I watch the next entry. He’s still a mess. And the next and the next and the next. All of him a mess. There’s plenty of mentions of Ark, but no one else ever appears in the videos. Just JD and his depression. JD and his sadness. JD and his overwhelming problems.
He talks about killing himself at least once a week. Sometimes every entry has a mention. And month by month, he appears to be getting worse instead of better.
But then he explains the business they’re starting and something changes inside him. It’s small on the first day. A pause. It’s a short pause, only a few moments. But in every other video, the pause is so he can cry.
After this pause, he does something different.
He smiles.
All because of Public Fuck America. Ark’s brainchild to a life of luxury.
JD buys into it. Every bit of it. Because after that one smile, there are more smiles. Not every day, but every week. I find myself fast-forwarding the recording until I see the smile before stopping to hear what he has to say. And then… he laughs. Exactly four months after meeting Ark, when he was at his lowest point in life, JD laughs.
From there, his diary is all about business. His acting. The girls. The money. The loft. That Ray guy. Holidays are happy and the entries become less and less frequent. Once a day turns into once a week turns into once every two weeks and on and on. Until there’s a six-month gap in the dates.
And that movie isn’t of JD lying down, like all the others are. A bedtime ritual that cleared his head and set him up for the next good day.
No, the next one is outside and JD never even makes an appearance. Because it’s nothing but one long shot of a headstone. Not the nice kind that stand up, but the flat ones. A marker, really. Just a marker of a girl he used to love. Marie Lagucci. Dead at age twenty-two.
He never talks, but the crying is audible, even over the roar of traffic.
This is the first time Ark ever appears in the diary. He picks JD up and takes him to a waiting car. The whole time the camera is recording. Ark is patient and sympathetic.
JD is a mess.
Ark must figure out the camera in JD’s hand is still recording in the car, because that’s when the footage ends.
There are no other entries for a year.
My mind fills in those dark days after her grave was found. JD is a guy who feels. Not like Ark, who seems to be a guy who watches. JD is a guy who is invested. When he’s in, he’s all in. Heart, soul, mind.
I don’t bother watching the rest of the video. Instead, I fast-forward to the end. And even though it’s more of a breach of privacy to listen to him talk about me, I do anyway.
And I feel like total shit once I’m done. Because he tells Marie I’m good. And pretty. And deserving of a nice life. Like the one Ark gave him. He tells Marie they can save me from whoever—whatever—the problem is.
But the problem is me.
So can he really save me from myself?
JD pays the girl in the alley afterward, while I pack up my lenses and put them in my bag. There’s a small crowd gathered, and since this is not how her contract was written, I’m gonna take the girl home in a cab before heading over to Ray’s.
“You ready?” I ask, nodding at the waiting cab.
The girl won’t meet my eyes, but she nods back.
“See you tomorrow, JD.”
“OK,” he says, walking off and lighting up a cigarette at the same time.
The girl is already climbing into the cab, so fuck it. He doesn’t know about that asshole Gabriel tonight, and I’m not about to tell him until I have a chat with Ray about it. So I let him walk off while I join the girl.
“Where do you live, darling?” I ask her, the cabbie looking over his shoulder at us.
“My boyfriend is waiting over at Skates Pub.”
“Your boyfriend?” Do boyfriends let their girls do this shit? I swipe my credit card and key in the address so we can get going. I have a lot of editing to do.
“Yeah,” she says, looking out the window so she doesn’t have to meet my eyes. “We’re having some trouble paying the bills.” And then she does look at me. “He lost his job a few months ago. I have to feed my kids.”
I nod at her, shoot a smile to let her know I don’t judge. But internally I judge. Not her. Him. What kind of asshole lets his girl do porn to feed their kids?
“My girlfriend worked for you guys a while back. Four or five times. She does real movies now.”
“Oh.” Real movies my ass.
“Her husband told my boyfriend about it. So we went looking for you guys. And that’s how I met JD. He’s real nice.”
I guess. I ignore her for the rest of the ride because honestly, I can’t understand how a man could let his girlfriend suck another man’s cock for food money.
“This is good,” the girl says, knocking on the glass that separates us from the driver. “That’s my boyfriend.”
The cabbie pulls over and I smile at the girl when she says thank you. Her boyfriend waits a ways off, letting her come to him.
“Where you going, mister?” the cabbie asks me, jolting my attention away from the scene playing out in front of me.
“Back to 16th and California,” I say, swiping my card again.
I think about Gabriel the whole five minutes it takes me to get back home, and then I go down to our parking garage and grab my Jeep. I wonder if JD is upstairs with Blue yet? I’m tempted to go check, but I can’t see him alone yet. Not until I talk to Ray. Because all that bullshit will come pouring out, and I’m not sure that’s good for anybody.
Not because I’m selfish. Not because I want JD to forget the past and concentrate on the future. I do, but that’s not why I don’t go up there and tell him his kid might be alive.
I don’t tell him because the last time he got wind of this, he was obsessed for months and it ended with a trip to the emergency room to pump his stomach from an intentional overdose.