by Libby Street
Oh, got it.
“Fine,” I say finally, plopping the knife onto the coffee table. “Where do you keep the baseball bat these days, Brooke? You got a box for that somewhere in your room?” I head for her bedroom door. “What’s it filed under? Sports equipment? Wood? Man-luring props?”
Brooke goes red and Luke cracks up.
“I don’t have a box for man-luring props,” she lies.
Oh, I know where it is. She keeps it under the bed now. I don’t really understand it. The baseball bat really only works as a burglar intimidation technique if you’re, say, Barry Bonds. Now, if you’re going to beat an unsuspecting photographer to a quivering mass of black and blue flesh, on the other hand…
I fly into her room and retrieve the bat. (Fun fact: not a single dust bunny under her bed. Remarkable.)
I slip on my fuzzy duck slippers and march out of the apartment, with Brooke and Luke close behind. They both chatter incessantly over and on top of each other. Convenient, as I don’t have to bother ignoring them—I can’t understand a word either is saying.
After lying into the elevator’s down button, I pace the floor.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Luke warns.
I try to reassure him. “I’m not really going to hurt the guy.” Much.
Leaving Brooke and Luke at the front door to keep an eye on me, I head to the bowels of my apartment building. I found this a couple of years ago when my mother came for a surprise visit, and I slipped out to freedom so that Brooke could honestly claim, “Sadie’s not home.”
I wander in the dark with a tiny key-ring flashlight and a nervous stomach. This will take me out to First Avenue about a half block from the front lobby of my building. I unlock the rusty door and ram my shoulder into it.
The sudden blast of light in the gloomy hallway briefly stings my eyes. I stumble down the steps into a filthy alleyway. It’s littered with clock radios, crusty dead houseplants, books, and other assorted bits of household ephemera that have apparently been falling out of people’s open windows for the last hundred or so years. The alley is wide at the back, where I am now, but narrows to barely a crack at the other end. Hopefully my thighs will be able to squeeze through.
Slowly, carefully, and using the bat to push the really disgusting things (toilet seat) or just plain bizarre things (a four-foot-long rubber penis?) out of my path, I navigate the minefield of junk. I guess this is the swan song for my fuzzy duck slippers—Brooke will never let me in the apartment with them again.
It’s a warm, sunny day—not that you’d know it from back here. The chill of hard shadows makes the temperature a good ten degrees cooler than out in the sunshine. A flurry of goose bumps tingle along my bare skin.
Finally at the narrow opening of the alley, I squeeze myself between the towering brick apartment buildings. Shuffling my feet and sucking in my belly like a freaking Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, I work my way slowly through the crack. At the narrowest bit, it’s a challenge not to scrape my face on the masonry.
Oh, my God. If I get stuck here I will absolutely die. That would definitely make the front page: “Duncan Stoke’s Mystery Gal Pal Dies of Embarrassment as FDNY Unit Unable to Rescue—Paralyzed by Fits of Laughter.”
I think skinny thoughts (I am a toothpick. I am a pencil. I am Nicole Kidman) and I make the final push to freedom. Excellent, still in one piece.
I dust myself off and survey my surroundings. I’m on First Avenue, a good five car lengths behind the Taurus. Perfect.
Ignoring the strange looks from my fellow New Yorkers, I crouch down and clamber to the trunk of the offending white vehicle.
That’s strange, it has a rental car sticker. What self-respecting paparazzi would rent…a Ford Taurus? This better be the guy. If I bust in on a bunch of vacationers from Kansas, it would be very disappointing—and bad for tourism.
I pop my head up, peek inside the car, and pop back down.
One head, in a red baseball cap. Four doors, unlocked.
Okay. It’s now or never….
I leap to my feet, sidestep between the car and the curb, and whip open the passenger’s side door.
Quickly plopping myself into the seat, I point the head of the bat at the driver’s skull. I hiss, “You should really lock your doors.”
Holy shit!
A high-pitched wail of misery fills the tiny car and most of the East Village.
I think that was me.
