by Robinne Lee
For a moment I was speechless. And then a random thought came to mind. “Seven minutes.”
He nodded, slow. “Seven minutes, yeah.”
“Do people know what it’s about?”
“No one knows what it’s about. Well, maybe Desmond…”
“Oh, Hayes, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well … It taught me to be a little more selective about who I bring back to my hotel room.”
I was quiet for a moment, respectful. “I thought it was about falling in love.”
He shook his head. “It’s about falling.”
* * *
On Tuesday, the boys headed out to Bogotá. And I went back to work.
south america
Friday morning, on my way to Marchand Raphel, Hayes called from Colombia.
“It’s crazy here, Sol. Our security is at a level I’ve never seen. There are about two hundred of them, and they’re armed. Like military specialists. They follow us everywhere.”
“What are they protecting you from? Fourteen-year-old girls trying to kiss you?”
“Yes,” he laughed. “Exactly.”
“Seriously.”
“Kidnappers. Apparently that’s a problem.”
“Be safe, okay.”
“You be safe. I have armed guards following me to the loo. I think I’m good.”
The phone signaled then. The gallery. I told Hayes I would call him back, and switched over to a frazzled-sounding Lulit. “Are you on your way in?”
“Yes, we’ve got Cecilia Chen at ten.”
Cecilia was an established photographer and director of art films. Caribbean born, New York bred, she’d spent the last twenty years in Paris building up a portfolio of exceptional work and was now looking to relocate to Los Angeles. She’d come recommended by one of our current artists, Pilar Anchorena. Cecilia also happened to be black, Asian, and female, the holy triumvirate of Marchand Raphel. Lulit and I were looking forward to meeting with her.
“It’s been canceled,” Lulit said then, “but just … hurry.”
“What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“Everything’s okay. Just waiting for you.”
But she had not been truthful. There were two police cruisers in front of the gallery when I approached, and immediately the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Three officers had congregated in front of our building, talking, milling, one writing in a notepad, a fourth seated in one of the cars. Things were not okay.
I parked in my spot behind the gallery and entered through the back door.
Lulit, Matt, and Josephine were all standing in the kitchen, their faces solemn.
“What happened? Was there a burglary?”
They looked at me. Funny. But not talking. Matt sipped from his espresso.
“What happened?”
“We had an incident,” Josephine said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s just graffiti.”
“Then why are the police here?”
Lulit took a moment to respond. “They’re taking it pretty seriously.”
“They’re taking what pretty seriously?”
Without speaking she grabbed my hand and walked me through the gallery, to the front entrance and out the door. There, on the lower part of the white brick wall that had been blocked from my view by the police cars, spray-painted in large black letters, were the words DIE WHORE.
“Oh my God. OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod. Is this for me? Is this about me? Is this because of me?” My head was spinning and I could not feel my legs. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Let’s go inside,” Lulit said, taking me by the arm.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“You’re not going to be sick. You’re going to be fine.”
I’d begun to shake. “Those fucking fans. Those fucking crazy fans.”
“All right … Let’s get you a glass of water. Jo, can you get her some water? They’re going to want to ask you some questions, but it’s okay.”
“It’s not okay.”
“It’s going to be okay. They’ve photographed it. They’ve dusted for prints. They’re going to check the camera footage. It’s probably just a couple of teenage girls. It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not okay, Lulit.”
“Look at me. Look at me. It’s going to be okay.”
She led me back into our office and sat me down, and I could not keep my water from sloshing out of the glass, I was shaking so.
“Who called the police?”
“Josephine did. She told them what was going on, the phone calls, the threats. They came immediately.”
Josephine was flustered. “I know you said to use discretion, I know you said ‘No comment,’ but I thought this was a pretty big deal. I’m sorry.”
“No. You did the right thing.” My mind was racing. “Are they going to paint it? Can we paint it? Can we get rid of it before the press gets ahold of it? Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m even saying this.
“Those fucking … bitches,” I said. And then I started to laugh. We all did. “It’s not funny. I feel like I’m in high school. Except I never even got to date the cute guy in high school. Can’t I just enjoy this? It’s not fair.”
“I say we find those bitches,” Matt said, “and then we beat their asses. Who’s down? We’ve got box cutters in the back.”
* * *
If ever I had doubted my team, I appreciated them anew that morning. The way they rallied for me. They were so calm and collected, and they went about the rest of the day as if I had not potentially put us all in danger.
“Thank you,” I said to Lulit, later that afternoon, in the office.
“For what?”
“For not saying ‘I told you so.’”
She laughed at that. “Hey, even I could not have dreamt up this. I just told you to use a condom.”
“Hmm.” I smiled. “You did.”
Lulit peered into my eyes for a minute and then frowned, shaking her head. “Whatever. It’s your vagina.”
