by Sloane Tanen
“Jordan,” I corrected, suddenly feeling insignificant.
“Whatever.”
“I’ve been around long enough to know that any press is good press,” Joe said. “Milan is right.”
“Of course she is,” Chaz said excitedly. “It’s all just information. Nobody’s held responsible if it turns out Jennifer Love Hewitt is in fact a man or if Mary Kate eats nothing but I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray from the can. It’s all speculation. That’s the fun.”
“For you, perhaps.” Eve said, “It’s your job, for God’s sake.”
“Now come clean, Drama Queen,” Chaz said. “This is nothing but an opportunity for you, sweetheart. You’re lucky to get a mention in Golf Digest these days. A little scandal would serve you almost as well as a spray tan. If Ned’s book is a success, you benefit.”
“Chaz is right, Eve,” Milan said.
“That’s not the kind of publicity I’m looking for,” she said in disgust. “I’m a real actor.” Her accent was back in force.
Chaz rolled his eyes.
“The tabloids are another form of theater,” Chaz continued. “You’ve got to know how to work the stage.”
“I don’t want to be Audrina Patridge, for God’s sake,” she moaned. “Nobody respectable works the tabloids.”
“Really, Angelina?” Chaz snorted. “Or Jennifer, or Reese?”
“They don’t work the tabloids; you guys hunt them down.”
“Look, Sunshine. How do you think the paparazzi know where they’ll be, with whom, and at what time? We get calls. Who do you think makes those calls?”
“You mean to suggest they work with you?”
“Well, you didn’t hear it here, Einstein, but duh. Try as I might, I can’t just miraculously be at all the right places all the time, can I? I’m not a superhero.”
Eve looked as shocked as I was.
“Is that true?” she asked Cisco.
He nodded, clearly in on the game himself.
“Almost always,” Milan admitted. “I mean, a lot more so since I’m unemployable, but there was always some of that going on.”
“It’s a necessary relationship,” Chaz explained.
Eve didn’t say anything.
“And people love a redemption story,” Chaz said. “Ned’s book can only help your careers, which, frankly, could all use a little nip and tuck,” he cackled, clearing his throat before continuing. “Don’t tell me you all came on this GLEA tour because you actually care about people less fortunate than yourselves. Please. It was a PR stunt for each and every one of you.
“So,” he said, standing up now, “why not look at this as a gift from the publicity gods? On the one hand,” Chaz said, extending his left hand like a scale as he spoke: “Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ned Harrison airs the dirty laundry of Hollywood’s teen elite, or,” he said, unfolding his right hand and lowering the scale, “five faux-Hollywood do-gooders teach hungry African kids reading skills.” Chaz shifted his hands up and down in mock deliberation before dropping his right arm entirely. “Hmm, I wonder which one I’ll read first?” he asked. “And you can’t even read, for God’s sake,” Chaz snorted, unable to resist the dig at Cisco.
“I can read,” Cisco protested again. “Just not that good.”
“Whateva,” Chaz said. “Any way you slice that story, it ain’t comin’ up sexy. Especially when you’re a Goodwill Ambassador, for God’s sake. You may as well cop to it. As a confession it’s brave; as a secret it’s a career-buster.”
Chaz was making sense. There was no questioning his media savvy.
“Trust me,” he said. “I get the most hits on the people who fall the hardest. Why do you think I love Milan so much? She’s always so dusty, and then she emerges all squeaky-clean from rehab twice a year, and it’s such a thrill.”
Milan made a pretty little curtsy.
“Nobody wants to hear about people who never screw up,” Chaz continued. “They’re boring. Dakota Fanning, b-o-r-i-n-g. Amanda Seyfried, b-o-r-i-n-g. Emmy Rossum…”
“B-o-r-i-n-g!” we all sang together.
“People want a train wreck,” Chaz agreed happily. “And you guys are the Express. Choo-choo,” he chuffed smiling as he made a gesture of pulling a train horn with an evil grin.
