The Fall Girl

by T. B. Markinson

  Claire shifted in her seat.

  “Are you saying he’s transgendered?” Tish asked.

  I walked right into that one. “No, I’m not.”

  “But—”

  I jabbed a finger in the air. “Don’t play the tabloid game, Tish.” I cleared my throat. “The point is, Mr. Flynn feels like he can dictate where human beings belong in society, contrary to what a majority of Americans think. He’s clinging to a time that no longer exists. Not just with LGBTQ rights—”

  It was her turn to cut me off. “But aren’t we past this type of rhetoric now? I mean, with marriage equality—”

  I hunched forward in my seat. “In Indiana, there’s a law against lying on one’s marriage certificate. Yet the document only includes a space for a man’s name and a woman’s name, so if a same-sex couple fills it out, they are guilty of a crime and could possibly spend time in jail even though it’s legal for same-sex couples to marry in America.” She tried to interrupt, but I silenced her with a finger. “It wasn’t too long ago, Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue licenses to same-sex couples, garnered a mass following, including presidential candidates hailing her as a hero or victim. There have been advancements in rights for all, but there are still those who want to subvert laws to deny all people. Stanly Flynn is one such person. I’m proud of exposing the real Mr. Flynn.”

  Claire laid a hand on my thigh.

  “Are you proud of the headline?”

  Without flinching, I sidestepped the question. “I’m absolutely proud of the courage and dedication of the journalists to uncover the truth.”

  Luckily, she took the bait. “About a man’s private life?”

  “He is in the public eye. Like it or not, calling Mr. Flynn out is for the public good. Voters should know if their politicians are lying to them. He jumped on the anti-gay bandwagon when it was riding high, and he’s been capitalizing on it for well over a decade. He’s raised millions of dollars for his campaigns. He’s steered laws in his state, limiting rights of the LGBTQ community, including the rights of his lover.” I tried to soften my voice but couldn’t. “Why isn’t that newsworthy? Why are so many slamming Matthews Daily Dish for supposedly slumming it? The truth isn’t always pretty. Voters have a right to know.”

  We stared at each other, menacingly. Tish smiled and shook her head like a Hollywood starlet on the red carpet. “Goodness, how did we get into such a heated argument so early in the morning?”

  Her effort to look nonthreatening put me on high alert.

  Tish focused on Claire. “How is your adopted daughter?

  Claire cringed slightly about the truth that only she was the legal adoptive parent. While we hadn’t gone to great lengths to keep the adoption a secret, we weren’t screaming from the mountaintops, either, in an effort to keep our child out of the public eye. Was that Tish’s angle? To further the debate about what the public has a right to know?

  “Mia’s settling in nicely, as much as a baby can.” Claire, still grasping my thigh, turned to me and said, “We haven’t had much sleep since bringing her home, but I’m lucky JJ handles most of the nighttime duties.”

  “I’ve always been a night owl,” I said to Claire, avoiding eye contact with Tish.

  “Now, you’re in your mid-forties. Do you worry that you’re too old to be adopting an infant?”

  Claire’s head whipped around to confront the pesky interviewer. “Would you ask a man that question? How old was Charlie Chaplin when he was still fathering children? Or Mick Jagger?”

  Tish didn’t balk, intent on the kill shot. “You adopted a baby from abroad. Was that because of your age, or did you have to because you’ve been tainted by JJ’s Miracle Girl status? I imagine it wasn’t cheap.” Tish’s smile was entirely innocent, and I had to admire her skill to look so sweet while being such a ruthless and coldhearted bitch. As much as I hated to admit it, she had a great future in the biz. And I was certain Matthews Daily Dish was now on her hit list.

  While I had stood my ground about a headline I hated, I couldn’t jump up and shout, “You’re doing exactly what you just accused MDD of!” That wouldn’t play well, not from me, the tainted Miracle Girl.

  Luckily, Claire swooped in.

  ***

  “Miracle Girl status,” I muttered in the back of Cora’s limo en route to the New York office.

