MAY 2001 #2
The Tonys were nice, but only a select few took notice. But this?
This was how I got back to the top.
———
Harper, it turned out, was nominated too. Maybe it was intentional—maybe they knew it would make an awards show no one could look away from.
There her name was, right beside mine. There was uproar from my fans and rigorous support from hers—that no one could prove what happened, and, anyway, it didn’t change that her performance in The Dark Beneath was extraordinary.
I wasn’t too upset. A strange part of me missed her. Another feared whatever she was planning without my overview.
But our court date had been delayed twice and was now pushed to early 2002, so there was little I could do but acquiesce and perform the bigger person whenever a journalist asked: “As nothing has yet been proven I can’t fault anyone.
I can only hope that when the time comes Harper accepts the order with as much grace as I’m accepting our dual nomination. ”
I wondered if Harper’s team knew about the nomination, and that’s why they’d had the court dates pushed.
Foolish of them if so—the restraining order was unlikely to be successful given the “attack” happened on foreign soil.
It was mostly just a statement to the public; one she was letting linger on.
I took vicious glee in destroying her as she’d destroyed me, but as the day crept closer I felt hope bloom in my chest in a way that felt vulnerable and tender. I wanted this. Rigged was the last thing I’d filmed before rehab. What a beautiful way that would be to rebuild my life.
Amos wanted to pay homage to the dress I’d worn to my first Oscars—all that gold I’d decked myself in.
And he was determined to design it himself this time—a risky piece, hazardous materials, but showstopping, if executed well, which I had full confidence it would be.
But I had to practically be wrestled into it.
The dress was basically metal, a long cylindrical tube of it with enough bend to pull together its two sheets into a tightly fitted minidress, strapless so that the bindings had to be tight to avoid flashing the watching crowd.
“Have you put weight on?” Amos growled as he heaved the hook-and-eye clasps together.
“I’m sorry I’m not as thin as the sample-size models you worked with last time you designed clothes,” I growled, bent forward to allow him to pull tighter.
“I can’t reshape this in time; it’s too complicated. You’re going to have to slim down.”
“You can’t reshape it in time, but you expect me to reshape my entire fucking body to fit?”
“Not all of it,” he said, with a pat at my side. “Just the newer parts.”
I didn’t eat for two days before the ceremony, and I didn’t even risk drinking water the day of.
I squeezed in, just about.
Old tricks got me through the red carpet, that ability of my mind to just slip away from my body. I barely even noticed as I passed Harper, not until Joel tugged her back, viciously muttering, “Haven’t you done quite enough? Don’t be stupid. Leave her alone and don’t make this fucking worse.”
His words rang like a bell in my head all the way to the auditorium, breathy and dizzying, and I couldn’t tell which of us he was speaking to. The echo was relentless. As the room swayed around me, his snarls lurched too, up and down before splintering entirely.
By the time I sat down, I could barely breathe, until finally I had to run to the bathroom, my vision darkening around the edges.
I collapsed against the door, feeling it swing open beneath me as I staggered forward and, with an involuntary gasp, the bindings burst free. The dress scratched my back as it fell, the metal clawing as it bent out of shape.
I caught the fabric—if the stiff, binding material could be considered that—and clutched it to my chest. I reached the basin, falling to my knees as my own breathing ravaged me, hyperventilating to the point of dizziness so that I could only lean my head against the cool marble countertop and wait for it to end.
When it finally calmed, I clambered to my feet to survey the damage.
In the mirror, my eyes were bloodshot, my lipstick smudged, my hair frayed.
But the dress was ruined, the two halves peeling apart like the petals of a tulip.
I fumbled for the clasps, trying to bend them back.
But then what? Strap myself back into the torture device?
Maybe for long enough that I could return and get help?
If no one had come for me yet, I assumed no one was on their way.
But they wouldn’t budge, whatever force had made them malleable far stronger than my fumbling fingers.
I couldn’t go out there like this. The press were everywhere. No one would care for the context of a photo like that, Nadine Heywood running through the Shrine Auditorium half naked during the Emmys?
