Читать книгу Pop Tart - Kira Coplin - Страница 6

What can you say about a society that says

God is dead and Elvis is alive?

– Irv Kupcinet

A jolt of electricity runs from Crescent Heights Boulevard to Doheny Drive – a gleaming, vibrating stretch of asphalt and neon so notorious that Sin City named its ‘Strip’ after it. It’s there on Sunset Boulevard where the rich and famous play out their scandals for the world to see – where ‘It Girls’ dance pantyless atop the oversized Monkeywood tables of Hollywood clubs, and where poolside catfights are veiled only by the thick foliage of the Marmont. And on one particular night in late November, just a stone’s throw from the glittering lights and madness of the Sunset Strip, I inadvertently became a key player in one of the most shocking celebrity dramas of the past decade. No matter how I try to put the puzzle together, to coherently map out the timeline of events, pieces are still missing and holes will always remain.

There was an unnatural stiffness in the air that night as I raced down empty boulevards typically teeming with drivers blasting their radios, or assholes laying on their horns.

Expressionless models from billboards stuccoed on the sides of shopping malls glared down on me; tonight they almost appeared menacing. The city itself felt like a ghost town at this hour, loosely woven and wrapped in nebulous unease. Waiting at a traffic light, anxiously drumming my fingers on the dashboard, I spot the only other living soul out on the street – a tall, muscular man with long brown hair falling past his shoulder blades, rollerblading in circles, wearing nothing but spandex shorts and laughing hysterically as if sending out a warning, ‘Proceed with caution, the crazies are out tonight.’

I turned onto the tree-lined street, lit up by the glow of a sign that read: Emergency Department. It was empty. Momentary relief washed over me. ‘Maybe it’s okay. Maybe no one knows.’ But I knew this kind of thinking was premature. I’d been around long enough to know the percolating frenzy: chatter from police scanners had already alerted reporters and photographers, letting them know that something was amiss deep in the Valley. I screeched to a halt in the first parking garage I could find, almost forgetting to pull the keys from the ignition. ‘Fuck,’ I muttered under my breath, wondering if I could’ve parked any further from the hospital entrance. I moved fast – the gentle summer breeze mocking my distress – time was limited, that much I knew. Up ahead, a single police car with its sirens blaring flew up to the entrance of the E.R. That’s where things get a little fuzzy. A wave of adrenaline washed over me, stimulating my heart rate and dilating my air passages, prompting me to break out into a sprint. Like an animal prepared for an attack, my footsteps echoed noisily along the pavement only to be masked by the drone of helicopters appearing suddenly overhead, circling like mosquitoes. ‘They’ve found her, this is it, get ready,’ I told myself, knowing that within mere seconds I would be submerged in complete pandemonium. I had hoped to make it inside before the throngs of people began to gather, but that hope was gone now.

By the time I made my way to the entrance, hospital workers had begun erecting screens in front of the doors to shield them from the hordes of paparazzi and news cameras on the sidewalk. No one quite knew what was going on.

‘I just got pulled out of bed by my editor,’ a disheveled tabloid reporter, still in her pajamas, complained.

‘Maybe she’s dead!’ one paparazzo yelled out, causing the crowd to erupt in laughter.

‘That wouldn’t be so bad. Then we’d finally be able to get some sleep,’ another reporter muttered to her coworker, who nodded sheepishly.

Our attention was soon directed to the motorcade that seemed to appear out of nowhere, more than a dozen lights and sounds spanning two blocks. As it moved in our direction, inhuman chaos broke out. Photographers leapt from cars stopped at red lights and swarmed the ambulance – hanging off of it as if it were a life raft – all elbows and shoulders, knuckles and dilated lenses, hoping for a snapshot of an American sweetheart in her state of distress. What had really gone on in the hours leading up to this moment, no one knew. Was she near death? Had she lost her mind? Would she emerge in a puff of stage smoke and dry ice, looking absolutely breathtaking and wave to the crowd as if the world were her stage? The only thing that was certain, not only to us outside the hospital, but to the millions of Americans tuning in to watch the drama unfold on live T.V., was that the girl who lived a life that dreams were made of, with a fistful of pop hits to boot – was being ambulanced to the emergency room, prompting people everywhere to ask, ‘How did this all happen?’

I didn’t have to ask.

I knew exactly how it had happened. I had seen it all first hand.

To the rest of the world, Brooke Parker was an immovable force. To them, she was the girl that sang happy songs with childlike abandon, who gyrated with vampy sex appeal across glittering stages and who lived in a world of feelings instead of facts – a dream, all smoke and mirrors. It was that face they’d seen so many times before – her doe eyes turned toward the camera, radiating the screen as she smiles – a smile that made them wonder what it would truly be like, how it would really feel, to be the kind of girl who had it all.