Paparazzi by Erika Vanzin
“You’re completely out of your mind.”
Michael’s voice is the first sound we hear following the silence that falls in Evan’s office after I speak. I asked our manager to gather the guys here so I could explain a plan I was excited about sharing with them, but given their faces, I’m not so sure anymore. Even Simon, who’s back from Connecticut, is looking at me with wide eyes.
“What the hell did I miss in the month I’ve been away from New York?” our bassist asks.
Lilly responds for me, the only non-Jailbird member present but naturally involved because she is Damian’s girlfriend. “He fell in love with a penniless paparazzo, and now he’s trying to save her ass,” she chuckles, finding it both amusing and romantic.
“I’m not in love.”
“Yes, of course, we all believe you,” Michael jokes. “You’re proposing we make up a fake story to give her the photos she needs. And, at this point, you’ll take the pictures for her because her shoulder still hurts—but you’re telling me that you’re not in love? I hope she’s at least a great fuck.”
I expected all of this from him; what I didn’t expect is that he would accept Iris. Every day he surprises me more. When I look down and start playing with the ripped hem of my shirt, he bursts into loud laughter.
“Oh, now you don’t want to talk about sex? You’re worse off than Damian.”
“Hey, I’m not that bad,” Damian replies half-heartedly, while making sweet eyes at his girlfriend.
I glare at Michael, expecting better from him because he understands what’s going through my head right now. If I really didn’t care, I’d be making jokes right along with him, not getting pissed off at him.
“You’re really in love, aren’t you?” My non-answer is enough to make him see the truth of the situation. “For Christ’s sake, you’re worse off than I imagined,” he adds, rubbing his pained face like I’d just told him I was going back to prison. I can’t quite read what’s in the half-smile he’s wearing.
“Okay, so why do we have to come up with a plan for her to make more money? Can’t you just give it to her? You’re loaded,” Simon says pragmatically.
I throw an exasperated glance at him at the exact moment Lilly makes an equally exasperated and annoying sound. “Why the hell do you men have this thing about paying to get us out of trouble?” she asks to no one in particular. Damian’s hand rests on her arm. It’s strange to see how he’s changed so radically in just a few months. I wonder if I’m going to end up the same way, given this room full of people I’ve gathered for an utterly absurd reason.
“Maybe we’re more practical than you women who stir up drama over everything?” replies Simon honestly, and I kind of relate to him.
“I refuse to have this conversation with you too,” Lilly says, and on the one hand, I can’t blame her. We men are really knuckleheads when it comes to women: pulling these stunts we think are heroic but that probably just make us look like idiots.
Evan gets up and wanders around the desk, leaning against the edge with his arms across his chest and a serious look. He seems to be considering helping me with this crazy plan, and he’s trying to figure out how much I am sure of what I’m doing.
“And you know why she needs that money? Are you sure she’s an honest person? Does she have a drug problem?” he asks me, and Michael bursts out laughing.
“It’s not like drugs are a big deal among rock stars. It wouldn’t be the first time,” he blurts out amusedly, and I wish I was as cheerful as he is right now. He’s not helping me with Evan and, this time, I have to have our manager on my side. I can’t go off on my own like I’ve been doing lately. If something goes wrong, we’ll end up in all the newspapers looking like idiots or, worse, manipulators or even swindlers. Not to mention, Iris could get into serious trouble.
“Her mother suffers from an early form of senile dementia. She needs assistance all day, every day, and Iris has no other choice but to put her in a long-term clinic because she can’t do it alone. Those clinics cost a lot, and it’s hard to find the money,” I explain, feeling a little guilty. This is Iris’s business, I shouldn’t blab about it to all of them, but my band is like my family: what’s being said in this room will never leave here, not even under torture.
“Okay, my question is still valid: why not just give her the money?” asks Simon, increasingly puzzled.
“I tried, and she almost ripped my eyes out. Trust me, that girl scares me when she gets angry.”
“No, I give up. I don’t even want to try to understand how women think,” Simon says when it becomes clear that a month out of town was enough to shake up the quiet state he’d left us in.
