by James Frey
The year was long, brutal, Anika thought of walking away there were so many times she couldn’t imagine going back to LaShawn’s room, even though it broke her heart every time she walked through the door she went anyway. He was reduced physically and mentally, lost over a hundred pounds, didn’t recognize himself when he looked in the mirror, he said his confidence was gone, his sense of self-worth was gone. She did what she could to bolster his spirits, told him she loved him every time she arrived and every time she left, told him he would be okay, he just needed to believe, he would be okay. She knew she couldn’t do anything more.
He would have to do everything else on his own.
A break came in rehab, he was trying to bend his knee couldn’t do it, he started bitching, whining and complaining. A few feet away, a former gang member, a man who had been shot in the spine and would never walk again, told him to shut the fuck up and quit being a bitch. LaShawn was shocked. The man said he knew who LaShawn was, that they were from the same neighborhood, that he had watched him play football since he was a kid. He said LaShawn was being weak, that whatever had happened, there are worse things in life than not having money and fame and the rest of the bullshit LaShawn was crying about, that he should be thankful he could still use his legs, still had Anika, still had an opportunity to finish his education, still had a chance at life beyond gangs, drugs and violence, which was more than many of the people in their neighborhood had, or would ever have.
Two months later he got out of the hospital and he was walking, though he couldn’t go for more than a hundred yards or so. He attended Anika’s graduation, she finished in four years with honors.
The day after graduation, with a ring bought using borrowed money, he got down on one knee and proposed. A month later, at a Baptist church in Inglewood, they were married. They didn’t have money for a honeymoon, but a wealthy USC alumnus, who also happened to be a huge football fan, offered them his beach house in Malibu for a week.
After years of neglecting each other’s bodies, they spent most of that week in bed.
Anika started USC Medical School in the fall. LaShawn went back to get his degree in education. To supplement their income, and make medical school possible, Anika worked as a graduate assistant in undergraduate courses, and LaShawn worked for the football team. Days were long and grueling, they were in class, studying or teaching for eighteen hours, they slept the other six, they were always tired, always tired. At the end of Anika’s second year of medical school, and just before LaShawn graduated with his education degree, Anika got pregnant. They were surprised because, when they did have time to be intimate with each other, they thought they were being careful.
Both were thrilled, as were their mothers, who volunteered to watch the baby while Anika was in school. LaShawn, who had stopped singing and humming when he started playing football, started again, he would lay his head next to Anika’s belly and softly serenade their unborn child. Anika joked that the child needed to have more of her genes than LaShawn’s because a baby resembling him would never make it out of her body. Friends, fellow students and coworkers pooled cash and helped them get a crib, a nursing chair, a changing table, they moved to a cheaper, but larger, apartment and LaShawn painted one of the rooms yellow, pink and blue.
The baby was born in February, it was a girl, small and light like Anika.
LaShawn cried the first time he held her, she was ten minutes old, he held her against his chest and his hands shook and his limbs trembled and he cried. They named her Keisha. She went home with her parents three days after she was born. Anika took a week off from school during which she still studied, still kept up on her reading, still graded papers for her undergraduate teaching assignment.
Anika is almost done with school, when she finishes she wants to do her residency somewhere in Los Angeles. LaShawn is doing duty as the largest stay-at-home father in California, he can still hold his daughter in the palm of one of his hands. When the residency is over, they’re going to move back to Inglewood, and at some point LaShawn wants to try to get a job teaching and coaching football at his former high school. He walks with a limp, and always will, every now and then someone recognizes him and asks for an autograph, which he loves and hates at the same time. Anika is going to train to be an ob-gyn, she wants to treat young single black women, help them live productive lives and raise productive children. Once a month the two of them go on a date, a walk, a movie and dinner. At least once a week they work on adding to the size of their family. They go to church with their mothers on Sundays. They thank God for the life they have together. They offer thanks for the dreams that have come true, they try to understand the ones that haven’t, they pray for those they still have, the ones they think about at night, while they lie in bed together, their daughter asleep a few feet away.
In 1886, while on their honeymoon, Hobart Johnstone Whitley and Margaret Virginia Whitley decide to name their country home Hollywood. The home is built outside of Los Angeles, near the Cahuenga Pass. As more people start settling in the area around their home, Whitley, who had founded more than 100 separate townships around the country, buys large chunks of land and incorporates the entire area as the city of Hollywood. He later builds the Hollywood Hotel and sells all of his land to developers.
