Between You and Me (28 page)

Kelsey releases the door, and we hear her wood platforms clatter down the slats.

Michelle uses tweezers to take a contender from the toddler album. “The first time I met Eric, he shook my hand—all of eleven years old, mind you—shook my hand, said, nice to meet you. I found
Sage putting my La Mer on her elbows! Wasn’t even embarrassed—just said, ‘Kelsey said I could,’ and walked out.”

“At least you’ve met them. I’m never here when she invites them over.”

“Count yourself lucky. I know they’re rich and all, but they walk around this place looking like they’re gonna slip her panties in their pocket. Which I suppose is better than keeping her out till all hours.” Michelle returns the album marked “first grade” and picks up “second.” “Like I wouldn’t have loved to get out of the house when I was separated? I was new to L.A.,
all
the men we were meeting were asking. What I wouldn’t have given to get a drink, get a little wild.” She pulls her glasses back down with a frown. “I had responsibilities. As always, Miss Thing’s only thinking about herself. She’d better focus on Jessie soon, remind Aaron what a great wife and mother she can be, so he gets over this B.S.”

“I think it’s just hard to be here,” I say. “You know, when Jessie isn’t.”

Her disdain doesn’t waver. “That’s what parenting is, Logan. Learning to let go.”

“Of a four-month-old?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. Jesus,
look
at me.” Michelle passes the album over. “Look at those legs!” It’s a shot of Michelle in a miniskirt and Kelsey beside her in a leotard, squinting at the camera in front of their beaten-up hatchback.

“Hot,” I acknowledge.

“Thank you.” She tilts her head with a grin. “Oh God, that sack of crap! I’m amazed it survived. We left in the middle of the night—made it in a day and a half. Even lost a hubcap outside Albuquerque, but that didn’t slow me down.”

“The middle of the night,” I repeat.

“Like a house on fire,” she says with a hard glint of pride.

“So, that’s why you didn’t say good-bye?” I ask without turning.

“Well, it’s not like I was going to stop at the hospital!”

“Dad says I was in a car accident.” My throat is dry. “I don’t think it was a car accident.”

“Well,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Your daddy is a . . . ” She slides the album off my lap and onto hers. “Good Christian man,” she answers with careful finality. “I, for sure, should’ve been a Nair model.” She resumes flipping.

We hear the engine of the convertible rev below us. “Dammit!” She slaps her palm on the floor. “She can’t see!”

I race down the steps.

Luckily I catch up before
she hits the highway, abandoning my car to get into her driver’s seat.

“What the fuck?” I say as I pull us back into traffic with the motocycles in tow, knowing that whatever the tabloids make of this won’t be good.

“I can do it! Everything’s just a little blurry, but I was going super-slow.”

When we pull up at the strip of boutiques on Melrose, Kelsey perfunctorily invites me in to meet her new friends, but we both know it’s just because she’ll need a ride home. Standing in her Hanky Panky, holding a beaded sarong, Sage Kopelman immediately informs me that she’s the heiress to America’s number one mattress company. Her friends, Brooke and Jodie, say the word
Daddy
an awful lot for women in their twenties. Other than that, I cannot get a handle on what they actually
do
. Brooke seems to be generally frustrated by wait lists—for handbags, restaurants, and yoga classes—and Jodie alludes to a jewelry line, but it sounds more like an excuse to peruse display cases than an actual business. Ultimately, judging from their speckled chests, deeply lined foreheads and preoccupation with chemical peels, they seem to spend half their time traveling to fry themselves and the other half paying people to correct it.

The paparazzi are starting to block the sidewalk, “Is Aaron fucking someone else with your baby there?” they shout. The flashbulbs
click click click.

Kelsey keeps her head down, face locked, until she’s released into the refuge of the next store, not giving them the expression of hurt or shock worth a hundred thousand dollars. Once inside, her companions stare at her expectantly, awaiting a private show. “You know
what’s totally weird?” she asks, grabbing a pinstripe hat. “They write about my shopping like it’s this crime, like I have a problem.” She tosses it next to the cash register without even trying it on. “I’m paid by the American people. You don’t like me, don’t download my work, don’t wear my perfume, stay home.” She has Sage’s undivided attention. “What would suck is to hoard it like Scrooge McDuck. Take all that cash out of circulation.” She swipes up a scarf. “I’m helping this boutique owner pay her bills and the manufacturer pay his. I keep businesses running. But nobody ever writes that.”