“So what do you think we should do?” Milan asked.
“Nothing. Thanks to Fran’s lack of discretion,” Chaz glared at me, “the cat’s out of the bag on all of us all now, right? So let Ned try and piece together a novel based on Fran’s phone entries. It’ll take him years to write a decent book. In the meantime, as soon as we get back, we’ll send out our own press release to every paper and tabloid detailing everything that happened here. As long as we beat Ned to the punch, he’s got no novel. Think of David Letterman. It’s all a matter of how the information is revealed. It’s all about maintaining control.”
We all agreed. Chaz was right.
“Now, Francesca, my dear,” he snapped his fingers. “It’s well past lunchtime, and I’m starving. Go in there and get me something to eat. Cleaning up your mess has left me famished, Frances. Absolutely famished.”
Dirty Laundry: The Spin Cycle
I’m not a catering service,” Ned snapped, looking up from his computer after I’d made my request for food and drinks. He was angry that I’d decided against throwing my friends under the bus for the thrill of his lofty authorship.
“Tell me what’s going on out there,” he demanded, licking his writerly chops.
I didn’t say anything.
“I honestly can’t imagine who you think you’re protecting, Francesca.”
“I just can’t do it.”
“You Americans with your simple sense of loyalty and camaraderie,” he mumbled. “It’s quite ridiculous, you know.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “English people don’t believe in loyalty and camaraderie?”
“We do,” he sneered. “We’re just better judges of character.”
“Right. Like the Massacre at Amritsar?” I asked.
Ned looked at me and burst out laughing. “Bravo, Francesca. Bravo.” His smile lit up his face like a candle in a jack-o’-lantern.
I smiled back, secretly thrilling that my passion for the History Channel finally had its moment. I could tell Ned was surprise and impressed.
“You’re obviously an extraordinary girl,” Ned started. “You’re educated, you can write, you’re funny.”
“You think so?” I asked. I was loving the compliments. It would take someone as eccentric as Ned Harrison to think that I was the special one in a group of marooned celebrities. Despite his being an evil plagiarist, I enjoyed the fact that he appreciated me.
“I do, I do,” he pressed, lighting a cigar and fingering some marbles and keys in a little bowl next to his computer. “Think of the larger picture, Francesca. Think of your career.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting down across from him. I’d never really given my career a lot of thought.
“I can help you along,” he suggested. “We could even write the book together,” he exhaled.
I shook my head.
“Or, if you don’t want to be involved,” he puffed casually, “I’ll write you a glowing reference for university? Whatever you like. Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge. You can write your own ticket. We can help each other out.”
A letter of recommendation? Was he kidding?
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I said.
“What then? What do you want?” His face was pink with frustration.
I paused to think if there was actually anything worth trading my morality on.
“Just something for us to eat and drink,” I said.
“Tiresome,” he mumbled, looking back at his computer screen now. I was invisible.
I started to sweat. It was fine to have a sense of pride, but we couldn’t eat it for dinner, and the idea of going back to coconut juice was just depressing.
“Could I just have a few cans of soup?
” I asked. “You can’t starve us.”
“I need you to tell me more about them, Francesca!” he shouted, pounding his fists on the table. “Fill in the blanks. What I have here is good, but it’s not enough. I’m frustrated. I feel cheated.”
“You feel cheated? How do you think I feel?”
“It’s not about you, little girl, don’t you see that?”
“I do. Very clearly.” I stopped to collect my thoughts. “So you’re going to hold us hostage until I cave in?”
“Enough with this hostage nonsense,” he quickly said, holding up his hands. “You’re all free to go. And as soon as I tune up the plane, I’ll fly you out. But that could take days…weeks even,” he said without a hint of irony.
“I don’t know anything else,” I pleaded, weakening at the prospect of a night without food. “Nothing happened last night. And do you honestly think they would tell me anything else at this point? It’s like you said, they don’t trust me,” I lied. “But I’ll try again, OK?”
