Crashed (24 page)

She was shifting from foot to foot, still hanging onto my hand. “I can’t. I can’t go out there. Not with
those
.”

I thought, the hell with it. I gave her hand a tug. “Good. Let’s go.”

“But she’ll fire me. I need—I need that money.”

“She can’t fire you. If she fires you, she hasn’t got a movie.”

She put both hands over mine, squeezing hard. “She will. She’s using this to figure out whether I’m going to do what she wants me to do. If I don’t go out there, I won’t get anything.”

“Thistle. Listen to me. I’m
working
for her. It’s my job to make sure she gets this movie done. But I’m telling you that this isn’t worth a couple hundred thousand. Let’s go.”

“I can’t. It’s not … you don’t know. I can’t even pay my rent.”

“I’ll pay your fucking rent.”

“What, for the rest of my life? Are you hearing yourself?” She dropped my hand and turned away from me, the carefully brushed hair catching fire in the light from the stage. She put both hands on top of her head, one atop the other, palms down. “Ohhhh,” she said. “Oh, I am so
fatally
fucked.” One hand dropped to her stomach. “I don’t feel good.”

“Come on. We’ll get out of here and think about this later.”

“Later.
Later
. There isn’t any later. This
is
later.
Before
is over, it ended a long time ago, and this is where I am. Oh, God, look at those dickheads out there. I need a wastebasket.”

I didn’t see one, but there was a fire bucket against one wall, and I said, “Over there,” and Thistle ran to it, bent over, and vomited. She heaved until there wasn’t anything left, and all I could do was watch the spasms rack her narrow shoulders and listen to her cough as she tried to bring up more. The cough turned into a sob and then two and then three, her body forcing them out as though something massive was squeezing her, and I thought she was going to lose it completely, but she choked it off somehow and remained there, bent over the bucket, as the chatter continued from the screening room and erupted into
laughter. Her fists were clenched, her arms straight down with the elbows locked. Then, when she knew she had it under control, she relaxed her back and arms, straightened, and wiped her mouth.

She turned around and looked back at the light pouring off of the stage area, as though she wouldn’t be surprised to see an arena full of lions, lazily waiting for her. Then she closed both eyes tight, squared her shoulders, and breathed out, hard. Her eyes opened again, and she was looking at me.

“Relax,” she said. “I used to do that before the first take every day. Is my chin clean?”

“Immaculate.”

“How’s my makeup?”

I looked closely. “It’s okay. Your mascara ran a little bit.”

“I always tear up when I vomit.” Her eyes dared me to contradict her. “Can you fix it for me?”

“Not one of my specialties, but I can try.” I put my left hand on her shoulder and used the tip of my right little finger to wipe away the errant black tracks. Beneath my hand, she was shuddering as though she was moments from freezing to death. “You’re okay,” I said.

“I doubt it,” she said. Her voice was steady. “But it should at least be interesting. I just heaved Doc’s pills, all the downers and smoothies, everything that was supposed to slow me down, and he gave me a second shot. Oh, and one of the makeup girls had some coke. So I’m going nowhere but up.” Her face was slick with sweat, and she mopped it with the back of her hand, then slipped her hands into the neck of her T-shirt and put them under her arms. She pulled her hands out and wiped them on her jeans. “I’m
sopping
,” she said. “Dead wet girls. I remember you talking about dead wet girls. Claudette Colbert and dead wet girls. What a frame of reference.”

I took my hand off her shoulder. “I’m telling you for the last time, don’t go out there.”

Her eyes came up to mine. “Why? You’re working for Trey, right? What do you care?”

“This sounds corny, but beautiful things shouldn’t be wrecked. It’s nothing to cheer about when trash gets wrecked, but you have something only one person in ten million has. You need to take care of it.”

“You still don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t have
anything
. That wasn’t me. I’m trash, and I need two hundred thousand dollars. Trash buys dope. Are you coming?”

“I said I would.”

“People say a lot of things.” She turned to face the stage, just in time to see Trey step into the light on the other side. “I didn’t mean that,” she said without turning back to me.

“What the hell are you going to tell them?”

