guess you better move along then.” He shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands, keeping a tight hold on this newborn iciness. He no longer smiled, smirked, or offered her a flirtatious glance.
“Okay… you seem rather distressed about a logical question, Mr. Starr. I asked because our parents are a part of who we are. They are in our personal story.”
“I don’t like your question.”
“You made that clear. You refuse to answer. Got it.”
“I may change my mind if you give me what I need. You see, I want to know your motivations, Ivy. Some people ask personal questions about a person’s family not because they care or are generally interested, but just because it’s the thing to do. Now, if your motivations are in order, then I’ll happily answer. The reporter in you is trying to get this story at any costs. You need to be challenged; we all need to be challenged. What?” He tossed up his hands. “Did you think this was going to be easy? No, you’re going to earn this. You have no care or concern for me, definitely not for my well-being. You’d sooner step over me if I were on fire.”
“You’re being really cynical, Mr. Starr, and none of that is true.”
“Everything I just said is true and I’m cool with it. You’re just using me for your vocational gain and that’s understandable. That’s fine, Ivy. I don’t mind being used sometimes, as long as it is for a good cause and we both benefit. Now, I want you to tell me, other than this being a feather in your cap, how will knowing about my parents and how they felt about me regarding my personal choices in life aid you or others? And don’t bullshit me, either. I’ll wait.” He leaned in close, a creepy grin spread across his face and worst of all, he seemed genuinely happy—as if a light switch was once again turned on, and his mood changed, just like that.
This man is truly insane!
This was one of the most intimidating motherfuckers she’d ever encountered. He sucked the damn air out of the room with just a word or two. His personality changed on a dime from jovial and loose to high-strung and angry. He was defensive, without raising his voice. He was arrogant, without bragging. He was confident and insecure, all at once.
“It will benefit people if they can identify with you, Mr. Starr. Similarities, compassion, understanding… we know these things via interaction. We learn about someone and immediately are drawn to them because, as it stands, you don’t seem human.”
“I don’t seem human?” He smirked and slightly lowered his head. “I obviously am. You’re sitting here looking at me, right? With those beautiful, dark brown eyes of yours… No need to respond, but you’re so fuckin’ pretty. What I’d do to taste you below the waist…” His gaze hooded and her heart beat a bit faster. “Look, thousands of people come and stare at me every night. Some of them even touch me, with my permission of course.”
“Right, but you can do things that a human is not supposed to be able to do. Eat fire and make it come out of your ear without even a first-degree burn… walk upside down in midair, no strings, pulleys… make bats fly out of the palms of your hands. Turn a deck of cards into doves… saw a man in half then dance with his legs while the top part of him claps to the beat of the music. Yes, they are illusions, but some experts who have been doing this for longer than you have been alive have openly admitted they don’t understand or know how you are achieving some of your stunts and acts, Mr. Starr. You have come into this profession and completely changed the game. You’re a genius at what you do.”
“That’s just mind over matter, the power that the eye and mind have over our experiences. It’s to cause doubt. Trick the eye and the mind will follow. The eye believes it is smarter than the mind, for if we don’t see it, we rarely believe it and followers are typically rather gullible, relying only upon the visual.” He tapped the side of his head. “The mind reminds us that it is impossible, that something is amiss, that the eyes are being fooled and yet, in our basic human nature, we can’t accept that our eyes are lying to us. When you look outside and see a car traveling at eighty miles per hour, you don’t step out in front of it. You see the car, you hear it, you respond accordingly. But in this case the car isn’t really there, and it would be hard to convince you otherwise.
“In fact, you’d fight me if I tried to toss you out in front of it because your eyes tell you that you will be killed. That’s what I give… the promise of a pretty death. That’s the art of illusion, Ivy. It’s the novelty. Being able to intrigue someone and mystify them are the keys. Even if I told my secrets for how I achieve these performances, some would still not understand, and for the few that would get it, this disclosure would ruin the joy for them. No one on this planet knows exactly what I do and how I do it. And I plan to keep it that way. Not because I don’t want anyone to emulate me, but because I enjoy giving these experiences, Ivy, and if I did such a thing, I would rob them of that delight. I give pleasure. I don’t take it away.”
“You seem very different right now than you do on stage.” She swayed ever so slightly in her seat, feeling as if she were being hypnotized.
“How so?” He rocked back in his chair, took a sip of his mimosa then set it back down.
“When you’re performing, you’re fun, loose, at times silly, and for lack of a better word, magical. Right now, you come across as philosophical, ominous, intelligent, dodgy, hot tempered, moody, a bit combative and oddly enough, open.”
