But he didn’t feel nervous. During all the interviews, all the media appearances, with all the famous people he’d met so far, he never felt anxious. Performing came easy to him. Which was almost unnerving in itself. Had he been altered somehow by the train? Had he become a slightly different person?
He’d gone from interviews to media appearances, a president pinning a medal to him, everything happening in such rapid succession that there was no time and there hadn’t felt like an obvious reason to think and plan. He hadn’t had time to consider what was happening to him. One day he simply became famous. That was it. So from the moment he stepped off the train, everything felt halfway like being in a movie.
Maybe because it almost was a movie. In a few minutes he would go out onto a television set and pretend to have a natural conversation with Jimmy Fallon as if the two were best buddies, but they were going to do it with makeup, and stage lights, and hundreds of people watching, crew members and big cameras on wheels moving back and forth. It was like stepping into a movie. And since it all felt a little artificial, he didn’t feel nervous. It wasn’t real.
That changed only very briefly, and the only person who proved capable of making him nervous—to make him take a moment and think about fame—was a kid in a black T-shirt and a headset walking up to him backstage and saying, “Okay, Mr. Sadler, in ten, you’re going on.”
“Where do I walk?” The curtain was huge.
“Just pull it back and walk through.”
“Wait, walk through where?”
“You’re on in ten, nine, eight” then the kid went silent and walked away.
“Wait, hello? Where are you going?” But the kid was gone, off to prep some other guest while Anthony wondered how many seconds had gone by and how fast to count, started concentrating on counting in his head, then started to worry about tripping over the curtain on his way onstage. Or what if he couldn’t even find the opening, and it was one of those slapstick situations where he gets turned around and confused and the audience roars with laughter at the panicked guest mummifying himself in the curtain?
Should I go? This is a pretty damn long ten seconds. It was a forced silence where Anthony couldn’t say or do anything other than think, I’m about to go on TV! A tingle in his fingertips, his palms clammy, and then his last quiet moment was over and he had the curtain aside with an explosion of bright, blinding lights.
Anthony was back in his element. Prime time.
“THANK YOU FOR BEING ON The Tonight Show. I appreciate this, uh . . .” Fallon didn’t seem to know exactly where to begin, so Anthony bailed him out.
“It’s pretty crazy, thanks for having me!” The audience laughed. This wasn’t hard.
“Yeah, good, yeah, now can you just, uh, I know . . . please just walk me through what happened . . .”
And off they went.
He hadn’t known that one of his favorite artists, the up and coming rapper Vince Staples, was the musical guest, but here he was, and Staples picked a song to perform that featured one of Anthony’s celebrity crushes, the singer Jhené Aiko. She came out in matching off-white sleeveless top and calf-length skirt, exposed midriff, exposed arms so the spiderweb tattoo on her shoulder was half visible, wearing sneakers but somehow making that sexy too. Anthony felt himself get a little uncomfortable in his seat. All his dreams were coming true.
Aiko sang with her sensual, youthful voice, singing in tandem with Staples, but really, singing straight into Anthony’s heart.
And if I told you that I love you would you know it was a lie Pretty woman, how you function with the devil in your thighs?
During the breaks he shot the breeze with Fallon and David Wells, a retired Yankees pitcher. He went over to the house band, the Roots, and asked for a picture. The bandleader, Questlove, obliged, and then said, “I always have guests autograph a pair of drumsticks. Will you autograph these for me?”
“For you? You want my autograph?”
43.
HERE WAS ANOTHER THING about being famous Anthony would have to get used to: famous people had a strange fascination with boring lectures.
He and Spencer got invited to San Francisco for the big launch of the new iPhone. The night before, Spencer was doing the Jimmy Kimmel show and Anthony wanted to go down and hang in the wings. He wanted to see the city with Chris Brown, who was going to be the musical guest, and Anthony figured the singer might take them around Hollywood if Anthony could get a chance to talk to him. What better way to celebrate finally being reunited, if only briefly, with Spencer? Of course Alek wasn’t there. This would become a pattern. It was rare for Spencer and Anthony to find time to get together these days, but even rarer for Alek to be there.
