The F List: Fame, Fortune, and Followers Read online

  No. I was struggling with a gut-twisting menstrual cramp and barely paid any attention to the man with no luggage whose phone wouldn’t stop ringing. What I did notice was the moment he pressed in the code (1-1-4-4), typed in a text, then clicked the power button on the top of the phone, holding it down until it quieted. Moving his arm out to one side, he unceremoniously dropped the newest model iPhone into the silver trash can.

  “Did you just throw your phone away?” I rose on my toes and tried to see over the dark wooden counter. Who threw a perfectly good phone away? My own, a three-year-old model with a spiderweb of cracks along its front, was barely functioning.

  “Don’t need it.” He passed me his credit card and later—the experts would call that moment his cry for help. By throwing away his phone, he was supposedly begging me for help. Pay attention! he was saying. I’m about to kill myself, and I need you to stop me.

  If it was true, I was the wrong desk clerk. If Nigel had been there—sweet, doe-eyed Nigel who wrapped up the catering leftovers and dropped them off at the homeless shelter each night—Nigel would have picked up on the clues. Nigel would have asked him what was wrong, and if there was anything he could do to help, or if he needed someone to talk to. Sadly, Nigel wasn’t there because, ironically enough, he’d been fired for his homeless shelter donations—the liability of giving away leftovers too alarming for management to process.

  I absorbed the guest’s response—don’t need it—and waited until he got on the elevator. The minute the doors closed, I sprinted around the front desk and fished the phone out of the trash.

  An hour later, I was swiping through his photos when the glass lobby doors opened, and two police officers walked in, a tearful woman in tow.

  * * *

  The elevator smelled like cigarettes and pine sol. I stood on the left side, next to the cops, and watched the doors close on the woman in the lobby. She stood in the gap before the doors, a full green purse hanging heavily off one shoulder and knotted her hands together. I recognized her from the photos on his phone. In one, she’d had a baby on her hip. In another, she’d been in black lingerie, her belly pouching over the top of her underwear, her mouth curled into a seductive smile.

  “She can’t come with us?” I asked.

  “We aren’t sure what we’re going to find.”

  I waited for more, but the silence grew as the car shuddered past the eighth floor. I had put him on twelve, just off the elevator, because he seemed like the type to complain if he had to walk down to the end. I thought of the phone, which I’d shoved in the drawer at the sight of the cops and wondered if I should mention it to them.

  “So… umm.. are you arresting this guy?”

  “Nope. Just a wellness check.” The officer’s gaze landed on my flip flops, which were emerald green and had little palm trees between my first and second toe. They were the pair I kept behind the front desk and slipped on to save the ache in my legs. In the excitement of their arrival, I hadn’t thought to put on my work heels, which were still kicked off beside the credit card slips.

  “My heels are behind the desk,” I explained. “I normally have them on.”

  He shrugged as if he didn’t care, and I rubbed the key card to room 1206 against the front of my polyester skirt, grateful when the elevator doors opened.

  “It’s to the right. Second or third door.”

  We came to a stop outside the door, and I watched as the first officer put his ear to the door, listening. I moved a little closer, my ears perked. He rapped on the door with his fist three times, then waited, his head still close to the door, one hand resting on the butt of his gun. I stared at the gun and wondered if they planned on using it. Was Mr. Union violent? He hadn’t seemed so.

  Another three raps and the officer looked at me. “Unlock the door, please.”

  I moved forward quickly, inserting the card into the keypad and frowning when the lights turned red. “Just a second.” Muttering a curse under my breath, I pulled it out and inserted it back in, withdrawing it a little more smoothly this time. The lock hummed, then turned green. I twisted the handle, and the larger of the two officers put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me back.

  “Stay here.”

  I watched as they moved into the room, the door catching on the lip of the carpet, affording me a narrow view of the room. I saw the moment they paused, their attention on the bed. One glanced at me, then murmured something to the other. I sidled to the right, and focused in on the mirrored closet doors, inhaling sharply at the view it revealed.