“When I perform, that is one side of me.” He pointed to his left. “When I am in my home behind closed doors, that is another part of me, too.” He pointed to the right. “I’m entitled to both. One is a star, the other is a recluse. One concentrates on the finest of details, the other is hyper active from my day-to-day grind and needs to decompress…come back down to Earth. Therefore, the side of me that does these things drinks like a fucking fish and almost drowns in his own ocean.”
Her heart began to beat so fast now, she wondered if she should panic. The man was pouring out things, confessions she never dreamed she’d receive.
“Would you classify yourself as an alcoholic?”
“No, but I definitely drink too much from time to time. It doesn’t interfere with my work though. I’ve never arrived at work drunk or hung over. It sounds so cliché, but I can stop at any time. I have done so to prove it to myself and no one else. But I like to drink, so I continue. I like weed, and yet, I’ve stopped for months at a time just to pro
ve to myself that I can. I have an addictive personality. I do almost everything I love in excess. My magic, making love, drinking, driving fast… I’m hooked on extreme amounts of fun, not the actual act itself.” She nodded at the man, appreciating his candor. “I can drop one and find another self-destructive habit in a matter of minutes. I don’t care what it is, as long as I like it. And if I like it, I tend to keep doing it. Simple as that.”
“Interesting… understood.” She quickly jotted down a few quotes from his words. “I want to get back to the joy that we were discussing your audience receives. You stated you didn’t want to rob them of that by disclosing your secrets. Is it possible that they may actually find you more interesting if they knew at least a few of your strategies on how you achieve your illusions?”
“All right, fair enough. That’s an interesting theory. Let me put it to you like this. You said on the phone yesterday that you know I like the company of women. Of course, I do. I’m a visual person, sensory to the hilt… you’re gorgeous creatures. Your minds intrigue me. The way you move, the way your voice sounds…” He paused, and her breath hitched. “And just like a woman I’ve laid down in my bed and made love to for the first time, I do the same with my audience. I take them to bed. The anticipation kills them with joy. So why take that anticipation and joy away? That’s a gift. No need to taint it.”
Her gaze hooked on his, she swallowed. “I’m glad you brought intrigue back up. People are intrigued by you but being intrigued and trusting someone are not one in the same. If people feel as if they trust you, then somewhere in their mind you two have commonalities, despite the fact that you are a celebrity.”
“People see celebrities as either someone they aspire to be or as remarkable train wrecks. People are interested in watching us implode. They come to see my shows for the thrills, but do you believe that if I accidentally cut my legs off in an act, that wouldn’t be front page news? Do you think people wouldn’t read it and gunk up the internet talking about my grizzly death? Memes would pop up about my demise. No one would give a shit about the ramifications, the effect this would have on my family and friends. My competitors might even be secretly thrilled as they cry at my funeral. Everyone nowadays is a big ass phony. No one gives a shit.”
“You’re quite cynical, but I do follow your logic, Mr. Starr.”
“Paxton… stop calling me Mr. Starr. How old are you, Ivy?”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“All right, so none of that formal shit anymore, please. I don’t want a woman I plan to kiss soon calling me Mr. Starr.” She exhaled loudly and rolled her eyes. “Am I making you uncomfortable when I talk that way?”
“Yes. I thought it was just to scare me away initially but I see you want to continue down this sordid path.” She chuckled.
“It was. But I meant what I said. We’re gonna fuck pretty soon.”
“You are ridiculous and full of it. We’re not going to fuck, screw, kiss, or even hug, Mr. Starr.”
“Yes, we will, and I won’t even have to ask. It’ll just happen naturally. Back to what we were discussing though… You were talking about joy and me being human and all of that other feel good, ridiculous shit no one gives two fucks about but me and you.”
She burst out laughing at this.
“Yes, I was. Joy… what makes you happy? Being open and honest, Paxton—that will give you greater success and it will give your fans joy. You’re Mr. Imagination. So, it makes sense from my perspective that we get to know something about your family, your home life, since you are in fact human and weren’t hatched out of an egg,” she said with a smile. “We, your fans,” she added, her hand over her heart, “want to know who and what produced a man such as yourself?”
Suddenly, a glass vase in the middle of the table drifted upward, spun around, then coasted towards her. On a deep swallow, her lips parted in amazement. She reached out to touch it, but it disappeared… vanished into thin air.
“How… how did you do that?!” She looked off to the side of the table and peeked under it, but nothing was there. When she popped back up she looked down at the other end of the table. Paxton wasn’t smiling. In fact, he sat there as if nothing had happened whatsoever. “Okay, you’ve proved your point. You’ve got to tell me, Paxton… you have to tell the audience what produces a Paxton Starr in the first place.”
