She waved one hand as if I’d written my answer on a blackboard and she was wiping it away. “Popular music. How do you feel about it?”
The question struck me as odd. “Well,” I said, stalling a moment. “I don’t mind it, but I don’t listen to it much.” Would this be a strike against me? “I tend to like classical music. Baroque. Romantic. But not the modern atonal kind.”
“And celebrities?” She leaned in over the desk. “Do you read
gossip magazines?
People
?
Us, Star,
the
National Enquirer
? Do you watch
Entertainment Tonight
?”
The hoped-for answer to this question began to dawn on me. Fortunately, it was the truth. “I don’t care much about celebrities.”
“How do you react when you see them on the street?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I might as well be honest. “I’ve never seen one on the street.” I sat up a little straighter. “I believe I would leave them alone.”
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. A moment passed. Then she smiled for the first time, a wide smile that revealed slightly overlapping bottom teeth. “You just might be perfect.”
The morning after the interview, my cell phone rang. I was walking back to the dorm from the bookstore where I’d turned in my textbooks for a not-very-satisfactory amount of cash. I paused on the pathway and let the other students flow around me. On the line was Julie Draper, sounding slightly breathless, much younger, and less formidable than she had in person. “Jane, I’m so glad to catch you. I have great news, a position to offer you.”
My heart thumped so loudly I worried she might be able to hear it through the phone. “That’s wonderful,” was all I dared say.
“More wonderful than you know,” she told me. “This is a plum position. By all rights it should go to a more experienced child-care provider, but until you came along, I hadn’t been able to find a candidate I could trust to have the right” — her voice trailed off — “the right attitude.”
I cast around for my job-interview voice, the one that had apparently served me so well yesterday. Though she couldn’t see
me, I threw back my shoulders and raised my chin. “I look forward to hearing more. Where will I be working?”
Julie Draper laughed in a surprisingly musical tone. “This will sound bizarre, but I can’t give you any more details over the phone. How soon can you be at my office?”
When I arrived at Discriminating Nannies, the first thing Julie Draper did was offer me coffee in a slightly chipped mug. Then she swore me to secrecy.
“You can’t tell anyone the details of this position,” she warned. “Not your friends, not your family.”
“I promise.” It would be an easy vow to keep. Who would I tell? My best friend from Sarah Lawrence had transferred to a school in her home state, Iowa; on top of classes, she’d been working extra shifts to save up for a semester abroad in Italy, and we hadn’t spoken in months. And after the accident I hadn’t had the heart for socializing. I knew I would drag down any party I went to, so I spent most of my time in the studio, priming canvas after canvas, trying to settle on something to paint. Every idea I came up with — the stand of trees outside the wide window, an abandoned bird’s nest I’d found on a walk, my own pale face in the mirror — made me tired, my arms too heavy to lift even a paintbrush. More nights than one, I’d slept on the sagging, paint-flecked studio couch, unable to face the five-minute walk back to the dorm. My parents had never quite understood me, and Mom had never made any secret of the fact that my conception had been a less-than-welcome surprise. You might think those things would make me slightly less miserable about losing my parents, but in some
ways it made the loss even worse. Not only had they never shown me the kind of attention and appreciation they’d given my brother and sister, now it was official: they never would.
“Your future employer is, well, let’s just say, he’s of interest to the media.” Was that a dimple in Julie Draper’s cheek? “A celebrity. It’s crucial that you not do anything to call attention to him. Anything that goes on in his house, no matter how big or small, must not be discussed with outsiders.” The dimple disappeared. “There will be a confidentiality agreement to sign. You are free to run it by a lawyer.”
A lawyer? A confidentiality agreement? It did me little good to wonder what exactly I was getting myself into; at this point, I was already in it up to my ankles. “That won’t be necessary,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I’m happy to sign.”
“To be absolutely honest, you were chosen because I have an instinct about you,” Julie told me. “You seem trustworthy.”
I nodded as solemnly as I could. But then I couldn’t help myself; I blurted out, “But what sort of person is my employer?”
“Jane,” she said, dimple returning, “surely you’ve heard of Nico Rathburn?”