* * *
Isabelle had a sleepover at Rose’s. The girls’ friendship had been strained since November, and I knew it had everything to do with my romance with Hayes. The idea that my daughter’s relationships were unraveling because I had found love seemed like a cruel and poorly timed joke. And yet another reminder that it wasn’t “Just us. Fuck everything else.” Rose had invited both her and Georgia that night to watch Friday the 13th, and Isabelle was thrilled to be back in her good graces. I dropped her off in Westwood and returned to the house alone, still a little on edge from that morning’s incident.
I’d only just stepped in and was sorting through the mail when I came across the package: a large padded manila envelope, with no return address, postmarked from Texas. I did not, to the best of my knowledge, know anyone in Texas. But that did not stop me from ripping it open and reaching inside. The second I touched it, I recoiled, horrified. I knew, without looking, precisely what it was. And for the second time that day I was shaking and sweating and feeling physically ill. Because there in the package was an enormous dildo. There was a note accompanying it. “Go fuck yourself,” it said, “and leave our boy alone.”
They’d found me. Somehow. They’d tracked me down and discovered where I lived and violated me in such a way that it felt as if they were in my house. I could hear panting as I rushed to put on the alarm and every light, and it took me a moment to realize the panting was mine. All the glass doors facing our cherished view were black and foreboding, and even when I turned on the patio lights I could not be certain someone was not there lurking. And it felt foolish to be so unnerved by what I was certain were teenage girls, but I could not rationalize it away. The fear.
I tried calling him. Over and over. But of course he did not answer. He was onstage in Colombia, drowned by the screams of thirty-five thousand girls. How could I expect him to pick up his phone?
I had the inclination to call Daniel, but then remembered he was against this all along.
And the idea that he would leave his twenty-seven-weeks-pregnant wife on a Friday evening to come and check on me, when Isabelle was not even here, was absurd.
And it hit me then, how alone I was.
I called my mom and cried. And she listened to me blubber about being scared and torn, at the same time elated that I’d found someone who had taken the time to know me, and all the little things that made me so very happy. And how I did not want to let him go. And for the first time in as long as I could remember, it seemed to me she did not judge.
“C’est ça, l’amour, Solène. Ce n’est pas toujours parfait. Ni jamais exactement comme tu le souhaites. Mais, quand ça te tombe dessus, ça ne se contrôle pas.”
Love, she said, was not always perfect, and not exactly how you expected it to be. But when it descended upon you, there was no controlling it.
* * *
Hayes called in the middle of the night. The show had gone well, he said, but he was alarmed by my numerous messages.
“What happened?” His voice was hoarse, froggy. It was almost two their time. In the morning they were flying to Peru.
I told him everything.
“Oh, Sol,” he said when I was done relaying the extent of the day’s lunacy. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s harassment, Hayes. I’m being sexually harassed … And I know it’s probably harmless young girls, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels threatening. It feels real.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then: “What kind of security do you have there? At home?”
“I have an alarm system.”
“Do you have cameras?”
That seemed extreme. “No.”
“You need cameras.”
“Hayes, this is crazy. They’re girls. I don’t need cameras.”
“You need cameras. I’ll pay for them. I’ll have Rana ring you in the morning and she’ll get it all sorted.”
“Hayes…”
“You should have cameras, Solène. Why didn’t your ex-husband put in cameras? You’re a beautiful woman and a thirteen-year-old girl living alone in the hills. You should have cameras.”
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too. Get some sleep. I’ll call you when we get to Lima.”
* * *
In the morning, when I picked up Isabelle from Rose’s, she was not her usual chipper self. I expected tales of horror movies and late-night girl talk, but on the car ride home, she was solemn. It was becoming more and more customary.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. We were winding west on Sunset, approaching the 405. Isabelle was gazing out the passenger window, her face blank.
For a while she did not speak, and then, without diverting her attention, she said, “I don’t like people talking about you.”
“Are people talking about me?”
She nodded, quiet.
“Are your friends talking about me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’m okay with people talking about me, Izz. People talk. That’s what they do. And we live in a world, a city, obsessed with celebrity … and people talk. And much of what they say is not true. So we just ignore it, okay? I don’t care what they say, because I know who I am. You know who I am. And we don’t let them define who we are for us.”
I caught her out of the side of my eye, wiping a tear that had fallen on her cheek, her gaze still fixed out the window.
“Hey.” I reached for her, our fingers interlocking. “I’m okay. We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
If I said it enough, perhaps I would actually believe it.
* * *
She spent the afternoon in her bedroom reading. And the few times I checked on her she seemed so melancholy it hurt my heart. But I did not press her, because talking about it seemed only to upset her more. So I left her alone.
And then I went against Hayes’s advice and all the rules I’d laid down for my daughter and myself and I got online and searched my own name. Because I wanted to know. What I was up against, what they were saying, what others were consuming without my knowledge. I wanted to know the worst of it.
