Patrick Jenkins.
I never would’ve gotten that. See, he doesn’t even matter to me anymore, but the legacy of what he wrote continues to mark my life.
So let’s clear things up. The article mentions you expressed unease at going out in public with Charly, that it was putting you in danger. It’s my opinion those statements contributed to the perception of your paranoia. I wonder if you can explain what you meant, if you still remember.
I’ll never be able to tell you exactly what I was thinking when I said it, but I can tell you what I probably meant.
Please.
Try imagining that every time you go out, people are there with cameras, asking inane questions intended to produce sound bites. Photographers step in front of your car so you can’t move, they risk their health to sell your image. Imagine having your personal space continuously violated. You almost have no option after a while but to disassociate yourself from the people around you. You don’t recognize them because you don’t recognize the behavior, it’s so fucking baffling to have someone you don’t know assume they can impede your path on the sidewalk. That type of behavior blows my fucking mind, I can’t relate to it, and after a while I stopped identifying with people. They didn’t make sense because the things they did didn’t make sense, and I became a misanthrope. I despised everyone I saw when I went out. The next logical progression for a budding misanthrope is to become a recluse. But we’re all social creatures, so the life of a recluse never suited me very well, and it makes one go a little crazy. It really does. I feel it some days here. At the time what I believe I meant was, I didn’t feel at ease going out because it felt too unpredictable. I had no idea what anyone was ever going to do, and every face on the sidewalk became a wild card, almost like a mask I couldn’t see behind and I never knew if it was a friendly grin or a devious one. Do you understand?
I think so, yes.
I would get letters, too. Women sent naked pictures all the time, another thing I never understood. Who the fuck does that? How can you relate to someone who would take a camera, get out a fucking tripod, set up a shot, hit the timer, go lay down on a bed, take that picture, and then, and think about this Chris, then even if they were drunk when the idea struck and they went through with taking the picture, they then got the picture printed and filled out an envelope and sent it off. All of those things were conscious decisions. How can you tell me that person isn’t going to knife Charly on the sidewalk out of jealousy. I had everything to lose, and no one made sense, and I stopped going out because it was too creepy. Tell me, am I paranoid?
I hear everything you’re saying, it all makes sense, but you’re telling me you’re afraid of people on the sidewalk.
Not just people, crazy people. The more you have, the more you have to lose. Patrick Jenkins, and the way he presented me in the article, lacked compassion and understanding. He spun everything. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but if you’re not going to try to understand me and then write in a way, like be the bridge between me and the reader, and write in a way that makes it clear what I mean, you’re a shit writer.
Did you ever speak with him afterwards? They should’ve called to verify the more extreme quotes.
No one had ever shit on me like that, with that degree of unprofessionalism. I’d given so many of these things over so many years that, long before then, I’d stopped trying to verify everything. That phonecall comes in and I say yeah, he was there, I was there, you have the tape just listen to it and if it’s my voice, I said it. Never again. Lesson learned. No one prints anything now without me seeing it first. You remember your promise from yesterday?
Of course. I gave you my word.
Good.
One last thing to clarify: at the time you said you were working on some new music that would be out soon. That album never materialized. Did you scrap it, or did the label decide not to put it out? Where are those songs?
First off, the label would never tell me not to put something out. Even when they didn’t hear enough singles on “Under the Sun,” and mind you it has them, three to be exact, they put it out because they knew it would sell. I sell. My music sells. If I’d brought something out, especially in a barren music landscape like we were having three years ago, it would’ve sat atop the charts for months. But the truth is, there was no album. There were songs, there always are, but an album didn’t exist and there was never a plan to put one together. That whole interview, and now that I’m talking about it I’m pissed I ever did it, was to put me out there again so people wouldn’t forget, and Murphy and I came up with the idea of talking about an upcoming album and how I was finishing it up, adding final touches. We thought it would build anticipation, get people talking again. Let them speculate about what it might sound like. When would the first single drop? Would there be another tour? In the end it never came and was replaced with a trial, but it did create buzz for the time.
Were you concerned about crying wolf?
And not having an album come out? Only a little. If people started to turn on me and wonder where the album was, I could’ve thrown something together. In a way Murphy was probably trying to get me to promise an album in the hope I’d deliver. I knew it, I didn’t mind.
Let’s talk about the trial. Some people claim you got preferential treatment.
Because of my celebrity status?
Yes.
I didn’t make myself a celebrity, everyone else did. If they want to be angry, they should look at themselves. But we aren’t gods, Chris. There was no special treatment. It was a fair trial. I didn’t break any law and I wasn’t convicted of a crime, so it went exactly as it should’ve.
But you’ve hinted at remorse for what happened. That seems to imply some degree of guilt.
