The Trouble Boy, page 21
Cameron motioned for me to sit next to him, and he started chattering on about how important I was to him, and how he could never survive without me. All I could think was, So this is what it’s like to hang out with Cameron. He kept putting his hand on my knee and looking at me with puppy dog eyes.
He slipped me the vial and I went back to the restroom. I would keep this high going all night if I had to. On my way back out, I had the urge to call Donovan on my cell phone, but I resisted. He had to call me.
The party was wrapping up, and Ariana was free to go. Jordan was now sitting with us. We had been chatting about her latest film, and I wanted the conversation to continue. She wasn’t terribly bright, but she had access to a world that I didn’t, and I was curious about it.
“Are you coming with us to Flash?” Ariana asked Cameron. “We’ve got my car. Jordan’s going to drive.”
“Why are you driving?” I asked Jordan.
“Ariana hates driving,” Jordan said. “But she knows I love her car. I never get to drive in New York.”
“That’s cool of her,” I said.
Jordan looked at me like I was an idiot. “I don’t pay her ten thousand dollars a month for nothing.”
“Let’s go,” Cameron said.
Jordan turned to him. “Listen, love, do you have any more—”
“Sure,” Cameron said. He handed her the vial.
“Be right back,” she said, and headed towards the restroom.
Ariana had to take care of some last-minute details, so she gave Cameron her keys, and the two of us stepped out onto Eighth Avenue. Though it had started raining, a large crowd was gathered on the sidewalk, since the launch party was over and the club was now open to the public. Ariana’s car, a black BMW convertible, was parked in one of four spots in the club’s loading zone. Cameron and I squeezed into the back seat and waited for Jordan, who finally came stumbling out of the club, escorted under a large umbrella by one of Ariana’s assistants. She got into the driver’s seat.
The club’s bouncer motioned for her to roll down her window. He was a big beefy guy wearing a black T-shirt with the Mirror logo on it. I noticed a scar running from his left cheek to his lip.
“Miss,” he said, “you can’t park here.”
“We’re waiting for someone,” Jordan said. I could tell she was in the mood for a fight.
“Your car’s been parked here all night in the loading zone, and we’ve been nice enough to let you—”
“We’re waiting for Ariana Richards. I assume you’re not so stupid that you don’t know who she is?”
“I don’t care if you’re waiting for the fucking Pope. You can’t park here.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Who am I?”
The bouncer crossed his arms. “Who are you? Another bimbo actress who thinks she can get whatever she wants. And I’m telling you to move.”
Jordan’s eyebrows arched up in anger.
Ariana was now standing next to the bouncer.
“Come on, Jordan, we’re going to be late,” Ariana said.
“Fucking Guido,” Jordan slurred to the bouncer, before rolling up her window.
The bouncer walked behind us and attempted to clear a small group of clubgoers away from the loading zone. Ariana got in the front passenger seat.
“He’s right behind you. You ought to give him a little tap,” laughed Cameron.
Jordan had the car in neutral, but she was revving the engine.
“Jordan, what are you doing?” Ariana said. She was starting to panic.
“I’m going to do just what Cameron said. Bloody bastard.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I looked at Ariana, but could read nothing from her expression.
The car accelerated in reverse, skidding on the wet pavement. Cameron and I looked through the back windshield to see the car hurtling toward the bouncer and the crowd of people.
With the force of a carnival roller coaster whose operator has fallen asleep at the brake, the car hit the group of people, smashing their bodies against a van parked behind us. There was an enormous Crunch! Crash! Thud! as my body slammed against the backseat and my head struck the back windshield, which had cracked but was still intact. Pressed up against it was a screaming mélange of bodies, a wriggling, slippery mess of flesh and blood and hair and clothing.
I winced as I realized that the crunch I had heard was the car breaking people’s bones.
Ariana had started crying. “What the hell are you doing? What the hell did you do?” she screamed at Jordan.
“I don’t know—I didn’t mean to—”
Cameron sat next to me, his head in his hands, as he chanted, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” like a mantra.
The car was still in reverse, and it was pinning the crowd against the van. My stomach turned as I saw how close we were to the injured. I grabbed Jordan’s shoulders, trying to shake her back into consciousness.
“Put it in drive!” I shouted. “Put the car in drive!”
Jordan was too stunned to do anything. Ariana put the car in drive and it lurched forward. The people spilled out behind us. The back windshield was splattered with blood. I felt dizzy and couldn’t see straight. Jordan opened her door and tumbled out, barely able to stand on her heels. She stood there, held up by Ariana’s assistant, and looked at the mayhem she had created, unable to speak.
Cameron, Ariana, and I got out and moved away from the car.
Dozens of people were now crowding the sidewalk and it became impossible to separate the injured from the merely curious. Every other person was on his or her cell phone, calling 911, reporting the news to friends, calling information for private ambulance services to bring help to the scene faster.
My heart was pounding and I was grinding my teeth.