  James Union had taken off his socks and his shirt. He was sitting up in bed, a can of our $8 chocolate-covered peanuts open in his lap, his chin tucked against his neck, a bullet hole clean and crisp in the center of his forehead.

  Shit.

  * * *

  I got off at eleven but stayed an extra fifteen minutes, my feet swinging as I perched on the plastic stool in the night auditor’s cubby and recounted the night. Marla snapped a piece of gum, her expression bored. “Happened before,” she drawled, holding down her finger on the printer’s queue button. “Room 419. Drug overdose. Everybody loves to die in a hotel.”

  Did they? I couldn’t think of a worse place to die. Especially not this hotel. We only washed the comforters once a year. We had a horrific cockroach problem, one frequently mentioned on online reviews, and most of the rooms reeked of a sort of spoiled-milk scent.

  “Go home,” Marla said, nodding at the clock. “You ain’t getting paid for this crap.”

  I stood and remembered James Union’s phone, which I had hidden in the side pocket of my bag. “Alright. See you tomorrow.”

  I wouldn’t be back tomorrow, but I didn’t know that yet. I walked out of the front doors and down the side of the building, my flip-flops flapping along the sidewalk, my heels tucked away in the cabinet of the employee break room where they stayed until someone stole or threw them out. I wouldn’t go back to that hotel until three years later, with documentary crews in toe, anxious to catch the humble and macabre root of my fame.

  I listened to Ziggy Marley and ate two pop-tarts as I took the short way home, my doors locked and pedal heavy as I passed through the worst part of Hyde Park, then took the hard turn into my neighborhood. I found a parking spot two buildings over and weaved through the cars, brushing crumbs off the front of my uniform as I clutched my bag under one arm and scanned the lot for anyone who might pose a threat.

  Everybody didn’t love to die in a hotel. One girl chose the 7-11 just outside of this parking lot. They found her with a Snickers bar in hand, the wrapper half off, a knife in her gut. Her purse was gone, and I didn’t know what she’d had in it, but I watched them tow her car, a decade-old clunker with bald tires, so it couldn’t be much. She’d probably died for the same amount of cash I had stuffed in the front pocket of my cheap blazer.

  I made it to my building and jogged up the exterior stairs, realizing on the second flight that I wasn’t sure whether I’d locked my car. I paused, warring over whether to go back and mentally cataloging anything of value in it. My textbooks. A knock-off set of wireless earbuds. My leather jacket, stuffed half-under the front seat. I forged on.

  I made it inside and trudged past my roommate, who nodded in greeting, her attention pinned to the TV, where a reality show diva shoveled fries into her mouth and moaned complaints about her hairdresser. I considered sharing the excitement of my night but didn’t have the energy for it. Pulling my door shut, I kicked off my flip flops and took James Union’s phone out of my bag. Curling into the pillows, I scrolled through more of his photos and then his messages, my interest in the dead man growing as I discovered his second family and the fireworks that had erupted that afternoon.

  I fell asleep while reading his texts. My hair was unwashed, my makeup and uniform still on, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the scratch-off in my ratty purse was a winner, and I didn’t know that James Union’s second wife was in her minivan, driving over to kill his first wife
.

  5

  #chaching

  EMMA

  The next morning, I stuffed a spoon heaped with corn flakes into my mouth and stared at my phone, scrolling through the article on James Union’s domino effect of death. Beside me, sat James’s phone, which I had decided to take to the police station as soon as I finished breakfast.

  The article was lengthy and riddled with typos, but full of juice. The wife from the lobby had followed the police to the coroner's office to identify James’s body, then visited the Dollar General and purchased an extra-large box of garbage bags, a box of latex gloves, and a cheap knife set.

  I’m dense; I realize that. When James Union checked into a hotel room with no luggage, didn’t negotiate the rate, then dropped his phone into the trash can, I should have picked up on it. But how did the Dollar General cashier not find black trash bags, a giant knife set, and latex gloves suspicious?