The Malibu Colony is a walled, gated, guarded group of homes that sit on the beach next to the Malibu Lagoon and Surfrider Beach. It was the first land in Malibu to be developed, when, in 1929, the Rindge family, which owned a 13,000-acre, twenty-seven-mile oceanfront parcel, sold the land to finance a legal battle against the state over the building of the Pacific Coast Highway, which they did not want passing through their property. They lost, and the town of Malibu gradually formed on their land. Now, the homes in the colony, almost all of which are second homes to residents of Beverly Hills and Bel-Air, sell for prices between five and fifty million dollars.
Casey and Amberton have a 15 million dollar glass, concrete and steel home built by a famous architect. They spend eight to ten weekends a year there, occasionally a holiday. The house has five bedrooms, six bathrooms, a gym, a roof deck, a pool and a full-time staff of three.
Their neighbors are actors and actresses, heads of talent agencies and film studios, media moguls. Both are sitting by the pool. The kids are with their nannies. Casey is in a bikini she’s rubbing oil on her legs.
Amberton is nude. Casey speaks.
What are you going to do?
I don’t know.
How many times have you called him?
Thirty?
Thirty?
Maybe forty?
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I’m not.
You’ve called him forty times?
Yeah. Maybe more.
Oh my God, you’ve got to stop.
I can’t.
How many times has he picked up?
Twice.
And you had good conversations?
Not really.
What did you say?
I asked him to have his assistant hang up.
At least you remembered to do that.
And then I told him I couldn’t stop thinking about him and had to see him.
What did he say?
He said he didn’t think of me that way.
What way is that?
Amberton laughs.
The gay way.
I met him. He’s gay.
See. That’s what I thought too. Totally.
He’s just hiding behind that football star, pillar-of-his-community thing.
It’s a deep closet, I’m sure.
Not that we’re ones to talk.
Our closets exist for marketing and PR reasons, my dear. His exists for another reason entirely. I think he’s scared.
Scared?
Yes. Absolutely.
Casey looks down, Amberton is still nude.
Maybe I should call him. I could tell him there’s absolutely nothing to be scared of.
They both lau
gh. She speaks.
Really now, what are you going to do?
I might go see him.
And do what?
Tell him I love him.
Are you sure?
Yes.
After one meeting, one lunch and forty unreturned phone calls?
Yes.
You sure it’s not a case of a man with everything obsessing because he can’t have something?
I have had men rebuff me before.
Not many.
That singer. In the boy band.
He slept with you.
Only once.
That’s not being rebuffed.
He shrugs, they both laugh. They hear their children coming up from the beach, doubtlessly accompanied by their staff. Amberton stands, I’m going to go shower and drive into town.
To see him?
Yes. I’m going to march into his office and shut the door and push him against the wall and start passionately kissing him.
What if he punches you?
He’ll melt. I know it. He’s going to melt.
He turns walks into the house upstairs to his bedroom, which, in the same manner as their other house, is separated from the other bedrooms.
He goes into the bathroom looks at himself in the mirror is pleased with what he sees. His hair, which was recently enhanced with very subtle plugs, looks thick and full. His body is lean and taut, his skin, which he conditions daily, is soft and smooth he runs his hands along his torso he imagines they are Kevin’s hands he smiles and feels a chill along his spine he imagines they are Kevin’s hands.
He steps into the shower. He turns up the water lies on the floor lets it hit his chest it sprays his face sprays the rest of his body. The stream is strong it feels like someone is pushing down on his sternum with one hand and tickling the rest of his body with hundreds of little fingers he just lies on the black marble floor and lets the water drop, hit, flow, spread. He sits stands. He lathers up using triple-milled French soap it smells like perfume he rinses it off, lathers again rinses, lathers again, rinses. He steps out of the shower stands at his sink marble shaves with a straight razor stainless carefully uses his comb ivory when he’s done he stands and stares at himself he wants to air-dry so that the smell of the soap stays on his skin. A breeze drifts through an open window. The sun comes through another. Amberton stares at himself he likes what he sees he smiles, smiles.
When he’s dry he walks into his closet he has a full wardrobe in the house, as does every member of his family, though his is not as extensive as the one in the other house. He tries to decide what to wear should he dress up, dress down, how far up, should he wear shorts and flip-flops. He thinks through his greatest outfits he has always been famous for wearing faded jeans Levi’s and black boots snakeskin and a white linen shirt Italian. He feels strong in it, confident and secure, no one can resist him. He opens the drawer where he always keeps it he smiles.
He gets dressed. He looks at himself again he looks good damn good.
He gets in his car a Maserati puts the top down drives along the PCH to Sunset Blvd. into Beverly Hills he knows as he drives he looks damn good.
