Shooting Stars (21 page)

“Stop,” Claudia says in a rare forceful tone.

“What?”

“Paparazzi don't leave notes.”

“But it was a
friendly
note. There wasn't…”

“Jen, no.”

“But…”

“Promise me. No more notes.”

One week, two crushes crushed. I am beginning to lose hope.

* * *

You could say “Anxiety” is a proper noun in my life, a female demon inside of me that is deserving of capitalization, and she is psyched for the battle with Dejection. Her strategy: an adrenaline drip. If my body starts
to relax at any point day or night, she just opens the drip and lets more adrenaline in. Awesome, right?
The more hours you're awake, Jen, the more you can be looking for love,
she encourages.

So between the drip and my
actual
bruises, the latter being visible externally, I was up most of the night. Yesterday was “team building” paintball, organized by Donna and Brian: CXN versus West Coast Wing, the paparazzi agency full of Tall Poppies. This morning, I had seventeen round, bloody spots covering my body. Paintball is a game for men. Just like paparazzi.

I can feel my mood, foul like black tar, creating something nasty in my stomach. This life is starting to get to me, and the ugliness of the paps is beginning to reach my insides. If only I had someone to love, then I could balance the hatefulness that surrounds me every day. But I'm beginning to think I might be asking too much. I mean, a girl in her mid-thirties has to lower her expectations—there just aren't that many “soul mates” left. My age, thirty-six now, constantly haunts me. In most women, the biological clock starts ticking at around age thirty; in me, the alarm is BLARING. I can't shut it off; frankly, I don't want to shut it off. But it's the only thing that I can hear, and it's making me crazy.

A few hours into the start of my miserable morning, Claudia and I are “dug in” outside La Conversation. (Simon loves to say he's “dug in like an Alabama tick,” which is particularly funny because he has no idea where Alabama is.) We're waiting on Shakira.

“Who the hell is that?” I beep Claudia.

Neither of us recognizes the car, and we can't see the driver through his limo-tint. We know it's a jump because it's a blacked-out SUV that pulled up in shooting position and no one got out.

“I'm gonna find out who it is.”

I get out, walk to the car, and when no window rolls down, I make a scope with my hands and attempt to look inside. I can't see anything so I stand there a few seconds more looking at my reflection. Whoever it is knows I want them to roll down the window, but they don't. It's confirmation: a pap.

I'm unreasonably furious as I walk back to my car. The combination of
sleep issues, paintball bruises, and male rejection has left me unequipped
to deal.
All my anger re-channels toward the Jumper.

I beep Claudia again. After several expletives, I take a breath and admit, “I'm really stressed out.”

“Yes, I can tell. What's wrong?”

Right, like I can tell her.

The jumper's outnumbered so I decide, “There are two of us. You pick up Shakira. I'm blocking.”

Claudia pauses for a few seconds before she responds. She would never intentionally block someone, particularly with her car, and she knows I've never actually tried. We both recognize it's not a safe choice, but it's my story and my decision, so she uncomfortably agrees.

The Shakira tip had come two hours prior from a waiter at La Conversation, the charming French café in West Hollywood. La Conversation is the kind of place where you can sit for hours, sipping coffee, and no one hassles you for the table. The waiters are refreshingly pleasant, non-Hollywood guys sans the “I should be
acting
, not serving you” attitude typical of the rest of Los Angeles. La Conversation is over-priced but an oasis. Not to mention, it has the best coffee in all of L.A.

It is also—and this is chiefly why I go—one of the finest locations in town to spot celebrities. Seventy-five percent of the time, I see someone. Ryan Phillippe was once sitting next to me. (I didn't even recognize him until another pap drove by and snapped him.) My favorite celebrity diner here was Scott Wolf. Remember him from
Party of Five
as Jennifer Love Hewitt's boyfriend? He didn't sell. One time Queen Latifah jogged past me. She sold.

