Leading Man

by Benjamin Svetkey

  There was a smiley emoticon indicating that last line was a joke. Or maybe it was Abraham Lincoln kissing a penguin—I could never really tell what Eliska’s emoticons were supposed to be. I read her words several more times, imagining Eliska as a young girl at the height of the Cold War, trapped behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, peering out the window of a snow-encrusted dacha, waiting anxiously for a letter from a boy in Leningrad. I could practically hear Doctor Zhivago’s theme music. Under normal circumstances, I’d have written her back right away, but I clicked the e-mail closed. These weren’t normal circumstances. I would have to find time for Eliska later.

  I was freaking out over Sammy. Worse, I was freaking out over the fact that I was freaking out. I couldn’t figure out what the hell my problem was. Hadn’t I wanted this for years? Then why couldn’t I shake the nagging feeling that I had made a big mistake? Of course, I always had a nagging feeling I’d made a big mistake whenever I got close to a woman, but this felt different. This wasn’t the same old gamophobia. I wasn’t imagining thick ankles or hallucinating veiny arms; this wasn’t about my fear of intimacy or inability to commit. This time I was pretty sure I really had screwed up.

  I kept thinking about what Sam had said—how I knew her better than anybody. I realized that was only half true. I knew everything there was to know about twenty-four-year-old Sammy, from how many pumps of butter she liked on her movie popcorn to what sort of bristles she preferred on her toothbrush. Presumably, at thirty-seven, she still enjoyed three pumps and a medium-hard brush, but in other ways she was a completely different person. So was I. We weren’t candy-eyed tweens sharing ice cream in a sofa sleeper in a Greenwich Village studio anymore. We were supposed to be grown-ups.

  I realized something else, as well. All those years I spent lying in wait, posing as Sammy’s platonic buddy as part of my elaborate ruse to win her back—turned out I wasn’t entirely pretending. When she called at two a.m. to talk about Johnny’s latest medical crisis, or some career setback of her own, or whatever, I wasn’t feigning my sympathy. I genuinely did care. I truly wanted to be there for her to lean on. All along I may have been scheming and plotting, but that didn’t mean I was faking my feelings. I barely noticed it was happening, but over countless late-night calls and catching-up dinners, Sammy and I got close in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Maybe she wasn’t really the One—maybe she never had been—but she was something else that was almost as rare and nearly as valuable. A real friend.

  I just hoped I hadn’t messed it up with a one-night stand at the Shui.

  I didn’t bother to check for an e-mail from Sammy—she was still on her flight back to New York. But I knew there wouldn’t be an e-mail even after she landed. Sammy hated e-mail. When it came to letter writing, she believed in the sanctity of stationery. When she contacted me again it would either be with a handwritten note or, more likely, a late-night phone call. I had no idea what was going through her mind. She didn’t offer any clues when I left her packing her bags in her hotel suite. She simply gave me a long, slow hug at the door, kissed me gently on the lips, then stepped back and adjusted the belt on her bathrobe. “Don’t forget to write,” she said, smiling. She hadn’t used that line on me in years, but it was her favorite parting back in our college days, when she was still encouraging me to become a journalist.

  But I knew what had to be done. As her friend, I couldn’t complicate her life with an affair that she only thought she wanted because she was lonely. I had to nip it in the bud before it went any further. I took a deep breath and made myself a promise: no matter what Sammy was thinking, no matter what she might be planning for us, I had to be the strong one and do the right thing.

  Meanwhile, there was an e-mail from Carla. She was assigning me an interview with Suki Monroe, whoever that was. This was starting to happen a lot; Carla would assign me a story on a celebrity I had never heard of before. It seemed that nobody wanted to read about old-fashioned movie stars anymore. Instead, in 2008, a brand-new crop of “reality” stars with funny, unfamiliar names—like Kardashian and Gosselin and Obama—were sucking up all the oxygen in the media. Every season, I felt myself falling more and more out of step with my once beloved pop culture. Worse than out of step—half the time I was horrified by what I was seeing. Movies based on theme park rides. TV dating shows for midgets. Taylor Hicks. I was just shy of thirty-eight, but already I was aging out of the target demographic. The culture was moving on without me.

