“This is ridiculous,” he said. “They’ll be in here in twenty minutes.”
“I’ve called the state police,” Clara Walsh said. “I don’t know what else I can do. Jerry can’t handle something like this on his own.”
“Don’t presidents of the United States vacation here?” Stewart said. “You’ve got to have something to take care of one of them.”
“We don’t take care of them,” Clara Walsh said. “The Secret Service takes care of them.”
The doors to the landing were bulging. Literally. They were pushing in like the ones from that old horror movie, The Haunting. Gregor looked at the other doors and saw that they, too, were bulging. In fact, they were bulging even more dangerously because there were more people on that side trying to push in. This was insane.
“There’ve got to be laws,” Gregor said. “It can’t be legal to do something like this. What if they compromise treatment? Couldn’t they get sued?”
Stewart sighed. “They could, but it’s worth the risk. The tabloids pay big for photographs of the right people, and even bigger for photographs of the right people in—what will we call it?—compromised circumstances. Dead. Dead drunk. Half undressed. Shoplifting.”
“And these are the right people,” Gregor said. “Marcey Mandret. What does Marcey Mandret do? I mean, she’s in this movie with you, I know, but what else does she do?”
“She’s been in a couple of movies,” Stewart said, “all minor, mostly aimed at teenagers.”
“And that’s enough to cause that?” Gregor asked.
“No,” Stewart said. “There are lots of young, pretty actresses with more substantive careers than that, and they’re not being followed around by a crowd of photographers who’d just as soon see them dead as alive. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. They do it. The people like Marcey do it. They do it on purpose.”
“Do what on purpose?” Clara Walsh asked.
“Become targets of the paparazzi on purpose,” Stewart said. “Look. Be sensible, all right? There really are some people with enormous careers who become targeted against their will, but it’s actually very rare. I was on the most popular science fiction program in the history of television. It’s got a cult following. I saw somebody dressed up as me on line for voir dire at the O. J. Simpson trial. With a mask of my face, yet. But those idiots are not following me. They don’t care what I do or where I am. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Clara Walsh said. “I’ve spent the last several days wondering why they aren’t following you. You seem like a better candidate than, well, the girls. If I may be so politically incorrect.”
“I think the phrase going around town is a lot more politically incorrect than calling them girls,” Stewart said. “But here’s the thing. I don’t ride around in limousines. I walk. I do my own shopping. I go out to ordinary pubs and a few restaurants on my own or with friends. I go to the bookstore. If somebody says hello, I’m polite and I keep on walking, because it’s really incredible what kind of nuts there are out there, but I don’t make a fetish of my ‘privacy’ or my ‘safety.’ I just live like a human being. I’m boring. You can’t do anything with me. I don’t even show up for openings except every once in a while when I’ve got a friend I want to support. And it’s not just me. Think about Julia Stiles.”
“Who?” Gregor asked.
“Lovely young woman,” Stewart said. “American actress. Very beautiful. Better looking than this lot. Very intelligent. Studied at Columbia. Been in a few serious movies. Mona Lisa Smile, for instance. But you never see her in the tabloids. And you never see her on the red carpet, as they all like to put it. Do you know what the ‘red carpet’ actually is? It’s a device for letting the lunatic press know that you’re fair game. Everybody talks about how crazy these people are, and what scum, and they are scum, they’re the embodiment of the decadence of late capitalism, but the thing is, they’re not stupid. They know it’s easier to make a living with people who are cooperating. They get into these symbiotic relationships with the twits who want the publicity, and then they ride the pony until it collapses. And it does collapse. It has to collapse. You can’t run a career the way Marcey Mandret is running hers, or Arrow Normand used to be running hers, and I say ‘used to be’ deliberately. She isn’t going to have one left when this is over. You can’t run a career like that and have it last. You can’t run a life like that and have it last. Los Angeles is littered with people in their thirties who used to be famous and now show up only when they get hit with a drunk-driving hit-and-run, or overdose in an alley. I hate Los Angeles.”