Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (16 page)

Jai and Faora both focus their entire
attention on us.

Faora says, “We think your freedom is as
important to us as it is to you. How much do you price your life?
That is not the only question. The bigger question is: how much
does the
world
price your life?”

Huh? I squint. What the hell exactly does she
mean?

Kurt is just as apprehensive as I am.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“How does the tune of one hundred million
dollars sound to you?” Jai says, grinning.

My eyes go round.

A hundred million? He has got to be fucking
kidding.

“Kurt doesn’t have a hundred million
dollars,” I blurt out. I toss a look at Kurt. Uh, does he?

He shakes his head.

“I don’t have a hundred million dollars,” he
says desperately. “I just started in this business, for Chrissake!
Look, I’ll give two million dollars, a sum I can honestly say I
have if my agent and manager haven’t taken their cut from it
already. Two million dollars is a tidy sum for you to build a
bigger wooden house on stilts, if you want to, and buy a retirement
home.”

Faora laughs. “Two million dollars is chump
change to us. Is that your American expression? Chump change?”

“Chimp change,” Jai argues.

“No, I’m sure it’s chump change,” his sister
replies.

I don’t believe they are arguing over the
semantics of two million dollars, a sum I will probably never see
in my entire life.

“Chump change or not,” Kurt says, “it’s still
all I can spare.”

“Oh, I’m sure your friends can spare a lot
more than that.” Faora smiles. It is not a pleasant smile.

“I don’t think my friends are going to shell
out any money for me. Not that much anyway.”

I’m certain Kurt doesn’t know how much his
friends are worth either. They are probably worth more than him,
seeing as they have been in the business for a longer time. But one
hundred million dollars? That’s Britney Spears type of accumulated
earnings! (Or maybe a fraction of what she has.)

“Not only the friends you know and have on
your private Facebook,” Faora explains. “But all the friends you
have in the world.”

She’s really got me stumped.

Huh?

“You got where you are through a reality TV
show,” Jai adds. “Then let a reality show decide whether you will
live or die.”

KURT

The next few days are surreal. The whole
devious plan unravels before our eyes.

This is how it works, in a nutshell:

1. Jai and Faora set up a website using a proxy
   server, and have it maintained by an associate from Barbados
   

2. They then record me, hands tied up behind my
   back and wearing artfully torn clothing. I am kneeling and staring
   at the camera aperture of the laptop. They have purposefully
   cleaned me up and left my hair flowing wildly around my shoulders.
   They want me to look as appealing as I possibly can.
   

“Speak,” Faora orders.

I have no choice but to say the words they
want me to say, especially since they have a gun trained at my
head. The black barrel of the gun is very obvious in the screen
shot, and it is pointing right at my temple.

I say: “Hi. I’m Kurt Taylor. I have been
missing for twenty days together with my girlfriend, Rebecca Hall,
ever since we both fell off a cruise ship. As you can see, I’m
still alive after being stranded on a deserted island. But I have
now been kidnapped.”

I pause dramatically. It would have been
farcical if I weren’t convinced they would pull the trigger on me.
Or if not on me, certainly on Rebecca.

“My abductors want me to raise a hundred
million US dollars to set me free. If I don’t raise that money in
ten days, they will blow my head off live on YouTube.”

The muzzle of the gun lowers to my cheek and
caresses my skin. I wince. The gunman squats and lets the camera
capture his masked face. He is wearing, perhaps aptly, the mask of
The Joker from Batman.

“The clock is ticking for me,” I say with
feeling. It’s true. I’m every bit as desperate as I sound. “They
have set some milestones for the money to be raised by intervals.
Every day, ten million dollars will have to be raised or they will
begin cutting a part of my anatomy off. Beginning with the little
finger of my left hand.”

And I’m guessing they will actually go
through it.

“So please . . . if you want to set me free
to walk amongst you alive and well so that Red Velvet can be a full
quartet again and make more albums, please donate to the ‘Keep Kurt
Taylor alive’ fund at the ‘PAY’ button you see on the website. You
can donate by Paypal, Visa, Mastercard or any means you like. All
currencies will be automatically converted.

