We spoke to the police, but there was nothing threatening in the letters, they said, and from what they could tell, “Amy Rose” might be simply a first and middle name. They couldn’t tell what her full name was, nor had she included a return address or a phone number. It was as if she assumed Declan knew precisely how to get ahold of her.
I tucked those letters in a box with the others from her, but they kept coming—usually at a rate of three a week—and Amy Rose was getting angry.
Declan, sweetie, the next letter said, this is getting ridiculous. I’ve told everyone that we’ve bought a new place, and I’m moving soon, but I need you to pick me up, or at least send me the address of the new house. You know how much I love you.
Declan’s mom called one night from Dublin, saying that a nice woman named Amy Rose had called her, looking for Declan.
“I knew enough not to say anything specific,” Nell said proudly. “Sure, hasn’t Declan told me over and over how we need to be careful now? But I might have let slip that the house was on Mulholland Drive.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “You didn’t tell her the address, did you?”
“Of course not. Didn’t I just get done saying that I know how to hold my tongue? She was a lovely woman, that’s all. Seems very enamored with Declan’s acting ability, and that’s hard for a mother to resist, now, isn’t it?”
I got off the phone and called the police detective. Again, he said that without a specific threat or obvious harassment, there was little to be done. I hung up the phone and tried to console myself with the fact that there were thousands of homes on Mulholland Drive.
chapter 21
Nearly every other day, I left Uki in my office (in the south wing, that is) and drove to the fashion district in order to confer with Rosita or the cutter, or to beg the manufacturing plant to make the clothes for my line quicker. I liked the chance to escape the house, and I’d grown fond of the crowded streets of the fashion district with its packs of Hispanic teenagers, but the frequent trips pulled me away from other things I could have been working on at home. I mentioned this to Liz Morgan one day, who I still spoke to often, and she offered to help me out part-time.
“God knows I need some pocket change,” she said. “I’m not getting any parts. At least not the ones I want.”
Liz had just turned thirty, and she was starting to panic. If she didn’t make it as an actor soon, she said, it would be too late.
“That’s bullshit,” I always told her. “Declan is in his early thirties and look at him.”
“He’s a man,” Liz said, sounding resigned. “It’s much, much different.”
I hired Liz to come over a few times a week to pick up the slack. It was a balm to have her around. Between the ever chipper Berry, the sullen Trista and the overly deferential Uki, I needed someone I could truly talk to.
At first, I asked her to help Berry with Declan’s mail, which was increasing exponentially by the day. The problem was, Liz spent way too much time on it.
“Listen to this,” she’d say, reading from a letter. “‘Declan, if you could just call my mother on her eighty-second birthday, it would mean the world to her. You remind her of my father who died thirty years ago.’” Liz would sigh and look at me. “Isn’t that sweet?”
“It is,” I said. “Where does the mom live?”
She looked back at the letter for a moment. “Bari. I think that’s in Italy. But that’s okay, right? I mean, we just have to figure out the time change.”
“Head shot,” Berry would say authoritatively from the other corner. “Put it in that pile.” She gestured toward an already towering stack of letters.
Berry ran Declan’s office like an army general, her sunny personality disappearing until she decided to bop through the house in search of food. (Peanut butter was her favorite, and so, just to tweak her, I often hid it in the back of the fridge behind gallons of milk and bottles of water.)
Another assistant was hired to help respond to all the mail. We now had people all over our house, all the time.
I’ve always liked being alone. Always. It’s forever a source of amazement that so many people detest solitude. I suppose, on a clichéd level this means I’m comfortable with myself—and that surely was true for the few years before I met Declan—but that wasn’t always the case. I’ve had many neurotic years. The post-college, I-am-such-a-fuckup stage; the I’ll-never-succeed-in-this-business stage; the why-am-I-dating-such-an-asshole stage. But even then, through all those years, I adored time alone. Maybe this has to do with being raised in Manhattan when one is so rarely by oneself.