Sage pats her. “That was amazing. You’re so right. Can I tell you something, as a friend?”

Kelsey nods.

“You should talk more like that in public. People think you’re stupid.
I
thought you were stupid until we met.”

“Me, too,” Jodie and Brooke echo, trying on matching parachute pants.

“Oh,” Kelsey says, nodding. “I mean, there’s a brand—I was really young, and I’ve had to balance—it’s hard to transition.”

Sage nods. “Just something to think about. Oh, no,” she says in response to the red top Kelsey has picked up. “Not while you’re sallow. Let’s find something flattering for tonight.”

“What’s tonight?” I ask.

“Oh.” Kelsey’s eyes dart to Sage’s. “Nothing.”

“Right.” Sage smiles. “Just a quiet night in.”

“They just suck.” I fill
Finn in that evening as we follow the Chateau Marmont’s maître ’d to our table. “I swear I heard Sage talking to her dealer. Her
dealer
, like some eighties movie. Do you really want to be
that
person?”

“What does Kelsey see in them?” he asks, waving as he spots the studio exec we’ll be dining with—and trying to impress—on Travis’s behalf.

“Well, she didn’t go to high school, remember, so it’s probably fulfilling some latent seventh-grade need to be talked to like shit.”

We take our seats, and I try to focus as the executive and Finn trad
insider gossip and film reviews fresh from the festival circuit. Then I spot Less Than Sage leading a tanned processional to a long table by the patio’s edge. “Sage,” I mouth to Finn, just as the last of her party weaves into sight—Kelsey.

As Sage’s dinner party, consisting predominantly of cigarettes and gin, progresses, Sage gradually slouches until she’s almost parallel with the tiled floor. Then, as dessert is served, she climbs up, and Kelsey slides back her chair, spotting me. I excuse myself and follow her into the ladies’ room.

“Oh, hi,” Kelsey says, nonchalant.

“Really?”

“Uch, Logan.” She tosses her arm as if I’m a weighted handbag she’s dropping.

Sage comes out of the stall without flushing. She wipes at her nose. “I’m texting anyone who can get their hands on a case of Cristal and some party favors. Wait, you’re two-three-two or three-two-three—I can never remember.”

“Two-three-two,” Kelsey confirms.

“Yea.” Sage pushes back into the restaurant as Kelsey pulls out her lip gloss.

“You really want to open your house to Sage’s iPhone contacts?” I ask her reflection.

Her eyes flash. “Are you fucking kidding me, Logan? Are you seriously questioning me right now?”

“She talks to you like an assshole.”

“Oh, go be with your boyfriend, Logan. I’m twenty-five. I’m not spending the rest of my life stuck in that house with pictures of the year I was happy.” She opens the door. “I have to live,
I have to
. And I
definitely
don’t need your—or anyone’s—judgment.”

I shakily reseat myself as
the executive takes a last swig of his scotch. “If we’re talking about a sports team that gets dropped in the Andes, I’d cast Travis as the Saint Bernard who comes to the rescue.”

“But he started in drama,” Finn reminds him.

“She started in porn.” He flicks his thumb at his wife. “Doesn’t
matter. He needs to be texturized. Get Tarantino to give him a cameo. Soot him up and win an Oscar, then your field’s wide open.” He raises his hand for the check.

“Well, at least now the
boobs make sense.” I try to cheer Finn up as our car inches along Sunset.

He doesn’t smile.

“You’re a guy, and you love Travis. I’m sure other guys feel the same.”

“Apparently, they see him as two hours they have to sit through to get laid. This is an absurd amount of traffic.” An ambulance siren wails in our wake, and Finn steers hard to the right, clearing a path. Then we see the motorcycles weaving through the idling cars, and another block on, we pull level with the wreckage. “Stop the car,” I say as Finn is focused on clearing to the other side of the rubberneckers. “Stop the car!” I scream. I bolt out my door.

