Having your own personal pack of paparazzi gives you
sympathy for hunted animals and is nowhere near as exciting
as people think. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if they kept
regular business hours—you know, showed up around nine and
clocked out at five. But celebrity stalking is a twenty-four
seven occupation with no time off for good—or bad—behavior.
Because if they don’t get pictures that make you look nasty,
stupid, or even less attractive without makeup than the
average tabloid reader, they don’t eat.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to become a celebrity today
than it used to be. You can be famous now for the size of
your boobs and butt, a five-minute cameo on a reality TV
show, doing a below-average tango on Dancing with the Stars,
or dating and/or marrying someone who’s done any of the
above. The celebrity bar has dropped so low that if it were
being set for a game of Limbo, that bar would be ankle-height.
You can even become a celebrity by accident. I happen to
know this because that’s what happened to me.
My name is Kyra Singer, and I became famous for falling in
love with a movie star named Daniel Deranian while I was
working as a production assistant on my first feature film,
believing him when he said he loved me, and then getting
pregnant with his child.
I might regret this more if Dustin, who just turned one last
month, weren’t so incredible. And if Daniel’s movie-star
wife, Tonja Kay, were a normal human being whose head
doesn’t do a 360 when she gets pissed.
If Dustin is the best thing in all of this, and he is, the
worst is the extra burden it put on my mother, who was
handling a lot already when I got booted off the set by the
head-spinning Tonja Kay and then sliced and diced in the
tabloids.
Unlike a lot of other ankle-height celebrities, I’d way
rather be behind the camera than in front of it. But today,
which is Christmas Eve day, when I get out to the curb at
the Tampa International Airport with my son, his car seat,
our suitcase, and my film gear, a bunch of paparazzi are
waiting at the curb. My mother and her minivan are not.
I’m careful not to make eye contact with any of them while I
try to figure out what to do. I’m considering turning around
and going back inside to regroup, when a text dings in. It’s
from my missing mother. It reads Sri. My fats in fyre.
I read it twice, but it doesn’t get any clearer. My mother,
Madeline, is fifty-one, and she’s impressive as hell in a
lot of respects, but I think she communicated way better
before her phone got so smart. Her next text reads Sree.
Mint tries flit.
IMHO, most people over forty don’t have control of their
thumbs and shouldn’t be allowed to text.
“Kyra, over here!” The accent is British and I recognize
the voice. Every once in a while you’re forced to realize
that there are real people behind the cameras. People who
barge into your life uninvited and then become strangely
familiar.
I look up and see Nigel Bracken at the front of the pack.
As always I try to shield Dustin as best I can, but he’s one
now and not a baby that I can hold in any position I want.
Plus he’s a veritable clone of his movie-star father, with
the same golden-skinned face, dark brown eyes, and curly
hair. The paparazzi can’t get enough of him. A couple of
weeks ago a crazed Daniel Deranian fan stole one of Dustin’s
dirty diapers out of the trash and tried to sell it on eBay.
That’s how weird it gets sometimes.
“Over here, Kyra!” another one of the paps shouts. His
name’s Bill and he has bad teeth and a potato shaped nose.
They are their own League of Nations— American, British,
French, and lots of Heinz 57s. They’re tall and skinny,
short and round, and everything in between.
Some of them
are good-looking enough to walk the red carpet. Others, like
Bill,
have faces only a mother could love. You rarely see women
doing this. I like to think it’s because women are too smart
and sympathetic to view stalking celebrities as gainful
employment, but it could just be that, like the movie
business, it’s a good old boys’ club that women have to work
twice as hard and be twice as talented to break into.
“Just give us a couple shots and we’re out of here!” Nigel
shouts.
This is a lie. One clean shot will madden them like bees
whose hive has been swatted. When I don’t respond, they
surge closer.
An airport security guard passes by and warns them to keep
out of the traffic lanes.
The transportation line is downstairs and so are the car
rental desks. What I really need to do is call my mother and
find out why she’s not here, but I don’t want to do this
on-camera. Most of these guys can read lips better than an
NFL coach with a pair of binoculars trying to decipher the
other team’s plays.
“Come on, Kyra, luv! It’s practically Christmas! Give us a
smile!” I’m not sure who died and elected Nigel spokesman,
but at least they’re not all yelling at once.
Dustin’s arm loops up around my neck, and he lifts his head
from my shoulder. “Krimas!” he says. The camera drives whir
and the digital flashes explode.
I feel the pack moving in, and I fall back a step, not
wanting to be surrounded. I turn and move quickly—I prefer
not to think of it as running—into the terminal. I head for
the only place I might be safe: the ladies’ room.
In a locked stall I check the floor on either side to make
sure there are no size-twelve shoes. I drop our suitcase and
my camera bag on the floor, stand the folded stroller in a
corner, and perch gingerly on the edge of the toilet seat
with Dustin in my lap. I could text my mother—she reads
texts better than she sends them—but then she might text me
back and if I can’t read it it will be another big waste of
time. I hit speed dial for her number.
“Mom?” I keep my voice down when the phone is answered just
in case. And because it’s always kind of gross when you hear
someone making a phone call from the toilet regardless of
what they are or aren’t doing there.
“Oh, Kyra, thank goodness.” My mother sounds agitated and
out of breath. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I had a flat tire on
the Bayway and I’m still waiting for AAA.” I can picture the
beige-gold minivan on the side of the causeway that leads
from Pass-a-Grille Beach, through Tierra Verde, to the
interstate, while Cadillacs and old Chryslers putter past.
The population of St. Petersburg and its environs is largely
elderly. The joke goes if you leave a glass of water sitting
out someone will put his or her teeth in it. My mom hasn’t
even made it off the beach. Even if she got the tire fixed
in the next five minutes, which is unlikely, she wouldn’t be
here for another thirty-five minutes after that.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll rent a car and meet you at
Bella Flora.”
“Are you sure?” My mother has witnessed the paparazzi up
close and personal from the day they first found me while we
were desperately trying to restore Bella Flora, which is a
really cool Mediterranean Revival–style home that was built
in the 1920s and was all my mother and the equally
unfortunate Avery Lawford and Nicole Grant had left after
they lost everything to Malcolm Dyer’s Ponzi scheme. That’s
where I’m headed right now.
“Absolutely. Who’s at the house?”
“Avery, Deirdre, and Nicole are there. Chase and his sons
are joining us tomorrow morning to open presents. Your dad
and Andrew are driving down from Atlanta today.”
“Okay. I’m going to pick up a car. I’ll take the Bayway
from 275 so I can stop and help if you’re still there.”
“Be careful. I don’t want them chasing after you and Dustin.”
I know from the way she says this that she’s thinking about
what happened to Princess Diana. But I’m not a princess, and
the Howard Frankland Bridge to St. Pete is not a Paris
tunnel. Still, it will be better if I can just disappear. I
don’t want to lead the paparazzi to Bella Flora, even though
I’m sure they all already know that Dustin and I are headed
to Ten Beach Road.
“We’ll be fine,” I say because we’ve had
this conversation before. Or at least we will be, once I put
on my disguise.
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