Anthony watched from the dressing room as Spencer sat down for his own experience with late-night TV, bobbing back and forth to try and get comfortable. I know, it’s weird, right? To try and face the audience and the host at the same time. Kimmel stood up and gave Spencer a standing ovation, then the audience did too, and Anthony watched Spencer shifting awkwardly on his bad arm, trying to find a comfortable way to sit with his thumb in its plastic sheath.
“You look good, you look healthy,” Kimmel said. “You just got back to the United States right?”
“Yeah, just a couple days ago on the . . . shoot, what was the date?”—Spencer closed one eye, winking; Anthony recognized his friend’s flustered face—“Shoot, I don’t even know.” Backstage Anthony laughed and shook his head. C’mon, bruh!
“It was like, last Tuesday . . .”
Kimmel came to the rescue. He held up a picture of the three boys on the train just before the attack, then the picture of Spencer in a wheelchair just after, X-style bandages above his right eye, on his left bicep, his left thumb wrapped in tape, and rivulets of blood streaming down his chest.
“Well, you don’t have a shirt on anymore,” Kimmel said, as if that were the only problem with the picture, but the audience was still ooooing at the sight of Spencer looking like he’d been put through a meat grinder.
“I heard that you were a big Golden State Warriors fan.
“I am, I am.You know, I didn’t get to watch as many games as I wanted to because I’ve been on a seven-hour time difference in Portugal.”
“Well, we have a visitor who wanted to say hello to you. Let’s go outside right now and see—okay, you see that gentleman right there?” Behind Spencer, a giant wrap-around screen flickered to life, with a live video feed showing the glimmering front grill of a brand new convertible in an alleyway.
Backstage, Anthony’s jaw dropped.
“You gotta be joking,” Spencer said, “no freaking way,” more to himself than to Kimmel.
“That is Klay Thompson.”
“Wha . . .” Spencer popped up and spun in his seat.
“He’s . . .” The headlights went off and the car stopped. An awkward silence. “Klay doesn’t drive stick.”
“Is he stalled-out right now?” Spencer was excited.
“Maybe Klay could walk,” Kimmel said, “it’s only like fifteen feet.” Now the crowd began to roar as the car lurched forward in the alley behind the studio, and Kimmel ad-libbed about the basketball player’s struggles. “These guys make so much money they don’t drive stick.”
Klay got out of the car, walked through a door, off camera, while Spencer and Kimmel stood up to go stage right, where Klay walked in, shook Kimmel’s hand, and hugged Spencer as the crowd cheered. “Klay has some things for you.”
Klay dutifully began handing gifts over to Spencer. First a hat: “I got plenty of them, you know.” Spencer laughed. “I got a jersey for you, my man.”
“He saw you had no shirt so he brought you a jersey,” Kimmel said. Spencer laughed; the crowd laughed louder.
“And also, Klay, do you have the keys to that vehicle?”
“I do.”
“Brand new Chevy Camaro convertible and so—we heard you didn’t have a car.”
Spencer still hadn’t composed him
self. He let out a high-pitched “What?” and he spun again toward the car.
“And we heard you were moving back to Sacramento. Do you know how to drive stick?”
“I can, I can! I learned in Portugal!” Anthony was moved by how jubilant Spencer was; he was genuinely excited, and all of a sudden Anthony didn’t see the pressed air force uniform or the photo with the blood or the person people were starting to call Captain America. All of that fell away and Anthony was looking at twelve-year-old Spencer, over the moon about a new airsoft gun for Christmas.
“Well, beautiful, because that Camaro is for you . . . you never have to get on a train in your life.”