She didn’t say “surely
even you
have heard of Nico Rathburn,” but the “even you” was in her voice. And it was true, even I had heard of Nico Rathburn. I probably knew all the words to his hit song “Wrong Way Down a One-Way Street.” It was one of those songs you heard everywhere you went — at the mall, in the grocery store, blaring from the radios in other people’s cars. I could still recall Rathburn’s cool dark stare in a poster tacked up on the wall above my brother’s bed, his denim-clad form posed in front of
a brick wall, a flame-red electric guitar brandished in his hands. Mark had gone to one of his concerts. I was little then, maybe in elementary school, certainly too young to stay home alone, so my mom dragged me along on the ride into the city, Mark and his best friend chortling in the backseat, playing with the Bic lighters they would ignite to demand an encore. I remember being afraid they would set the upholstery on fire. And I’d been brought along on the ride to pick them up from the Spectrum too. I remember the strange and pungent smell that clung to the oversized black concert T-shirts they wore over their usual clothes, and the lights of the city, a thrilling expanse of electricity and skyscrapers glimpsed from the highway overpass that hastened us back to the suburbs.
But even if Mark hadn’t been a fan, I would have heard of Nico Rathburn. For as long as I could remember, he’d been one of those celebrities whose name conjured up instant associations, most of them having more to do with his dramatic personal life than his music. I vaguely recalled something about his being busted for possession of cocaine, something else about a car crash and a string of high-profile girlfriends. Then there was the on-again, off-again marriage to a model whose name I couldn’t remember. Hadn’t they both been junkies? Suddenly chilled, I rubbed my arms for warmth. How badly did I need this job? I thought of my dwindling savings account, of the few belongings I hadn’t carted to Goodwill that were crammed into a couple of suitcases on the floor of my dorm room.
“Sure, he’s been out of the papers for a few years,” Julie continued, “and you’d think he wasn’t such a hot commodity anymore. But the tabloids are like sharks, always circling, hungry for blood. He needs his employees to be absolutely discreet.”
“Um,” I stammered. “He has children?”
“A girl, five years old, named Madeline. It was in the news, but you don’t remember, I suppose.” Julie’s voice turned impatient, despite the fact that she hired me precisely because I wouldn’t care about such things, much less remember them. “Madeline’s mother was a pop star in France; she cut a solo album on a U.S. record label a few years back. That was the high point of her career. Maybe you’ve heard of her? Celine?”
The name was familiar. “What happened to her? The mother, I mean. Does she have shared custody?”
“The details shouldn’t concern you.” Julie was back to the brusque, professional version of herself. “Not that they wouldn’t be hard to find if you went looking for them. But I’d advise you not to buy into every overblown story you read in the tabloids. That business with his wife, with Celine, the drug use.… He’s been sober for a while now. That’s all you really need to know.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m glad to hear it.” My voice didn’t have much conviction in it.
“Listen, Jane.” She looked pointedly in my eyes. “Nico Rathburn is a devoted father. That bad-boy stuff is old news. Besides” — she paused for emphasis — “the pay is excellent. You’ll be living in a mansion in Connecticut. And you’ll get… you’ll get
proximity
to one of the gods of rock-and-roll music. You do know how many nannies would kill for this position, right?” She rifled through a folder and drew out a document on legal-size paper. “You’re a lucky, lucky girl.”
Despite Julie’s advice, I spent my last evening on campus in the library computer lab, reading everything I could find about Nico Rathburn. It wasn’t so much that I cared about the story of his love life, criminal record, and meteoric rise to stardom; if anything, the details made my stomach twist in knots. But I believe in being prepared.
The lab was air-conditioned to an Antarctic chill, and I thought longingly of the lone sweater still hanging in my closet. Classes were over, and apart from me the lab was empty. Every now and then I’d hear laughter and shouts as groups of students passed the window on their way to some celebration of the semester’s end.
