Gone (3 page)

“You know Nora?”

“I’ve read the court documents.”

“Nora’s in the documents?”

“She’s mentioned. So you’re saying the false abduction was related to your training.”

“You keep calling it false,” she said.

“What would you like me to call it?”

“I don’t know… something else. The exercise. How about that? That’s really what it started out as.”

“An acting exercise.”

“Uh-huh.” She crossed her legs. “Nora never came out and told us to do an exercise but we thought —
she was always pushing us to get into the core of our feelings. Dylan and I figured we’d…” She bit her lip. “It was never supposed to go that far.”

She touched her temple again. “I must’ve been whack. Dylan and I were just trying to be artistically authentic. Like when I tied him up and wrapped the rope around myself, I held it around my neck for a while to make sure it would leave marks.” She frowned, touched a bruise.

“I see it.”

“I knew it wouldn’t take long. To make a bruise. I bruise real easily. Maybe that’s why I don’t do pain very well.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a crybaby about pain so I stay away from it.” She touched a spot where the scoop neck of the T-shirt met skin. “Dylan feels nothing, I mean, he’s like stone. When I tied him up, he kept saying tighter, he wanted to
feel
it.”

“Pain?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Not his neck at first, just his legs and arms. But even that hurts when you go tight enough, right? But he kept telling me tighter, tighter. Finally I screamed at him, I’m doing it as tight as I can.” She gazed up at the ceiling. “He just laid there. Then he smiled and said maybe you should do my neck the same way.”

“Dylan has a death wish?”

“Dylan’s a freak… it was freaky up there, dark, cold, this emptiness in the air. You could hear things crawling around.” She hugged herself. “I said this is too weird, maybe it wasn’t a good idea.”

“What did Dylan say?”

“He just laid there with his head to the side.” She closed her eyes and demonstrated. Let her mouth grow slack and showed a half inch of pointed, pink tongue. “Pretending to be dead, you know? I said, ‘Cut it out, that’s gross,’ but he refused to talk or move and finally it got to me. I rolled over to him and touched his head and he just flopped, you know?”

“Method acting,” I said.

Puzzled stare.

“It’s when you live a role completely, Michaela.”

Her eyes were somewhere else. “Whatever…”

“How soon into the exercise did you tie him up?”

“Second night, it was all the second night. He was okay before that, then he started punking me. I was letting him because I was scared. The whole thing… I was so, so stupid.”

She folded wings of golden hair forward, masking her face. I thought of a show spaniel in the ring. Handlers manipulating the ears over the nose to offer the judge a choice view of the skull.

“Dylan scared you.”

“He didn’t move for a
long
time,” she said.

“Were you worried you’d tied him too tight?”

She released the hair but kept her gaze low. “Honestly, I can’t tell you, even now what his motivation was. Maybe he really
was
unconscious, maybe he was punking me a hundred percent. He’s… it was really his idea, Doctor. I promise.”

“Dylan thought the whole thing up?”

“Everything. Like getting rope and where to go.”

“How’d he pick Latigo Canyon?”

“He said he hiked there, he likes to hike by himself, it helps him get in character.” The tongue tip glided across her lower lip, left behind a snail-trail of moisture.

“He also says one day he’s going to have a place there.”

“Latigo Canyon?”

“Malibu, but on the beach, like the Colony. He’s crazy intense.”

“About his career?”

“There are some people who put everything into a scene, you know? But later they know when to stop? Dylan can be cool when he’s just being himself, but he’s got these
ambitions.
Cover of
People,
take the place of Johnny Depp.”

“What are your ambitions, Michaela?”

“Me? I just want to work. TV, big screen, episodic, commercials, whatever.”

“Dylan wouldn’t be happy with that.”

“Dylan wants to be number one on the Sexiest Man List.”

“Have you talked to him since the exercise?”

“No.”

“Whose decision was that?”

“Lauritz told me to stay away.”

“Were you and Dylan pretty close before?”

“I guess. Dylan said we had natural chemistry. That’s probably why I got… swept along. The whole thing was his idea but he freaked me out up there. I’m talking to him and shaking him and he looks really… you know.”