  It was the cheapness of Christina Union that saved the San Diego wife’s life. When Christina tried to stab the second wife, she missed, and the knife hit the fridge door, the handle immediately popping loose of the blade. Wife #2 thought fast, picked up the toaster from the counter and whacked Christina over the head.

  I guess grief does strange things to people. I chewed and clicked on a video link, watching as a newscaster spoke to Rick, my manager. I turned up the volume.

  “Oh, my gawdddd.” Amy staggered into the kitchen with a pronounced limp. “Leg day yesterday was brutal. Please kill me if I ever mention box jumps ever again.”

  I shushed her as she asked him a question. Would Rick stutter? He had a pronounced impediment that flared when he got worked up. I silently rooted for him as he cleared his throat and began to speak.

  “Hey—isn’t that your hotel?” Amy paused, mid-stretch of her rock hard thighs and peered over my shoulder.

  I nodded, my mouth full. Rick made it through a halting but smooth introduction to the hotel and last night’s events without a single stumble. I mentally high-fived him as he wiped at his brow and stepped out of the shot. I could anticipate what would happen next. Tall black coffee chugged like water in his office. Then, a donut delivery. By the time I started my shift at three, there would be a few half-eaten pieces left in the box, sitting in the middle of the break room table.

  “Whoa.” Amy crossed her arms. “This happened last night? When you were there?”

  I ran her through a quick recap as I finished off my cereal, then carried the bowl into the sink and rinsed it out. She gave the appropriate responses, and it was funny how easily I preened under her attention. That was all I had needed, three years ago. A spandex-wearing physical trainer who clung to my every word while I told my small and insignificant part of someone else’s story. Just one person, for one moment in time, to listen to me.

  “But, both wives are okay.” I dried the bowl with a paper towel and stuck it back in the cabinet. Our dish inventory was limited. One bowl. Three plates. An odds and ends assortment of silverware. Stack of disposable plastic cups. “They arrested the crazy wife.”

  “That is insane.” Amy tightened her ponytail. “I can’t believe that happened to you! You’re like, famous.”

  “Right?” I grinned at the thought. “Not that they’re going to interview me.”

  “They might. You’re working tonight, right?”

  I nodded and tried not to think about how big my teeth would look on camera. Maybe I’d get lucky, and a journalist would show up, notepad in hand, no camera in sight. I could get a quote in, my name in an article, something to send to my parents and prove that aha! I had done something with my life, even if that something was just to swipe a credit card and give someone a room key.

  “I’ve got to run.” Amy groaned theatrically, as if she didn’t enjoy the act. “Literally. Half-marathon in Malibu next weekend.”

  She headed for the door, and I shifted through my purse to find the business card that the cop had given me last night. I still had five hours before work, which was plenty of time to swing by the station and drop off this phone.

  The business card was stuck to a cheap scratch-off ticket, and I pulled them both out and set them on the table. Rummaging through the bottom of my purse, I found a slightly sticky penny and brushed it off, then scratched off the top row of numbers. In the neighboring apartment, someone started a shower, and the pipes gurgled to life.

  There was a five, which was a good thing. Fives always seemed to match the big prizes. I started down the first row of possibilities and wondered if I should take a shower before work. There was a chance that the news crews would still be there. And not that my hair was greasy, but it was borderline. Should I put on makeup? And if I did, would it be too obvious why I was doing it? I hadn’t worn makeup to work since my first day, five months ago. Chris would call me out on it. Definitely. I scratched the second row, checking the top line with each revealed number.

  So, a shower and super light makeup. Concealer, powder and mascara, nothing else. Too bad I hadn’t washed my uniform last night. I had two versions of the calf-length skirt and cheap blazer, and both were crumpled in the bottom of my closet, dirty. I could hang one in the shower, then hit it with an iron.

  A 21 on the third row matched on in the top bar. I quickly scratched the area below it.

  1,000,000

  The numbers were small and cramped, barely fitting in the little space. I looked from the 21 to the top 21, then back down.