“Trey said,
tell them the truth
,” she said in Trey’s voice. “So I will. Unless a lie works better.”

“You’re absolutely certain.”

“I’m waiting for the alternative.”

“Okay, I’m with you. Give me your right shoe.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Trey said. “I’m Trey Annunziato, the executive producer of
Three Wishes
. Thank you so much for coming.”

“My shoe? Why do you need—”

“I just need it. Right now. Hurry.”

She put a hand on my arm for balance, bent down, and pulled off her right sneaker. I took it and used the little penknife I always carry to worry a hole in the toe. “I’ll buy you a new pair,” I said. “Get this back on.”

“… one of the most talented actresses ever on American television, and the youngest Emmy winner ever,” Trey was saying. She looked across the stage and saw me standing over Thistle, who was on one knee pulling her shoe on. Trey raised both eyebrows at me, clearly in the imperative and meaning
Get her ready right now
.

“I think this is your cue,” I said.

“Wooo, that’s a lot of dope,” Thistle said, standing back up. “
Going up
. Wish I hadn’t heaved those Percocets. Listen, if I say too much, put your hand on my shoulder, okay? If I keep talking, squeeze. I might not notice if you don’t.”

“… my great pleasure,” Trey said, “to introduce you to Thistle Downing.”

“Fuck you and
hello
,” Thistle said, smiling at Trey.

She stepped out on the stage with me two paces behind her, and every light in the northern hemisphere flashed at us. A few people clapped, but it didn’t catch on. Cameras exploded all over the room, and the lights on half a dozen TV cameras did their electric supernovas. The light was so thick I felt like we were wading through it.

The director’s chair I’d seen on the monitors was dead center on the stage, positioned in front of the earliest of the photos of Thistle. This close to the picture, I revised my guess at her age downward to thirteen. Thistle hoisted herself up into the chair and the image was echoed on the monitors. I stood next to her, and the bulbs all went off again as I blinked against them. I caught a sudden whiff of something sharp and acidic and realized it was Thistle’s fear.

“Could you move away?” a photographer shouted at me. I started to step aside, but Thistle sunk nails into my wrist. I stayed where I was.

“Who is he?” someone else called out.

People were shouting questions, and Thistle didn’t respond, just sat perfectly still, her eyes floating somewhere above the crowd as though there were a ball of light drifting there, maybe bringing the Good Witch of the East to her rescue. Trey watched nervously. To her it may have seemed as though Thistle was in command of herself, waiting calmly for order, but her grip on my wrist actually hurt, and the knuckles of her other hand, clasping the arm of her chair,
were about to burst through the skin. Eventually, the noise died away.

“That’s better,” Thistle said. Her voice was very small. People in the four rows of seats leaned forward to hear her and some of them held up small tape recorders. The film crews standing at the back of the room fiddled with their equipment. “Someone asked—” She cleared her throat and started over, louder this time. “Someone asked who this man is. He’s my personal burglar. Every girl needs a burglar, and he’s mine.” They started to shout again, and Thistle held up both hands. When it was relatively quiet again, she said, “I have very sensitive hearing. Especially right now. If you keep yelling, I’ll have to leave. Just put up a hand, and I’ll call on you one at a time.”

From her side of the stage Trey said, “I thought I might choose the questions.”

Without turning her head, Thistle said, “Did you really?” Trey gave her a smile that should have sliced her in half, and stepped back in retreat.

“What’s his name?” a photographer called. “For the captions.”

“My name is Pockets Mahoney,” I said.

“Pockets is a nickname,” Thistle said. “You should put it in quotation marks, those of you who bother to punctuate.” She pointed to a woman in the middle of the first row and said, “You. You get to shoot first.”

“Thistle,” the woman said, oozing empathy. “You were a big star. Why are you doing this?”

Thistle said, “I need money. Don’t you ever need money?”

“But you sold your residuals,” the woman said. “You got hundreds of millions of dollars for them. What happened to all that?”

“I made bad investments,” Thistle said.

Other people were waving their hands, but the woman persisted. “Investments in what?”

Thistle said, “Pharmaceuticals,” and pointed at a short man with a toupee so bad I could spot it past all the lights.