“Dead.”

“Not that I’ve ever seen anyone really dead but when I was young I liked to watch splatter flicks. Not now, though. I get grossed out easily.”

“What’d you do when you thought Dylan looked dead?”

“I went crazy and started untying the neck rope, and he still wasn’t moving and he held his mouth open and was looking really…” She shook her head. “The atmosphere up there, I was getting freaked
out.
I started slapping his face and yelling at him to stop it. His head just kept flopping back and forth. Like one of those loosening exercises Nora has us do before a big scene.”

“Scary,” I said.

“Scary-terrifying. I’m dyslexic, not intense dyslexic, like illiterate or illegible, I can read okay. But it takes me a long time to memorize words. I can’t sound anything out. I mean, I can memorize my lines but I really work hard.”

“Being dyslexic made it scarier to see Dylan like that?”

“Because my head felt all scrambled up and I couldn’t think straight. And then being scared blurred it. Like my thoughts weren’t making sense —
like being in another language, you know?”

“Disoriented.”

“I mean, look what I did,” she said. “Untied myself and climbed up that hill and ran out to the road without even putting my clothes on. I had to be disoriented. If I was thinking normal, would I do that? Then, after that old guy, the one on the road who…” Her frown made it as far as the left side of her mouth before retracting.

“The old man who…”

“I was going to say the old guy saved me but I wasn’t in real danger. Still, I
was
pretty terrified. Because I still didn’t know if Dylan was okay. By the time the old guy called the rescue squad and they got there, Dylan was out of the ropes and standing there. When no one was looking, he gave a little smile. Like ha-ha, good joke.”

“You feel Dylan manipulated you.”

“That’s the saddest thing. Losing trust. The whole thing was supposed to
be
about trust. Nora’s always teaching us about the artist’s life as constant danger. You’re always working without a net. Dylan was my partner and I trusted him. That’s why I went along with it in the first place.”

“Did it take him a while to talk you into it?”

She frowned. “He made it like an adventure. Buying all that stuff. He made me feel like a kid having fun.”

“Planning was fun,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“Buying the rope and the food.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Careful plan.”

Her shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”

“You guys paid cash and used several different stores in different neighborhoods.”

“That was all Dylan,” she said.

“Did he explain why he’d planned it that way?”

“We really didn’t talk about it. It was like… we did so many exercises before, this was just another one. I felt I had to use my right side. Of my brain. Nora taught us to concentrate on using the right side of the brain, just kind of slip into right-brain stuff.”

“The creative side,” I said.

“Exactly. Don’t think too much, just throw yourself in.”

“Nora keeps coming up.”

Silence.

“How do you think she feels about what happened, Michaela?”

“I know how she feels. She’s pissed. After the police took me in, I called her. She said getting caught was amateurish and stupid, don’t come back. Then she hung up.”

“Getting caught,” I said. “She wasn’t angry at the scheme itself?”

“That’s what she told me. It was stupid to get caught.” Her eyes moistened.

“Hearing that from her must’ve been tough,” I said.

“She’s in a power role vis-à-vis me.”

“You try talking to her again?”

“She won’t return my calls. So now I can’t go to the PlayHouse. Not that it matters. I guess.”

“Time to move on?”

Tears ran down her face. “I can’t afford to study, ’cause I’m broke. Gonna have to put my name in with one of those agencies. Be a personal assistant or a nanny. Or flip burgers or something.”

“Those are your only choices?”

“Who’s gonna hire me for a good job when I need to go out on auditions? And also until
this
is over.”

I handed her another tissue.

“I sure wasn’t out to hurt anyone, believe me, Doctor. I know I should’ve thought more and felt less, but Dylan…” She drew up her legs again. Negligible body fat allowed her to fold like paper. With that lack of insulation, two nights up in the hills must’ve chilled her. Even if she was lying about her fear, the experience hadn’t been pleasant: The final police report had cited fresh human excrement under a nearby tree, leaves and candy wrappers used for toilet paper.