But our lives required staff now, and so the new assistant came in, and Berry and I gave Liz other odd tasks to handle.
“Not a problem,” Liz said. “This is better than the job I was going to take at Ed Debevic’s.”
Professionally, I was happy, too. The only exception was the fact that I had to drive in order to do my job, and I just couldn’t get used to the whole driving thing. My license and my precious jade car from Declan hadn’t changed that.
It was impossible to time anything accurately. If I gave myself lots of leeway to fight the gridlock, I might get lucky, but then I was thirty minutes early. More often than not, I wasn’t so “lucky” and instead found myself calling Rosita or Victor on my cell phone and apologizing profusely for being late.
“It’s this goddamn traffic!” I would say.
After my incessant complaints, Declan suggested I make a game of it.
“What?” I said, irritated to be pulled out of my rants about gridlock and asshole drivers who failed to give the thank-you wave.
“Look, love,” Declan said, pulling out a Thomas guide. “Try to find a different way to take, okay? Look for little side streets and shortcuts. Then time yourself and give yourself a prize when you beat your record.”
“A prize? Like what?”
“Well, I usually award myself a pint or two, but maybe you could give yourself a pair of earrings you’ve fancied.”
“Hmm,” I said. My competitive nature flared, even though it would be myself I would compete with.
The next day, instead of taking the 405 to Pico, I got off on Olympic and wound my way from 16th to Santee to 14th. I shaved off five minutes from the day prior. Another time, I tried taking Beverly Glen to Sunset to La Brea. A disaster—an extra twenty-five minutes. Once, when I tried to take a different route home at the end of the day, I made a wrong turn and came across a street seemingly in flames. I hit the brakes and leaned forward to peer through my windshield. The street was filled with trash cans, all ablaze and tended by homeless people, an eerie sight that could have been Manhattan during the depression.
Over the months, I awarded myself a Chanel bag and Yves Saint Laurent shoes and M. A. C lipsticks, all for good driving time. But it couldn’t sway me. I still hated the driving.
Graham and Declan’s PR agent asked if they could set up a few interviews for me. I told them I’d never been interviewed, and I didn’t think I had anything particularly interesting to say. I wanted to dial down the media fracas, not crank it up. But Graham pointed out that this would help me as well as Declan. I could get my “message” out there about my designs. I didn’t mention that there was no message, that I just designed clothes I liked, because I realized Graham had a point. Why turn down a chance to get my designs in the press?
I gave my first interview for a women’s magazine called Kate. Just that one woman’s name. I was never a big magazine reader, but the few times I’d seen Kate, I rather liked it. There was a certain irreverence about it because it didn’t necessarily ass-kiss the makeup companies and the designers. Instead, it field-tested products and clothes and didn’t hesitate to slam them.
“Normally, they have a three-month lag time,” Angela, Dec’s publicist said, “but some story fell through, so this will run soon. They just want to know what it’s like to be married to a movie star. It’ll be a short piece.”
What happened to my m
essage? I wondered.
The reporter was young. When she arrived at the Starbucks in Santa Monica where we planned to meet, I mis-took her for a high-school student. She wore low, tight jeans and thong sandals. Her skin was as smooth and creamy as milk. Carrie was her name, and she clearly thought that all my nice, planned answers about Declan and my informational speeches about my designs were insufficient, because she kept digging for something more. She smiled blandly when I talked; she made a few notes, but the same questions kept coming in varying forms: “Are you jealous of the attention Declan gets from other women?” (No, I said. I’m really not the jealous type); “Isn’t it hard to watch him fool around with someone on-screen?” (It’s strange, I said, but not hard. I know it’s his job. And did I tell you about my Kendall Gold dresses?); “Well, I’m not much interested in Kendall Gold, but what about Lauren Stapleton? I’ve heard she wants Declan back.” (I struggled not to make a disgusted face. Fact was, I’d been hearing the same thing when I snuck a glance at the tabloid clippings Max sent over. I affected an unconcerned shrug and told Carrie that Lauren had had her chance.)
