The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention (24 page)

“The box office at this theater has been getting some unusual phone calls,” the first detective told me.

“The caller has mentioned your name several times,” his partner chimed in, “so what we’re here for today is to try to find out if you have noticed anything suspicious. Anyone loitering around the theater, sending you messages over the Internet, any letters?” He trailed off.

“Ummm . . .” I started, “I haven’t received any messages. What have they said over the phone?” I asked, dying to hear more of the story. I had the feeling that they were downplaying the situation so I wouldn’t be scared.

“Well, we don’t want to alarm you, but they were threatening messages,” the dark-haired officer said. “They mention you and Tiger Woods . . . do you know what that connection might be about?”

“No,” I replied. “That sounds completely random. I’ve never met the guy.” Tiger Woods had been all over the news for the past few years due to his cheating scandals. The Vegas press took exceptional interest in the story, as many of the women involved were locals.

“The caller was threatening to take a gun and kill you and Tiger Woods,” the second, lighter-haired officer said calmly, as if not to alarm me. “They have also mentioned bomb threats.”

A chill ran down my spine. Clearly the person on the other end of the line wasn’t all there, but something told me this wasn’t just a harmless prank, either. I remembered how scared I had felt in my house earlier.

“We came down here to check this out. Also, a suspicious package was discovered by your stage manager earlier,” the detective continued. “It was an unmarked shabby-looking box left in the theater, centered in front of the backstage door. He was worried, because of the phone calls, that it might be an explosive device. The package turned out to be harmless, but we’re keeping an eye on the situation, so any information you can provide would be helpful.”

“I haven’t received any threats personally,” I offered, shaking my head. I was still taking it all in. I couldn’t believe this was the first I was hearing about all this! I related the incidents of people knocking at my door, but admitted there had been no actual threats issued.

“Do you ever see anyone loitering around the theater or notice anything strange?” the dark-haired detective asked me.

“Um, just Peter?” I said, ending the statement with a question mark as if I wasn’t sure he counted. I looked at security for confirmation, knowing they knew Peter on a first-name basis as well.

Peter was an unusual but seemingly harmless man who regularly frequented
Peepshow
. He came to my meet-and-greets roughly once a month, always with a small trinket gift. That part was sweet, but when he started showing up at some of my
Extra
tapings in the morning . . . well, that struck me as a little excessive.

When I took my vacations and Angel stepped into my role, he would show up to see Angel as well, bringing her similar gifts. Alarm bells went off when he followed me out of an
Extra
taping, asking if he could “stop by my house” because he “had a present for Angel.”

“She doesn’t live with me anymore!” I had lied, quickening my pace and losing him in the crowd that covered the casino floor.

“But Peter has a really distinctive voice,” I added. “And he’s such a regular, I’m sure anyone who works at the box office would recognize it.” Plus, just because Peter had been the first person to pop into my head didn’t mean there weren’t others. There were other regulars who brought me roses frequently. Who’s to say they were any less suspicious?

“Can you describe Peter for us?” the sandy-haired detective asked. I went on to describe Peter as best I could. He was tall, lanky, blond, and always wore a tan suit. The detectives thanked me for my time and gave me their cards, urging me to please contact them if I thought there was anything else they should know.

“Would you like me to escort you down to your car, Miss Madison?” one of the security guards asked me.

“No, thank you,” I replied with a smile. “I’ll be fine. It’s kind of you to ask, though.”

I appreciated the offer, but I was sure I would be all right while I was still in a public place. When it came to my empty house in the suburbs, though, that was a different story. Ever since Angel had started in
Absinthe
, she and Roman had been staying at her mom’s, which was closer to the Strip, leaving me by myself. I texted Eric and asked him if he would stay over that night. I told him I had reasons for not wanting to be alone, but that it was a long story and that I’d fill him in once he got there.

So much for waiting until the third date,
I thought.

“Oh, yes; I am anxious,” returned the Scarecrow. “It is such an uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool.”

—L. Frank Baum,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

M
y goal is to make enough money so that I can spend half the year on a yacht,” Eric declared to his friend who sat opposite us.

I cringed on the inside, trying to hide the fact that I thought his dream sounded like the most boring thing on the planet.

“Yeah? My goal is to hire all the
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit models to appear at my nightclub,” his friend shared, as if they were having a
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
fantasy pissing contest.

Jesus, I ditched Mark for this?
I thought. He had been so much more interesting! These guys seemed like they were more obsessed with trying to impress each other than anything else.

Less than a month into dating Eric, I was bored. Sure, he was handsome, but we had nothing to talk about. I needed some kind of substance! He had been mysterious and charming from a distance, but up close, we had no chemistry.