  Cora, on the seat opposite Claire and me, laughed. “I thought Claire’s response was brilliant—that all children of the world deserve a loving family and Tish, as a single woman in her early thirties, just wouldn’t understand.”

  I reached for the mini-fridge and immediately sensed Cora’s and Claire’s eyes on me. Suppressing an annoyed grimace over their worry, I snatched a tonic bottle, not even bothering to look at the booze on offer, twisted off the cap with too much relish, and downed half of the tiny beverage. One bad interview wouldn’t drive me to drinking. “I hope that achieved what you wanted.”

  “Even bad press is good press. Besides, you landed a few zingers.” Cora flashed a smile. “Our writers are already spinning it, smearing Tish’s name while splashing the blogosphere with interviews with kids who have been adopted and given a chance when the cards were stacked against them. Others are calling Tish out for bashing MDD for outing Mr. Flynn and then going after your history, considering you came clean.” She waved etcetera. The fact that MDD had been preparing for these outcomes before the interview started irked me. I understood how the news business worked, yet I constantly put myself in these situations, baring myself and my family for hits.

  Only an idiot would have thought the Fancy Pants article wouldn’t be addressed. Admittedly, a tiny part of me had believed Mia would be left alone. We hadn’t released the crucial aspect that only Claire could legally adopt Mia, and so far we’d also been able to keep under wraps the capital expended by Cora and Silas to smooth over certain irregularities. Wasn’t there any goodness in people to leave a baby alone? Any leeway for justifiable hypocrisy when it came to innocents?

  “I don’t see you putting yourself out there, helping to build our brand,” I tugged on the collar of my blouse. Claire had been smart to wear a white sleeveless shirt with red stitching. I never wore short sleeves during interviews, fearful people would casually seek out track marks, even though I’d confessed in my memoir that I’d only snorted coke. The fear was probably irrational, but living in the limelight for the past year had done a whopper on my nerves, forcing my brain to try to stay one step ahead. The irony didn’t elude me. MDD revealed secrets about celebrities all the time, and yet I continued my efforts to bar the public from my private life.

  Cora, impeccable in her custom-made skirt and silk blouse, calmly said, “Because I’m not the Miracle Girl who just proposed on the summit of a mountain to the woman I fell in love with and lost over twenty-something years ago.”

  “Your family has been in the media biz for eons. How many presidents have you had over for dinner? How many Nobel Prize winners? World leaders?”

  “I’m part of the old world, the stuffy elite. People don’t want that. They want new. Exciting. Relatable. Someone who’s fallen flat on her face and brushed herself off.” Cora’s implacable expression communicated no argument I offered would change her mind. I was what the public wanted, and that was all that mattered in our business. Until the public tossed me to the side. Feel-good stories only had so much play, and I sensed I was reaching my sell-by date. If Cora became embroiled in a scandal, would the tables be turned?

  “And which news organization had a story about Janie being in hiding?”

  Cora shrugged.

  “No one on our staff picked up that useful crumb before my interview?”

  Another shrug. An entirely unconvincing one.

  Instead of pursuing the topic, I watched a woman applying crimson lipstick in the back of a cab next to us at the traffic light. She wasn’t afraid of being noticed, and I envied her. I pretended to squish her h
ead repeatedly with my forefinger and thumb.

  Claire followed my gaze, not impressed by my childish antics.

  The limo pulled up outside the skyscraper on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Claire handed over my trusty baseball hat and sunglasses from her mom purse. As we made our way to the front door, a few people stopped to point and gawk. One woman snapped a photo.

  Another shouted, “Way to kick some ass, Miracle Girl!”

  More people turned their heads.

  I tugged the hat lower and whispered to Cora, “Was that your doing?”

  “What?”

  “To have someone shout encouragement.”

  “Are you accusing me of trying to influence the news?” She placed a hand on her chest, her diamond wedding ring nearly blinding me.

  “Yes. And in case you didn’t notice, I was hoping to go incognito.” I gripped the bill of the hat, shaping it more to block my face, a useless gesture, but it made me feel better.

  She smirked.

