“Waves of grief for Stella Cross and her husband, Travis, rolled over Silicone Valley yesterday,” said an article in the New York Daily. “Cross and her husband were known in the industry as the First Couple of Porn. ‘They were our Camelot,’ said performer Reginald C*********.”
Witnesses said Stella had been shot by a woman on a motorcycle. “A crack shot,” said a witness when interviewed on TV. The man, wearing a Jets ball cap, was interviewed outside the hotel, which was still festooned with yellow police tape, like a sad sort of Christmas garland.
“She was just shot—bam!—like that,” he said. It seemed that he wanted to add “awesome” or a similar exclamation.
Before she was murdered, the appearance of Stella Cross on the sidewalk outside the hotel had caused an outbreak of excitement among the tourists in Times Square. Such was the crush of autograph seekers and photograph takers that ten minutes before the shooting, the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, after receiving an award in the hotel ballroom, walked out the front door and into a waiting car, unnoticed.
“Do you think the assassin was actually aiming for the Supreme Court justice?” the television interviewer asked the man.
“No way,” the man said. “No way. I don’t know nothin’ about this justice or whatever, but I’m telling ya, this motorcycle pulled up outside the hotel and this woman just aimed right at Stella and shot. It was totally a woman who did it, too.”
The blond Stella was shot as she walked away from the crowd of fans, sandwiched between two large black men who were her bodyguards. By the next evening, there were tribute videos posted online by Stella’s fans, with clips of Stella having sex spliced together with photos of her dead body—or perhaps they were just stills from her film Fuck Me Till I’m Dead.
? ? ?
The New Baptist Plan, Task One:
Withdrawal
The Nola and Nedra Show played on the radio, broadcasting live from Minneapolis. I listened while lying naked on the sofa, running my fingers through the sweaty curls of my pubic hair.
“My eleven-year-old nephew has a Stella Cross poster on his wall,” said Nedra Feldstein-Delaney.
“No!” said her cohost, Nola Larson King.
“Yes. My sister said all of his friends have it and she didn’t want him to be left out.”
“Oh, Nedra, I’m just sick about this.” I could hear the pain in Nola’s middle-aged, midwestern voice. She was always the more emotional of the two.
I picked up my glass of water (FREE FOOD) from the coffee table; after taking a drink, I set it over my bellybutton, the black hole amid the swirling stretch marks and deep crevices. Outside it was a boiling July day, and inside my body it felt like July as well. I was baking from the inside. I had the air conditioner running, but it wasn’t helping.
The day after meeting with Verena I had begun to cut my tablets of Y—— in half. She was right. Alicia wouldn’t be strung out on antidepressants, and if I was serious about becoming her, I needed to start taking more steps in that direction. Within days I began to experience flu-like symptoms and thought I had caught a bug, but Verena told me over the phone that I was suffering from “Y—— flu” and that this was a normal symptom of withdrawal.
She made me sound like a drug addict.
“Y—— won’t give up its grip on you easily, but your willingness to change is impressive, hon. This is an important step.” She encouraged me to endure the symptoms but said if they became too much I should call my doctor and ask for a low dose of Prozac, which could make Y—— withdrawal easier. I thought another pill was the last thing I needed.
For days I had a high fever and was marooned in my bed, wrapped in the sheets. I was nearly delirious for some of the time and saw things that weren’t there, like my dead grandmother sitting at the end of my bed. I began to sweat and experience chills and aches. This went on for days. When the worst of it was over I left my bed and went to the living room to lie on the sofa and watch TV or listen to the radio, feeling leaden and exhausted, sensitive to touch and light. I couldn’t recall ever feeling such misery, and yet in a strange way I welcomed the symptoms. They were unpleasant, but they were evidence of the change I was going through, my metamorphosis from Plum to Alicia.
Despite the humiliation of my session with Verena, I was grateful that she’d moved me one step closer to my new life, though I knew she had other intentions. Speaking with her had been painful and embarrassing, but in a way it was a relief to say those things. Afterward I felt as if I were carrying one less burden.
“Stella Cross’s father is being released from prison early so he can attend her funeral,” said Nedra Feldstein-Delaney.