Since I didn’t feel safe alone at my house, I had taken to staying at
Eric’s place more often than not. I still felt unsafe alone in my home, even though the threatening calls to the theater had been traced back to a mental care facility (clearing Peter of any suspicion). I still had strangers knocking on my door regularly and received unusual fan mail and notes at my home address.

At first, staying at Eric’s was fun. He lived at Turnberry Place, a luxurious high-rise on the north end of the Strip. Getting to know Eric better wasn’t so much fun, though. It seemed the charming, debonair gentlemen I had fallen for was a bit of a facade. At home he was a cranky, sleep-deprived mess who spent most of his time saying he was “working,” but really he was just googling girls on the Internet. Our physical intimacy quickly dwindled. I started to suspect he was addicted to the chase.

It was quite humbling to realize, so quickly, what a major mistake I had made, trading Mark in for Eric. Eventually, I started sleeping at home again and hired a security guard to keep watch outside my house at night. Eric and I hadn’t officially broken up, but we were seeing each other less and less and I was fine with that. We still texted daily, but I no longer thought of him as an ideal boyfriend.

“I have something amazing to tell you,” Eric texted me one evening as I was applying my makeup backstage.

“What is it?” I shot back.

He replied instantly. “I can’t tell you over text. I have to tell you in person.”

Shit,
I thought,
this is intriguing
. When I didn’t reply right away, he texted: “Come to Marquee tonight. Please? I really want to see you.”

I told him I would stop by the club after my performance. I hadn’t brought a change of clothes with me to the theater, and I wasn’t exactly looking resplendent in the black leggings and Space Mountain T-shirt I had left the house in. But in the end, my own curiosity got the better of me. I was dying to know what the big secret was! So after that night’s
Peepshow
, I headed straight to the club. I was anxious to find out what he was so eager to tell me, but when I finally slid into his booth, Eric was
nowhere to be found. He had to know I was there; Nancy had greeted me at the door and led me to his table, after all. My eyes darted around the room, half expecting to see something spectacular go down. I mean, whatever it was, Eric certainly made it sound like a big deal.

Just then, he plopped down next to me, his eyes locked on his BlackBerry, and let out a halfhearted, “Hey.”

“Hey! What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked, eagerly waiting for him to cough up this big news that he couldn’t wait to share.

Without looking up from his phone, he launched lazily into the story. “So, remember that awesome thing I wanted to tell you?” He asked the question as if it was a conversation we had weeks ago, instead of just hours earlier.

“Yeah . . .” I said, resisting the urge to remind him that it was the only reason I showed up to the club at all.

“Well, remember that bitch I told you about?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” I muttered.
Where was this going?
I wondered. The last time I had stayed over at his house, he had been angry about an ex-girlfriend.

“Well, I may or may not have had drugs planted on her in Mexico,” he said matter-off-factly, still not bothering to look up from whatever message he was ferociously typing.

“What?” I shouted. He had to be kidding. Right? And even if he had wanted to do that, how was he capable? What kind of weird connections did this guy have? “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he said, still not looking me in the eye.

“What happened?” I asked incredulously. “Is she in jail?”

“No,” he said, finally looking up, his voice dripping with annoyance. “She somehow managed to get away with it.”

Cue a long, awkward pause as he waited for me to respond.

“Wow,” I finally offered. “That’s pretty insane.”

I had so many questions: Was she at the airport? At a resort? Did he phone in the tip to the Mexican police? Who planted the drugs? What
kind of drugs? I thought it
had
to be a tall tale he was telling in hopes that I’d somehow be impressed with the reach of his power. Or maybe this was his way of scaring me off. If it was, it was working! If this actually turned out to be true, I thought it was in my best interest to know as little as possible, as I was becoming increasingly unfamiliar with the man sitting next to me.

I knew then and there that I needed to formally—and carefully—call things off with Mr. Parkington. He’d now gone from surprisingly boring to straight-up sinister. My initial reaction was to run out the door, but as the experts say, when you meet an animal in the wild, back away SLOWLY. I finished my drink, dropped a few hints about how exhausted I was, and then after about fifteen minutes told him that I needed to catch some sleep.

As soon as I walked out the door, I pulled Twitter up on my phone. I needed to know if there was any truth to this crazy story. I searched the name of the woman in question and her account came up right away.

Sure enough, she had recently landed back in the United States and began tweeting a slew of messages about her run-in with the Federales, how outraged she was that a bag of marijuana had been planted in her purse and how #blessed she was to be back in the U.S. In one post she tagged the name of the friend she was traveling with. When I checked out that woman’s account, I saw the most recent tweet: “Thank God! Back home safe! No jail for my bestie!”

Holy shit!
I thought.
It seems to have really happened
.

