Some Nerve Read online

  Some Nerve

  JANE HELLER

  For Susan Shuman, who embodies the two

  qualities every volunteer should: a huge

  heart and a wicked sense of humor

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Things weren’t going so well for the country that winter—the…

  Chapter Two

  “I’m totally buying this sweater,” said my best friend, Tuscany…

  Chapter Three

  So, naturally, I decided to gift Malcolm Goddard, as repellent…

  Chapter Four

  After I had a brief word with Henry, the maître…

  Chapter Five

  But I did feel a thing on Saturday morning. More…

  Chapter Six

  “Wait, listen to this,” I said to Tuscany and James,…

  Chapter Seven

  I spent several hours on Saturday writing up my interview…

  Chapter Eight

  I awakened early on Monday morning with a sense of…

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  “How old were you when you first realized that you…

  Chapter Ten

  On Sunday night, the last Sunday in February, the Academy…

  Chapter Eleven

  On the drive home, I reached into my purse for…

  Chapter Twelve

  “I see that you’ve had a career in journalism, but…

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Friday afternoon at ten minutes to one, early as…

  Chapter Fourteen

  The women of the household were panting with excitement when…

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was tempted to bolt from the sixth floor and…

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Come on, it’ll be okay,” said Tuscany after I called…

  Chapter Seventeen

  When I finally arrived on the sixth floor, I made…

  Chapter Eighteen

  “So nobody has a clue where Goddard is?” I asked…

  Chapter Nineteen

  On Sunday morning, I put on my uniform and stole…

  Chapter Twenty

  “He’ll be all right. He just fainted,” said Jonathan after…

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I stowed my cart back in the storage room and…

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Okay, so I’d been forced to abandon the idea of…

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Malcolm wasn’t the pale, wan patient this time; he was…

  Chapter Twenty-four

  On Tuesday, Malcolm’s fever was still slightly elevated, but he…

  Chapter Twenty-five

  At eight-thirty that night, I drove Rebecca back to the…

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I floated through the rest of my shift, handing out…

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  On Saturday I forced Richard and Isabelle and everything unpleasant…

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I woke up on Sunday morning with a love hangover.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I showered and dressed and pulled myself together. I checked…

  Chapter Thirty

  I had another phone conversation with Harvey later that day.

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I loaded up the Honda with everything I had loaded…

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Suddenly, I was a big get. I’m serious. I launched…

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The following week, during a scheduled appearance on KNBC-TV’s Six…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Jane Heller

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Things weren’t going so well for the country that winter—the stock market was slumping and gas prices were rising and our soldiers were still at war—but they were going very well for Britney Spears, who was pregnant with her first child. She described the experience as “freaking awesome” during the two hours we spent together at her recently purchased nine-thousand-square-foot Malibu beach getaway, and she confided that sex with her husband, despite her swollen belly, was “crazy good.”

  No, the Britster and I weren’t girlfriends sitting around having an afternoon gabfest, although there were moments when it felt like that. I was a thirty-year-old reporter for Famous, an entertainment magazine in Holly-wood, and my beat was interviewing celebrities. Britney was an assignment for a cover story. She’s generally viewed as a product rather than a talent, but she had a sweetness about her, I found, a giggly openness, and I enjoyed my time with her.

  I enjoyed my time with all of them. I loved the feeling of gaining access to their private realms, loved trying to figure out for myself what it was that made them special. I’d been fascinated with famous people since I was a kid in Middletown, Missouri, a tiny place in the general vicinity of Kansas City. They were royalty to me—the beautiful ones with the beautiful clothes and the beautiful houses and the beautiful companions—and they were my escape from what was a dull and dispiriting childhood. I dreamed nonstop of fleeing Middletown and landing a job in L.A., and I’d made the dream come true. I’d really done it. So you could say that things were going very well for me too.

  Well, you wouldn’t say it if you’re one of those snobs who thinks it’s only news if it’s on PBS or NPR. In fact, you’re probably rolling your eyes right now as you picture Britney telling me about her morning sickness, her fluctuating hormones, and her cravings for pickles and ice cream, but I considered myself the luckiest woman on earth to be doing what I was doing. I could have been stuck in Middletown, where people get their kicks experimenting with different brands of snowblowers, eating casseroles made with cream of mushroom soup, and needlepointing pillows with bumper-sticker-type sayings on them, and where the biggest celebrity for a while was the guy who was cleaning his rifle and accidentally shot himself in the balls. I was bored out of my skull there, logy with the sameness of it all, convinced that if I stayed I would end up like my father, who died a slow and agonizing death, or like my mother, aunt, and grandmother, a trio of phobics who were too afraid of life to take risks and live it.

  By contrast, I felt healthy in L.A., empowered, energized by the constant whirl of activity and by the people I met, most of whom were colorful and creative and the opposite of dull. I mean, I was attending movie premieres, film festivals, and Oscar parties, mingling with Clint Eastwood and marveling at the merry band of women who bear his children, waving at Penélope Cruz and admiring her ongoing battle with English, exchanging friendly glances with Meg Ryan and wondering why she looks so much like Michelle Pfeiffer now. It all seemed so glamorous to me, so Technicolor, especially in comparison with the grayness I’d left behind. Rubbing shoulders with exceptional people made me feel exceptional by osmosis.

