The Hot One

by Carolyn Murnick

  10

  NEVER-ENDING SWEET SPOT

  “WHEN YOU SAY [Ashley] was a party girl, does that go further than going to parties, in terms of your definition?”

  Jen takes a breath. She’s been on the stand a while now, and the slut-shaming questions about Ashley keep piling up. She remains composed. The defense attorney, Charles Lindner, is the same guy in the wheelchair I saw last year at the continuance at the Airport Courthouse. This time he’s got room to move. He’s got edge. His phrases drip with sarcasm, literary references, and incredulity. “Do you know, or do you think you know?” is a common one. “Does your memory improve as time goes by?” is another particularly needling barb. He picks at witnesses during cross-examination, parsing words and phrases, catching them in contradictions. They dab at their eyes with tissues, and he continues apace, appearing not to register it. I cringe often and feel thankful to be sitting back here and not up there.

  He asks Jen to list the drugs she observed in their apartment—“powder cocaine? crack cocaine?”—and he asks for details on Ashley’s sex work, which Jen doesn’t seem to have.

  “Did Miss Ellerin tell you she was working in Las Vegas?” Jen says yes. She did know that Ashley disappeared on some weekends but did not know the nature of her work beyond “dancing.” Lindner insists on referring to it as “pole dancing.”

  The Vegas part gives me pause. Ashley worked in another state? I remember her talking about her stripping and escorting all those years ago when she visited me in New York, but I always assumed she was doing it closer to home, in LA, though I’m not sure I ever asked for those specifics. Now I have a whole new picture of things, and it saddens me unexpectedly. Something about the thought of Ashley leaving her friends—her home, her life—and flying away to another city for the weekend to work alone, naked, felt unspeakably lonely to me, but perhaps that was part of why she did it that way. Like a cheating husband who never takes his mistress to a restaurant where someone he knows might see them, Ashley didn’t want her shadow self to get caught. Perhaps there was an emotional efficiency in keeping parts of herself separate from one another—there’d be no one around to put them all together.

  Lindner stays mostly behind the desk, but occasionally he turns his wheelchair in the direction of the jury box even though it’s empty. I can only imagine how it will be when an actual jury is in those seats, taking notes, scowling, looking bored. What kind of picture will they be drawing of Ashley in their minds?

  • • •

  When I first entered the courtroom, I didn’t anticipate encountering anyone else who was also interested in learning more about Ashley. The proceedings hadn’t started yet, and all the rows in the gallery were empty except for the one in the back. Two women were sitting there, both pretty and somewhere between five and ten years older than I was. One was dressed in a business casual, Ann Taylor sort of way, and the other was in a short dress and boots with light blond hair and lots of eyeliner. They were both typing on laptops.

  I edge into their row and take out my own computer. It still amazes me that there was Wi-Fi in these courtrooms. The fact that someone could be live-tweeting this sort of thing disturbs me—shouldn’t we have been made to sign some sort of nondisclosure agreement?

  I’m toggling between Facebook and my work email when I hear someone addressing me from the right side. “Who are you writing for?” asks the blond as I turn to look at her. The other woman stays occupied with her phone. The blond’s voice sounds curious and friendly, not competitive, but it is still a bit jarring to be spoken to.

  A courtroom lesson that somehow wasn’t obvious to me at the outset: people can see you. It might seem ridiculous to point out, but often with the whole theater/stage/audience vibe of the room you really can forget that you’re not actually at a play since most of the time everyone is looking straight ahead and you’re not making conversation. The bailiff-judge banter is the coming attractions and the oaths are the turn-off-your-cell-phone warnings, and then the show starts—it’s amazing that no one has thought to sell popcorn. Most of the time you feel pretty anonymous in a bureaucratic way, like at the DMV. And if you’re in and out only once, for the most part you can stay that way.