A dark, handsome face turns toward me. I feel a violent stir of excitement well up from deep within me, the frightening consequence of attraction and revulsion intertwining. There’s no scruffy beard, but rather freshly shaven skin—smooth and touchable like flesh-colored silk. Locks of wavy, shiny black hair tumble out from under a worn-out Red Sox cap. Two impossibly blue, unimaginably penetrating eyes stare back at me with astonishment.
“You!” I screech at Ethan Wyatt. “It’s you!”
Wyatt’s lip curls in a little smirk. “So, you found me.”
“I mean, I knew it! But it was just too unbelievable! You’ve been following me and taking those horrible pictures?”
“Wait a second. I think I’ve shown remarkable improvement for a novice. I gotta give you credit, it’s not as easy as it looks.”
He’s nuts! “Why are you doing this to me?”
“There’s this thing my father always used to say: turnabout is fair play,” he replies smoothly.
“What goes around? Karma? Revenge?” I ask bitterly.
“Revenge makes it sound so evil. I prefer to think of it as atonement,” he replies with a sickly superior tone in his voice.
“So you do this to every photographer who catches you cheating on your girlfriend?”
“No, unfortunately, I didn’t think of it until recently. You’re a test case.”
“You asshole! How can you be cocky about this? You’re sick, you know that? You’re a slimy…disgusting…stalker!”
“I’m a stalker, am I?” he asks, calm and poised.
“Yes!”
“What’s the difference between me doing it to you and you doing it to me?”
“I’m not a celebrity, you idiot. That’s what!”
A twinkle appears in his eye. He shakes a finger at me and says, “Ah, but you’re dating one.”
A deep, guttural groan rolls off my tongue. “You’re totally fucking crazy, you know that? You’ve sunk so low your publicist is going to need an earthmover to resurrect your career.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s to stop me from taking this public?”
Ethan Wyatt looks at me with rancor. “How do you like it so far? The lack of privacy, the fear, the rumors and suspicion? Have you lost any friends over it yet? Has it affected your career? Do you want to lock yourself in a room and never come out?” He pauses dramatically, then lowers his voice to a deep, menacing whisper and says, “Now, imagine that Star magazine finds out you’re the subject of celebrity stalking.”
A wave of nausea forces me to swallow hard. I can’t think of any comeback to that. He’s right. He’s got me, damnit. I am totally screwed. Shit, what if this never ends?
“Don’t you have a job or something?” I ask him scornfully, grasping at anything that might make him stop this madness.
“I have a lot of free time—”
“Obviously,” I huff.
He arches one eyebrow, giving his face a sly sort of glamour, and continues wistfully, “Three months on, three months off. Actors are kind of like deep-sea fisherman, journeymen—”
“Serial killers guided by the zodiac,” I add bitingly.
He replies by conjuring up the sucking noise made famous by Dr. Hannibal Lecter and his fava beans.
I gasp. “Are you bipolar or something? That is the mental illness of the moment, isn’t it? Are you feeling manic?” I turn to him with as much condescension as I can muster under these conditions and gloat, “Oh, no. I’ve got it. This has something to do with the messy tran
sition from Scientology to Kabbalah as the Official Religion of Hollywood™, doesn’t it? Are you wearing your red string?”
“You are fascinating!” Ethan exclaims, while looking at me like something he just scraped out of a petri dish.
“Well, can I fascinate you straight out of my life?” I ask, shooing him with my hands.
Not reacting to me, but as though continuing with his own train of thought, he says, “You’re so…clever.” A startlingly open, easy grin arches from ear to ear. “I hadn’t expected that.”
The sweetness of his tone is annoying, and just the slightest bit appealing. His eyes are really quite beautiful—the perfect shade of blue—sharp and somehow cool at the same time.
“How did you find me?” I ask, as the agony of defeat begins to make my head ache.
He smirks. The muscles in his jaw relax, creating an alluring sort of pout. His eyes sparkle with a cunning charm. He leans across the car and coos, “I wonder if you can help me. A girl I…ahem…met, left her cell phone at my place. I’m so embarrassed, I don’t have a clue where she lives. I’d like to get it to her before I leave tonight for Paris.”