He pulls up to the valet at the agency looking damn good and walks into the agency looking damn good. As is often the case wherever he goes, even in places where people should know better, all heads turn to stare no words just stares part of the reason is his superstar status part of it is because he’s looking so damn good.
The agency looks like an art museum. Everything is clean and white there are a million two-, three-, four-million-dollar paintings on the walls. The receptionists, both male and female, are dressed in black suits they’re extremely good-looking. On one side of the building is the executive wing, where the high-level agents, department heads and partners keep their offices. Most of them have multiple assistants, their offices have windows, some of them have second rooms with bars and refrigerators and large-screen televisions, a couple have their own bathrooms. The other side of the building is for the younger and lower-level agents. Some have assistants, some don’t, a few of the offices have windows, but most do not. The televisions, if there is one, are smaller, there are no bars.
Amberton doesn’t know where Kevin’s office is, but knows, because he’s a relatively new agent, that he’ll be on the lesser side of the building.
He starts walking through the halls heads turn people stare actors who generate the kind of box office he generates are rarely, if ever, seen in this part of the building. He stops at a desk where a young woman with a bob haircut and a black suit sits in a cubicle wearing a headset. Using his public voice, with a bit of extra sexiness thrown in to match his mood and his outfit, he speaks.
Hello, darling.
She looks up. Surprised immediately nervous, almost shaking.
Uhh, hello.
Are you having a good day?
Sure. Yes. Yes, I am, Mr. Parker. Thank you.
He stands and stares at her, she looks away, looks back, smiles nervously, looks down, back up.
Can I help you?
Do you know where Kevin Jackson’s office is?
At the end of the hall.
He continues to stare at her, watches her become more and more uncomfortable. He loves to do this, to see how people react to him, to see how his presence affects them, to feel how much power he has over them.
He reaches out, puts his hand on her shoulder, it’s shaking.
Thank you. And you’re a beautiful girl.
He walks away, down the hall, towards Kevin’s office, as he approaches he can see him through an open door, he’s sitting at his desk staring at a computer, he’s wearing a headset as Amberton gets closer he can hear him talking.
He’d be great for it.
He nods.
He’s got two films coming out, supporting roles. There’s talk he might get nominated for one of them.
He waits.
He plays a compulsive gambler.
Amberton walks past Kevin’s assistant, an attractive young woman in a black suit.
Yes, it’s negotiable.
Amberton steps into the office closes the door.
Meet him. You’ll see. Trust me.
Kevin looks up, Amberton smiles.
Set it up with my assistant.
There is no window in the office, the wall behind Kevin is covered with pictures and awards from his football career. There is a chair opposite his desk, Kevin motions towards it. Amberton sits down. Great. Thank you.
Kevin hangs up, types something into his computer, Amberton stares at him. Kevin finishes. Looks up.
How can I help you, Mr. Parker.
Mr. Parker?
Yes. How can I help you, Mr. Parker?
We know too much about each other for you to call me Mr. Parker.
One lunch?
There’s more than that.
I’m not sure what you mean.
Why don’t you return my calls?
I didn’t think it was appropriate to return them.
Amberton smiles.
Why not?
Because that’s how I felt.
Amberton stands.
If you thought my approach was inappropriate, you would have called and told me so. I think you’re just scared.
You’re mistaken.
Am I?
Amberton takes a step.
Yes you are.
It’s okay.
Another step.
I’m not going to tell anyone.
Another.
And, as you can imagine, I understand the situation better than anyone you’ll ever meet.
He steps around the desk.
I can see, and I can feel, and I know in my heart, that you want me as much as I want you.
Steps towards him.
And I want to love you.
He reaches out to him.
And I’m not going to hurt you.
Amberton stares at Kevin, holds out his hand. Kevin takes off his headset, takes the
offered hand, stands. Amberton smiles,
Amberton smiles.
The Indiana Colony, so named because its founder was from Indianapolis, becomes one of the largest citrus groves in the United States. In the early 1890s it holds a competition for a new name, the winning entry is Pasadena, which means of the valley in the language of the Chippewa Tribe of Minnesota. The moneyed class of Los Angeles starts moving into the area in large numbers in an effort to escape the concentrations of immigrants, primarily Mexican, Chinese, black, and Irish, that are living in the city.
Dylan and Maddie lie in bed it’s late the drapes are closed it’s pitch-black in the room, though they feel each other their legs intertwined their bodies side by side the tips of their fingers touching they can barely see the other. Maddie speaks.
He did it again today. I was in the break room.