  The people next to you can see you, however. So can the judge and the lawyers and even the defendant. You don’t put on a cloak of invisibility when you go inside. It only feels that way, but actually everyone—lawyers especially—is taking note of everyone else. What are you doing there? What is your deal? Might you know something that we could use, or are you someone we should pay attention to? Are you going to make a scene? Are you going to inflame things in the media? If you come back more than one day or even return after the lunch break on the same day, you can’t escape having to answer for yourself, I was learning.

  The court, I had begun to realize, was the place that was forcing me to get my story straight. I wasn’t a journalist—though I played one on TV or, um, was one in my day job—but my presence here was about something else. It was personal and self-motivated and, I feared, a little hard to translate. I was here because Ashley had meant something to me in childhood, even though our relationship as young adults had been more complicated. I was here because even though Ashley hadn’t been family, I had a sense that our friendship had almost imprinted something on my DNA. The way I saw myself now was connected to the times we’d had together as kids, and it was that kid I was paying my respects to. It was that kid, that girl, that not-yet-a-woman person, about whom I wanted to know: What happened?

  • • •

  “Um, I’m not writing for anyone. I’m a childhood friend of Ashley’s.” I say it tentatively, a bit warily, wondering if I should give up the truth so readily. I second- and third-guessed almost all my decisions about Ashley these days. “What about you.” That part comes out less like a question and more like a thing to say because I’m already talking and I don’t know how to stop and I don’t really want to answer any more questions about myself.

  “Oh, wow. Okay. I’m from LA Weekly,” she says. “I’d love to take you to coffee at the break. It’d be great to learn more about Ashley and ask you a few things if you’re interested.” She says this all casually too, like, oh, it’s no big deal, we’re just two people interested in the same dead girl and how about we go get lattes and talk it out? Or is this just what real journalists were always like?

  This is something I haven’t considered at all. Here I am, just trying to keep my own shit together. I’ve dropped myself as an observer into a terribly serious, high-stakes situation, the likes of which I’ve seen only in movies, and my priority at the moment is just to get through the day without getting kicked out or offending anyone in the process. And now a reporter potentially wants to make me part of her story?

  But maybe I need something from her, too. She probably already has a file full of things I haven’t even thought of yet. She knows how this stuff goes down: how to ask questions, what to look for, which boxes to check. I should be asking her to coffee.

  But if I do talk to her—should I talk to her?—how will that look to Jen and Chris and Detective Small? Would that mean I would be playing both sides and if I gave it a try would it make me an asshole? What would Ashley have wanted?

  “I’m not sure,” I murmur, looking down at my screen. “I have some work to do, maybe later. I need to . . .” I trail off.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” says the blond, who I learn is named Christine. She passes me her card and turns back to her notes. She’s fine with it all, has seen this before. Her vibe is confident and experienced. She just asks questions and handles whatever answers come back. It’s good. She isn’t worried about getting kicked out or offending anyone, she knows what she’s doing. I want to project her kind of objectivity and coolness.

  After Christine seems suitably ensconced in her computer, I google her. I learn she is a something of a pro on the LA homicide beat. Things like gang shoot-outs, drive-bys, and armed robberies are her stock-in-trade: this wom
an is the real deal. Her investigative reporting played a crucial part in the identification of a serial killer she named the Grim Sleeper, a man who appeared to have been connected to ten murders of women in South Los Angeles between 1988 and 2007. She got to name a serial killer. I’m impressed and intimidated.

  But then in the next moment I’m confused all over again. Wait, what? She’s here for this, too? Even though I’ve had nine years to get used to news stories about this case, I still haven’t fully processed the fact that Ashley’s death is a matter of public interest. Not to mention that the major players in this world, this city—a defense attorney from the Dream Team; a reporter who broke serial-killer stories; a bona fide celebrity, Ashton Kutcher—are all part of this thing. Blown-up pictures from our childhood are now in magazines for people to stare at. Media people are taking notes on the mundane details of Ashley’s postadolescent years. From two girls playing in the New Jersey woods to two women in a courtroom in Los Angeles—one pale and one a ghost. When will that ever stop feeling so discombobulating?