Holy shit, he’s good. He could bewitch Ellen DeGeneres into batting for the other team.
“You’re, like, a sociopath, right?” I say to him.
He leans back to his side of the car and smiles. “No. But if I want something bad enough, I’ll get it.”
“Oh, so you’re not a sociopath, just a typical fucking actor.” I can’t believe this. “So, what’d you do?” I ask. “Charm yourself into the pants of every editor at every major tabloid?”
“I would have. But it turned out to be completely unnecessary. I made a few calls through some publicists I know, got a few editors’ numbers. I gave them some solid leads, they trusted me—I fed them you.”
“Well, stop feeding. You’ve had your fun. You have your revenge. Now. Leave. Me. Alone!”
“I don’t know, I’m having a pretty good time. I guess you’ll just have to wait and see. Which reminds me, your annual Pap smear is Monday.”
Humiliating. Humiliating.
The thought of this nightmare continuing makes my blood boil over. The baseball bat shakes in my hands. “Leave me alone…or else!”
I jump out of the car as Ethan Wyatt laughs. “Or else what?” he clucks, as I slam the door.
I march toward my apartment building, trying not to trip and fall in my now sticky slippers.
As I press my hand to the front door, I hear the click-click-click of cameras.
Oh, God—I forgot about them.
Chapter 15
Close the curtains!” Stomping through the front door, I shout to Brooke. “Close them all!”
I toss the bat on the couch and march over to a window, but my attempts to untie the drapes and pull them closed are futile. My hands are shaking too badly.
“He is pure fucking crazy! Off his damn rocker!” It’s difficult to grasp. My mind is reeling at the very idea that Ethan Wyatt—Ethan Wyatt!—is behind all of this. I really didn’t think he was that crazy. I mean, it is crazy.
I continue to fumble with the curtain ties until Brooke delicately moves my hands and takes over.
“Who’s crazy, Sadie? Who’s doing this?” The curtain swings closed as the tie comes loose. I feel myself being pulled away from the window and ushered to the couch. “Who was in the car, Sadie?” Brooke asks in a frightened whisper.
Looking at her, I feel several tears break free and stream down my face. “Ethan Wyatt. Ethan Wyatt was in the car.”
Brooke is stunned. Her mouth hangs open like that of a cartoon character, or a soap opera diva in that bizarre pause just before they cut to the commercial. I would laugh if her face wasn’t so perfectly descriptive of the thoughts running through my mind. I sink deeper into the couch and throw a pillow over my face, waiting for Brooke to come back to earth.
After almost a full minute, I hear a tentative, “Ethan Wyatt…the movie star?”
I nod my head and the pillow in time.
Brooke prods again, “Are you sure?”
Lifting the pillow just enough to be understood, I reply, “Oh yes. I sat in his car and the psychotic, demented, self-absorbed, childish stalker told me so himself—with pride.”
“Ethan Wyatt?Suicide Mission, Felony Charge, Hager Saga Ethan Wyatt? Frequently swooned over on Fashion Police Ethan Wyatt? Took his mother to the Academy Awards last year Ethan Wyatt?”
“Yes!”
I rise to close the rest of the curtains, but Brooke pushes me back down. “I’ll do it. You shouldn’t get near the windows when the vultures are circling.” My eyes go wide, and she attempts clarification. “Sorry, I mean…you know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, I do know what she means. I wonder, Are the feathered variety of vultures also cannibals?
“Where did Luke go?” I ask.
“Provisions. I told him to walk down the candy aisle and grab anything with chocolate,” she replies.
“Thank you,” I squeak, through a new wave of tears.
Just as Brooke has released and draped the last of the curtains, the door buzzer goes off.
“He must have forgotten his key,” she says, heading for the door.
I have to think of something, some way to get out of this. Or get back at him. Force him to stop. I can’t live this way for long. I’m positive that mere days from now I will have the overwhelming desire to hire a personal yoga guru, seek the advice of a stylist, and speak frankly and tearfully with Oprah. In other words, to sum up: I can feel myself slowly going insane.
