The Year of Living Famously (25 page)

“That was Amy Rose back there!”

“Jesus,” he said. He hugged me tight. “I'm sorry I wasn't there.”

We congregated in a corner of the lobby with Adam and Denny, who were well acquainted with Amy Rose's letters. I wanted them to call the police, to have her removed from the property.

“They won't do it,” Adam said. “She didn't threaten you.”

“Yes, she did! She said it was time for me to go!”

“That might have meant it was time for you to go in the theater.”

“That's not what she meant. I want the police notified, at least.”

Declan's main publicist, Angela, pushed herself into our tiny circle. “We're not calling the police, guys,” she said. “If we do, it will cause the biggest media story.”

“So what?” I said, appalled. “Don't you care about our safety?”

“Of course. But it doesn't sound like anything truly threatening, and she won't be admitted in the building. Plus, if we get the cops here, the show could be held up. It will be in all the papers, it will be all that everyone is talking about.”

“Who bloody well cares?” Declan said. “If Kyra wants to call them, I think we should.”

Angela placed a hand on my arm. The gesture reminded me of Amy Rose and I fought not to pull away. “Look, Kyra,” she said. “I want this night to be about Declan, about his nomination. Don't you?”

“Of course,” I said softly.

“If we get the police here, the night will be about a nutty fan. She'll get the attention she wants, and Declan won't. Do you see what I'm saying?”

“Do whatever you want, love,” Declan said.

I sighed. By now, I felt a little silly. She was outside, not next to us, and what had she really said anyway?

“Okay,” I said. “Let's just forget it.” I kissed Declan's cheek. “Let's go have some fun.”

 

But the ceremony was interminable. I tried to muster interest for the Best Short Foreign Film category, and Best Special Effects, yet it was impossible. I couldn't help wait
ing, wanting, the Best Actor category. It was toward the end of the show—Murphy's Law—by which time I was famished and weary. I was particularly tired of putting on a happy face and clapping serenely every time the camera swung its inquisitive head toward Declan and me, which was often.

Bobby, who was at an Oscars party, rather than the actual ceremony, told me to keep my phone on, even though it wasn't allowed, and he kept torturing me with text messages.

I'm on my fifth vodka martini. I'm drinking for you, too,
the first one said.

A few minutes later, he messaged,
Smile more, you look miserable. Also, you have something on your teeth.

I surreptitiously scrubbed at my front tooth with an index finger.

Got you,
the next message said.

Then later,
You could out-bling J. Lo with those earrings.

Declan, I think, was in more pain than I was. He had on a big fat grin, and he clapped like crazy, especially when
Normandy
won in other categories, but I could feel the tension coming off him in waves.

“I just want this to be over,” he whispered to me.

Finally—finally!—two hours and fifty-eight minutes into the show, it was time for Best Actor. In a stroke of fortuitousness, Hannah Briscoe was announcing the award, along with her current costar. They made some forced, witty banter about leading men, but I couldn't focus on their words.

They began to read the names of the nominees, followed by a montage of clips from the actors' movies. The other nominees were tough competition—Jack Nicholson for
The Taming,
Denzel Washington for
Stolen Lives,
George Clooney for
Cheaters,
and another relative unknown named
Harvey Carpetta for
Theory of Beauty.
Declan's name was read last. Was that good? I wondered frantically. Or did that mean that he wouldn't win? Maybe being read last meant you were runner-up?

Declan put a hand on my knee. I could feel the heat of his skin. I grasped his upper arm.

“And the winner is…” Hannah said sweetly. She began to open the envelope, but it got stuck somehow. “Oops,” she said, causing the audience to titter. She tried again.

That moment lasted days. In a time warp of excruciating slowness, she finally opened the envelope, she put her dainty fingers inside, she withdrew the heavy card, she opened
that
card, she read it, she showed it to her costar, they both smiled, Hannah leaned into the microphone, she cocked her head a little as if to say, “Wow,” she smiled again, she opened her mouth, and said, “And the Oscar goes to…”

Years seemed to go by before I heard, “Declan McKenna.”

I burst into immediate tears so powerful there was nothing I could do to stop them. Declan pulled me to my feet and embraced me.

“I'm so proud of you,” I said, bawling. “I love you.”

“Christ,” he said. “I love you, too.”

He managed to break away from me and make his way to the stage. In a flash, he was there, hugging Hannah and shaking the hands of her costar. He thanked Kaz Lameric for his vision and for taking a chance. He thanked the screenwriters for a brilliant script. He gushed about the producers and all the work they'd done. He thanked the editors, who had made a cohesive and gripping drama out of thousands of hours of film. He was grateful for his costars, who made him look good. He thanked Max and Graham.

The lilting background music started to play, the music
that signaled he had only seconds left before they escorted him offstage.