The sun was beaming through the window at this point, right into my eyes. I was hot and cranky, and I wanted to be home, or at least inside my little green car.
Carrie asked me for the third time to describe what it was like to watch Declan kiss someone on-screen.
“Honestly,” I said, trying to shift away from the sun. My chair scraped on the floor. “It’s weird but it doesn’t upset me.”
Carrie sighed and ran a hand through her cropped black hair. “That’s not exactly what I want,” she said.
Here’s where I made my mistake. I was annoyed. I thought I could loosen her up with some humor. “Well, I’ve heard a lot of women want to fool around with Matt Damon, but we don’t always get what we want, right?”
It was meant to be funny. It was meant to be a lighthearted comment. It was stupid. I’d never even met Matt Damon, but Margaux had a crush on him, and there he was, his name flying from my mouth. Carrie scribbled notes in earnest then. I tried to take it back, but I only made it worse. Carrie left shortly after with a smug look.
When the issue came out three weeks later, the headline for the story read, Declan’s Wife Craves Matt Damon with the sub line, Declan Was Second Choice. The article said little about my designs and lots about how I pined for sex with Mr. Damon.
Declan’s response surprised me. “How could you?” He was brandishing a copy of Kate magazine like a sword.
It was six o’clock at night, and he’d just gotten back from Graham’s office, where he’d been given an advance copy of the issue. We were in our new living room with the ice-rink floor. We’d gotten a few pieces of furniture—some fat leather couches by the fireplace, a coffee table—but still the room was too big. It bore a slightly hollow quality.
Declan huffed and paced around the room. This was the first time I’d seen him truly pissed off, but instead of scaring me, it made me want to laugh.
“How could I what?” I said.
He flipped open the magazine and found the article. “How could you tell this woman that you wanted to sleep with Matt Damon?”
“I didn’t say that! C’mon, Dec, you know how it is. They take what you say out of context.”
He sat on the couch and slammed the magazine on the coffee table for effect. The maple legs wobbled.
I flipped the magazine over, determined not to look inside at the picture of me. In the photo, which was taken during the interview, my mouth is wide open. I was in midsentence, but in the context of the story, it appears not only that I crave Matt Damon, but also I’m prepared to give him one hell of a blow job.
“Babe,” I said, starting to get a little pissed off myself. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to do that interview to begin with.”
He stewed silently, the muscles in his jaw twitching a little.
“Hey,” I said more softly. “What happened to ‘Don’t worry about it’ and ‘It doesn’t matter’?”
This is what he’d been telling me for weeks when I got upset about the crazy media coverage, the articles about his alleged romances with Lauren Stapleton, Cameron Diaz and Tara Reid.
“It matters because it’s you.” He gripped my hand.
“What do you mean? They can say all sorts of things about you having a threesome with the Olsen twins, but they can’t touch me?”
“That’s right, love.” He squeezed my hand harder. “I signed up for this. I’m the actor, for fuck’s sake. I wanted to be famous, and I have to put up with this, but I don’t want anyone saying anything about you.”
I climbed into his lap. “Hey. I’m married to you for better or worse, right? I have to put up with it.”
At the time, I meant it a hundred percent.
chapter 22
I admit, I was looking forward to when Declan left for Tokyo for the Japanese premiere of Normandy. I was relieved at the thought of having some time to myself. But when he was gone, it only reminded me that I was surrounded by near strangers in that house. At night, when they went home, I somehow couldn’t enjoy that alone time I craved. Instead, I missed Declan. I watched him on Extra! as diminutive Japanese women screamed and cried and tried to break down police barricades with surprising force. Who are these people? I wondered. What do they want from him? What do they think they know of him?
London was the next stop after Tokyo. I was in my office with Uki when Declan called me from the airport lounge at Heathrow, where he was waiting for his escort.