Of course I’m remorseful. The one person I ever found who made me completely comfortable being myself is gone. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t poison her, like the prosecutor angled at. She was a sad sack of worthlessness, that one.
The prosecutor?
She had it out for me. She tried to make me an example, to show that celebrities also have to pay for crimes. And there’s plenty of reasons why: O.J., that one girl in L.A. that always gets caught with drugs but never goes to jail. Soccer stars who wreck cars while driving one-twenty down the freeway and don’t get tickets. But I refuse to pay for their mistakes, or for the piss-poor job the prosecuting attorney did with their cases. Just because they got away with something doesn’t mean I should be made an example for one woman’s crusade.
Were you ever afraid you’d go to jail.
Of course. She came out firing from the start, she never made it a secret she wanted to see me locked up. That woman’s tongue is split, she twisted my words. I know a little something about the English language, I know how to use it to subtly convey an idea, but she mixed my statements up and regurgitated it to the judge to make me look like a killer.
How so?
She implied I poisoned Charly. She wanted everyone to believe I gave her a cocktail of sleeping pills and booze, that I let her slip into the pool. She even put forth the idea I held Charly under water.
And none of that happened?
Watch yourself, Chris. You’re a guest here.
I have to ask.
Can you tell me what happened? You’re in the driver’s seat. You can clear up a lot of things here.
I’ll tell you what you would’ve heard if you were in court. Charly was found to have drowned, likely due to a large number of sleeping pills mixed with red wine, which rendered her unconscious and unable to save herself when she stumbled into the pool. I didn’t have anything to do with it. You don’t need to know more.
It’s that simple?
The prosecutor started to build a story around why I would want her gone. Oscar testified that he hadn’t heard anything the night it happened, but that terrible woman smelled something rotten when there was nothing and she got the police to bring me in, to interrogate me
about why I wasn’t with Charly when it happened. They thought I wanted to break it off and she wouldn’t let me leave her and I settled on that as my only choice. It doesn’t even make sense, it never did. The prosecutor was reaching for anything she could use to make a name for herself and, I don’t know, sell some papers. If I’d wanted to end the relationship Charly would’ve respected that. She wasn’t crazy. She had issues sleeping and alcoholism in her family. It’s that simple.
It must’ve been a hard time for you, dealing with the loss of Charly and going through a trial.
It dragged out for weeks. And some people wanted me to go down for it, that was the worst part. It was a witch hunt because, I don’t know, they wanted to believe there was foul play. Again it’s the way people who have nothing to occupy their time want to have an event to rally around, they want some external drama to follow, some real life event that’s as theatrical as what they see in a movie so they have purpose again. Logic flies out the window while they speculate and build up a story that over time becomes preposterous.
What was life like afterwards?
When the trial was over?
Yes.
Sad. I had to get used to living here without her.
And yet you didn’t move from here. That’s one thing people cited as a reason you might have had something to do with it, because it made sense that you would’ve left this place.
It makes sense to them. Apparently to you, also.
I never said that.
Most people run away from the things that make them uncomfortable, even if there’s joy in it. They think they’re moving on by moving away. I want to live here still, I want to walk these rooms and remember the time she stopped me in the hallway and kissed me, remember the place in the study where she first told me she loved me. This is what I have left of her, I won’t leave it.
Was there something that made her drink that night? Do you know? If she was doing well, getting better as you say, what brought her to start drinking again?
I don’t remember.
Was she upset?
It’s a blank page, Chris.
You didn’t have to testify at the trial about the events of that night?
Of course. I told them we’d had dinner, I went to my studio to work and she stayed upstairs to read. When I came up later I found her.
I’m sorry. For your loss.
Thank you. Come, it’s already starting to get dark. I’m going to have Oscar make us some food. I was supposed to serve you lunch yesterday but we got sidetracked. I’m a better host today.
Track 8
Oscar served an assortment of sandwiches with onion soup in the large dining room where I’d sat with Darin the day before. The food was excellent and I ate hungrily. Darin slurped every spoonful of soup into his mouth and dunked every bite of sandwich into the salty brown liquid.
Compliments to Oscar, this is delicious.
I’m glad you like it. Mention it to him when you see him, he’d appreciate that. I don’t have many guests like you, the only people he ever serves are me and my night companions, and they’re too self-conscious to eat in front of me. I myself only usually pick at food, I think it gives Oscar a bit of insecurity that no one likes his cooking.
That seems like a waste. What do you do with all the food he makes no one eats.
Oscar composts it. Eventually it goes back into the flower beds. Recently I’ve been thinking about getting a pig, though. Something to feed the scraps to, fatten up and eat. I could invite people over, fly Murphy in, have a pig roast in the backyard. Did you know there can be over sixty percent glass in a pile of scraps and a pig will still eat it?
That seems unreasonably high. Where’d you hear that?
Straight from the mouth of a farmer.
