“The Corey Mays,” she repeated. “Are you kidding me?” I think she was falling in love with him before I had even hung up the phone.
I used the key that Nicky had given me for emergency use only to unlock his bottom filing cabinet and pulled out his new digital camera. Nicky had shown it off to me like a new mother preening over a child. It was a professional-grade camera, the kind a photojournalist would use, and it included what was, at the time, a new concept on digital cameras: a feature that let you take pictures at night without a flash.
. . .
Much like Tammy Farrell, Chloe had a delicateness of feature that drew men to her. She also had the curves of a woman but the nature of a child. That is, she had a way of looking at a man from underneath her bouncy black curls, like maybe he had hung the moon in a past life and just didn’t know about it.
The downside of Chloe’s MO was that most guys eventually came to hate so much idolization. Admiration is like candy: It tastes good at first, but too much of it, and you get sick.
That night, though, it was her and Corey’s first time meeting, and he ate her up from go as she asked him question after precious question. How do you stay in such great shape during the off-season? How do you manage to stay so calm on the field? Do you have nightmares before games?
The only thing she didn’t ask him about was his fiancée.
I found it all a little ridiculous, but Corey answered her questions with consideration and bemusement. After a while, neither of them seemed to notice that I was still there or the fact that I was making sure that both of their wineglasses stayed full.
Corey and Chloe. The situation was almost too cute to be true.
. . .
Thanks to the wine and Chloe living in a ground floor apartment with a bedroom window and me being in criminal possession of a camera that pretty much did everything itself to take a good picture, I got some quality images.
I called Russell the next morning. At that point, he had yet to break a cover story, so he was more than grateful for the tip. He asked me to e-mail him the pictures right away and downloaded them while I was on the phone with him. “Oh my God,” he said as the first picture came through. Then: “Oh, now I know Miss Veronica would never let him do that to her. Girl, this is money. Both literally and figuratively. Do you know what the photo fee is for pictures like this? You are about to receive a nice check.”
That made me feel a little bad. Humiliating Veronica Farrell was one thing, but profiting from it was another. “I don’t need any money, just anonymity.”
“Company policy. We got to pay you, and you got to sign a waiver saying we own these bad boys. I’ll courier over the paperwork right now.”
That night, I took a frantic call from Chloe. Russell had called her for a quote in the story. Luckily, she had never met him or she might have put two and two together.
She told me that she had been calling Corey all day, but that he hadn’t picked up or answered any of her messages.
“I think he thinks I set him up,” she wailed.
I had to create a new character for the occasion. Shocked Davie. This one was self-righteous and couldn’t believe we lived in a day and age when paparazzi would follow somebody home from a bar.
Shocked Davie assured her that if Corey called me, I would let him know that Chloe was a good person who would never ever make a deal with the paparazzi. This was an easy promise to make: Corey did not have my number. And I seriously doubted that he would want to look me up, since our short time together was now tainted by scandal.
Still, I soothed Chloe as much as I could, then hung up and again waited for the inevitable. I could not be sure that Veronica Farrell would dump a perfectly rich man for cheating on her, but I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to dump him for humiliating her in public.