“If you want to see how I’m doing, please
check in periodically on this website again to see the
Livecam.”

There is a close-up on my face. My pleading
eyes. The Joker behind me grabs my hair and thrusts my entire face
into the camera. My throat is spread wide open and he lovingly runs
the muzzle of the gun down it.

“Please,” I say as a final word.

And then we wink off.

After that, it is pandemonium.

*

They let me and Rebecca watch the proceedings
unfold on a monitor without a keyboard. So we can only observe
whatever is playing on their laptop outside the room, but we are
not given the opportunity to Facebook or email or Twitter
anyone.

In a matter of minutes, someone uploads the
video from the ‘Keep Kurt Taylor alive’ website (
www.keepKurtTaylorAlive.com
)
onto YouTube. Thereafter, it rapidly becomes viral. The video is
embedded in a million Twitter and Facebook feeds overnight, and the
number is growing by the second. The news portals like CNN and Fox
and Al-Jazeera take it up and start reporting it around the
world.

With the technology we have today, it is very
possible to go global in a matter of hours.

The interviews and debates start.

“Should we allow kidnappers to dictate to us
what to do?” a newscaster is saying. “What if it’s all a
bluff?”

“I vote that we do not give in to threats,”
says a spokesperson from CNN.

“It could all be a scam perpetuated by Kurt
Taylor himself. It could be a publicity stunt to kick-start a
troubled career,” says someone from one of the online gossip
rags.

Huh? A troubled career? If he is referring to
my community service aboard the
Princess Alexandria
,
shouldn’t that be considered a blip in an otherwise meteoric
rise?

The news portals begin to interview my band
members.

I watch, both apprehensive and fascinated,
fingers entwined with Rebecca’s, as people I know begin to pour out
publicly what they really think of me:

*

From NBC news:

STEVE: He was always a bit of an odd duck. He
never really fit in with us. Guess we’re all a generation older.
But he was a good dude, so we figured he would ease into the flow,
you know. So when he went missing, we thought it was a prank. To be
honest, I’m still not sure if this whole shindig is a prank.

*

Thanks a lot, Steve
.

*

REPORTER: So was he the wild type, Alex?

ALEX: Wild? He was the wildest of the wild,
man. I can tell you some of the wild things he has done. Why, on
the night he was arrested for DUI, he was fucking three women at
one go. He was certainly the wildest of us.

*

Huh? What am I missing? My eyes pop out with
incredulity when I hear this.

Rebecca notices this and gives my hand a
squeeze.

“I don’t mind whatever you did in your sordid
past,” she assures me.

“The trouble is that I didn’t . . .
don’t
. . . have a sordid past,” I splutter. “And I wasn’t
fucking three women at one go. I only fucked
one
. I was
performing cunnilingus on the other.”

Like, duh.

“That was before you met me,” Rebecca
says.

“Uh, I kind of met you when we were both in
high school.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” I squeeze her
hand back, so glad I have such an understanding girlfriend.

Girlfriend!

I still can’t believe Rebecca is my
girlfriend. Deep down inside, I realize I have always been kind of
waiting for her.

*

REPORTER: So what are you guys going to do
about the situation, Tyler? Do you think Kurt’s abductors would
really kill him if the one hundred million dollars is not collected
by the end of the ten days?

TYLER: Anything is possible. I mean, there
are a lot of bad people in this world. Like that chick who claimed
I fathered her triplets. Can you imagine me fathering triplets?
Twins don’t even run in my family.

REPORTER: Uh, back to Kurt Taylor. Are the
band members of Red Velvet pooling any donations to his ransom
fund?

TYLER: Are you kidding me? Of course we are.
I’m personally donating five million dollars, and so are the guys.
Britney Spears said she would throw in three million. Madonna would
not be outdone with four million. Usher and Ne-Yo and Pitbull and
Nicki Minaj are all passing round the hat as well. We haven’t
gotten Justin Bieber yet. I think he’s somewhere in Germany with
his pet monkey.”

*

Tears spring to my eyes.

