“What?” she’d asked, appalled that that sleazy rag even knew of her existence. “How do they know about me and Jake?”
“Well...” Pauline confessed, “I’m afraid that might be my fault to some degree.”
“Your fault? What do you mean?”
“I accidently let slip that Jake was seeing someone a week or so back,” she said. “It was at the end of a long day and they were hitting me with enquiries about whether Jake and Celia were getting it on, and ... I’m sorry ... I spoke without thinking it through and said that Jake had a girlfriend.”
“And you told them my name?” Laura asked, her voice climbing a bit higher than was her norm.
“No no,” Pauline said. “Of course not. I told them that Jake and his lady friend would prefer to keep their relationship private. I gave them no hint about who you were.”
“Then how do they know about me?” she demanded.
“I’m guessing they staked out Jake’s house until they caught a glimpse of you leaving it or entering it,” she said. “Once they knew he was seeing someone, they would’ve pulled out all the stops to track and identify you.”
“They staked out our house?” she nearly screamed.
“Yeah, most likely,” she said. “The reporter I talked to says they have pictures of both you and Jake and he made a point to mention that he knows what Jake looks like now. From what he tells me, they have shots of you going in and out of the studio and shopping in the grocery store.”
“They’ve been following me around?”
“It’s what they do, Laura,” Pauline said. “Welcome to the celebrity life.”
“But ... but ... how do they know who I am? You said they know my name?”
“They probably ran the license number on your car to initially ID you.”
“Is that legal?” she asked.
“No, but they get away with it as long as they don’t admit that is what they did. That’s not all they know about you.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” Pauline said. “They know where you graduated from college, that you hold a teaching credential, that you used to teach junior high school for the LA unified, and that you are the sax player on both Jake’s and Celia’s albums.”
“My god!”
“That’s all public record stuff,” Pauline told her. “Once they had your name from the DMV records, everything else was child’s play to look up.”
“What do they want with me?” she asked.
“They want to interview you about your relationship with Jake and about your life prior to meeting him. They want to take some official photos of you to include in their rag when they run the story about you and Jake. More than anything, they’d love for you to say something that they can twist and distort with a negative spin so they can sell more of their shitty papers in the checkout stands.”
“I don’t want to talk to them!” Laura said. “And I don’t want them running any stories about me.”
“Well ... you can have wish number one,” Pauline told her. “You don’t have to talk to them. In fact, it is my stern suggestion that you do not talk to them or cooperate with them in any fashion, anywhere, anytime. It will never do you any good. As for the second wish, however, I’m afraid they have a right to run whatever they want to run about you as long as it is not blatantly and provably libelous. And even then, you’d have a run for your money trying to call them on it.”
“So ... they can just print whatever they want about me?”
“As long as they have the barest and thinnest of corroboration for what they allege,” she said. “And I’m talking paper thin here for them to keep in the bounds of the First Amendment.”
“Paper thin?”
“Razor thin even,” she said. “For instance, all that crap they printed about Jake and Michelle Borrows—his girlfriend back in his club days—was nothing but lies. She accused him of regularly raping her, drugging her, beating her, and then, finally, throwing her off a boat into the river and leaving her there to sink or swim on her own. None of that was true. Michelle was truly in love with Jake at the time and they were a reasonably happy and well-adjusted couple. Yet that highly respected Christian publication—Catholic Monthly, one of the primary magazines of the Catholic church, a publication that is presumably read and approved of by His Holiness Himself—was able to print these allegations based only on the word of Michelle Borrows, with no further corroboration whatsoever, and stand free and clear of libel charges because the burden of proof in a libel case rests with the person or persons against whom the accusations are leveled. In other words, Jake would have had to have proven that the accusations were not true and that Catholic Monthly knew they weren’t true. And that was a respected magazine. Rags like the Watcher toe that line even more loosely.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re not doing a very good job,” Laura told her.
“I’m not trying to make you feel better, hon,” Pauline told her. “I’m trying to talk reality here. The true fun and games of dating someone like Jake are about to start.”
And, of course, she had been right. Laura had refused to be interviewed or voluntarily photographed by reporters from American Watcher. And a week after that refusal was conveyed to them, a full spread about her and Jake had appeared in the tabloid, complete with unauthorized pictures.
JAKE KINGSLEY IS BACK IN THE GROOVE, read the headline on the front page. AND HE HAS A NEW LOVE INTEREST AS WELL.
Side by side on the front page, just below the headline, were pictures of Jake with his new look and Laura, standing next to her car in partial profile in what appeared to be the Safeway parking lot down the hill from Jake’s home.
Jake’s picture was captioned with: Notorious former singer for the death metal group Intemperance, Jake Kingsley, shows off his new look for our camera. Gone are the long locks and he now sports a mustache as he enjoys the success of his solo album, Can’t Keep Me Down. Laura’s photo was captioned with: Musician and former junior high school teacher Laura Best, who played saxophone for Celia Valdez on her latest solo album, is reportedly dating Jake Kingsley and living in his Hollywood Hills mansion with him. Article and more pictures on Page 12! promised a smaller text below the pictures.
And indeed, there was an article and further pictures. She looked at the photos first, seeing that all were zoom shots that had been taken from a distance. There were shots of Jake behind the wheel of his car and standing next to it. There were shots of her in the grocery store, behind the wheel of her own car, and one that had been taken in a restaurant when she and Jake had been together. They were not unflattering photos by any means—in fact the one of her in the grocery store, dressed in a pair of white shorts and a green top, was quite becoming to her figure and her bare legs. But still, she had not given permission for these shots to be taken or published! She felt violated in an icky way, as if someone had been peeping on her in the bathroom. And Pauline assured her they had every right to do this.
She then read the article and her anger and frustration grew. They knew absolutely nothing about her except what they had found in public records: They knew she was alive, that her name was Laura Best, that she had graduated with honors from UCLA with a degree in English and a teaching credential, that she had been hired as an eighth grade teacher by the LA City Unified School District, and that she had resigned her position with the district four months before. From those facts and from the supposition that she and Jake were actually romantically involved, they had woven a string of innuendo that suggested, but did not outright say, that Laura had not been a particularly good teacher, that there may have been some rumors of inappropriate behavior with her students, and that the district had strongly encouraged her to resign when it became known that she was dating the notorious Jake Kingsley. There were even a few observations about how she had been seen from time to time wearing long sleeved shirts when the weather was warm and how that was a classic sign of a woman in an abusive relationship.