There was much to behold. Tabloid gossip and myriad blog posts and speculation. How we had gotten together, how long it had been going on, how serious it was, how many years there were between us. Daily Mail and Perez Hilton and TMZ. Fake Twitter and Instagram accounts with variations of my name spewing lies and filth. Fan-run websites and Tumblr pages with cruel memes. The one that would stay with me longest was “Solène Marchand: Mother, Fucker.” And photos. Far beyond the boat excursion in Anguilla and shots of us leaving the Edison Ballroom, we’d been caught a dozen-odd times. Outside of the Ace Hotel, the SLS, LAX, Bestia, Whole Foods, Nobu—places I did not even recall seeing photographers. And it had been going on for months. There I was: boarding the boat in Saint-Tropez, exiting the Chateau Marmont with him in my car, leaving the London, standing in the taxi line outside of the Grand Palais, waiting by the valet in Miami, returning from my run in Central Park. All those moments when I assumed I was still anonymous, invisible—captured.
And suffice it to say, the things they said—the fans especially—were not kind. Biting, caustic, insulting, offensive. Sexist, ageist, awful. I had to wonder which of these things Isabelle’s friends were repeating to her. And how long she could attempt to ignore it. Because, I gathered, she could only internalize it for so long before it destroyed her.
And I realized then that part of the problem with Hayes’s “no comments on his personal life” policy was that he would not defend my virtue. He had the luxury of living in his cocoon because the fandom would always protect him. They worshipped him. They adored him. There is no telling what they would do for him. And in the most extreme cases, I feared what that meant for me, and my family.
* * *
I flew down to Buenos Aires the following Sunday to meet up with the band. In my absence, they’d performed in Peru, Chile, and Paraguay, with sightseeing detours to Machu Picchu and Chile’s Lake District. Hayes had been enthusiastic at the beginning, but his excitement had started to wane.
“It’s a little stifling here,” he’d said via phone, late Saturday night from Paraguay. “It’s been nearly impossible for us to get out because the crowds have been so deep. We go straight from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the venue and then back, and all the things that I’d hoped to see I’m not seeing. In Santiago, there were about seven hundred fans outside of the hotel and they refused to disperse. The other night they sang through all three of our albums, beginning to end. With Chilean accents. It was quite charming. But loud. And I got no sleep.”
“Métro, boulot, dodo,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a French saying. You get up, you go to work, you go home, you go to sleep. It’s kind of what the rest of the world does. Not what you signed up for, huh?”
He laughed at that. “I guess not, no.”
* * *
By the time I reached the Four Seasons in Buenos Aires, it was almost eleven-thirty on Monday morning and the guys had already departed for their sound check. It was just as well, because I relished the opportunity to take a much-needed shower and crawl into our bed and sleep.
I awoke some hours later to Hayes’s body sliding up against mine, his arm wrapping around my waist, drawing me into his warmth. Like being in a womb. His breath soft at the back of my neck.
“You came back to me,” his lips buzzed my ear.
“Of course I did. Liam.”
He laughed.
“Wait. Whose room is this?”
“Mr. Marchand’s.”
“Crap. I might be in the wrong room.”
He smiled, rolling me over to face him. “Hiiii.”
“Hi.”
“You want to come with me to an August Moon concert tonight?”
“It depends…” I said.
“It depends?”
“Do I have good seats?”
His finger was trac
ing my cheekbone. “You can sit on my face.”
“Okay. In that case I’ll come.”
* * *
The Estadio José Amalfitani was a massive stadium in the Liniers neighborhood of Buenos Aires that held just shy of fifty thousand people. August Moon had managed to sell it out two nights in a row. We arrived a few hours before showtime and already thousands of girls had lined up in the large thoroughfare leading to the structure. More fans than I had ever seen congregated in one place. The band and their entourage traveled by caravan: nine vans interspersed with motorcycle police. The cavalcade winding its way through throngs of screaming girls. Barriers holding back crowds near the hotel and the stadium. This was what Desmond had been referring to when he talked about Peru being crazy. This unimaginable level of idolatry and pandemonium. It was hard to wrap one’s mind around. I sat there in the van, holding Hayes’s hand and watching the madness unfold on either side of us, wondering what was going through his head. How did one even begin to process something like this? How?
He leaned into me then, sensing my anxiety. “You’ll get used to it, Sol.”
He said it so reassuringly, but I knew—I could never get used to this.
* * *
Inside, beneath the stadium, was a maze of winding tunnels. Utilitarian rooms and dank corridors that went on and on. The guys were set up in a series of large dressing rooms: wardrobe, hair and makeup, catering, a space for their band. I watched them prep and dress and psych one another up and carouse with their stylists and their handlers, and they struck me as young again, frenzied, like high school boys before a big game.
In the final minutes before they went on, when the guys were lining up and the crowd was so loud the ceiling seemed to be shaking, Hayes took me aside and handed me a box.
“Open this,” he said, “before we go onstage.” He was fiddling with the power pack at the back of his jeans and its accompanying belt.
“You bought me a gift?”
“Just something I promised I would get you … a very long time ago.” He leaned in and kissed me then, before backing up down the long corridor, security detail flanking his sides. “I love you. Enjoy the show.”