The Year of Living Famously (14 page)

T
he pictures that were taken in those initial few weeks cropped up first in the tabloids, then in
In Touch
magazine, then in
Us Weekly
, and eventually they spread to other glossies. Every day, Graham's assistant sent over a packet of Declan's press clippings from the previous day. At the beginning, Declan and I went over them together in bed. We spread them out around us, like pirates with their booty. We exclaimed over this picture and that caption; we laughed at the ones where he looked overexcited, his eyes wide; we groaned at the ones where he'd been snapped with his mouth open like a caught fish.

Those were good days. True, the photographers were always around, and yes, we had only minimal time together. But Declan had found the success he deserved, and my own career was finally kicking into place, at least for the week I was working on Kendall's dress.

I found the perfect fabric. It was lighter than what I'd used for my dress, the Pucciesque print even more splashy. Ro
sita worked her magic overnight from my sketches, and she got Victor to cut the fabric in two days. I'd decided to sew the dress myself, and I worked on it constantly. I had a purpose now. I was designing, and I would make some money on it. There is no better feeling than doing something you love and getting paid for it.

I called Kendall Gold when the dress was done and scheduled a fitting.

Her place was in Bel Air. I pulled up to the black iron gates, which stretched skyward, and gave my name to the person whose voice came over the intercom. The gates slowly opened, and I drove up a long brick driveway until I came upon Kendall's house. It was a huge yellow stucco home with a wavy, Spanish-style roof. Despite its monstrous size, the house had an inviting, happy look about it.

Kendall herself came to the door, dressed in gray workout shorts and a white tank top.

“Hi!” she said, giving me a hug. “I'm so excited to see it!”

She led me into the foyer. My shoes clicked on the Spanish tiles. Above my head, an iron chandelier about as big as a tractor wheel hung from the high, high ceiling.

“Will this work for our fitting?” Kendall said. She took me into the living room beyond the foyer, which was decorated with yellow walls, slouchy, slip-covered sofas and rattan tables. Sunlight streamed from open French doors, a huge pool and veranda beyond them. The effect was casual, elegant.

“Perfect,” I said. “Are you ready to see it?” I had forgotten to attempt nonchalance; instead, my voice came out high and fast.

Kendall clapped her hands and nodded, even though this couldn't have been a unique experience. The top designers in the world had made gowns for her.

I slowly unzipped the garment bag. As I did this, I experienced a pang of nervousness.
I
loved the dress. I thought it was exquisite, but what if it wasn't the dress she remembered? What if she despised it?

The zipper snagged on something and stuck. “Now, I can make alterations if you don't like it,” I said, my hands tugging frantically.

“Sure, sure,” Kendall said. Strangely, she sounded as excited as I felt. “And I swear, I'll tell you if I don't like it. Believe me, I'm honest to a fault.”

I finally jerked the zipper free and removed the dress, holding it out.

She squealed. “It's fantastic! Brie, come here!”

“Who's Brie?” I said.

“My assistant. Can you believe that name?”

A girl who looked about eighteen stepped into the room. “Wow!” she said when Kendall showed her the dress. “Cool!”

“I've got to try it on,” Kendall said.

She stripped off her tank top, dropped her shorts and slipped the dress over her head. I was used to seeing people naked for fittings, but I was overly aware of the fact that this was
Kendall Gold
that I was seeing naked. She was at least five foot seven and had large, tanned breasts (implants, perhaps?), but there was something pixie-ish about her. Besides the breasts, she was whippet thin, and then there was that frothy gold hair and the impish personality.

The dress fell onto her frame and draped over her shoulders perfectly. It hugged her breasts and her waist just the way it should, and flared flawlessly around her hips. The oranges and yellows of the fabric complemented her sunny coloring. A circle pin of fake diamonds—I had brought boxes of them from New York—glittered from the center of the waist. Kendall skipped to a mirror hanging on the wall and squealed again. “I love it! Now, who should I say
I'm wearing? I saw from your business card that you go by Kyra Felis, not Kyra McKenna, right?”

“Right,” I said. I couldn't stand the thought of giving up my parents' name.

“Kyra Felis, it is.” She twirled around so that the skirt lifted and swung. “Kyra Felis, you are fabulous!”

I watched Kendall Gold, movie star, spinning around in a dress I'd designed, and right then I felt fabulous.

 

“So how is Declan handling all the press?” Kendall asked me. We were seated at the island of her kitchen, having tea from two mismatched mugs. The kitchen probably could have held fifty people, but with its pine furniture, Spanish-tiled floor and wide bay window it exuded comfort and charm.

“Declan loves it,” I said. “This is what he's always wanted.”

“And you?”

I sighed. “I'm happy for Declan, but I'm having a hard time with it. I don't like the feeling of being watched all the time, and the paparazzi make it hard to go anywhere.”

Kendall nodded. She was back in her tank top and shorts, her wavy blond hair in a ponytail on top of her head. “Are you starting to do the separate-entrance thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know, there're tons of ways to manage the paparazzi. That's really what you
have
to do. Use them when they can help you, avoid them when you need to be on your own.”

I must have looked confused, because Kendall kept talking. “For example,” she said, “you've got to start picking the spots you go based on the way they handle celebrities. Go to the places that have VIP rooms, or the ones who will let you come through the kitchen door. You know, go to Mr.
Chow's and Spago. Those are cliché, but they'll help you out. Or another trick is that you and Declan can leave separately and arrive separately, too. That cuts down on the photographers. You scatter them. You can also get look-alikes to act as decoys.”

I put down my mug and stared at her, shaking my head. “This sounds like espionage.”