Within ten minutes, six ambulances had arrived and paramedics were frantically engaged in triage. Most of the people who had been hit were lying near the curb or leaned against the back of the van. Blood flowed from their wounds, pooling on the asphalt before being washed away by the rain. Two young women were surrounded by the contents of a spilled purse; someone said it had come open moments before the crash and they had been collecting its contents. One had her hand over her right eye; her face was covered in blood. The other woman’s arm was sheared all the way to the bone; a friend had fashioned her a sling from her shirt. The friend squatted on the sidewalk wearing only a soaked black bra, comforting the crying and wounded women.
People were fighting over who got to go first in the ambulances, and several people had to double up. For every injured person, there were two or three others who were equally if not more hysterical about their friend’s injury.
I was suddenly more sober than I’d been all night.
Two squad cars arrived, and officers started taking statements from witnesses.
Ariana was on her cell phone talking to her lawyer and barking orders to Jordan, Cameron, and me. She was in high crisis mode.
“We’re going inside the club,” she said.
She pulled us all through a side door down the street from the main entrance.
“Why?” I asked.
“Just do it, okay?”
Ariana led us into the club’s offices, in the basement near the restrooms, and shut the door. The four of us stood together in a circle, soaking wet from the rain.
“I think we’re okay to talk here,” she said, making sure no one else was around. “Jordan, can you act sober?”
“Sure,” Jordan said.
“No, I mean, seriously, you cannot let on that you’ve been drinking or doing anything else tonight. The police are going to ask you what happened. You will not, under any circumstances, take a Breathalyzer test. My lawyer will meet us at the station and he’ll take care of everything else. You got all this?”
“I think so.” She took out a pocket mirror and started applying lipstick, preparing for the role of a lifetime.
“They’re going to be nice to you because of who you are. Just charm them, you know how to do that, right?”
Jordan nodded.
“Okay, now we all need to have the same story.” She took a deep breath. “What happened is Jordan’s foot slipped on the gas pedal. She was about to pull out and she thought the car was in drive. It was wet, and we spun out of control. Those heels you’re wearing? Have you ever driven in heels?”
“Sure,” Jordan said.
“Well, we’re saying you haven’t, okay? You weren’t familiar with the car, because it was my car and I was letting you drive.”
“Because Jordan loves driving foreign cars,” Cameron said.
“That’s right,” Ariana said. “You were excited to drive my car.”
Cameron looked at me. “Toby, you’re cool with this?”
Though he phrased it as a question, it was clearly a command. There was only one way I could answer.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
It was all happening so quickly. I knew what was going on, but I didn’t know how to react. There was no precedent in my life for what to do when my boss’s publicist asks me to lie to the police.
“Jordan, do you have any drugs in your purse?” Ariana asked.
Jordan rifled through her tiny handbag and pulled out the vial. “Sure. You want some?”
“No, you need to get rid of that!” Ariana was getting frustrated. “Give it to Toby. He’ll flush it.”
Jordan handed me the vial of cocaine.
“Do I have anything on my . . .” I motioned to the spot on my upper lip below my nostrils.
“You’re clean,” Ariana said, as if it were the least of her concerns, which it was.
I went into the restroom. The attendant seemed oblivious to what had happened. I locked myself in a stall. I briefly, stupidly considered doing some more of the coke, but then decided to flush the entire vial. I washed my face at the sink, left a dollar tip, and grabbed some mints to mask my party breath.
Upstairs, Cameron and Ariana were standing together on the sidewalk as the police questioned Jordan. She looked ridiculous standing in the rain in her harem pants.
Several reporters had arrived on the scene, including a TV crew.
“No press, no interviews,” Ariana said to them.
Several photographers kept snapping. I turned my head away.
An officer motioned towards me. “Are you Toby? Where have you been?”
“I was in the restroom.”
“Don’t worry, officer,” Ariana said. “He’s not going anywhere.”
The other officer came back to talk to us. “We’re going to need to take you all down to the station for questioning.”
They’re going to know I’ve done drugs, I thought to myself. They’re going to be able to tell. I didn’t know if I was more worried over lying about Jordan or getting in trouble myself. That was all I needed, to get busted for cocaine possession.
Ariana and I were put in one squad car, and Cameron and Jordan were in the other. Ariana held my wet hand like a big sister. Over and over again, she kept whispering to me, “It’s going to be okay.”
For a moment, I believed her.
They took us to the local precinct, the Tenth, on Twentieth Street. The four of us were separated and I waited alone in a dingy interrogation room for twenty minutes.
Detective Ron Shiro, a middle-aged officer, interviewed me. Under the light, his skin looked gray and pockmarked. Behind him was a large mirror; I was sure there were people on the other side watching us.
I told the detective the story that Ariana had instructed us to. As he made notes on his pad, I had the feeling he didn’t believe anything I was saying. I told him I didn’t know Jordan well, but she didn’t seem like the kind of person who would do something like this on purpose.