“What produces a man such as myself? Finding out that you’re magic, being told that you’re not, then trying to figure out for the rest of your life who was right. You, or them?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Swimming Towards the Deep End
“But why?”
“Because I want to.” Paxton stood by his bed, looking at it from various angles, ensuring the sheets were just as he wished them to be. The entire house could be a wreck, but he was rather particular about his bedroom.
“You invited her to come back, to literally be with you for an entire week on and off for this in-depth interview. She’s hit the motherlode, and you’ll lose your entire goddamn sanity. I can’t believe this shit! First, you don’t even want her here, Paxton; now, she’s practically your roommate.” Major slid against the wall as if he needed it for support, as if his life were slipping away right before his very eyes. “You shouldn’t trust her. She’s going to destroy your career, Pax.”
“In order for my career to be destroyed, I’d have to allow her access to it and then sign off for that to happen. No one can take shit away from me that I don’t give them. Besides,” he said dismissively, “what’s mine is mine and if someone can jack me for it, then it was never mine to begin with.”
Major stomped his foot, clearly frustrated with him. What else was new?
“Then why are you inviting this scheming journalist who will only twist your words, quote you incorrectly, and exploit you back into your life? Weren’t the two hours you gave her enough?”
“No, they weren’t.” Paxton tossed his brother a look from over his shoulder. “Because I like talking to her. She’s thought-provoking and she didn’t get everything she needed. Apparently, I’m an interesting son of a bitch. Imagine that.”
“No. You’ve got hundreds of people you can talk to. You just wanna fuck her. That’s what this is about.”
“Of course I do, but she’s actually a good conversationalist. And I’d be a fool to not wanna screw her. Never going to deny that.” He shrugged as if that were a no-brainer. “Fuck Away the Pain” by Divide the Day started to play in full volume. “I have to go. She’ll be over later tonight but I need to rehearse for tonight’s show.”
“You gave her tickets, didn’t you?”
“The gift of me… who could ask for more?”
Paxton winked at the man and disappeared out his front door…
Ivy clutched the phone closer to her mouth and whispered as if she were being secretly recorded. She was alone in Paxton’s gorgeous home, sitting at his dining room table with a piece of untouched strawberry cheesecake from his Chef and a cup of green tea in front of her. She’d drank half of the brew as she waited for Paxton to return. The man said he had an errand to run but would be right back. She reminisced on the phone call she’d had with her boss not too long ago. She regretted giving him an update once he let her know that he was concerned…
“Ivy, how long do you plan to stay in his house?” Eric questioned. “Don’t you find it odd that he would leave you in there by yourself?”
“He said just to wait here, that he’d be back soon, and as far as me finding it odd, not really… you have to consider the source. Apparently, he had some people run background checks on me and everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was being videotaped right now. He seems like he could easily be the paranoid type…” She kept a tidbit to herself, though, one which proved that though Paxton was in fact suspicious by nature, he had reason to be. He’d had his share of stalkers. One person had even managed to get into his home and one had gotten on the stage, having to be forcibly removed. The final straw had been t
he woman who kept sending him locks of her hair then threatened to kill him if he didn’t agree to marry her.
She shook the thoughts out of her mind and yawned. It was two in the morning and she’d seen him perform again just a few hours ago. This time he’d allowed her to sit on stage, right behind the curtain, out of view. She’d tried with all of her might to detect helpers dressed in black crawling about the ground giving the madman a helping hand, but she saw nothing. Only a bare-chested Paxton in a long black leather coat, matching leather pants, and dark cowboy boots adorned with a red cobra could be seen.
He moved entirely too fast, too slick, and his movements were deliberate, contrived, and flowed like water from the sea. Paxton had gone from a beautifully whimsical display of tiny angels dancing on the stage—himself wearing a little pink tutu over his perfectly fitted pants, swaying his hips amongst the hologram of angelic cuties—to dodging daggers thrown at him as he was being spun on a large metal wheel. At one point he even shot her a glance and blew her a kiss, but it happened so fast, she questioned if it had truly occurred.
Right after the show, they rode out in a limousine to one of the casino buffets for dinner. She was amused by the offer but found the food to be surprisingly tasty. Paxton said he enjoyed a good dinner, be it an angus burger and fries or a five-course fancy meal. She found herself laughing at the man’s jokes over bowls of salad, platters of sushi, and made-to-order spaghetti. At one point in time, he ran his large ring-covered hand over hers and remarked once again about how sexy she was. She hated how much she liked the way he looked at her and spoke to her…