  Suki Monroe, it turned out, was indeed a reality star, of a sort. She was the flamboyant, hugely successful restaurateur who had just opened a new theme eatery on Hollywood Boulevard called Celebrity. It was one of those brilliant ideas that makes you wonder why nobody had thought of it before: a place where unfamous paying customers could experience, for a couple of hours, what it was like to be Jack Nicholson. From the moment you arrived at Celebrity’s red-carpeted entrance (where fake paparazzi pretended to take your picture) you were treated like a member of the A-list. You’d get ushered past a line of waiting customers (or, rather, a bunch of extras being paid to look like customers) and escorted directly to your table, the best in the house (like every table at Celebrity). At least once during your meal, you’d be approached by a (paid) fan asking for an autograph. “In the future,” promised Celebrity’s Warholian advertising slogan, “everybody will be famous for three courses.”

  “I know you don’t normally write about restaurants,” Carla wrote in her e-mail assigning me the story, “but this seems right up your alley. It’s all about your favorite subject—fame! The interview is set for Friday night. Dinner at Celebrity. Bon appétit.”

  She was not Asian, nor was she related in any way to Marilyn. Her real name was Janice Smith, but she changed it to the more attention-grabbing Suki Monroe when, at seventeen, she left Ohio for Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actress. When that didn’t work out, Suki pursued producers. She ended up marrying and divorcing three of them over a period of fifteen years. With the money she made from those profitable failures she opened her first restaurant in West Hollywood in 1996. It was called Formaggio alla Griglia, and it wowed the LA food world by giving the lowly grilled cheese sandwich a gourmet makeover and turning it into a sexy, decadent treat. Three years later, Suki jumped into LA’s cutthroat high-end cupcake business by opening her first Shut Your Pie Hole cupcake shop. Within two years, she controlled Los Angeles’s small baked goods trade with the iron grip of a mafia boss.

  From everything that I read about her in the clip file, she was as flaky as she was formidable. For starters, she wore a turban, not a look you saw a lot of in LA since Tallulah Bankhead passed away. For another, she was such a devoted animal activist she once tried to ban fur-wearing customers from eating in her restaurants (she reluctantly rescinded the edict after the Los Angeles Times pointed out how many swine were slaughtered every month to fill croque monsieur sandwiches at Formaggio alla Griglia). But Suki could also be ruthless. A few years back, she made a play for the ultimate culinary trophy in Hollywood—catering the Governors Ball at the Oscars. When Wolfgang Puck beat back her challenge, Suki took it hard. In an interview with Los Angeles Magazine, she dismissively referred to Puck as “Ronald McDonald with a Düsseldorf accent.” As far as I could tell from the clips, she still hadn’t apologized.

  When I arrived at Celebrity on Friday night at 7:30, I couldn’t help but be impressed. The fake paparazzi at the entrance went berserk when I stepped onto the red carpet, snapping pretend pictures and begging me to pose for their prop cameras. Of course, they also went berserk over the elderly tourist couple who arrived before me, and over everybody else with reservations that night. The extras pretending to be customers in line for a table were pretty convincing, too, although they had the easiest acting jobs in Hollywood. All they had to do was stand behind velvet ropes and gawk with wide-eyed astonishment as “celebrities” filed into the dining room. When I got to the hostess station, there was a moment of confusion when the hostess rea
lized I was meeting Suki herself for dinner. That made me an actual VIP. She was trying to figure out how to suck up to me for real, instead of just make-believe.

  Suki kept me waiting at our table for fifteen minutes, which was about average when interviewing famous people, even famous restaurateurs. I was glad for the time it gave me to watch Celebrity in motion, to observe the clockwork of the operation. I noticed, for instance, a blond woman in a blue dress get up from her corner table and walk over to another table halfway across the room. She asked the delighted diners for their autographs, and jumped and yelped with over-the-top enthusiasm when they signed her pad. Less than five minutes later, she did exactly the same thing to another table. Like the fake paparazzi outside, the fake autograph hound in the blue dress might as well have been an animatronic robot. She repeated the same thirty-second script over and over again. I was truly in awe of what Suki had accomplished here: she had turned fame into a post-ironic theme ride.

