how is alison she must feel like shit, Schaeffer wrote.
haven’t seen her since la when they were shooting that piece of shit, she’s in the demimonde, Seth replied. He didn’t hit send. That wasn’t what Schaeffer was asking; he wasn’t asking for gossip, a tricked-up bit of information about an actress in a muddle. Alison liked Schaeffer for a reason. He was all heart, that guy. Peculiar, for a gossip columnist on the internet. Unheard of, even. Seth deleted his response and wrote another.
i’ll get back to you after i call her, he typed. i’ll let her know you were worried and that you think this reporter is a douchebag piece of shit.
douchebag piece of shit is too nice, Schaeffer wrote.
If she had any sense at all, she wouldn’t be answering her cell phone, and emails would be off limits too. He tried both anyway, as well as texting. Schaeffer says douchebag piece of shit is too nice, he wrote.
He heard back within ten minutes: emoticon heart, emoticon tear.
where r u, he wrote.
She texted him her address and an hour later he was at her door. “You brought food, thank God. Not that I can eat it. Eating? Food? What a stupid idea, EATING.” She was rattled, rattling; he wanted to reach out and hug her, but she seemingly could not stop moving. “You know what happens to you if you eat like, one bite of carbs? You look like a whale, seriously. That happens! Get that away from me. They’ll say I’m fat. In addition to everything else I’ll be fat after starving myself for five years. This person who is writing complete shit about me online will say I have no talent and I’m fat.”
“You shouldn’t have read it.”
“Somebody is writing complete shit about me online and I’m not allowed to read it? Someone who I never met I never met this person and she’s writing terrible things, LIES about me and publishing them, but it’s my fault if I read it?”
“Hey hey—”
“Don’t tell me, hey hey. I didn’t do anything except wake up this morning, and now I find out that my career is over—”
“Your career isn’t over.”
“What do you know. You’re one of them—”
“HEY!”
“You are, you make excuses for all this bullshit.”
“I’m not making excuses! Would you relax?”
“I don’t want to relax. They’re all LIES and they’re printed out there, and who would do that? Who would say those things? Did she make them up?”
“It’s doubtful she made them up.”
“I never—did—any of that—”
“You threw the wig.”
“What is the big deal about the stupid wig? God, the shit they did to me every day, the shit I’ve been putting up with for years, how come nobody reports about the bullshit they do? What kind of reporting is this?”
“It’s not reporting,” he sighed. He hated having to explain the world to this actress who, God help her, seemed to still have something of an innocent heart.
“Can I sue? I want to sue.”
“It’s not worth suing.”
“People say that because they’re scared to fight for themselves—”
“People say that because these people who write this shit are the lowest form of life and they can claim that they were just reporting what someone told them and it’s not slander if they’re just reporting what someone said.”
“Well, can I sue the person who said it?”
“It’s doubtful she’ll give up her source.”
“Well, isn’t that FUCKING CONVENIENT.” She grabbed her drink, which seemed to be some huge shot of vodka over ice. God knows he’d been there often enough; the morning after he almost got fired for sexually harassing this very actress, he went to the office, apologized mightily, pointed to the Twitter feed and the two blog posts exonerating him, then went to the bathroom and puked for five minutes.
“I’d be careful with the vodka,” he suggested.
“It’s water,” she retorted. “I don’t drink anymore. I got scared of drinking. All those people drinking all the time. Me too. I was drinking all the time. But I could use a drink. Did you bring any vodka?”
“We’re going to stick with water,” he said. He opened one of the cartons of takeout, mu shu something.