He looked at me pointedly and looked back down at his laptop.
“If there’s a will, there’s a way, Francesca. If there’s a will, there’s a way.” He gestured to a bottle of water and a huge bag of nuts before looking back at his laptop. “Take them and go. Go.”
I grabbed the stuff and went back outside.
***
“For the love of God, shut up, Eve,” Milan finally said after a half hour of listening to her complain about her ruined career at the hands of Ned Harrison. “You have no career. So it really doesn’t matter about your yearnings for men with saggy balls. Nobody will care…and if they do, it will only serve to remind them that you still exist. Remember what Chaz said.”
“I just feel like I’m the only one who really has something at stake,” Eve whined.
“Hello, the guy knows Cisco can’t read,” Milan said, kissing Cisco sweetly on the cheek. “That’s embarrassing.”
“I can read,” Cisco sulked.
“Oh, he’ll end up being the poster boy for some literacy program. It’ll just make him more famous,” Eve sulked. “And the same is true for Jonah. I’m the only one who can’t parlay my dirty laundry into something,” she paused, searching for the right word, “something more.”
“So what? You think your secrets are more outrageous than ours?” Jonah asked.
“A little,” she admitted.
“OK,” Cisco finally said, “I can raise you.”
“Yes?” she asked, placing her hands together and pressing them to her lips in hopeful prayer.
Cisco paused to think. Thinking was a stressful verb for Cisco. One could almost hear the exercising of the limp brain muscles.
“I don’t always recycle,” he finally said.
“Oooooh,” she purred in mock revelation. “Scandalous!”
“All right,” he admitted. “I never do…unless someone is watching.”
“Whatever, Cisco.”
“I eat steak at home. Sometimes even veal.”
“While we appreciate your admissions of hypocrisy,” Eve said, shaking her head, “it just doesn’t feel on par with having an affair with the most famous man in England and then setting his pied-à-terre on fire. You know? Just not the same.”
“I wax my chest?” he threw at us like a fly ball at a Little League game.
“Again,” Eve said, “really unappealing but not entirely newsworthy.”
“It’s newsy-ish,” Chaz yawned, sucking lazily on the information guarantee.
“I had a nose job,” Cisco finally blurted out.
“Whaaaaaat?” Milan shrieked. “You are grossing me out, man.”
“Yes!” Chaz said, pumping a fat fist into the air. “I knew something about you was different after your Disney Possum days.”
“Well, there it is,” Cisco said, casually popping a nut into his mouth.
I knew once Cisco confessed, someone would try to top him. They were a competitive group, and they didn’t like being one-upped.
“I had a boob job,” Milan offered.
“That’s no secret, jingle bells,” Chaz said. “Try again.”
“I put Ex-Lax in Kirsten Dunst’s mojito so she’d miss her audition for Naughty Corner.”
“Jesus Christ,” Eve said.
“You did that?” Joe laughed.
Milan nodded. “I don’t regret it either. It’s the best role I ever had. And she would have gotten it back then. Oh, I also accidentally pushed Kristen Stewart off the set when we were filming.”
We all looked at her in disbelief.
“What?” she shrugged innocently. “She was upstaging me.”
“Aren’t you guys like best friends?” I asked.
“We were,” she sighed regretfully.
“All right,” Eve cleared her throat, “You know those naked pictures of Avery Printz? The ones that came out last year that she so passionately denied being her?”
We all nodded.
“They weren’t of her. They were of me.” She was smiling this perverted little half grin I’d never seen before.
“Nooooo!” Chaz gasped. I thought he might take off, he was so amped.
Eve nodded.
“How?” I asked.
“Peter’s son David was dating Avery at the time, so when the pictures he’d taken of me leaked to the press, he convinced David to lie and say they were of her. We kind of have the same complexion.”
“Poor li’l Ave,” Chaz laughed. “Her whole girl-next-door persona was destroyed after that. Why would David agree? It’s so wrong.”