“Miss.” A cop tries to catch me, but I struggle past him to the woman standing in the torn dress amid an assault of flashbulbs, her black shins bleeding, shoes in her hands. I wrap Kelsey in my arms, and she sobs. Sobs like the world is coming to an end.

Sitting on the edge of Kelsey’s couch, as if staying rigidly alert will somehow help her, I watch the navy sky shift to gray and then orange, waiting for Andy and Michelle to bring Kelsey home from the police station. Finn found his way to the guest room at around three
AM
after conceding that persuading me to join him was pointless. I press my phone again for the time. I can’t believe that with everything at her disposal, it’s taken this long for her to be released.

Hearing a car in the driveway, I run to open the door, finding only Cheryl climbing out of her Audi in silk pajamas, clenching her laptop and cell. “Shit,” she says, blowing past me, stink face at full throttle. “I lost the signal.” She sets her computer on the dining table.

“What’s happening?”

“Cocaine was found in the car. Coffee. Now.” She starts scrolling the blogs, watching the story break. “Jumbled up with all the shit that fell out of that Sage’s purse. But it’s Kel’s car, and any second now, Nancy Grace is gonna say just that.”

I hand Cheryl a mug as we hear the SUV approach. Michelle blows right past me to the fridge. Kelsey is behind her in a sweatsuit, the gash on her forehead bandaged, her bloodied dress in a Ziploc. Cheryl looks from the pictures on her laptop to Kelsey and back. “I wouldn’t have gone with gray,” she actually says.

Andy’s cell’s on speaker. “Dan? Dan? Can you hear me?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” responds the newest addition to Kelsey’s legal team, a criminal specialist. “These charges aren’t going away.”

“Fuck.” Andy spits.

“But I swerved because that paparazzi lost control of his bike.” Kelsey protests. “I saved his life.”

“We’ll get to that,” Cheryl adds as Michelle slaps the whisk loudly through the eggs.

Andy gives her a silencing glare. “Dan? You still there?”

“Andy, Michelle, I don’t want to make today worse, but you need to know that Aaron’s lawyer is at court reopening his claim for custody.”

“What!”
Kelsey cries.

Michelle slams the omelet pan onto the range.

“How can he—he can just do that? It was finalized!” Kelsey pulls the phone to her mouth. “Custody can be reopened?”

The phone crackles. “I’m going to try to buy us some time for you to shift the public discourse.”

“On it, Dan,” Cheryl says from the couch.

“Public discourse?” I ask, not sure how the public enters into it.

“The fact is,” Dan clarifies, “our judge waits to buy her milk in front of the same magazines as everyone else, and it’s colored her opinion. She’s really hung up on that whole fountain incident.I promise I’m doing everything on my end. I’ll call you as soon as the official tox screens come back. Hang in there, and please, Kelsey, do not go out.”

Michelle jostles the cast iron pointlessly against the burner as the eggs singe.

“Momma,” Kelsey says, licking her chapped lips. “Momma, do you think maybe you could—”

Michelle lands the pan heavily and turns off the flame. “No, I can’t. I can’t do a fucking thing. You weren’t even out of fingerprinting before Walmart called. The Wade name is ‘tainted.’ That’s the word they used. Tainted by the spectacle you’ve made of yourself.” She pulls a plate out of the cupboard and bangs it onto the counter.

“Your deal’s canceled?” Kelsey asks, touching where blood is starting to seap through her bandage. “I’m sorry—”

“I
finally
get something, just a little something of my own, and you go and pull this shit.” Her eyes narrow in her flushing face,
and I remember how she’d look when Andy came home high, primed to strike. “You have had
everything
,” she says, her body jackknifing at the waist as if the sight of Kelsey was punching her.

“Now, let’s just calm down.” Andy interjects.

“I’ve been calm. And patient like a saint.”

“I—I.” Kelsey tries to respond. “I just—”