Not So Model Home

CHAPTER 11


Being World Famous For Fifteen Minutes Is Far Too Long

I got up early the next morning, and like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, I started up my iMac and poured some coffee. I came back to my computer as it loaded my home page on Yahoo. I sped through the day’s headlines, and at the bottom, what I saw almost made me fall off my chair. The last headline: SLAPPING VIDEO GOES VIRAL. I clicked on the link to see that “Great Bitch Slaps of History” had climbed from about 7,000 views last night to over 420,000. The other videos had jumped as well, but “Great Bitch Slaps” was chewing up the bandwidth. I knew that Jeremy and his cadre of computer nerds had dropped the video on YouTube, and they knew what they were doing. And what they were planning: They were trying to drive viewers to the show through the Internet. As I did some searching around the Internet, there were stories plastered all over the gossip Web sites, Hollywood Web sites, and celebrity scandal sites. All in one freaking night! The episode wasn’t even on the air and already hundreds of thousands of people had already seen it. I was used to the days of Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin, when people like Zsa Zsa Gabor became sensations seemingly overnight, but the reality was that in those days, it actually took a long time. Even better, once you became famous, you stayed there a long time, whether you deserved it or not. Now, everything happened overnight. You went from a mild-mannered real-estate agent to a tit-flashing whore by the time you got up. Then you faded into obscurity just as quickly. One could hope.

I was getting ready to go into the office to list a few more homes that wouldn’t sell for a long, long time when I heard a knock on the door, sending Knucklehead into a fit of barking. That was Knucklehead; he barked at planes, helicopters, geckos, roadrunners, birds, clouds—everything except strange men. I took a peek through the door sidelight and saw a mass of flowers sporting a woman behind it. Or was it a woman sporting a mass of flowers? I opened the door.

“Jesus Christ, Amanda. What did Ken do?” Regina barked.

“What do you mean?”

“You only get flowers like this when he’s been cheating. What strumpet did you catch him with?”

“Nobody. Here . . .” I said, grabbing at the base of the flowers, trying to find something resembling stems. “Let me get those for you. Jesus, these are a lot of flowers. You mean you didn’t bring them?”

“Just picked them up. What’s the occasion? Someone shoot a member of The Beatles on your doorstep?”

I took the mass of flowers and laid them down on my mid-century Saarinen dining table. “They’re from different people,” I said, thumbing through the attached cards. “And I don’t know any of them.”

“Let me repeat my question: What’s the occasion?”

“My Internet debut.”

“Oh, the slapping thing,” Regina commented.

“How do you know about that?”

“Amanda, wake up and smell the espresso. It’s all over the Internet.”

“Regina, since when are you all over the Internet? You hardly touched that computer I got you a month ago. I had to teach you how to use it, and when I showed you how to cruise the Net, you responded—and I quote—that you’ll ‘just stick to meeting men the old-fashioned way: pleasantly tight and in a dark bar.’ ”

“Yeah, and I stuck to that statement. You just didn’t tell me there was so much porn on the Internet. And hot dating sites for older, er, mature men. I belong to so many sites with the word silver in the name, you’d think I was looking at a Web site for Jewish surnames.”

“So even you saw me on the Internet? Holy shit.”

“That’s what I said when I saw your slapfest.”

“Regina, it was one slap. One.”

“Yeah, but what a slap it was.”

“So what site did you see it on? YouTube?”

“No, on Perez Hilton’s Web site. Wait a minute. I think it was on crazedbitches.com. Or bitchslap.com. Something like that.”

“Regina, I don’t know any of the people who sent these flowers.”

“Secret admirers!” Regina gushed. “I used to have several when I worked for Paramount Studios back in ’55. Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, James Dean.”

“They were all gay. Or at least two of them were, Regina.” I didn’t ask her how she knew who her flowers were from if they were secret admirers. I let it ride. After all, most of Regina’s stories didn’t quite check out factually. I just accepted it all as the color Regina added to my life.

“They weren’t always gay, Amanda. I think it was all due to those early television sets. X-rays, I tell you. Fried their balls off watching I Love Lucy.”

“Regina, what I don’t get is how all these people knew where I live. I guess I should be grateful for the adulation and attention, but at the same time, there’s a creepy side to it that I’m not sure I like.”

“You’re not used to fame, honey,” Regina said, laying her liver-spotted and bejeweled hand on mine for comfort and to assert her broad Hollywood experience. “You haven’t hit the big time until someone’s stalking you.”

“Maybe someone is. Regina, would you check behind that yucca over there near the wall?”

Regina turned her head for a second to look, then caught herself. Great big smile. I invited her in for coffee, but she declined.

“I just came over to congratulate you.”

“For the slap?”

“Yep, you’re on your way, honey. You’re gonna be a star.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of, Regina.”