“I’ll be at the Savoy Hotel, love,” he said. “Should be a quiet night. Tomorrow’s the junket and the premiere.”
“I wish I was there with you,” I said. Fabric swatches covered my desk. I was working on a new line at Alicia’s urging, and there was still so much to do to get the existing collection ready for the stores. There was no way I could have taken off ten days to travel with Declan.
“How are things there?” Dec said. “Is Berry around?”
“I think she ran out to get peanut butter.”
“Well, when you see her, tell her to get back to my office and back to work.” He knew how Berry’s presence grated on me. Now, he had another assistant, Tracy, who was on the road with him. “I’ve got to go, Kyr. I love you.”
“You, too.”
Later that evening, after Berry and Uki and Trista left the house, I turned on the TV and flipped forever, finally landing on Entertainment Tonight. I sat through an exposé about the breakup of some boy band and a story about a radio shock jock who had nearly died pulling a stunt. Then the brunette who was sitting in for Mary Hart said, “Declan McKenna and Lauren Stapleton. Are they an item again? We’ll have footage of their night in London when we return.”
“What?” I said, uncurling my legs from under me. I turned up the volume.
Fifty or so commercials played for at least twenty minutes before the show returned. I sat there, muttering, “What the fuck?” and “Calm down, calm down.”
The brunette finally came back on and reviewed the history of Declan and Lauren’s “relationship,” showing pictures of them from the movie set and the premiere. She then went on to briefly mention that Declan had married a fashion designer, without mentioning my name, before zooming into video footage of Declan and Lauren coming out of a London restaurant earlier that night. Declan was looking very Spencer Tracy in a suit and tie. Lauren wore a plunging red dress.
I shrieked and threw the remote against the wall. I picked up the phone and dialed the number for the Savoy Hotel.
“I’m sorry, madam,” the male hotel operator said snippily. “Declan McKenna is not staying here.”
“Yes, he is,” I said, matching his tone. “This is Declan McKenna’s wife.”
“I’m sorry, but we have no one here by that name.”
Of course. The goddamn code names Declan now used when he stayed in hotels so that fans wouldn’t call him. He’d forgotten to tell me the one he was using tonight.
I tried the name he’d used in Tokyo—Tommy Colin—the first names of the twins.
“I’m sorry, madam,” the operator said again, sounding very un-sorry.
“Give me a break here!”
He cleared his throat.
I tried the last names of the twins, Declan’s parents’ names and the names of U2 band members. All the while, I paced the gold-carpeted floor of the media room, which now seemed like a padded cell in an asylum.
“I’m his wife!” I yelled at the operator.
“Madam, if you only knew how many people have called here tonight claiming to be his wife.”
“So you admit he’s staying there!” I yelled triumphantly.
“No, madam. I didn’t say that. We have no one named Declan McKenna here.”
I slammed the phone hard enough to break the receiver. Unfortunately, it didn’t. I thought about calling Graham but it was already past eleven. Berry might know the code name, but damn if I’d admit to her I didn’t know it. She took a gleeful pride in knowing everything about Declan, which irritated the hell out of me.
I stomped out of the media room to our master suite and spent a mostly sleepless night imagining Lauren in Declan’s plush bed at the Savoy. I trusted him, I kept reminding myself, I did. I didn’t really believe that he would cheat on me, but then what had he been doing at that restaurant with Lauren? Why hadn’t he told me she would be there? Why hadn’t he told me his fucking code name?
I finally fell asleep at 4:00 a.m. Three hours later, the phone rang.
“Morning, love,” Declan said, cheerful as can be.
“Are you kidding me?” I screamed. I raged about Lauren, about having to see them on TV, about not knowing his check-in name.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not quite yelling the way I was, but raising his voice. “I’ve got a bit of pressure, you know? And I’ve got fucking jet lag, too.”
The Year of Living Famously Page 17