  Inside the refuge of Cora’s office, which spanned half of the forty-ninth floor, my armor melted. Most of our employees had offices on the two floors below.

  Avery, my personal assistant, held Mia in her arms. Ian, Claire’s son, stood at the window, his innocent eyes agog over the hustle and bustle of the street below. He’d flown in with his father the day before. Darrell was catching up with some newspaper friends he hadn’t seen in over thirty years and would be joining us tonight for dinner in the theater district.

  “How’d it go?” Avery asked. She’d already noticed my hunched shoulders and tight lips, but she shrugged them off. Per my request, she ensured Ian didn’t watch the interview. “No matter. It’s over for today, and you still have the whole day to spend with your family.”

  It was Ian’s first trip to the Big Apple, and he had a list of things he wanted to do and see, culminating with taking in a show this evening. Much to Darrell’s displeasure, we had tickets to see Billy Elliot. Darrell was the type of father who wanted to see his son in a football uniform and helmet, not dance shoes and tights. Ian, to his credit, had played a season of peewee football and, moments after the final game of the year, announced it wasn’t his cup of tea. That he’d used those exact words cut Darrell to the bone, though that hadn’t been Ian’s intent.

  I shed my navy blazer and kicked off my five-inch heels, already feeling more like myself and not the media mogul my job required. I pivoted to my business partner and asked, “Are you spending the day with us?”

  Cora smiled wistfully. “I wish, but someone has to steer the ship.”

  “Yeah, right.” I winked at Avery, who pretended she didn’t pick up on my meaning.

  Cora either chose to ignore the wink or didn’t bother to notice and said, “Don’t forget you and I have a West Coast tour next month.”

  I groaned. We would be spending nine days traipsing from the Pacific Northwest all the way to Southern California, culminating with a meeting with a Hollywood producer who had an elephant-sized hard-on for the movie rights to my memoir. Several others made a pitch, but Hal Ross was a close friend of Cora’s.

  “Such a baby. Not everyone gets the chance to have an intimate chat with Ellen on her show.” Cora knew the talk show host was the least of my concerns.

  “In front of millions of viewers, don’t try selling ice to an Eskimo.”

  “Don’t pretend you aren’t a media whore just like the rest of us.” She fluttered her eyelashes.

  “Don’t pretend you have a heart.”

  “I never had the luxury, not in this business.”

  Chapter Four

  Cora and I were at a party in the Hollywood Hills outside the Beachwood Canyon community, home to many famous celebs since it had popped into existence in the 1920s. To my right was a pool with a waterfall made from boulders set against tropical trees and bushes. In the cove behind the cascade, two guests in lip-lock, maybe more, permitted those interested a chance for voyeurism. Tea lights in red votive holders flickered along the passageways, waiting for the sun to set.

  So far, I had counted seven actors who had won an Academy Award within the past three decades. Twenty years ago, I might have been impressed, not to mention I’d be on the hunt to score some coke and a girl to take home. Tonight, though, my thoughts were about family. I was missing the eighth straight night of reading a chapter of Beverly Cleary’s The Mouse and the Motorcycle with Ian and another chance to tuck in Mia. Skyping briefly each day eased the disconnect with Claire and the kids, but it wasn’t the same.

  It was my last evening in L.A. Hours from now, I’d be on Silas’s private jet scheduled to land in Colorado around five in the morning. The arrival time allowed a couple of hours to snooze on the couch in my office in the Denver Tech Center before putting in a full day to catch up on work I’d neglected while schmoozing with interviewers, television personalities, investors, and potential advertisers in an effort to promote Matthews Daily Dish.

  When I wasn’t traveling, once or twice a week, I made the commute. The time usually clocked in at a little under two hours to Denver from our house. I preferred working from home so I could pick up Ian from school. On the days I couldn’t, Claire’s mom picked him up or the recently retired Darrell, who had relocated back to Northern Colorado after a much too brief stint in Wyoming. Winter offered more opportunities to justify not making the trek to the office. The time in the car, though, allowed me to take care of phone calls to the East Coast as well as tend to planning sessions with Avery. Thank goodness for hands-free.