  “I’m Suki Monroe,” she said, sneaking up on me from behind. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  I had to admit, the black silk turban took years off her face. Or maybe it was Botox. Around her throat, a two-carat red diamond glittered in a platinum choker like a tracheotomy by Tiffany. She was an attractive, extremely well-put-together forty-six-year-old multimillionaire. From the clips I’d read, I knew she could also be a prickly interview subject. But even for a famous diva of the LA foodie scene, coverage in a major national magazine like KNOW was a big deal (after all, Time had been running puff pieces on Wolfgang for years). So Suki was on her best behavior. Better than best: the truth is, we had one of the mostly bluntly honest conversations about fame I’d ever had with anyone who ever had any. Carla was spot-on—Suki was right up my alley.

  “Do you know why everybody wants to be famous?” Suki asked me while we nibbled on salmon canapé appetizers. “Have you ever thought about fame, I mean really thought about it? What fame is exactly? Why people are so obsessed with it?”

  “As a matter of fact—” I started to say.

  “I’ll tell you why,” she went on. “Fame is the ultimate status symbol. And status, when you cut through all the crap, is what life is all about. Everybody wants to feel special. Everybody wants to think that they’re better than the next guy. Everybody wants to be higher up on the food chain than their neighbors. And there’s nobody higher on the food chain in our world than celebrities.”

  “It’s interesting that you say that because—”

  “Most people in their daily lives never get to feel special in that way,” Suki rolled on. “Most people never even encounter a celebrity in their lives. And if they are lucky enough to see one, or even shake one’s hand, it’s a big moment. They take pictures to show their friends. It’s like some of that celebrity specialness has rubbed off on them. It gives them bragging rights. It gives them status: ‘I’ve met Jimmy Kimmel, have you?’ ”

  I felt the phone in my pocket vibrating. I wondered if it might be Samantha. It had been four days since our night together at the Shui, and I hadn’t heard from her yet, by letter or by phone. But it was only 8:20 in LA, 11:20 in New York. That was a little early for Sammy to be calling. Unless sleeping together had bumped me up to an earlier calling time. I did my best to ignore the vibrating while I listened to Suki explain fame.

  “What we’re doing here at Celebrity,” she said, “is democratizing fame. We’re giving everyone a chance to experience it. For once in their ordinary lives, normal folk get to feel like the most important people in the room. They get to have the status. And even though everyone knows it’s fake, that they aren’t really celebrities, they still get a rush out of it. They still get to feel what it’s like. They get to be famous without having to do anything to earn it. Except, of course,” she added with a grin, “pay the check at the end of the night.”

  “Yes, but isn’t there something sort of sad about that?” I said, finally managing to squeeze in a question. “Doesn’t it say something kind of pathetic about human beings—that fame is the thing that gives us the most status? Rather than, say, intelligence or empathy or bravery?” I could feel my phone vibrating again. Jesus, Sammy, hold your horses.

  “You’re probably right,” Suki answered. “But it’s human nature. People want to be famous because it gives them the illusion that their life is important. That it actually matters that they’re alive. That even after they die, some part of them will live after them. Fame is really a state of grace, only with money and power and beautiful lovers.” A waiter slipped next to Suki to deliver her a note on a silver tray. She unfolded the paper, skimmed its contents, and looked up at me with a smile. “I’m so sorry—I know this is rude—but there’s a phone call I really must take,” she said, getting up from the table. “It’s Jon Bon Jovi. A real celebrity! We’re doing an event for him. Just give me a moment.”