The fabric was barely enough to cover me as it was. If the paparazzi got hold of even a blurry shot of a sliver of breast, or worse, a nipple, then …
My eyes fluttered closed against the rising panic. Why did this keep happening? Every single time I tried to take back control, dedicate myself to my work, make art that meant something, here was the slightest thing come to skew the narrative and ruin it.
The door opened, and for just a moment I imagined salvation had come. But, of course, that was never the way luck swung for me.
Harper, of course, like a shark to blood.
I watched her in the mirror, the way her dark eyes flitted across me and the feline smirk that whipped across her face.
“A wardrobe malfunction? How quaint.”
A sudden fear settled. “Was this you?”
Harper laughed. “No, darling, sometimes awful things happen to you without my influence. The show has started, by the way, so I wouldn’t hold out much hope for anyone else to come knocking either.”
I curled my hands tighter and met the reflection of Harper’s gaze.
“Gloat then, if that’s what you’ve come to do.” I tilted my head high and summoned a withering glance. “Another moment without and I might suspect you just want the show.”
Harper’s gaze darkened as it flit down, dismissive and scathing, and while I felt the chill of it, I also could not resist making a similar observation of my own.
Still regarding her in the mirror, like to turn would give her some sort of advantage, I noticed the way Harper’s dress shimmered beneath these fluorescent lights, silver to my gold and flowing like water, so that each gentle curve of her ran like a wave.
Her lipstick was pressed into the very corners of her lips, staining her whole mouth a dark and moody red.
But what I noticed most were the earrings studded through Harper’s lobes, swollen chrome discs.
I thought of the last time we were in a bathroom together and all that blood. I would go for the earrings first this time, would spit them back out to her.
“I’m not here to watch, Nadine. I’m going to help.” And then, for some inane reason, Harper dropped to a knee.
Her fingers flew to her boots—black leather, biker-style stompers like she used to wear to CADS, only far more expensive. They reached up her delicate calf, stopping just below the knee and leaving a long expanse of bare thigh before her dress cut.
Finally, I turned to look at her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to thread the shoelace between the hooks like a corset.”
That … That could work.
Everyone would know, of course. My dress altered, Harper missing a shoelace. That sort of thing didn’t go unnoticed. They’d think us friends, or at least that we’d recovered from our last encounter.
There would be no chance of securing that restraining order.
And, from the glint in Harper’s eye, that’s exactly what she intended.
“Fine,” I bit.
“The words you’re looking for, are thank you,” Harper said, standing up and gesturing for me to spin. I did, and Harper came close behind, shoelace unfurled. Our eyes met in the mirror, Harper so close my spine prickled in anticipation of her touch. “In fact, I think I’d like to hear you say them.”
She held the shoelace out to the side, dangling it like a prize.
Fuck you, I thought—and I was far, far too tempted. I would not do this again—allow myself to become beholden to Harper’s beck and call. But my stomach was tight, my anxiety still thrumming through me, making Harper’s every action an intense and frightful thing.
This was supposed to be a good night. It wasn’t supposed to be, as things were increasingly becoming, about Harper.
“Thank you?” I said, as though I was amused by this pettiness.
Harper laughed, and then, slowly, enough that I could have pulled away if my brain hadn’t short-circuited the moment I caught the scent of her perfume, Harper drew that shoelace taut and leaned forward, pulling the shoelace across my neck.
The cord was soft and worn, and Harper grasped it tight behind me. My breath hitched. She brushed my hair aside so we could both see the lace encircling me. My heart pounded an anxious staccato and almost instinctively, I found myself arching a little, surrendering to her machinations.
“Or perhaps I could tie it here?” Harper teased in that distinctly Harper way, like this was all oh so fun.
“I missed you like this. Until you ruined the fun, of course. Come to think of it, that’s my price.
I’ll use one shoelace to tie your dress in place and the other gets to kiss that lovely throat of yours.
To remind us both of how it felt to have you on my leash. ”
My rage flared quick and sharp. My elbow jammed into Harper’s gut, eliciting a sharp hiss, and she released me, the cord licking my skin as it fell.
“Why don’t I bend over if you’re so desperate to fuck me?”
She laughed. “Don’t tempt me.” She held the shoelace out. “Come on Nadine, you know how this is played.”
“I would rather walk back out there naked,” I snarled.