“You have a whole generation of new fans,” he began.

Thistle said, “If you say so.”

“Most of them are young girls. How do you think they’ll feel to know you’re making an adult film? Do you think that you’re a good role model for them?”

The girl who did Thistle’s hair had put some sort of guck on her bangs to make them look spiky, and she took one of the spikes and twirled it between her fingers, her hand hiding part of her face. “Do you want a serious answer?”

“Sure,” the reporter said.

“Okay. I don’t think young girls should need role models. I think they should grow up on their own. But if they do need role models, it’s dumb to use somebody who’s on television. They should use someone they know. A teacher, maybe, or an older sister. Maybe their mother. Not my mother, obviously, but their mother.
My
mother wouldn’t be a good role model for a serial killer, much less—” I squeezed her shoulder, and she broke off. “Look, nobody who saw me on television knows anything at all about me. I was never that little girl. Anyway, what kind of role model is a witch? How dumb is that? ‘My role model solves problems with magic.’ So what’s she going to do when she’s seventeen years old and she gets pregnant by some asshole with a stocking cap and a bolt through his lower lip? She going to wave a wand at her stomach? Suppose she marries some jerk who hits her. She’s going to dematerialize before he connects? Actually, if you don’t mind my saying so, that’s a stupid question.” She pointed at someone else. “Your turn.”

“You were the most famous little girl in America for seven years—”

“Eight,” Thistle said.

“Sorry. How has it felt to live in obscurity for the last eight or nine years?”

“
Obscurity
?” Thistle said, leaning on the word heavily enough to make it sag in the middle. “I guess that’s one way to put it. It took me a while to adjust to
obscurity
, to use your word, not to mention poverty and a closer relationship with the world of large insects living under sinks. As you can probably guess, it was very different. Not that it was all bad. You know, in my old life I’d gotten used to having vultures circling around all the time, waiting for me to pick my nose or smoke a cigarette in public so they could deliver it into people’s houses that night. So I didn’t have bugs, but I had vultures. I’d started to think it was normal to have cameras shoved in my face all the time and hear people shout rude questions at me and then, when I was tired of being worked to death or had a stomachache and didn’t answer, they’d say that I wasn’t
grateful
or something, like
they’d
made me famous, when all they were really trying to do was take a bite out of me so they could get their forty-five seconds of face time on some shitty cable channel.” She glanced up at me. “Coming because they smell blood and then spitting some of it up on camera. I’d gotten used to having these people live on me, sort of like mold on bread.” I put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. “I can’t really say I missed being part of all that, where people like you make a big deal out of people like me just so you can turn around and start grinding us into sausage.” She stopped and drew a couple of quick breaths. “So, yeah, I had to adjust, but I can’t say I cried myself to sleep every night. Basically, I like the bugs better than I liked the vultures.”

“But here you are again,” the reporter said nastily.

“And so are you,” Thistle said. “And a few dozen exactly like you. At least there’s only one of me.”

I caught a glimpse of motion on the far side of the stage and saw Trey stepping back out of sight. She kept her eyes on Thistle as she pulled out a cell phone and started to dial.

Thistle pointed at someone else, a female I recognized from
local news, where she did stories about how even regular people are interesting, and isn’t that great? “You,” Thistle said.

“You mentioned your mother a minute ago. Are you speaking to her?”

“I’m sorry,” Thistle said. “I didn’t hear you.” She started to point at someone else, but the reporter pushed on.

“Your
mother
,” she said. “I asked if you—”

“Can’t hear a word,” Thistle said. “Next.”

Trey was talking on the phone, saying something sharp if her expression was any indication. Her eyes were still on Thistle. It looked like Trey was reconsidering her resale value.

“Why are you so hostile?” was the question.

“
Hostile
?” Thistle said. “This isn’t hostile. This is just recess, we’re playing together nicely. I mean, come on, let’s at least be honest. You’ve all come here to make an omelet, and I’m the egg you have to break.”

Trey hung up the phone and came back into the light.

“Why do you say that?” the reporter asked. “Why do you assume we’re not on your side?”