It didn’t take me long to find an astonishing amount of information about my new employer, little of it reassuring. Rathburn’s early press was mostly positive, fawningly so. The Rathburn Band
had weathered middling success for a while, playing clubs up and down the East Coast until their third album bowled the critics over and became a breakaway hit. I could remember that album blaring from behind the locked door of Mark’s room every afternoon for months. One song in particular, “Wrong Way Down a One-Way Street,” played irritatingly in my brain as I read record reviews and Wikipedia articles, my eyes glazing over. Nicholas Rathburn’s Wichita boyhood had been unremarkable. An indifferent student, he disappointed his parents by running off to Brooklyn and starting up a band instead of going to Kansas State. Rathburn and his bandmates had shot abruptly from obscurity to fame — a
Rolling Stone
cover, multiple platinum records, international tours.
At a fan site I discovered photos of Nico Rathburn at the peak of his celebrity, in leather pants and mirrored sunglasses, dragging a blonde, miniskirted model past the paparazzi. There were many variations on that theme; the sunglasses remained the same, but the blonde girlfriends were interchangeable. At his official website, I found tons of in-concert photos, Rathburn grimacing in concentration as he played guitar or throttling the mike as he sang, head thrown back. Then there were the stagey professional shots — his dark hair fluffed up, his smoke-gray eyes fixed on the camera as though he were looking past it to the person who would be viewing the photo years later.
In his twenties, he cultivated a quieter look, exchanging the skin-tight leather pants and muscle shirts for black denim and plaid flannel. Despite his new low-key persona, he dated debutantes and actresses, and owned a penthouse apartment in Lower
Manhattan, a villa on the Ligurian coast, and a mansion in the Hollywood hills. Many of the stories were about his wedding to Bibi Oliviera, a model who had just made her first appearance in
Vogue.
Unlike his other girlfriends, she was dark haired with sun-kissed skin, a big, engaging smile, and leaf-green eyes. They’d met in her native Brazil when she starred as the love interest in one of his music videos. On their first weekend together they’d gone out and gotten matching tattoos — a coiled green serpent with a heart clenched in its bared fangs on his left forearm, and its twin on her right one. A few days later, they flew to New York City and got married at city hall.
From the wedding onward, the news stories piled up, too many for me to read. I skimmed several. There were drug busts, minor car crashes, violent public fights and recriminations. In one strange episode, a male neighbor discovered Bibi shivering in her underwear, mascara dripping down her face, apparently disoriented, cowering on his front porch. “Nico locked me out,” she had told the policeman called to the scene. “It wasn’t really him — the devil was looking out at me from his eyes. I would have slit his throat if I’d had a knife.” Blurry photos documented this story; I lingered over them awhile. But for the snake tattoo, this version of Bibi looked nothing like her earlier, glamorous self. Skinny as a famine victim, black hair matted, she slouched between a pair of cops, her wide green eyes broadcasting panic. Someone had thought to throw a blanket over her shoulders at least; just looking at her made me feel cold and anxious. Still, I forced myself to read on. Bibi’s breakdown had led to a stint in celebrity rehab. Released after a few months, she seemed to be on track to recovery. She’d gone back to
work and was even featured on the cover of
Femme,
but there didn’t seem to be much news about her after that.
A loud bang just outside the computer lab window startled me back into the present. It was only fireworks; more of them crackled and fizzed out on the lawn to laughter and cheering. Still, the noise had set my heart pounding, and a strong surge of foreboding seized me. In what kind of universe did people wander through their neighborhoods in lacy black panties, too stoned to care what other people thought of them, squandering their tremendous good fortune on cocaine and heroin? No universe I cared to live in. Still, I needed to understand what I was getting myself into. I took a few deep breaths, steadied my hands, and kept clicking.
Not long after Bibi’s release, the couple had separated. Nico Rathburn’s next album, a downbeat collection of songs about disillusionment and romantic dysfunction, was reviewed favorably — “Grown-up songs for sophisticated listeners,” the
New York Times
had called it — but didn’t get much airplay. Maybe the songs were too somber, or people were simply ready for the next big thing. He fired his band, telling the press he was ready to shift gears. I couldn’t find many articles from the months right after that, but then Rathburn began dating a French pop star so famous in her native country that she was known simply as Celine. The sheer volume of magazine articles gushing about the happy couple made my eyes start to glaze over. Fortunately, there wasn’t much more of the Nico Rathburn saga to get through. After their very public breakup, he sued her for custody of their daughter, Madeline. He won, bought an estate in Connecticut, and went into seclusion.