AFTER SPENCER GOT HIS CAMARO, he and Anthony met up with Alek for dinner at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s house. Just another day in the life.
Anthony sat out in the yard, still thinking about how surreal all of it was, how nice a house this was, how big Arnold’s fireplace was, and why, by the way, you’d need a fireplace, let alone a big one, in Southern California, when he heard footsteps from somewhere off in the yard. He knew Schwarzenegger had some kind of big dog, but whatever it was moving around behind him sounded really heavy. The footsteps grew louder, the dog got closer, Anthony turned around and almost jumped off the patio.
“What the fuck is that?”
His host looked up.
“Sorry.” Anthony tried to recover. “Pardon my—is that a horse?”
“Oh yes,” Arnold’s girlfriend said, “That’s Whisky. It’s a miniature horse.” She smiled politely, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“She’s a—is she like . . .” Anthony couldn’t think of what to ask; this situation had never presented itself before. He’d never had to make conversation about livestock on someone’s patio. “She’s here like, permanently?”
“Um, Yeah. She’s here all the time.”
That night, they had rooms at a swanky hotel in LA, and Anthony was in the lobby on the phone telling his dad that rich people in Los Angeles kept horses in their houses, when a group of what had to be at least twenty girls walked by single file to the elevator. What the . . . Behind them was a guy Anthony recognized.
“That’s A$AP Rocky—Dad, hold on. I gotta call you back.”
Anthony decided to try out his new celebrity status with the famous rapper.
“A$AP! What’s up!” A$AP smiled, and took the hand Anthony had offered. “Hey—”
“It’s me, Anthony Sadler.” A$AP’s smile dimmed a little; he pursed his lips and gave a little shake of his head.
“From the train!”
Still nothing.
“The terrorist on the train; you didn’t hear about the train attack in France?”
“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Now he was clearly getting impatient, Anthony feeling less confident, less like a peer, more like a stalker.
“Okay, no prob, no prob. Well, where’re you guys going?”
“We’re going up to a penthouse party.”
“Okay, I might see you up there . . . ?”
“All right.” No invitation came. Anthony had bungled the approach; the rapper had no idea who he was and wasn’t about to let him up with his parade of girls. Anthony tried the hostesses, two girls in slip dresses standing by the elevator and flanked by security guards.
“Hey! Hello, how you girls doing? I’m one of the train heroes, you think I could get up there? Spencer Stone’s with me too, he’s up in his room.”
The girls looked at each other. “Sorry, you’re one of the whats?”
Does no one in LA read the news? He pulled out his phone, figuring he’d fight LA with LA—he’d do what people here in the land of spectacle probably did on a daily basis, he googled himself. “Look! I’m not making this up. This is CNN. It’s serious!”
Finally one of the girls relented. “Okay, I might be able to let you up but not until everyone on the list is in. Come back with your friends in a couple hours.” So they did. By the time they got up to the penthouse, A$AP Rocky was gone, but so be it. It was still a penthouse party in LA. They’d make do.
The next morning, they had to catch a four o’clock flight in order to make it to Northern California for the iPhone launch. Anthony still didn’t get it. Why did people get so excited about going to lectures? At the launch, Spencer and Anthony walked into the hall, the lights dimmed, and they promptly fell asleep.
Next to them Al Gore, Barry Bonds, Joe Montana, and a bunch of other celebrities watched nerds talk about computers.
44.
LATE IN THE MORNING one day in early September, flyers began filtering out through downtown Sacramento. Press releases went to radio stations, bosses huddled employees in conference rooms and cafeterias to fill them in on what would happen.
On September 11, they would have a few hours off, and they would go outside. On that day, the fourteenth anniversary of the attacks on America, they would hold a parade to celebrate the defeat of terrorists by three hometown boys. Anthony had no idea what he was in for.
