Taylor had to figure out a way to get a print of the film from Travolta without having to explain why she had failed to pick him up at the airport and then disappeared from his life for months, without a word. A couple of days later, the missionaires arranged for her to use a pay phone on one of the lower floors of the building. Taylor called Kate Edwards, Travolta’s creative director at the time.
“Spanky! Where are you?” Edwards cried. Travolta and his production company had been looking for her frantically.
“Honey, I can’t really talk,” Taylor said. She told Edwards that she was in the Los Angeles complex. “I’ve been specially selected to do a program that will help me,” she explained vaguely. She said she had an urgent favor to ask—a print of the film.
That was a problem. The movie was being shown around the world and all the prints were out. The only one available was Travolta’s personal copy, but Edwards said she would make the request. “Johnny said if you ever called and needed something, just do it,” Edwards assured her.
“You can’t tell John about this call!” Taylor said.
“I’m going to have to tell him,” Edwards replied. “I’m going to have to ask him to borrow it.”
The next time Taylor was allowed to call, Edwards told her that Travolta had agreed to loan Taylor the print, under one condition: that he could see her. The missionaires conferred with their superiors. They decided that as long as Taylor got the print, she could meet Travolta for dinner on the Sunday night after the screening.1
Travolta followed up by sending flowers, which were delivered to Taylor in RPF.
The screening took place on Saturday night in Scientology’s Lebanon Hall. It was a high point for everyone, all the more so because it was followed by a disco dance. Across the country similar dances were taking place, inspired by Travolta’s passionate performance.
Taylor wouldn’t be a part of it, however. As soon as the movie was over and the credits were rolling, several Scientology executives, including Yvonne’s former husband, Heber Jentzsch, escorted Taylor to an office and told her to call Travolta and cancel their date for dinner the following night.
“I can’t do that!” Taylor said.
“There have been all sorts of efforts to recover him, and we can’t let you get in the way of that,” Jentzsch told her. “Call him right now.”
“It’s after midnight!”
Travolta was furious when he heard what she had to say. “We had a deal!” he said.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“How could you do this?” he demanded. “How could you leave your baby?” For the first time in their relationship, he raised his voice. “My mother died, and you weren’t there!”
Taylor began to bawl so hard she couldn’t speak. She recalled that Travolta was asking questions she couldn’t answer, questions she had been afraid to pose herself. He seemed to know what she was going through. “Unless you killed somebody, which I don’t think you did, there’s no reason for you to be where you are,” Travolta told her. He had never said an unkind word to her in their entire relationship, and his frankness was devastating.
“I’m doing this so I can be better!” Taylor sobbed. “So I can help you more.”
Meanwhile, Jentzsch was jabbing his finger at her and mouthing the order to hang up the phone. She quickly said good-bye and set the phone in the cradle. Then she was escorted back to RPF.
All that night she cried and cried, but when the sun came up, she was flooded with clarity. “I am so fucking out of here!” she decided. “I don’t know how, but I’m getting out.”
It wasn’t obvious how she could escape. She had been placed in RPF in March; now it was September. There hadn’t been time to plan because she was working constantly. She didn’t know where to turn. It didn’t occur to her to call her parents because she was so apprehensive that she might bring shame on Scientology if anybody knew what had happened to her. In any case, she was forbidden to speak to anyone outside the RPF, even to other Sea Org members. And even if she did escape, she realized, she actually knew very little about what was going on in the world. Since she had joined Scientology at the age of fourteen, she had never read a book that hadn’t been written by L. Ron Hubbard.
Taylor managed to slip away to visit her ten-month-old daughter in the Child Care Org across the street. To her horror, she discovered that Vanessa had contracted whooping cough, which is highly contagious and occasionally fatal. The baby’s eyes were welded shut with mucus, and her diaper was wet—in fact, her whole crib was soaking. She was covered with fruit flies. Taylor recoiled. The prospect of losing both her unborn baby and her daughter seemed very likely.
She finally conceived a plan. Explaining to her guards that she had to telephone the doctor, she managed a brief call to Travolta’s office and asked Kate Edwards to meet her the next day at a certain time, giving the address of the Child Care Org. She hung up without even hearing Edwards’s response.