  • • •

  Pictures of Ashley are being flashed on a projector screen throughout people’s testimony. It’s the same couple of fun-loving group shots from a party that apparently took place at her house only about a week before the murder. Lindner and Deputy District Attorney Marna Miller are asking all the witnesses if they were there—everyone was, it sounds like.

  I don’t remember seeing this DA at the continuance last year, but it might have been because things were happening so fast and I didn’t know where to look. Miller looks intense and harried and at the ready with her opinions and objections. She’s attractive but understated, wearing minimal makeup and a plain pantsuit, a slim jacket hitting right at the end of her hips.

  About the party, most of the witnesses say they were there. But who else was there? How about the defendant? What did he do during the party? What was everyone drinking, and how much? Do you recognize this outfit that Ashley’s wearing in the snap where she’s holding court in the middle of a big group? Most of them do.

  I don’t. It’s not something I could ever imagine wearing, either. It’s a gamine-gone-late-nineties look: an off-white sleeveless mock turtleneck and off-white arm warmer–type things. I can’t see the bottom, but I’m guessing it’s some minidress sort of thing and her shoes are white stiletto heels. It’s a strange ensemble when you break it down, but on her it works. Her eyebrows are plucked thin, and her hair is light with a skinny headband and a white flower tucked behind her ear. She’s smiling in a delighted way—they all are—except for the guy on the right in the caramel leather jacket. He just looks stoned and a bit smug. There are Justin and Jen, whom I recognize, plus the caramel-jacket guy and two other guys I don’t know. Everyone’s got their arms around each other and they all have the whitest teeth, so straight and so even, like an ad for some whitening gum or a movie poster for a rom com about the good old days. They are clearly the good old days, the glory days, the days of wine and roses—or coke and synthetic hair flowers, depending on whom you asked.

  I look at that picture for a while, and I think about how much Ashley liked the camera. The posing we would do, the photo shoots and the scenes and the make-believe in our bedrooms or in the woods. Playing characters, playing at being grown up, playing at making each other laugh—we’d switch in and out by the minute. However the pictures came out, whenever they came out, was never the point—often we wouldn’t even look at them again. They’d end up in a box or in a drawer or sometimes still in their paper sleeve from the photo place. The recording of the moments was the fun part, the extra sense of importance it would convey to things. With every click, every roll of film, we were showing each other we were worth remembering.

  • • •

  Over time I’d come to learn a lot from Ashley’s friends about her life in LA in the year before she died, and her story was the stuff of Hollywood fantasy—most of it, at least. She had just turned twenty-two, and it felt as though she were in the midst of a never-ending sweet spot. Things just seemed to happen to her in Los Angeles—good things, magical things, things that made her feel alive, chosen. She could be walking down the street, and someone would stop her, compliment her, and invite her to a premiere. She could be in a shoe store and the manager would decide to bring out this one amazing pair of heels that some actress had forgotten to pick up, and they would fit her perfectly. She could be in a restaurant and her meal would be comped, for no reason at all except that someone had noticed her and liked what he saw.

  The weekends in Vegas gave her more money than she knew what to do with. She leased a maroon BMW to get around town, and though she had, technically, transferred to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, there was just too much stuff going on that she’d rather do than be in class. Parties, clubs, guys, all of it. What was the point of school—of working at something boring on account of the future—when the present was so fantastic? When Justin decided to move down from San Francisco, it seemed like the perfect time to get a new place.

  Ashley and Justin had met at a rave in San Francisco back in high school. They’d hooked up once at eighteen, but it had been just a random party thing. No drama, no hard feelings. Justin was gay now, but he and Ashley still sometimes liked to act like a couple for fun. The two of them had known each other longer than any of Ashley’s other friends in LA, which meant a lot to her. He felt like family.