It was to be a packed day. In the flurry of media attention and appearances and flights across the country, Anthony hadn’t totally grasped that this, September 11, was going to be one of the last times he and his two friends were going to be together. They had become famous together, but the effect of fame was to pull them apart. Alek to LA to become a reality TV star, Spencer on a speaking tour, Anthony trying, trying to finish his degree amid all the temptations and distractions. It had proffered them the opportunities of their lifetimes, but individually, not as a group, because how could you keep three young men, each still figuring out his own life, together?
It was almost by accident that they’d been on the train at the same time; they were not the Beatles, they were not a basketball team, they were not a group created and maintained to confront the world together. They were individuals. Even the thing that had first brought them together, back at that small private school, was that they were each individuals. Under the bright lights and diverting power of public adulation, they were shunted in different directions; each interpreted and processed the attention differently, each took advantage in his unique way. So while Alek was going to become something of a troubadour, Spencer was going to become the face of the air force, both doing just about the opposite of what Anthony would have predicted for them.
Although on second thought, maybe these were the roles they’d always been meant to play. Maybe the train gave them the chance, the excuse, to fall into the lives they secretly always wanted to live. Or didn’t know they always wanted to live.
Sure, Alek had always been kind of quiet, not very expressive, not very concerned with how he came across to other people. But there were times he performed, in the photos he posted from base, goofing off on the train with the miniature soda cans right before everything happened. Alek had things to say; Anthony found him to actually be deep, thoughtful, and Heidi always told of how her middle boy was maybe a man of few words, but was always the one with the dramatic streak growing up; the one who dressed up in costumes of superheroes and performed in Christmas pageants. It was a part of him that had been buried, of which Anthony could see no traces, but here, on a prime-time national TV show, was a chance for him to finally share it.
And Spencer, who ever since the family’s clashes with his father had never found a system or an authority figure he trusted besides Joyce; Spencer, who had a hard time falling in line and lashed out every time someone he didn’t really respect tried to show control over him, had created for himself a sense of belonging. The air force was celebrating Spencer for behaving the way Spencer always thought he should behave. For acting, rather than sitting; for thinking on his feet, thinking for himself. In a way, the air force was validating the person Spencer had become, independence, irreverence and all; by tackling a man with a machine gun on a train, Spencer had created for himself an institution he could belong to.
So today they would part ways, fame providing the jolt, the activation e
nergy to send them spiraling off into their various adulthoods. They spent the morning doing press, first a shoot for People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, during which Anthony learned that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had nominated them—apparently, past winners had to nominate you—then taping their first group interview. Fox News won the sweepstakes for the first sit-down with the three train heroes together, mostly because Fox News was willing to move their whole operation to Sacramento, and the boys needed to be there for what was going to happen next.
After the morning of press ops, a car took them from the Hyatt to the Tower Bridge over the Sacramento River, where people had started to gather. Already, Anthony could tell this was going to be something special. Preparations had been under way for weeks, but he’d been only loosely aware of them; that morning a correspondent for the NBC affiliate on site told the anchors back at the bureau, “I’ve lived here almost eighteen years now. I don’t remember anything like this in Sacramento before.”
Anthony was shown to a trailer with HOMETOWN HEROES written on the side. He took a moment to marvel at it, and then he and Spencer and Alek climbed up—Spencer in his air force uniform, Alek wearing what was becoming his trademark short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and sneakers, and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. I gotta teach these guys how to dress.
The trailer was decked out with an archway of red and white balloons to frame them, forming a threshold in front of which they stood, as if at any moment they could turn around and disappear through a colorful passageway into another world. Anthony could see their families sitting in the back of classic cars, JFK style, feet on the seats, butts on the seat-backs, so they could see and be seen.
Their trailer was being pulled by a pickup truck, and the bed of the truck was filled with cameramen sticking out at all angles like porcupine quills, folded over one another trying to get a good line of sight to the boys, as the truck pulled out in front of the bridge and began its slow approach toward the capitol building.
The 15:17 to Paris Page 22