“Enough with the bullshit. How do we come up with it?” asks Michael.
“I have an idea, but I don’t know if you’ll like it,” Lilly suggests as we all turn and look at her. She’s got that enthusiastic, persuasive smile on her face that almost makes my skin crawl. That girl, behind the sweet and innocent facade, could drag you into anything. Lucky for Damian—and us too—there’s not a shred of evil in her. Compared to us, she’s a lamb in a pack of lions.
*
How Evan agreed to this, I don’t know. I think he’s with our press office right now writing a press release to try and save Damian and Lilly from what they volunteered to do for me. I’m in front of Iris’s door, my heart pumping furiously in my chest, and I feel the urge to get out of here quickly. I’m worried this isn’t such a good idea anymore. I’m afraid this time she really will kick me out of her apartment and call the police. I have no time to change my mind because the door to her apartment suddenly opens before I can even knock.
“You’re getting creepier and creepier, you know that?” she says with a half-smile at my dazed face.
“How the hell did you know I was here? I didn’t knock...did I?” I ask for confirmation with a puzzled raised eyebrow.
Iris’s lips widen into an amused smile. “No, you didn’t knock.” It reassures me somewhat to hear these words. “I noticed Dexter nervously pacing back and forth in front of the door. I came to look through the peephole, and I found you with a terrified expression,” she explains.
“I don’t look terrified,” I say, pretending to be shocked.
Iris lets me in while she giggles. “Yes, I can assure you that you look terrified, and you’re usually like this when you have to tell me something I won’t like.” She crosses her arms on her chest and raises an inquisitory eyebrow.
I never knew what performance anxiety was until I met this woman. “This time, I’m sure you’ll like it.”
Her non-answer, and the eyebrow that arches even more, weakens my confidence, so I hasten to add an explanation. “I won’t offer you money or try to pay for something you don’t want.”
“But?” she’s too smart to believe it’s that simple.
“But you can make a lot of money from it,” I explain proudly, realizing that, given Iris’s perplexed face, I didn’t explain anything at all.
She sits at the table stool in the center of the kitchen and looks at me carefully. “Why is it every time you come up with one of your ideas, I get the feeling that I’m going to get mad at you?” Her question is slightly mocking, but she doesn’t seem particularly angry.
“No, I swear that this time it is organized well and thought out. I can give you the story you’re looking for on Damian and Lilly.”
I get her full attention, her face lighting up with hope, concern, perplexity. “And you would sell your friends out like that?” she asks doubtfully.
I smile and shake my head. “Actually, it was Lilly’s idea,” I admit almost proudly because this time, I didn’t act impulsively or alone; I ran it by my friends before I offered it to her or did it behind her back. I’m getting better, given my record.
“Okay, this thing is getting more and more surreal. Who’s involved, exactly?” she asks me halfway between incredulous and amused.
“All my bandmates, Lilly and even Evan, who’s working with the press office,” I say as if it were the greatest idea ever, and I take in Iris’s face, first amused, then puzzled, then incredulous.
“So you involved everyone?” her tone is almost shrill.
“I called a meeting tonight. Simon even came back from Connecticut.”
“You’re completely out of your mind,” she says with a smile that makes me hope she’s not mad. She’s not going to kick me out of her apartment, or attack me screaming like she did at the clinic. It’s a huge step forward.
Iris inhales deeply as if she’s undecided about what to say. “Well, what is it? You haven’t explained it to me yet.”
“You’ll find out when we get there. You have to get your camera and come with me.”
Iris’s face darkens. “I can’t take pictures with this shoulder.”
I smile at her and pound a hand on my chest. “That’s why you have an assistant. You tell me what to do, and I shoot in silence,” I say as she bursts into laughter.
“I knew you were crazy, but I didn’t think you were this crazy. You’ve completely lost it.”
She’s right, and what makes me the most nervous is that I’ve never done anything like this, not since I got out of prison, at least. Since keeping on the straight and narrow, I’ve become someone who never lets himself get carried away by emotions, who thinks before he acts, who calculates every move. Now, I’m feeling like a little boy on his first adventure.