  They found a sweet little bungalow in the Hollywood Hills: 1911 Pinehurst Road, modest, pale yellow with a driveway, a dog park across the street, and a very cute property manager, Mark Durbin, thrown in free of charge. Later, Jen would move into Justin’s room after he left to live with his new guy, but before all that there were parties to be had, as many as they could: small ones every other week or so, and then there was that one from the court photos where they packed almost a hundred people inside. It was as though the place had an open-door policy—their circle just kept on growing. Sure! Come on by! Why not? Someone is always around. They collected friends the way regular people picked up lint on sweaters.

  No one knew much about what went on when Ashley went to Vegas, however, and they didn’t want to ask questions. It felt easier not to know. When Ashley returned from those weekends away, it was almost like she was in a funk; she’d be tired and withdrawn and not up for doing much outside the house. They knew to give her space for a few days until she was back to her old self. Chris would tell me later that he was never sure whether it was about coming down off drugs or feeling horrible about what she had just done in Vegas or whatever had happened to give her so much goddamn cash—he didn’t pry. He knew she wasn’t proud of it, and the two of them were more about the good times. They never talked about anything that might get in the way.

  • • •

  I could relate. It was a slippery slope, knowing too much. You might start to get too emotionally involved, and then you’d worry when she wasn’t around, and then if you brought it up you might come off as judgmental. You might feel responsible, then, and feeling responsible always ended badly. Don’t ask, don’t tell was the only choice, really. That way, you could pretend it wasn’t really happening.

  Your twenties were funny like that, I saw from the rearview mirror, now thirty-one. Back then that adulthood thing had still been so new! You could drive and drink and fuck whomever you wanted, but none of it really counted toward your final grade, right? There would still be plenty of time to become who you were supposed to be. It didn’t need to happen right this minute. Sure, what’s-her-name was rail thin from all the speed and still puked up her food whenever she remembered to eat, but she’d get it together eventually. And yeah, it was true, that guy was a total shit when it came to women, no way would you want him around your friends, but he’d straighten out when he met a girl who could handle him. This was not the moment for reckonings. Those could totally come later, and, hell, by then it would probably be someone else’s problem.

  If they were crafty, tho
ugh, people showed you only what they wanted you to see, and it didn’t occur to you that perhaps what they didn’t want you to see was the important stuff. You had habits, too, that maybe weren’t the most healthy or kind. You had different versions of yourself that came out in different situations, and then you had the one you were when you were all alone or in a place where you didn’t have to be accountable. The you that ate peanut butter from the jar while sitting on your couch in yesterday’s underwear or the you that accidentally ran over that stray cat and kept on driving. The you that stole the painkillers your girlfriend got after her root canal and swallowed them all over two days after telling her you didn’t know where they were or the you that did lines off the back of the toilet in that basement club in Berlin and then maybe pretended you had blacked out the rest of the night so you didn’t have to face the guy you let jerk off in front of you while your eyes grew heavy. You didn’t know it yet, but you were becoming yourself. The behaviors you were developing now would end up being the ones that defined you if you weren’t careful.

  • • •

  Gargiulo sits next to Lindner, wearing the same baggy orange jumpsuit I last saw him in and looking even thinner than before. On his back it says LA COUNTY JAIL XXX in black block letters like some twisted sports jersey logo. His skin looks rough and his head is shaved, and he almost resembles a cancer patient or else someone much, much older. He has a weird goatee. He’s only a few years older than we are—I mean I am, I have to keep reminding myself. He’s fidgety and muttering to himself, occasionally trying to get his attorney’s attention in the middle of a sentence to argue with something that’s being said or a line of questioning happening in real time, like a person who talks over you when you’re in an argument and things are getting heated. Lindner is clearly frustrated but tries not to break his concentration. I can’t pick out the words from where I’m sitting, but the energy is there.