“Oh God, no,” Declan said, laughing. “I want to thank my parents and my family and friends in Ireland.”

The music played louder.

“And most of all,” Declan said, the music growing ever stronger, “I want to thank my wife, Kyra Felis. I made this film before we met, but without her…” He shook his head, he looked on the verge of tears. He held his Oscar up with a triumphant arm. “Without her,” he yelled as the music reached a crescendo, “this wouldn't mean anything. Kyra, you are my angel!”

H
onestly, I don't know where the reporters get this stuff. There's often a hint of truth in these articles—here the truth was that Declan did attend the
Vanity Fair
party—but they often get so much of it wrong. I was there, although I don't know why I should get so defensive about it. The truth is,
I simply wasn't at Declan's side most of the night. I spent nearly half an hour talking to Graydon Carter (charming, great hair, to-die-for clothes), and another forty-five minutes or so at the bar with Bobby, railing about Lauren. Kendall dragged me around for a while, introducing me to everyone, telling them they were idiots if they didn't start wearing my clothes soon.

Now this one I kind of liked. Mostly, I enjoyed the concept of bitch-slapping Lauren, and the tough-girl image the article gave me. Alas, the reality is that although I desperately wanted to maim her, I held myself back. I killed her with a certain catty kindness.

I did, in fact, run into her in the bathroom at the Miramax party. I heard her before I saw her. She was in a stall with a friend, complaining in a loud whisper that Harvey
Weinstein wouldn't give her the time of day. When she came out, I was there, fake beaming at her. I had consumed somewhere between five and twenty vodkas; between the alcohol, Declan's win and my four dresses at the awards, I was flushed with victory.

“Kyra!” Lauren said, as fake friendly as me. “How long have you been there?”

“Oh, here, there, I'm everywhere,” I said inanely.

She blinked at that. “Look, sweetie, I hope there are no hard feelings about the dress.” She moved to me and patted my shoulder, the way one might a child who'd taken honorable mention at the science fair.

“No hard feelings at all,” I said. “I think it worked out for the best.”

“Is that right?”

“Sure. I mean, you needed a true professional to design your dress, and I needed true actresses to wear mine. It all comes out in the wash, doesn't it?”

I checked my lipstick in the mirror, and left.

 

As someone who is, for better or worse, famous, you get to do many things that other people don't, and yet there are so few people who understand those things.

When I was a normal woman, I could call Margaux or one of my other girlfriends in New York. I could tell them a story about some guy not calling me back. I could share a tale about getting fired from a temp job. I could always find someone who understood implicitly.

But when you're having dinner with Kaz Lameric or meeting Brad Pitt, these are events most people don't have in their mental roster, and you're bragging if you talk too much about them.

Even if you're lucky enough to have a few people who understand you, or pretend to understand you, odds are
that they want something eventually. You can't entirely trust them.

So you keep your mouth closed. And you get lonelier.

Except for Bobby. Bobby was still my saving grace in L. A., the one person who automatically understood what Dec and I were going through, the one person who wasn't particularly impressed with celebrity, who didn't need or want anything from us (especially since Declan had told him officially that he wouldn't be leaving Max for Bobby's team at William Morris). It was with Bobby that I could let my guard down and talk about how cool it was that we had met David Bowie, how ridiculous the ass-kissing was when Declan went on
The Tonight Show.

 

The enormous amount of press that Declan and I garnered after the Oscars made day-to-day living so much worse. We were now a confirmed media product, one they wanted to place on the shelves as often as possible.

When Declan left for the set, they followed him. When I had a meeting in the fashion district with Rosita or Victor, they followed me. When Declan and I were able to do something together, they swarmed. The paparazzi weren't just at the usual spots—the premieres or the party for Kaz Lameric's sixtieth birthday, for example. Instead, they knew
all
our spots. It was as if they had a sixth sense about the restaurants we'd frequent, the resort in Palm Springs where we'd try to escape for a weekend, the Tiffany's store where we'd shopped for a birthday gift for Dec's mom.

Bobby, as usual, counseled me on the laid-back approach and told me to get used to it. Liz told me to enjoy it. This was what every actor dreamed of, she said, while I said softly that I wasn't an actor. Kendall said much the same thing as Bobby but expressed doubt that the paparazzi could really know where we were all the time. I agreed with her
in some way—I mean, how could they
always
know? It was uncanny. Or was it?