“So you’re in?” I ask for confirmation.
“At this point, I’m curious to know just how far you’ve gone,” she confesses before turning around and going to get her camera bag which I offer to carry.
*
We’re stationed behind a six-foot hedge at the park in front of Lilly and Damian’s house. When we have a nice view of their stairs and entrance, I position the camera and pull out my phone to send a message to my friends.
“So what? What are we going to do?” Iris asks, the curiosity obviously consuming her.
“Wait, they should be in sight soon.”
As if summoned by Iris’s question, Damian and Lilly walk out the door. They look around to make sure there aren’t too many people around but, thankfully, at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night, there’s not much going on in a residential, private street in this part of Manhattan. The show begins: they pretend to shout at each other, to fight furiously like two crazy people in the middle of the street. They look like mimes gesticulating, pointing an accusing finger at the other, but not making a sound. As I begin to shoot, I feel Iris beside me, struggling to hold back a laugh. The grand finale comes when Lilly pushes Damian on the chest, he staggers slightly back, then she goes back inside, banging the door behind her, or at least pretending to. Meanwhile, my friend sits on the steps, elbows on his knees and hands digging into his long dark hair. When the scene ends, he gets up, gives us the thumbs up, then goes back inside the building laughing like a madman.
Iris turns to me. “You are completely insane. Can you imagine if anyone had seen them shouting like two idiots without making a sound? They’d take them for two fools! Or call the police!”
I laugh and put the camera away. “They would’ve called the police if they’d really been fighting furiously in the middle of the street. Damian’s voice isn’t meek and mild...and trust me, Lilly can screech like an eagle. I’ve only heard her a couple of times, but I had to run before my eardrums pierced.”
Iris smiles at my story then lowers her gaze, shyly. “Thank you,” she whispers.
I don’t know what to say. I’d do anything for her, she doesn’t have to thank me. But I suspect that if I say that, she’d think I’m a fool, so I stretch my hand out until I grab hers and squeeze it.
“Come on, they’re waiting for us.”
Iris looks at me with her wide eyes, and I have to bite my tongue to resist the temptation to lean in and kiss her right here, in the middle of the street. “Who?”
“Damian and Lilly. Do you really think they did that whole scene without wanting to see the pictures? Those two are so picky that, if they didn’t come out well, they’d make us stand in the middle of these bushes until we shoot something decent,” I explain, and I hear her giggling as I drag her across the street and up the stairs leading to the apartment.
I can sense her amusement but she hesitates as we reach their door and I squeeze her hand. I know she’s nervous, and, in a way, so am I.
When Lilly opens the door, she wraps Iris in a hug that leaves her almost disoriented. I see her wide her eyes, caught off guard, while Damian laughs at his girlfriend’s affectionate gesture.
“So? How did they come out?” Lilly asks when she finally frees Iris from her grip.
“I don’t know. We haven’t seen them yet,” Iris admits in a somewhat uncertain voice.
“We’re here to look at them together,” I explain as the hosts guide us to the sofa.
Iris sits down and pulls out her camera. While Damian hands a beer to each of us, I watch Iris laugh at Lilly’s words, the light-heartedness on her face. It’s a moment that catches me off guard. I could spend my whole life like this, with my best friend laughing and joking along with his girlfriend and the girl I love. The realization comes so sharp, so sudden, that I can’t help but feel almost short of breath with happiness, and at the same time, fear. The only time I loved a woman, I gave her everything and ended up in prison, and the feeling that memory elicits scares me and at the same time excites me. I realize I don’t have the slightest control over my emotions, and I feel lost.
“What are you doing? What are you waiting for?’ Lilly’s voice seems to come from afar as my mind is tormented by thoughts overlapping with each other. How the hell am I going to tell Iris about my past without ruining everything? How can I continue keeping her in the dark about a part of my life that has profoundly changed me? The fear that all this may end as soon as my past comes knocking at my door tightens my stomach in a cold vice. I feel like I might faint.