He smirked at me. Perhaps it was best if I didn’t editorialize.
As I told him my story, I looked him straight in the eye. I remembered reading somewhere that a liar was someone who averted his eyes. When I realized my eyes probably looked bloodshot under the fluorescent light, I stopped staring so hard.
“Had you been drinking at all?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “I had a few drinks.”
“Were you hurt in the accident?”
“I hit my head,” I told him, “but I think I’m okay. It’s just a bump.”
“You should go to the hospital and get that checked out,” he said.
“Really, I’m fine,” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was to spend time in a hospital tonight.
“It’s for your own good: just get yourself checked out. We’ll have a squad car take you there.”
I finally agreed. I didn’t want to seem like I was avoiding anything.
“And Toby,” he said, handing me a card, “if you think of anything else—anything at all—give me a call. I know it all happened really fast, and there may be things you’re forgetting. If you remember anything else, even the smallest detail, give me a call.”
I shook his hand and was released from the station. Ariana, Cameron, and Jordan were nowhere in sight. Maybe they had left this party early, too.
I was escorted to a squad car outside. As it pulled away from the station, its sirens started blaring.
“Could you not—could you not put those on?” I shouted through the partition.
“Don’t you want to get there faster?” the officer said.
“I don’t care how long it takes,” I said. “They’re just, they’re just really hurting my head.”
The officer switched them off.
I was dropped off at the nearest hospital and examined for head injuries and whiplash. The doctor and nurses said I seemed fine, though I was told to limit strenuous exercise for the next day or two and not drink alcohol or take aspirin or pain killers. I was to call them if I experienced anything unusual.
“You were lucky,” the nurse said. “You could have had a concussion.”
“Will I have any memory loss?” I asked. I was hoping I would. I wanted to forget the whole thing.
“It’s a possibility,” she said. “But we’ve seen much worse. Some of those people who were hit? They’re going to be here for a long time.”
I felt terrible. I was worrying about a small bump on my head, and there were people who had surely suffered broken bones and worse.
I was supposed to have someone wake me every hour and ask me where I was, who I was and who they were, and check if my movements were unusual or clumsy. I lied and told them I had a roommate who would take care of it.
I was released just after 4 A.M. and took a cab home. The rain had stopped, but the streets still smelled wet.
12
At 8 A.M., my phone started ringing. I pulled it out of the wall and let all my calls go to voice mail.
I finally woke at eleven, bounding out of bed to run to the bathroom and throw up. My skin felt tight and dry; every nerve ending was screaming for water. I looked in the mirror to find my face had broken out in three places.
When I checked my messages, I discovered I had sixteen, mostly from the press. I had thought my number was unlisted.
I got into the office at noon. Everyone was sympathetic and inquired repeatedly about my well-being. Cameron invited me into his office. He told me I could take as much time off as I needed, that it was understandable if the shock continued to affect me.
“I feel awful that you were part of this, Toby,” he said. “You wouldn’t have been at that party if you weren’t working for me.”
He lit a cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke. Business as usual.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Ariana invited me to ride with you guys.”
“I know,” he said, “but I still feel responsible.” As he said the words, he was distracted by something on his desk. When he looked up, he seemed almost surprised that I was still standing there.
I asked him what had happened to Jordan. I could see he was about to choose his words carefully.
“Jordan was released on bail this morning. The car was impounded. It’s all procedure, you know. It was just such a terrible accident. Jordan is so torn up about it.”
He spoke to me as if I were an outsider, as if I hadn’t been in the car alongside him. If he believed his story long enough, he might think it was the truth.
Cameron spent most of the day talking on the phone with the door shut. I was tempted to patch myself in on his calls, but I restrained myself.
At three, Cameron said he was going out to a late lunch with his mother.
The story had already shown up on some of the online versions of the local papers, and I realized it would be all over the print editions tomorrow. Jamie called me just before four.
“I just heard about the accident from my secretary. Were you really there?”
I told him I was.
He asked what happened.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “Let’s have dinner tonight, okay? You, me, and Donovan.”
“Are you talking to Donovan?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But I need to.”
I realized I should let my parents know I was okay, in case the news reached them in San Francisco. I called home and left a voice mail that I hoped would make sense.
I went out for a long lunch, as Cameron had suggested. When I returned, there were several more messages: one from Sonia and three more from reporters. Apparently, it was now common knowledge where I worked.
I wrote down the messages, but didn’t return any of the calls. I knew if I called Sonia back, she would start asking me questions I didn’t want to answer.
I told Cameron about the calls.
“I’ve been getting them, too,” he said. “Don’t return any, okay? From now on, Eric is going to screen everything for you. He’ll take mine, too. It’s too difficult not to talk once you’ve got a reporter on the phone. This will make things easier on both of us.”
Now I knew what it would be like to have an assistant. The lack of control made me feel like I was in jail.
One call that was put through was from Ariana.