From across the room I hear Brooke’s voice speaking in a low, concerned tone, “Oh, boy.”
“What is it?” I ask, panicking. “What’s wrong?”
“Sadie…” she whispers. “Sadie, I…”
Brooke tiptoes back into the living room. A little wrinkle has appeared over her brow, and her mouth is straining against itself in a false grin. Her smile looks like it was drawn onto her face by one of the cartoonists at MAD Magazine. She speaks. “Uh…you might want to…uh…”
“What is it? Reporters? Dogs? A giant ape?”
A loud, whiny pitch calls out from the other side of the door. Even though it’s tainted and muffled by rusty metal, I know that voice. It says, “Sadie, honey, I’m here! Mother’s here to help!”
Chapter 16
Open the curtains!” I yell to Brooke.
“Why?” she asks, running for the nearest window and frantically stripping open the curtains.
“Because I’m going to jump.”
Brooke lets the curtains fall from her grip as she rolls her eyes at me. “I know you guys have some issues, but—”
“Oh, is that what they’re called? Issues? I always thought they were called nightmares.”
“What are you going to do, just let her stand out there banging on the door all day?”
“No, that won’t work. She’d just camp out in the hallway. We’d be stepping over her for weeks.” I rack my brain, search the ceiling—then the floor—for some kind of solution.
Brooke lets out a loud gust of air. “I’m going to open the door now.”
Oh, God.
Brooke walks slowly to the front door. She puts her hand on the knob and gives one last look at me—as pure, unadulterated dread begins to liquefy the contents of my abdomen.
With one flick of the wrist, the door opens and the tornado slips in.
Paige spews, “Oh, hello, Brooke! So good to see you. How are you? How’s she doing?” One of my mother’s many talents—having a one-sided conversation with someone and still managing to make them feel like they’ve been heard. Witchcraft, I tell you.
“Good to see you, too, Mrs. Price-Farmer!” says Brooke as she’s enveloped in a minihug and given several air kisses. “She’s—”
“How many times have I told you, sweet girl? Call me Paige! Where is she?”
She is going to hide in the little nook by the living room window and hope
that the divot in the floor finally gives way and she falls through to the apartment below.
“She’s—” Brooke tries again.
“I was worried about her, and I had some free time. We’re not going to Barbados this year until July.” Oh, thank goodness my stalker chose May. “I felt I had to come give her support. This situation is a bit unusual, don’t you think? You know, Dr. Hank says she has legal basis to sue.”
“I’m sure she’ll be glad you came,” Brooke says unsteadily.
I run for the little nook and slide into the armchair by the window. The sound of my mother’s heels clicking on the hard-wood floor sends a cascade of spasms through my limbs. My injured knee once again begins to throb.
“There you are!” Paige says, opening her arms wide as though I’m meant to leap up and hug her like people do in the movies.
Paige has had her hair cut since the last time I saw her. Crisp blonde waves flutter down in artfully carved layers, just barely grazing her collarbone. Long shaggy bangs are swept off to the side and behind her ear. Her makeup, as usual, is flawless. She looks at least ten years younger than her age. In fact, in the right light she could probably pass for thirty.
She’s wearing her travel uniform: impossibly high Manolos, long, skinny black pants that cling to her thighs like white sticks to rice, and a fitted linen shirt with the cuffs casually rolled up to her forearms. The collar of her shirt is flipped up in the back, accentuating her long graceful neck and the gold draped around it. This little collar flip, one of my mother’s signature style moves, also communicates just exactly how chic and confident she is.
Paige continues to stand in front of me with her arms spread wide. I can tell by the determined look in her eye that she could stand here as long as it takes for me to give in. This is the sort of thing mothers and daughters do—greet each other with great leaping hugs. She won’t be living up to her picture of ideal motherhood if I don’t play along.
I rise slowly and, before I totally have my footing, she wraps her arms around my waist and squeezes me like a Greco-Roman wrestler going in for the kill.