Whatever they have said and done, the guys
are really OK. Honestly, truly OK.

“Wow,” Rebecca says. “How much is that so
far?”

“They will need some time to mobilize the
money,” I reply. “I don’t know if we are going to make that first
day milestone.”

We keep watching the money counter. The
website has a ticker as to how much money has been collected. These
kidnappers/drug smugglers/whatever they are . . . they are good.
Money keeps getting mobilized from all over the world.

“Can I donate to my own fund?” I ask Jai.

“Only if you can do it without emailing or
calling someone. We wouldn’t want a trace now, would we?” He
grins.

No, I guess not.

At two p.m., the tally is five million.

At three, the tally is six million.

Rebecca and I are on fingernail gnawing
tenterhooks.

“What time is their cut off for the day?”
Rebecca asks.

“Midnight, I guess.”

“You guess? It could be your little finger
they are cutting off.”

“I know.”

*

Meanwhile, the interviews go on.

REPORTER: So what is the FBI going to do
about it?

FBI SPOKESMAN: Seeing as the incident is
taking place in international waters, there is not a lot we can do
about it.

REPORTER: So it’s a job for the CIA then?

FBI: You could say that.

REPORTER: So what are the CIA going to do
about it?

CIA SPOKESMAN: We have cordoned off a
possible area where Kurt Taylor and Rebecca Hall could be in. But
the area is in the radius of several thousands of miles. It’s not
an easy place to comb. There are hundreds of islands scattered
there. They could be anywhere.

REPORTER: We are speaking here to Alice
Mulwray, the President of Kurt Taylor’s Internet fan club.

Cut screen to Alice Mulwray, who possibly can
be one of the contenders for ‘America’s Fattest People’.

ALICE: (waving into the camera) Hi, everyone!
Hi Mom and Dad!

REPORTER: Alice, how do Kurt Taylor’s fans
feel about his kidnapping?

ALICE: We are devastated, of course. (Waving
again.) Hi, Brenda! Hi, Aunt Jake and Aunt Sim! (Eagerly) We are
all crying our eyes out. We have put in our donations, of course. I
can’t afford anything much, but I’ve personally put in my entire
life’s savings into the Kurt Taylor ransom fund. Which isn’t saying
much, but it’s all I’ve got.

*

“Oh, Kurt.” Rebecca links her arm through
mine. “That is so sweet.”

I know.

I can’t stop tearing since two p.m.

*

REPORTER: We are speaking now to Rebecca
Hall’s mother. Hello, Mrs. Hall.

Cut scene to Mrs. Hall, who is wearing her
best Sunday dress and a hat to match.

MRS. HALL: (dabbing her eyes) Hello.

REPORTER: How are you feeling, Mrs. Hall?

MRS. HALL: Very worried. My baby is out there
somewhere, and Lord knows what those animals are doing to her! She
could be hurt! She could be . . . be . . .

(bursts into a bout of crying)

REPORTER: (offers tissue) There, there, Mrs.
Hall.

MRS. HALL: (blows nose) Thank you.

REPORTER: Mrs. Hall, do you feel the
spotlight has been too much on Kurt Taylor?

MRS. HALL: (vehemently) That Kurt Taylor.
I’ve known him since he was a child. Practically a child! He was
always up to no good. I knew he would get into serious trouble one
day, and I was right.

REPORTER: How do you feel about your daughter
getting mixed up with Kurt Taylor?

MRS. HALL: I never knew they were seeing each
other! Rebecca had always hated Kurt Taylor, as far as I knew. I’m
just so glad my baby is alive after being missing for so many days,
but to be with Kurt Taylor . . . that is a terrible fate. A
terrible fate indeed. That boy is evil.

*

“Oh, Mom.” Rebecca bursts into tears, a
gesture extremely reminiscent of her mother’s.

I put my arm around her shoulders and hold
her tightly to me.

I remark, “I guess this means your mother
doesn’t approve of me, huh?”

Rebecca dabs her eyes, another gesture which
has genetic roots, I can tell.

“We’ll work on proving you’re not such a
douchebag as I once made you out to be.”