“I think Peter kind of forced him into it,” she shrugged. “You know, he gets a really good allowance.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Chaz cried. “So Peter lets Avery take the fall to protect his own ass…and yours.” He swallowed a fistful of nuts. “Hmm, like father, like son, I guess.”
“I gather she dumped David shortly thereafter?” I asked.
“Yes,” Eve said, clearly enjoying her confession. “I guess it is pretty disgusting,” she admitted.
I knew this was my moment to come clean. I was fairly certain that Ned was the only one who had bothered reading all my texts. Milan and the others would have only read what I’d written about them. And besides, once we got out of here they would all know the truth. I took a deep breath.
“My dad isn’t dead,” I said. “He just had an affair. I lied about him dying. I lied to get here. I wanted to win the essay contest.”
They all stared at me with their mouths hanging open.
“What?”
“You lied about your dad dying?” Jonah asked, looking at me with horror.
“Yes. He left my mom and is having a baby with his girlfriend.” I paused. “I was really mad.”
“That’s cold, Francesca,” Cisco said.
“I know,” I stammered.
“Who would do that?” Milan looked at me like I was the one who pushed my best friend down the stairs. I mean, in the scheme of things, my crime didn’t seem that heinous.
“I never thought I would win the contest,” I admitted. “I entered on a whim. Once I’d won, I didn’t know how to get out of it. It was too embarrassing.”
“But why did you lie to me?” Cisco asked.
“And me?” Jonah added.
“I don’t know. I guess I liked being a part of something. Being fractured made me feel like I was more interesting.”
“Now that’s pathetic,” Eve grinned.
“I know,” I said.
It was quiet for a few seconds before Joe spoke.
“I was in a porn movie,” he said, hanging his head but raising his eyes with a sly grin. “A few actually.”
I was so grateful that he got the attention off me that the shock of his admission nearly didn’t register.
“Whaaaaaaaat?” We all gasped. Jonah looked like he might faint.
“It was 1974,” he said, taking a deep breath. “The Double Dutch Bus, Double Dutch Two, and Little Head Riding Good.”
We all burst out laughing. It was really hard to imagine Joe as a young person…let alone naked…let alone having sex.
“Impressive!” Chaz exclaimed. “But how is it possible that nobody ever discovered it?” Chaz continued in disbelief. “Nothing gets by me. I’m a Google god.”
“I had a nose job too,” Joe added without a beat.
We were on the ground hysterical now. Joe was all right looking, but he had a big nose. A really big nose.
“I hope you sued your doctor?” Milan chortled.
“No. I asked for this,” he smiled, touching his honker. “My agent suggested I might do better as a character actor. I used to look more like him,” he said, pointing at Jonah. “And once I got the part on Small Secrets, I was glad I’d done it, if for no other reason than that I knew nobody would ever recognize me from my previous career.”
“And what was your acting name?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
“Joe Jangles.”
Needless to say we were all laughing so hard by this time that we had to take about ten minutes to collect ourselves. Jonah was laughing hardest of all, so it came as a particular surprise when he cleared his throat to speak.
“I think I’m gay.”
“I knew it!” Chaz clapped immediately as he stood to do a little victory jig. “I knew it! There was no way I was buying that you were straight.”
Chaz looked around awkwardly before sitting back down trying to wipe the smile off his face and bury his less than polite reaction. “Sorry,” he bowed his head. “That was rude.”
“Wowza,” Cisco mused. “That’s some hypocrisy, man. Jesus won’t like that.”
I was stunned.
“You’re gay?” I finally said.
“I think so,” he nodded apologetically. “Yes.”
“And I’m the bad guy?” I said.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure. I’d hoped. I thought maybe…”
“You lied to me, Jonah. You told me you liked me! That you wanted to be with me!”
“It did seem like a bit of a stretch,” Chaz whispered to Milan, who nodded in agreement. I ignored them and kept talking.