I began to seriously consider whether someone close to us was tipping off the press and the paparazzi. Was it Trista? I wondered. Could the cleaning whiz with the bad attitude who rarely spoke be gabbing into a cell phone in the garage, calling photographers? Or was it Berry, Dec's assistant, who was always asking Declan for a raise? Maybe this was her way of making some side cash. It could be Uki, too, I thought. She was in my office all the time. She heard my phone calls, had access to my date planner. Of course, there were the bodyguards, Denny and Adam, but I doubted that these two had anything to do with it, since the paparazzi only made their job more difficult, and they had already put in a request to add two people to our “security staff.” Then there was Max, Dec's agent, and Graham, his manager. They professed to feel sorry for us when we were followed, but in some way, weren't they a little happy? Didn't the constant press increase Declan's exposure and therefore eventually make them more money? There were the publicists, too, who knew our every step. There was Tracy, Dec's second assistant.

The wondering made me paranoid. I can see it for what it was, now that I'm not so close to it. Everyone became a suspect, people who wanted things, people who were watching. And, as nice a guy as Denny was, it was tiring to always have him at my side. Sometimes I felt as if I'd married him not Declan.

One day when I was thoroughly sick of studying everyone out of the corner of my eye and tired of constantly having people around, I shook off Denny by pointing out something at a stoplight. When he shifted himself in the driver's seat and looked in the direction I'd pointed, I clutched my bag, jumped out of the car and dodged into Fred Segal, the one in Santa Monica.

I slipped into the Italian-eatery side, and headed into the women's bathroom, where I sat in the last stall and tried to guess what the women looked like by gazing at their shoes under the wall. After forty minutes or so, when I was sure that Denny had passed through the store and was looking elsewhere by now, I dodged out of the rest room, with my baseball cap low over my eyes. I wandered the boutiques, fingering cashmere sweaters, running my hand over the smooth leather of a bag, all the while pretending that it was one year ago, that I was in the Saks on Madison Avenue, that I was alone again, that no one was ever looking or staring, that I could take the subway back to my old apartment anytime I wanted. It lulled me, these thoughts, so that I began to wander almost dreamily. The problem with these fantasies was that Declan wasn't in them. It felt as if I was missing a limb. I tried to ignore that aspect of the fantasy as I strolled to a makeup counter in one of the boutiques.

“Here,” the saleswoman said. “Give me your hand. You absolutely
must
try our new hydrating thera-lotion. It's stunning, really. You don't have dry skin, I can tell, but we all age, you know how it goes. Seriously, try this.” She wielded a pot of white cream and a Q-Tip.

I could tell by her spiel that she didn't know who I was. In fact, I was sure I was the ninety-fourth person who'd heard this spiel today. I was just like everyone else.

I held out my hand and watched as she applied the cream in a little circle over my wrist. I feigned interest in the “silky texture.” I'd never known what to do with these women. What, exactly, was I supposed to feel, to say? Certainly, the skin on my hand wouldn't test the same as that on my face. Was I the only one who knew this? I murmured something under my breath like, “Nice, very nice,” caught between whether I should leave politely or buy two hundred dollars' worth of product to make her feel better, to make me feel ordinary.

“All the celebs are wearing this,” she said when I mentioned that I wasn't sure if I needed any moisturizer. “Like Courtney Cox? She uses this all over her body. And that Kyra, you know she's married to Declan McKenna, she came in last week and bought from me.”

“Really?” I glanced around, wondering if I was being filmed for one of those reality shows where they play jokes on celebrities.

“Oh, she always buys from us.”

“Is that right?”

I had become a sales technique.

 

Hypothetically, fame should have made me confident, even if I hadn't wanted that fame. After all, there I was, regularly selling my designs for the first time, married to a movie star, having no worries about paying bills. I should have, hypothetically again, been walking taller, smiling gracefully at everyone I passed, feeling serene and self-assured. Alas, this wasn't how it worked, at least not for me. Instead, I became more unsure of myself than I ever had been before. I lost the thread that kept me connected to the me I'd always known.

So much of my life was viewed at a distance. Not just by the reporters and the tabloids and the public, but by me, too. One night, for example, Declan and I attended a premiere for Paul Carlyle, Declan's old acting coach, who had the starring role. Flashbulbs flamed as we got out of our town car. A reporter from
Access Hollywood
dumped the interview she was conducting and ran to us before any of the other reporters.

“How are you tonight, Declan?” she said. “And Kyra, this must be one of yours.” She gestured with her phallic microphone at my navy blue shawl-collar dress.

I nodded and greeted her by name. Dec started chatter
ing away about Paul, how he couldn't wait to see the film. He was so good at this, unlike me, while I noticed that I left my body in a way. I could see the other reporters huddling around us, shoving their microphones near us. I could see the evil red glare of the power lights. I floated higher and higher, watching it from above, watching the way I nodded at one reporter, laughed with another. I watched the way I stood, one foot in front of the other, my arms slightly away from my body, the way I'd been taught. And yet, gazing at it all, I had a hard time feeling it. I was unable to unite this life with my old, this me with the one I used to know.