  Yes, the city was my oyster or, to be more L.A.-ish about it, my sushi. I had Leonardo DiCaprio’s cell phone number, for God’s sake. (Okay, his publicist’s cell phone number.) It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?

  Not for me. Not then. When you grow up yearning to be in the orbit of movie stars and then actually hang out with them, albeit in the service of helping them promote their latest project, it’s—well—freaking awesome.

  And as far as I was concerned, there was nothing cheesy or demeaning about my career. I mean, I wasn’t one of those tabloid creeps who picks through people’s garbage. My methods weren’t exploitative or intrusive. I had scruples. I didn’t resort to underhanded tactics to score an interview. I didn’t have to. I was a hard worker and a good reporter. The new and n
otoriously temperamental editor of Famous, fifty-year-old Harvey Krass, had been expected to clean house and bring in his own writers when he’d taken charge the previous month, and though he did fire some of the staff, he’d kept me on. I assumed it was because of my straightforward approach to the job, my integrity. He hadn’t said as much—he wasn’t big on compliments—but the fact that he’d asked me to stay at the magazine spoke volumes.

  So, yes, things were going very well for me. I was living my dream, as I said.

  And then, suddenly, a jolt.

  Not an earthquake, although there was a cluster of tremors that winter. No, this was a much more internal, life-altering shift. A radical change in direction that sent me into an entirely new phase of my life. I went from Gutsy Girl to Gutless Wonder and back again, and what I learned from my journey was this: It’s possible to be chasing the wrong dream and not know it.

  “GOOD MORNING,” I trilled to Harvey on Monday at nine twenty-five. His assistant had summoned me to his office for a nine-thirty meeting, but I was always early for things, unlike everybody else in L.A., where traffic is an extremely reliable excuse for being late for things or for missing them altogether. I’d been raised to believe it was rude to be late, and I certainly wasn’t about to be rude to my new boss.

  “It isn’t good at all!” he shouted, brandishing a rolled-up copy of what appeared to be In Touch Weekly. “This rag and its evil twins are eating into our sales and it’s gotta stop! Right here! Right now!”

  As his temper flared, his short, stubby arms shot in the air, nearly knocking over the statue of the Buddha that was resting serenely on a table, courtesy of his feng shui master. He had an unfortunate habit of waving his arms around when he was irritated, which was most of the time. He’d bang into objects and send them crashing to the ground without so much as a backward glance and go right on ranting. Yes, I loved L.A., but borderline-personality disorder was rampant, even among those on a “spiritual path.”

  As I sat in one of his visitors’ chairs, he began to pace in front of the window. His office had a spectacular view of the Hollywood sign on a clear day, but he was too wound up to appreciate it. “How can I help?” I said, because I wanted to be indispensable to him.

  “You can interview Malcolm Goddard.”

  I laughed. “Malcolm Goddard doesn’t do interviews. He hates the media.”

  “They all hate the media until their careers are in the toilet!” he yelled. “Then they can’t wait to talk to us!”

  A perpetually red-faced man with a pear-shaped body, a silly little ponytail, and the waddle of a duck, he was one of those Neanderthals who didn’t get that it’s not okay to scream at one’s employees at the drop of a hat. He was also a heart attack waiting to happen, and there were many at Famous for whom it couldn’t happen soon enough. But he’d been brought in by our parent company last month precisely because of his hard-driving style. Circulation at Food, our sister publication, had skyrocketed when he was editor in chief there, even as blood pressures did too.

  “Right, but he’s hot now and he won’t talk to anybody,” I said. The approach I’d adopted with Harvey was to remain focused and professional no matter what his decibel level. “He wouldn’t cooperate for People’s Sexiest Man Alive cover, for example.”

  “I envision Famous as much hipper than People,” he said with disdain. “We won’t do stories about miracle quintuplets.”

  “Even if Charlize Theron gives birth to them?” I suggested. “Now that I think of it, why don’t I interview her?”

  Harvey wheeled around to face me, his cheeks florid with fury, his ears flaming. “Because she’s not the big get anymore. Malcolm Goddard is!”

  “Chelsea Clinton is a big get,” I said. “Malcolm Goddard is a get-me-not.”

  “No, the Olsen twins are a get-me-not. I’ve told you my motto: If they’re overexposed or over-the-hill, the only way they’ll make it into Famous is if they croak. I want Goddard.”

  “He won’t do it,” I repeated. I wasn’t trying to be negative, just realistic. I had nothing against Malcolm Goddard—I really did try to see the best in celebrities, even the ones who were reputed to be insufferable bullies—but he’d made it clear that he had no use for publications like ours. “Did you read that interview he gave Vanity Fair last year? He said it was his last. He sounded like an artiste with a sense of entitlement to match. He told the magazine—wait, let me quote his exact words—‘Reporters are parasites who only want to feed off my vessel.’”