  Cora jabbed her pointy elbow into my side. “Snap out of it, and pretend like you’re having a good time.”

  I massaged my side. “Geez, what do you use to sharpen that thing? It’s a weapon.”

  The pudgy producer I’d been avoiding for the past couple of days approached with a twenty-something blonde on his arm. I’d bet twenty thousand the reason this woman was with the pale and bloated man was the fact that he’d produced five blockbusters in the past eight years.

  “Ah, there you are. Dear, I’d like you to meet JJ Cavendish and Cora Matthews.” He chewed on an unlit cigar, and I wondered if he did so to look more like a Hollywood producer.

  The blonde smiled as if she had just heard a director shout, “Action!” I wasn’t particularly fond of applying the blonde bimbo stereotype to anyone with a pulse, but in this environment, it was nearly impossible to avoid the types that should exist only in movies.

  The producer ignored the woman on his arm, which he freed to shake hands with Cora and me. “Are you ready to talk shop?”

  “I make it a rule never to talk business at a pool party.” I attempted to sound sincere.

  A server approached with three glasses of champagne and a tonic water with a slice of lemon. Every time one had approached, he or she brought the same drink. I would be pissing carbonated bubbles for the next day. Well before I came clean about my past, I’d started drinking clear beverages with fizz at public events in order to fool people into believing I was actually imbibing a vodka tonic or something. Not drinking in social situations made most people antsy and invited awkward intrusions into my private life.

  Cora took her glass of champagne, hooked an arm through Hal’s, and moved him far enough away so I couldn’t put a damper on the mood or conversation.

  The blonde stood, waiting for me to entertain her. A hot stifling breeze rustled the fronds of a palm tree behind her head.

  “You look familiar,” I blurted even though she didn’t.

  “You don’t.” In the blink of an eye, her ditzy expression vanished and so did she.

  Behind me, the actor Jack Humphrey laughed, and I turned, raising my tonic in the air to imply C’est la vie.

  He took this as an invitation to initiate our first interaction ever, although his easygoing gait implied we’d know each other for years. I suppressed a groan.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t recognize you after all the attention the media
has piled on lately. Of course, the Jackie-O glasses and perma-frown make it a bit more challenging.”

  “Does that mean you do?” I eyed the rugged but handsome fifty-something man that had two days’ scruff on his chiseled chin.

  “Yeah, you’re the girl who proposed to another girl on top of a mountain. Now that’s classy.” He rolled back onto his heels, soaking me in from head to toe. His lightweight black cashmere sweater, sans an undershirt, expertly displayed his muscled arms and torso.

  It took me half a second to speculate he was more of a smartass than I was. “And you’re the guy who’s been busted for drugs more times than Lindsay Lohan, but you’ve managed to resurrect your career.” Jack had been in the latest superhero flick that had advertisements smeared over busses, billboards, and internet pop-up ads.

  He tapped his tonic water against mine. “You want my advice?” He made a face that said tough shit if I didn’t. “Get the fuck out of L.A. This town swallows people like you and me whole.”

  “Why are you here, then?”

  “Hal makes me fly in for events like this.”

  I noticed Cora laughing so hard she had to hold onto Hal’s meaty arm so she wouldn’t tumble over the cliff into the canyon. Deep down I knew it was all for show. I had witnessed that fake laugh more times than I cared to admit.

  “That doesn’t look good for you,” the actor said.

  I bobbed my head. “No, it doesn’t. Cora is a hound for attention.”

  “Says the Miracle Girl who’s been on more talk shows than Tom Cruise promoting his latest release.” He grinned over the rim of his drink, as if challenging me to defend my media blitz.

  “Guilty as charged. By the way, I thoroughly enjoyed your memoir, More Cracked Than Humpty Dumpty. I was particularly moved by the scene when you missed your mother’s funeral because you were high and went to the wrong cemetery.”

  He whistled. “Damn, that’s good. Next time, I’ll hire you as my ghostwriter.”

  “Typical Hollywood type.”