  1,000,000

  Later, when the press would unfold how Emma Blanton came to be, and they’d return to this moment, I’d tell a story of me screaming in joy, then running around the apartment, looking for Amy. But in truth, that isn’t what happened. Instead, I just sat at our cheap wobbly table, the dented detective’s business card beside me, and checked the numbers over and over again. And then, after a long moment where the validity of it sank in, I started to cry.

  It was the exhaustion of it all that finally hit me. The stress over the fourteen dollars in my bank account. The past-due balance on my cell phone. The deposit I had to abandon on community-college classes. The upcoming eight-hour shift. My teeth, which had dictated my social standing, dating prospects, and self-confidence for my entire life. And now I had this small square of paper with a million dollars that I suddenly felt an enormous pressure to do something with. But what?

  I didn’t deserve this. I’d stolen a dead man’s phone. I owed Amy twelve dollars from takeout three days ago. I’d faked a doctor’s note to get an extra paid sick day at work.

  I hadn’t done anything in my life which warranted this sort of blessing, and I cried because the hope it gave me was terrifying.

  After ten minutes, I wiped off my face, then called Rick and left him a voicemail, quitting my job. I left the detective’s card on the table and moved into our shared bathroom, placing the ticket on the soap rack and locking the door behind me. I turned on the water and undressed.

  For the first time, I didn’t skimp on the shampoo or turn off the water in between rinse cycles. This time, I took my time and let myself dream.

  For the first time ever, I had options. Every option. I could disappear. I could reinvent myself. I could have the life, any life, that I wanted.

  6

  #believeinyourself

  EMMA: 849 FOLLOWERS

  I thought, foolishly enough, that with money came friends. And it could, in the right way, buy a certain amount of interaction. But fame was the real draw. In Los Angeles, everyone wanted to know someone famous. I learned that from Vidal Franklin. I learned everything from Vidal Franklin.

  “Take what you know, honey. All of it. Take it and throw it out the window.” Vidal was porcelain white and bald, with eyelashes so thick they looked fake. “You know nothing, understand?”

  “Sure.” I nodded, because when you pay someone ten thousand dollars a month, you listen to them. And, Vidal was right. I knew nothing.

  “Now, on the phone you said that you wanted to be an actress. Why?” He
had a coffee cup set before him, the lid off, upside down, and placed meticulously to one side. His long fingers pinched a silver spoon and stirred the contents, which already had four sugars and one cream.

  Why did I want to be an actress? I struggled with the truth—money, fame, adoration—and some less vapid motivations, none of which came to mind. “Umm… I like to act.”

  “Are you good at it?” He cocked one pierced brow, and he was intimidatingly beautiful. Impressive bone structure. A perfect complexion.

  “Well…” I shifted in the seat. “I think so?”

  “You’re not good at it.” He shook his head, and I got a whiff of his cologne.

  “I’m not?”

  “No. If you were good, you wouldn’t have a question mark at the end of that sentence. And in this town, hot white girls with some acting talent are everywhere. Leave this coffee shop, and you’ll trip over one on your way out.”

  Hot white girls. Was that what I was now? Was I, with a new haircut, spray tan and fixed teeth, suddenly hot? I held my breath and hoped desperately that it was true. It would mean a peek at a world I’d never known, one where I could smile at someone without them flinching, walk into a room without my guard up, and be flirted with, minus the cruel punchline.

  “Here’s what we have.” He took the empty sugar packets and lined them up in a row in front of his cup. “We have money. We have fame. We have celebrity.” He stabbed each packet as he spoke. “And then we have talent.” He moved the fourth packet away from the others. “Talent is something I can’t teach you. You either have it, or you don’t, and there’s a big difference between pretending to be something you aren’t—which is something that we all do every single day—and acting out a role on camera. So let’s talk about these other things. Money, fame, and celebrity. Those, I can get you, but it’s going to require that you trust me implicitly and give me a full year.”