But from the restaurant, I mostly spot celebrities in cars. Hundreds live within a few square miles, and La Conversation is located on Doheney, a major artery into town. I like to go in the mornings and watch for stars heading south to their errands and lunch dates. The restaurant is also near the little street where Cameron Diaz's gym is, and every once in a while Demi Moore and Penélope Cruz work out there too.

The waiters at La Conversation know what I do. They know if I suddenly disappear, they should save my food and I'll come back. I pay in
advance. My car is always parked by the closest available meter next to the restaurant, and I leave my keys inside, ready to roll.

Today, the best shot of Shakira will be one of her exiting, but having no idea which car is hers, I don't know if she'll go to the left or the right out of the restaurant. Since it was necessary to stay hidden in my car due to La Conversation being a trendy jumping location, I needed another shooter—and that's why I had called Claudia.

My tipster, Mauricio, a server at the restaurant, has been keeping me abreast of the situation via text:

Claudia and I have managed to stave off paps for the entire two hours, Claudia in the back of her SUV and me slumped down in the driver's seat of my red truck. Now, just as Shakira is paying the bill, we get jumped by the thug who refuses to identify himself.

From her position, Claudia can see Shakira's table through the front window of the restaurant. When the party gets up to leave, she radios me. We pull our cameras to our noses and keep our hands on our door handles ready to rush out when we see her.

We wait. But no one exits the restaurant.

“They should be out by now,” Claudia beeps. “Where did she go?”

From my position, I can see the rear of the restaurant. Suddenly, the back door, where the cooks and waiters exit, opens and I see legs. I don't wait. I jump out of my car and race to the back, arriving just as Shakira steps into a mammoth blacked-out Escalade which pulled up as she walked out. She must have gone through the kitchen, though we don't know why. She couldn't have known we were there.

I have no shot and run back to the truck. Claudia, the jumper, and I pull out behind Shakira's chauffeured ride, and almost immediately it turns down a side street and stops in the middle of the road. We stop too, and other cars have to swerve around us.

“What's he doing?” beeps Claudia.

“I think he's trying to figure out what to do.”

Shakira's chauffeur is definitely a rookie—there is no reason to stop in the middle of the road. We are stopped for quite some time, five minutes maybe.

“I'll be right back. If they move, she's yours,” I beep to Claudia and get out of my car.

I go over to the jumper's SUV. This time he rolls down his window. An inch. “What the hell are you doing?” I say.

“It's Shakira. I pay my tipsters well. If you ever touch my car again, I'll punch you,” he says through the crack then rolls his window back up.

I return to my car.

The critical point here is that he knew it was Shakira. Since he didn't walk into the restaurant, and from his position couldn't have seen her on the way out, he had to have had an inside tip. So, technically, he didn't jump me. He has as much right to the story as I do.

Regardless, he could have told me this politely when I walked over the first time. I know I shouldn't expect civility from paps, but my anger won't recoil. I walk back over and knock on his window. He cracks it again.

“What's your name? Who do you work for?”

“Barclay. West Coast Wing.”

“Barclay, if you ever fucking threaten me again, I will call the fucking police.”

Obviously, I'd lost it. I was making no sense. I can't call the police on another pap—
I'm a pap!
Even if he did punch me, they wouldn't care. I walk back to my car.

After another five minutes, the driver of the Escalade accepts that we aren't going away. He screeches off, down Doheney and across Santa Monica Boulevard where he begins circling in the middle of the road. We have no choice but to circle too. Now all four of our vehicles are blocking both directions of heavily trafficked lanes.

Next, the Escalade tears down a side street and heads toward residential neighborhoods. From one narrow road to another, hopping over curbs
and jumping red lights at 40 to 60 miles per hour, we weave our way into Beverly Hills. With adrenaline spiking through my system, I am able to stay with it. Claudia loses it, and soon Barclay does too.

Shakira's vehicle continues through parking lots, out the other side, down alleys and around office buildings. My concentration is on driving, and I can't get to the Nextel to catch up Claudia on where we are. Not that she'd want to re-join.