“Now,” she said, “everyone will think I’m a dumb blonde.”

“Some people say there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

“They do?” she said. “You think so?”

“I think people can turn themselves around.”

She fixed her eyes on mine. “I was stupid and I’m so, so sorry.”

I said, “Whatever you guys intended, it ended up being a rough couple of nights.”

“What do you mean?”

“Being out there in the cold. No bathroom.”

“That was
gross,
” she said. “It was
freezing
and I felt like creepy-crawlies were all over me, just eating me up. Afterward my arms and legs and my neck
hurt.
Because I tied myself too tight.” She grimaced. “I wanted to be authentic. To show Dylan.”

“Show him what?”

“That I was a serious actor.”

“Were you out to please anyone else, Michaela?”

“What do you mean?”

“You had to figure the story would get exposure. Did you consider how other people would react?”

“Like who?”

“Let’s start with Nora.”

“I honestly felt she’d respect us. For having integrity. Instead she’s pissed.”

“What about your mother?”

She waved that off.

“You didn’t think about your mother?”

“I don’t talk to her. She’s not in my life.”

“Does she know about what happened?”

“She doesn’t read the papers but I guess if it’s in the
Phoenix Sun
and somebody shows it to her.”

“You haven’t called her?”

“She can’t do anything to help me.” She mumbled.

“Why’s that, Michaela?”

“She’s sick. Lung disease. My whole childhood she was sick with something. Even when I fell on my head it was a neighbor took me to the doctor.”

“Mom wasn’t there for you.”

She glanced to the side. “When she was stoned she’d hit me.”

“Mom was into drugs.”

“Mostly weed, sometimes she’d take pills for her moods. Mostly, she liked to smoke. Weed
and
tobacco
and
Courvoisier. Her lungs are seriously burned away. She breathes with a tank.”

“Tough childhood.”

She mumbled again.

I said, “I missed that.”

“My childhood. I don’t like talking about it but I’m being totally honest with you. No illusions, no emotional curtain, you know? It’s like a mantra. I kept telling myself, ‘honesty honesty honesty.’ Lauritz told me to keep that here, right in front.” A tapered finger touched a smooth, bronze brow.

“What
did
you figure would happen when the story got out?”

Silence.

“Michaela?”

“Maybe TV.”

“Getting on TV?”

“Reality TV. Like a mixture of
Punk’d
and
Survivor
and
Fear Factor
but with no one knowing what’s real and what isn’t. It’s not like we were trying to be mean. We were just trying to get a breakthrough.”

“What kind of breakthrough?”

“Mentally.”

“What about as a career move?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you think it might get you a part on a reality show?”

“Dylan thought it might,” she said.

“You didn’t?”

“I didn’t think, period… maybe down deep —
unconsciously —
I thought it might help get through the wall.”

“What wall is that?”

“The success wall. You go on auditions and they look at you like you’re not there, and even when they say they might call they don’t. You’re just as talented as the girl who gets called, there’s no reason anything happens. So why not? Get yourself noticed, do something special or weird or terrific.
Make
yourself special for being special.”

She got up, circled the office. Kicked one shoe with the other and nearly lost balance. Maybe she’d been telling the truth about being clumsy.

“It’s a suck life,” she said.

“Being an actor.”

“Being any kind of artist. Everyone loves artists but they also hate them!”

Grabbing her hair with both hands, she yanked, stretching her beautiful face into something reptilian.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is?” she said through elongated lips.

“What?”

She released the hair. Looked down on me as if I was thick.

“To. Get. Anyone. To. Pay.
Attention!
”

I
saw Michaela for three more sessions. She spent most of the time drifting back to a childhood tainted by neglect and loneliness. Her mother’s promiscuity and various pathologies enlarged with each appointment. She recalled year after year of academic failure, adolescent slights, chronic isolation brought on by “looking like a giraffe with zits.”

Psychometric testing revealed her to be of average intelligence with poor impulse control and a tendency to manipulate. No sign of learning disability or attention deficit, and her MMPI Lie Scale was elevated, meaning that she’d never stopped acting.