  “What do you expect?” sniffed Harvey. “He’s one of those Method assholes. Their vessel. Their instrument. Their whatever. ‘The role took me places I never thought I could go.’ They all spout that crap.”

  “But he seems to have a genuine distaste for the media, so who needs him?”

  “We do!” Out went the flailing arms, just missing the hunk of crystal he’d been given by a shaman in Santa Fe. “He’s the ‘it’ guy now and millions of women are in love with him and I don’t want to see his face in Us Weekly or In Touch Weekly or Up My Ass Weekly! He’s ours and you’re gonna make him ours, do you hear me?”

  The shaman in Santa Fe could probably hear him. I sat very still for a couple of seconds, my eardrums throbbing, waiting to see if he’d cool down again. Or fall to the floor and die.

  “Look, Ann,” he said. “You’ve been working here for—what?—three years?”

  “Five.”

  I had arrived in Los Angeles shortly after getting my degree in journalism from Mizzou. Why journalism? I had a penchant for asking questions and digging for answers—a “busybody nature,” my mother called it—and I’d always gotten As in English classes. Why celebrity journalism when a byline at the New York Times was so much more respectable? As I’ve said, I had an attraction to all things Hollywood, needed to place myself in the midst of that glitter. I could have taken my J-school degree and gone the Maureen Dowd route, ferreting out the truth and then penning withering Op-Ed pieces about wars and presidents and matters of real importance, but I was more interested in movie stars and TV stars and matters of no real importance. I actually cared when celebrity couples like Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt broke up. I wanted to know why they broke up and who said what when they broke up and did anyone threaten suicide while they were breaking up, not to mention whether a third party was involved. I know it makes me seem like a complete fluff ball to admit this, but I wanted to know who celebrities were underneath their designer clothes and nine-trillion-dollar haircuts and surgically altered faces, wanted to understand their specialness. Blame it on Don Johnson. He was born and raised in a small town in Missouri, just like I was. I was still a kid when he became a star on Miami Vice, and I guess it started me wondering why some people rise to the top and others don’t. Yes, I could have taken my degree and covered wars and presidents and matters of real importance, but my need to know about George Clooney trumped my need to know about George Bush. So I headed for L.A., spotted an ad for an entry-level position at Famous, grabbed it, and scaled the ladder.

  “Yeah, well, entertainment journalism has changed in those five years,” said Harvey in almost an avuncular tone, as if he were suddenly my teacher as opposed to my tormentor. “The competition is uglier. Print. Television. The Internet. Celebrities are all over the place, so who cares about most of them? It’s about the big get now—the person we fight over, the one who isn’t accessible.”

  “I understand. Malcolm Goddard’s a big get,” I said, conceding the point. “But, practically speaking, how am I supposed to—”

  “You just do it!” he bellowed, switching back to Bad Harvey, arms in the air. “I don’t care if he’s a pretentious little prick! I don’t care if he thinks we’re parasites! I don’t care if he never does another interview in his spoiled-brat life after he does this one, but he’s gonna do this one and you’re gonna make it happen!” He paused to examine his hand. He had just singed it on the flame of the soy candle he’d been given by a Tibetan monk. “You’re a g
ood writer, Ann,” he continued more softly, as if reminding himself to be Zen-ish, not churlish. “There was a reason I kept you on here: You know how to string sentences together and you know the right questions to ask. It’s your killer instinct I’m not sure about.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, stung by the comment. Was he referring to the fact that I didn’t embellish the truth the way some of my colleagues did? That I didn’t turn in stories that were based strictly on rumor and gossip? That I didn’t scheme and stalk my way into a subject’s life? That I was raised to believe that if you were honest and trustworthy and worked hard, you were rewarded? My previous editor had never complained about my lack of a killer instinct. Okay, so I’d lost the Jane Fonda interview to People when her book came out, and Russell Crowe had decided to unburden himself to Esquire after his telephone-throwing incident. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t tried.

  “Just what I said: You’re not a killer.” Harvey shook his head at me. “The business has changed and you haven’t changed along with it. It’s not enough to be nice to people. You need to toughen up, elbow everybody aside, show your edge, prove you’re willing to do whatever it takes for a story.” He sat down behind his big, stupid desk, a slab of antique mahogany that had been tested for termites by a holistic exterminator who hummed bugs away instead of spraying them with good old pesticides. “And right now, that story is Malcolm Goddard.”

  What was this? After five productive, thoroughly fun-filled years at Famous, I needed to prove myself? Prove, as in: change my style or else? Was he issuing me an ultimatum? Was my job suddenly in jeopardy? Did my career, my very identity, hinge on my ability to coax an interview out of Malcolm Goddard, who was not only media shy but downright hostile to reporters? It didn’t seem fair, but I wasn’t about to argue. I would put on my can-do face and continue to do things the way I’d always done them, and everything would turn out just fine. “Okay, sure, Harvey. I’ll try to get him,” I said with a big smile.