There's no hiding now, and to even have a chance at a shot of Shakira, I know I'll have to get in her face when we stop. I manage to change my lens from my long to my short, a hazardous task while driving in this manner, and a great example of why a fully kitted pap has two camera bodies. I do not.

As the hideous drive continues, I ignore the sense in me telling me to stop.
I won't let them win
is all I can hear.
At least I can control this.
Stupidly, I put my life in danger. I know it. But Shakira's driver puts hers right up there too, and I doubt she does. Suddenly, it reminds me of what happened to a beautiful princess many years ago.

Finally, the Escalade pulls into the Peninsula Hotel where no fewer than ten bellmen are standing outside doing nothing. I screech in behind it and jump out of my truck, camera in hand.

Shakira's door opens, but she stays put casually talking to someone inside. Meanwhile, her driver comes around with an umbrella.
Oh, please!
The horde of bellmen begins to catch on and they yell at me to move my car.

“We'll call the police,” they tell me.

I know the police can't get here that fast.

As the bellmen move in, the petite Columbian singer hops down out of her beast of a vehicle and into the crowd.

Fifteen feet mark the path between her and the hotel entrance. I position a yard in front of her, walk backward with my short-and-flash pressed to my face, and hope the tomfoolery will clear for a split second.

“Hi, Shakira. Could I get a quick shot?” I ask.

Through a crack, I can see her. She's smiling and trying to dart beneath
the chauffeur's umbrella, around a girl holding up a blanket, and through the bellmen's hands. “It's OK. It's OK,” she's saying to them.

They don't hear this.

I still haven't taken a shot and step out of her way so she can enter the hotel. With a quick maneuver, she turns, ducks down under the blockades, smiles, and waves at me. I get one shot. Of her head.

In case you are wondering, there is no shortage of Shakira headshots in the world today. The mags need a full-length. They've got to show what she's wearing and that she's visiting L.A.

I am not lucid as I walk back to my truck. “You are all fucking idiots!” I scream several times at the dozen men.

It's the only thing my rage can form. After that incredibly stressful chase, I got
this
—a worthless picture!

When I get to my car, the head bellman is waiting. I try to get in, but he holds my door closed. We play tug-of-war, and he's stronger.

“Just wait. Just wait,” he says over and over.

He can see that I'm out of control. Finally, I realize that his goal is not to prevent me from leaving but to talk to me. My energy drains, and I stop pulling on the handle. We stand quiet for a beat.

“Did you see what happened?” I say weakly.

“I know.”

“She wanted it.”

“I know,” he confirms gently. “We were just doing our job as security.”

“I know you were, but you see what you did, right?”

“I know. I saw what happened. I'm sorry.”

He's sincere, and I take it in. They really were just doing their job, and hotel bellmen should be on the side of hotel guests. They just didn't know which side she was on.

“I'm sorry for yelling at your guys.” I extend a quivering hand with my apology. He takes it, then opens the door for me.

“Thanks,” I say. At least he understands. That's all I can really ask for now.

I pull out of the hotel driveway with the Shakira-less Escalade in front
of me, when it stops—
again!
—in the middle of the road. The driver motions for me to pull over down the block.

Oh, why the hell not.

I pull over and he pulls up in front of me. A small-statured black man who looks to be about forty gets out of the SUV, lights a cigarette, and leisurely works his way to my car. I stay put but roll down the window.

“What's your name?” he asks, putting out his hand.

“Jennifer.” I take it and we shake.

There is a long pause as he inhales and exhales a drag.

“You're a pretty good driver, Jennifer.”

“Yeah, not bad for a girl.”

“Not bad for anybody.”

Another long beat. I don't try to make conversation.

“So, uh, sorry about that back there. The driving. The blocking,” the man explains.

“Yeah, kinda sucks.”

“I didn't know she wanted it.”

“They often do.”

* * *

The one shot I did manage to get of Shakira under the umbrella is used on
People.com
the next day. It's the only publication that picks it up. After paying Mauricio and splitting my cut with Claudia, I make twenty bucks.