For the next few days, I eased up on Eric’s and my communication and came up with excuses that would keep me as far away from him as possible. When he texted me to tell me that he would be going to L.A. for a few days, I used it as my opportunity to break things off. Knowing that he would be out of town would make things less awkward.

Okay, so I know that it’s super cheesy to break up with someone via text message . . . but how often has that ever stopped me? In this case, I didn’t feel I had a better option. Eric and I never spoke on the phone,
and I knew it would be at least a few days until I could see him in person, so I decided to message him that since we’re both so busy with work, it’s probably not the best time to be seeing each other and we should just stick to being friends.

I hit send and braced myself for his response. I hoped he wouldn’t be upset. I wondered if he would ask me to reconsider. Hopefully he would agree and say it had been nice getting to know me. I waited . . .

and waited . . .

and waited.

For someone so addicted to his damn BlackBerry, I knew he saw my message. He didn’t respond, though. Not a single word. I knew our relationship had lost steam, but that didn’t mean I expected him to ignore my breakup text. I had wanted this guy to exit stage left from my life, but when he totally blew me off, it drove me nuts! In fact, I couldn’t stop obsessing over it. Just a few months earlier he had been bugging me for a date and I was putting him off like a snobby cheerleader—and now he couldn’t even be bothered to acknowledge my text? Had my stock fallen that far? Just as I had with Jeffrey, I found myself hurting more over the lack of a reaction than over the actual loss of the guy.

The ball was in his court, and I was stuck wondering why he was so completely unfazed by my calling it quits. Or was he playing games with me? Even though I had plenty of reasons to be glad this guy was out of my life, my head was swimming and my ego reeling. Was I so worthless I didn’t even deserve a response?

The following Saturday, Lindsay asked me to meet her for drinks. We sat around pouring our hearts out to each other. She had quit the downscale topless show she had been performing in and was feeling unfulfilled in her new job as a go-go dancer. Just when I was about to remind her that she had flaked the last time
Peepshow
held auditions, I spotted Nancy making her way toward me.

“Hey, girl!” she said, with a big smile plastered across her face. “Are you coming to Marquee tonight? Eric’s going out.”

“No,” I said soberly. She must have known that Eric and I broke up, right? Nancy gave me a puzzled look, so I told her that going to Marquee, Eric’s favorite club of the moment, probably wasn’t a good idea since Eric and I were no longer seeing each other.

Her jaw dropped to the floor. She told me she was sorry to hear that and asked what happened.
He didn’t even mention it to her?
I wondered incredulously. If this guy was trying to make me feel like I had never existed, he was doing a damn good job. Eager to get it off of my chest again, I confessed to her what I had already started to tell Lindsay: how shitty I was feeling over this latest breakup.

“I guess I’m so hurt because he just disappeared. He could have at least texted back something like ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out,’ or ‘I agree, I’m glad we can still be friends, hope to see you around.’ Ignoring me completely is beyond rude.”

Nancy listened sympathetically, nodded, and gave me the unsolicited assurance that she was sure Eric wasn’t seeing anyone else—even though up until that moment the idea hadn’t crossed my mind.

A few hours later, after I had arrived back at my house, I heard my phone vibrate. I was already in bed, but I reached over to my mirrored bedside table to see who felt like talking. I was surprised to see that it was Eric. Quickly I read the message.

“Hey, I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I agree with you and am glad we can still be friends. I hope to see you around soon.”

It was pretty much word for word what I had said to Nancy. She must have run back to him and told him everything! I was too embarrassed and angry to confront her about it. I clunked my phone back down on my nightstand and threw the covers over my head. I was frustrated with Nancy and decided I needed to sleep on it before opening my mouth. It was all so ridiculous. Why was Eric even bothering to try and smooth things over at all at this point?

I tried to tell myself that I shouldn’t care so much. Eric hadn’t been right for me anyway. When I decided to go out with him, I thought it
was a no-brainer. After all, he was good-looking, successful, local, only a few years older than me, and he’d been pursuing me for a long time, which had to mean he really liked me and would appreciate me once he had me, right?

Wrong. In fact, I started to wonder if the real reason I had been attracted to Eric was that he fit a dangerous pattern I had been drawn to before: a successful alpha male with women throwing themselves at him everywhere he went. It was as if, deep down, I felt like a nice guy like Mark was too good to be true and that I didn’t deserve him, so I shoved myself back into my comfort zone . . . even though my comfort zone wasn’t good for me.

I was having a hard time truly accepting it, but I needed to admit that while Eric looked good on paper, I had taken a big chance on him before I even got to know him.

But perhaps most important, I learned to always check what’s in my purse before heading through airport security.