She laughed. “It is in some way, I suppose. But it's what we signed up for. You can't complain about getting something you wanted. You can only learn how to control it to your advantage.”

“I didn't sign up for it.” I noticed, vaguely, that I sounded like a child forced into a soccer game.

“Are you going to keep designing clothes?” Kendall asked.

Her question surprised me. “Of course.”

She lifted her eyebrows. She sipped her tea. “Well, you've got real talent. And you married Declan, who's a celebrity now. If I were you, I'd learn how to roll with it.”

 

Kendall was right. I had married Declan, I had signed up for better or worse, and I should make the best of our new life.

I started smiling more when we saw the paparazzi. I didn't complain when our sunset walks were photographed by at least four people who scurried around us like vermin at our feet.

But it became tougher, because Declan now had fans, real live people who wanted to know him, love him, for better or worse, just like me. He'd been getting bags of fan mail since
Normandy
opened. Since I had so much more time on my hands, I'd been reading the mail and sending out the head shots with his autograph, which seemed to be what most people were after. But the bags got larger, and then the letters got stranger. Women started sending nude pho
tos of themselves (“We should send these to the twins,” Declan said), and a few people claimed to be his long-lost sister, cousin or uncle who could use a little help with their cash flow. And then he started getting letters from Amy Rose.

Dear Declan,
the first one said,
I've watched you through the curtains with that woman…

“‘That woman? That woman?'” I said. “What the hell is this?”

Declan took the letter from my hand and read it, chuckling. The rest was about how much she loved Declan. “She's full of it,” he said. “Graham warned me about these people. They latch on to some celebrity and get attached.”

“Yeah, attached is one way to put it.” I moved to the window and peered out onto the alley. No sign of anyone, but was she lurking out there in the shadows? I yanked the drapes closed.

 

A few days before Christmas, Graham called the apartment.

I assumed that after our usual pleasantries I would hand the phone to Declan as I normally did. But Graham said, “Kyra, I'm glad you answered.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, I was calling to talk to you.” He had a deep, raspy voice that always made it seem as if he was calling from a jazz club, a whiskey in hand.

Graham and I were on pleasant terms. I respected his work on Declan's behalf—it certainly seemed as though he was working very hard, an impression that would never be sullied—and I think he respected the relationship Declan and I had at the time. Still, Graham never called to talk to me.

He got right to the point. “I wanted to make sure you saw the
People
magazine that just came out.”

“The one with the picture of Declan and Kaz?”

“No, the one with you in it.”

“Oh, is that the shot where Declan and I are standing outside Capo?” Dec and I had taken to eating frequent dinners at Capo, an upscale Italian restaurant in Santa Monica. Though neither of us wanted to admit it, we liked Capo because it could only fit a small number of patrons, thereby reducing the number of people who would now look at Declan in an I-think-I-know-you-but-I-can't-place-you kind of way.

“Capo?” Graham said. “What the hell is that?”

“A restaurant.”

“No, no,” he said impatiently. “There's a fashion page in
People.
In this new issue, they wrote about your dress. Kendall Gold has it on. Some loud print.”

My belly fluttered with excitement, my mind flickered with optimistic pride. “What does it say?”

Graham cleared his throat. “It says, ‘The Winner's Circle' and then it reads, ‘Kendall Gold wears a fifties-inspired dress designed by Kyra Felis, wife of Irish hottie Declan McKenna. “These dresses are comfortable and hip,” Gold says. “They're the next big thing.” We agree.'”

I squeezed the phone. I thought about Declan and how he must have felt that night at the
Normandy
premiere. Like he was on the verge.

 

Captain Christmas. That's what my friends in Manhattan used to call me, because of all the holiday junk I gathered like a bag lady at a Salvation Army clearance sale. As long as it had something to do with the Christmas holidays and it was kitschy, chipped, garish and wasn't part of a matched set, I wanted it.

The few pieces of Christmas stuff I'd received from my parents' estate had begun the whole fascination. There had
once been an entire place setting of red plates with a roughly painted Christmas tree, a whole set of hand-painted miniature ornaments and an eight-piece set of silver candles that looked like wreaths. But Aunt Donna wanted all these things—she had bought them with my mother, she told Emmie—and Emmie, who felt bad for Donna, even after the custody battle, agreed to give them to her, as long as I got to keep one of each.

So started my Captain Christmas collection. I never wanted a set of anything from then on. Even as a teen, I would scour flea markets and New Year's Day sales for anything else to add. At first I kept it respectable enough. I purchased the odd red-and-green candle or a drinking glass with a holly pattern around the mouth. But then I became drawn to the Christmas junk—angel dolls with heads that bobbled, a mug depicting Santa peeing on a roof with a caption that read, “Where icicles come from.”

Every year in New York, the minute I got back from Emmie's Thanksgiving dinner or the visit to one of her brothers' homes, I would pull out my boxes and decorate my apartment. I would string copious amounts of colored lights until the place screamed with color and blinked like a Vegas casino.

I had a cocktail party every year, where guests were asked to bring along a piece of Christmas crap to donate. Usually I wore a skirt and knee-high boots with one of my obnoxious Christmas T-shirts, like the one where reindeer diarrhea flies into the face of Santa, who remarks, “That's the last time we stop for Mexican food.” My friends loved the party each year, and my collection grew.

I got a late start that year in L. A., what with
Normandy
coming out, and Kendall's dress and all the hoopla surrounding Declan. But finally, a few days before Christmas, I lugged the boxes from the back of the closet and decked our halls
with synthetic garland and lights that played “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.”