Did you speak to one?
That’s how I heard it from his mouth.
Recently?
About two months ago. I get bored here, there’s only so much time I can spend working on music. If other interests pop up I pursue them, and while Oscar was out there working on the yard, getting it ready for Spring, it occurred to me I’d never been on a farm. I didn’t know what it was like to work the earth with your hands. I made a few phone calls and found a local farmer who agreed to let me visit. It was perfect, he had no idea who I was, I just stopped out and he took me around.
Just like that?
Just like that. Same with most things in life, you just have to ask.
And he told you about pigs.
And cows, and chickens. Cows are actually quite smart, and very friendly if they’re treated properly. They understand what the farmer wants from them, what he’s doing when he moves them from field to field, that they shouldn’t go near the fencing.
That’s just basic behavioral modification. If you get zapped by something you won’t touch it again.
See it your way, but I prefer my bovine to be thinkers.
And so now you’re interested in getting a pig.
I’m trying to convince Oscar. He knows as well as I that he’d be the one taking care of it, so I’m getting him adjusted to the idea. He says he’s too old to deal with livestock. He prefers plants. Says they’re perfect because you put them in a good home and make them comfortable and they do the rest. Plus there’s no mess. He likes his hands in the soil, but he’s got no desire to be shin deep in shit. I can’t blame him.
Well he has a green thumb, I give him that.
You properly satiated? Darin rose and brushed a few crumbs from his front.
I am, thank you.
Good, you’ll be less agitated. Why don’t you call that lady of yours?
Not necessary. And what does agitation have to do with it?
The conversation I heard yesterday was borderline unfriendly. With a full belly you’ll be nicer. On the phone, I mean.
Thanks a lot. We’re fine.
Well you should still call.
Why’s that?
Because I want to talk to Oscar about getting a pig. I’ll feel less selfish about doing that if you’re busying yourself with something.
He rose quickly and exited the room.
Click.
I waited until his footsteps had disappeared down the hall to bring out my phone. I held it in my hand, felt the weight of it. Would she be annoyed we hadn’t spoken the night before? Or would her discontent revolve around what she was or wasn’t doing back in New York? Would Darin believe that I hadn’t gotten through to her if he came back and I was calmly sitting at the table, looking through notes?
I called. The phone rang, twice, three times. I began composing a message to leave on her voicemail.
“Hello.”
“It’s me.”
“I was just thinking of you.” She sounded happy, cheerful.
“What about?”
“Just what you’re doing. How’s it going?”
“Well. We’ve had a long day already, a lot of good discussion.”
“Nice. Are you finished?”
“No, just taking a break. Darin went to ask his butler if he could get a pig.”
“For dinner?”
“No, not for dinner. A live one. It really isn’t important. How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“What have you been up to?”
“I met with a new client, a very wealthy woman on the Upper East Side. She’s looking to decorate a recently purchased two-story apartment. He’s writing the checks, she’s in charge of making it a home.”
“A mistress?”
“No, not like that. They’re married, but he’s always working. I wanted to meet with both of them, but it was clear she’s in charge of decorating. You always jump to the seediest conclusions.”
“That’s not true at all.”
“Maybe not seedy, but you always think there’s more than there is.”
“Because you do this for long enough, if you talk to enough people, there’s always more. Everyone’s got a secret.”
“Speaking of wh
ich, did you ask him about the dead girl?”
“We briefly touched on it.”
“And?”
“And I got his side of things. I can’t really get into it now, I don’t know when he’s coming back.”
“Okay. So what else is going on? What did you do last night, I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk.”
“I had dinner, went over some notes.”
There was no reason to tell her I’d had dinner and drinks with someone. That path would lead to a myriad of questions I didn’t know how to answer, and regardless, what had happened the previous night was nothing, and nothing deserves no attention.
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much. Dinner out, then drinks back at the hotel to unwind, a little work mixed in. Nothing spectacular.”
“I thought you might go out with Darin. Any reason you didn’t?”
“He had plans. It’s probably for the best, I needed to put my head down and plow through some notes. I don’t have a lot of time, I need to be sharp.”
“You always are.”
“I appreciate that. I should get going, Darin could be back any time and I don’t want to make him wait.” I also didn’t want to go through the ending of a personal phone call with him in the room.
“Okay. I love you. I hope you get everything you need.”
“Thanks, me too. I’ll be home tomorrow before you’re in bed.”
“I know, I can’t wait. What do you want to do when you get back?”
“No idea, I can’t really think about it right now. Probably unpack and relax.”
“Okay. Call me before you go to sleep?”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I hung up and looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had heard the conversation. The room was empty. Not wanting to feel like a child waiting for the principal to enter the office, and not knowing how much time I’d have to look over notes, I began to stack the plates and bowls and silverware from our lunch.