  While Suki was gone, I pulled out my phone to see if Sammy had left a message. But it wasn’t Sammy who’d been calling. It was Robin’s 323 number in Silver Lake. She was still writing for DINKs, but had finally moved out of my loft and rented a small house in the hipster enclave east of Hollywood. She even had a new girlfriend. I assumed that was what the calls must be about—Robin had had her heart broken for the umpteenth time. I decided to deal with it later and was about to slip the phone back into my pocket when it started vibrating again. It was Robin calling for the third time. I answered.

  “Are you all right?” Robin asked, sounding more anxious than I’d ever heard her before. “Where are you? Do you need me?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, puzzled. “I’m at that new restaurant Celebrity. Do you know about it? It’s really wild. You get to be a movie star for a night—”

  “Max,” Robin interrupted me, “you haven’t heard, have you?”

  “Heard what? What are you talking about?”

  “Oh fuck,” Robin moaned into the phone. “I can’t believe I’m the one who has to tell you this. This so sucks.” Her voice had that reedy warble it always got just before she burst into tears. “Max, something really horrible has happened. There’s been a car accident in New York. On the West Side Highway. A really bad one. It’s all over the news. Samantha was in the car. She’s dead, Max. Samantha is dead.”

  I don’t recall hanging up the phone. But I do remember that at first I didn’t feel a thing. “How odd,” I said to myself. “Why am I not reacting?” And then, suddenly, the Earth tilted thirty degrees on its axis. The restaurant began spinning around me as if I were in the center of a carousel. I could hear people talking and laughing, but I couldn’t focus on where their voices were coming from. I reached for a linen napkin and, as discreetly as I could, retched in it. When I looked up, there was a blond woman in a blue dress standing in front of me, holding out a pad and pen.

  “Excuse me,” she said, acting very nervous. “I’m so sorry to bother you. But I’m such a huge fan of your work. You’ve been such an inspiration to me and to so many others. Would it be okay if I asked for your autograph?”

  I must have had a complete dissociative breakdown. I could barely remember who I was, let alone understand why this strange woman wanted my autograph. I took her pad and pen and scribbled the only name I could think of. With flawless penmanship, I wrote, “Samantha Mars.”

  18

  After somehow managing to get home, I spent the next three days holed up watching wall-to-wall coverage of Samantha’s death on the cable news channels. Details of the crash were coming in drip by drip, like Chinese water torture.

  Sammy had been on her way to Westchester to have dinner with her parents. For reasons nobody yet understood, instead of taking a chauffeured town car, her usual mode of transport, Sammy decided to drive herself in the Mars’s seldom-used BMW sports wagon. The minute she left the garage, she was trailed by a black Ford SUV—license plate 944BBDC—driven by a self-described “photojournalist” named Andrew Leighton. According to CNN, Leighton had a long history as an aggressive paparazzo going as far bac
k as 1993, when John Kennedy Jr. and Daryl Hannah filed a restraining order against him. According to MSNBC, Sammy had complained to friends about Leighton’s black SUV, saying she felt like she was being stalked.

  At some point while driving north on the West Side Highway, Samantha must have finally got fed up with being followed. She attempted to elude Leighton. A witness told Fox News that Sammy’s car abruptly accelerated, weaving between traffic in the double lanes, but that Leighton continued pursuing at high speed. Just after Sammy passed the Riverside Drive exit, before reaching the Henry Hudson Bridge, she lost control of her vehicle. It swerved into an embankment and spun around. Leighton slammed on his breaks, but not in time. He plowed head-on into Samantha’s driver-side door, crushing the BMW like a soda can, killing Sammy instantly. Leighton’s SUV flipped on impact and collided with a pillar. He may have taken a few minutes to die.

  I kept waiting to wake up. I could actually feel my mind pushing back against the fact that Sammy was dead, blocking the thought by any means necessary. Any minute now, I told myself, Sammy was going to appear on TV to announce that it had all been an Andy Kaufman–style hoax. She had jumped out of the BMW just in time. Some part of me must have known that she really was dead—I could see an avalanche of grief heading my way—but I clung to denial for as long as I possibly could. Which wasn’t very long.