by Scott Bassis
I was Amandine’s personal assistant for only two weeks before the incident in Phoenix. I hadn’t witnessed it firsthand. Like most of the world, I watched it on my phone. The footage came from a bodega security camera. The owner posted it on Instagram with the description, “Recognize this Crazy Karen?” It immediately went viral.
The “Crazy Karen” in question was unmistakably Amandine. She was slender and pale, with long, black hair parted in the center. Tattoos swirled around her arms, including one of a Victorian skeleton key, a nod to her signature song, “Locked Inside.” Even her famous unibrow was visible for one frame, the one circulated most often in the media: she turned to the camera, lip curled in disgust, while the young boy reached his hand out to her.
The clip began with Amandine strolling down an empty sidewalk. Two olive complexioned figures, a stout woman and a wiry, preadolescent boy, approached her from across the street. The boy ran ahead, asking for money. Amandine rifled through her purse, seemingly for a dollar. He waited, his hand out, then she grabbed his wrist.
Amandine held onto him while he squirmed and flailed around. The other woman, presumably his mother, stood frozen, mouth agape. Finally, the boy twisted free, fleeing off-camera. The other woman followed him. Amandine stormed after them. She returned into view a moment later, stomping off, having apparently given up.
Public reaction was diverse, but unanimously damning. Conservatives held Amandine up as a prime example of liberal hypocrisy. “She preaches compassion for illegals, then assaults a Mexican boy asking for a buck. Imagine if he were taking her job away,” Carl Brooke of Fox News opined.
Liberals demanded she be removed from all music streaming platforms. “Once a bigot like Amandine is exposed, it taints their prior output. We must not tolerate hateful ideology in any form,” Erin Wyeth-Leigh argued in her The New Yorker think-piece.
The fact that no charges were brought against Amandine provoked more outrage. The woman and child in the video didn’t come forward. It was widely speculated that they were undocumented and feared deportation.
After the incident, Amandine lost endorsement deals, received death threats and her label reportedly considered dropping her. Nonetheless, she refused to make any public statement.
Up until that point, my contact with Amandine had been limited. Her manager, Kevin Russo, had finagled the PA position for me. Kevin also represented neo-glam rock artist Tommy Starr, my ex-boss and ex-boyfriend.
Tommy was thirty-four and at the height of his fame when he romanced me, a closeted, eighteen-year-old sociology major at UT Austin. Noticing me in the audience of his concert, he had his bodyguard slip me a backstage pass. I naively thought I had missed a merch raffle announcement. I showed up in the green room expecting to be handed a free tour jacket. Ten minutes later, Tommy and I were making out on a squeaky leather sofa. He called my refusal to go all the way “adorable.”
He flew me out to his next shows, brought me to five-star restaurants, made love to me in luxury hotels. Tired of competing with my studies for attention, he offered me a full time PA job. I finished up the semester, then turned in my college withdrawal form.
After six years together, he broke up with me on FaceTime. He called me from his trailer while shooting a music video in Barcelona. Primped up in spandex and freshly botoxed, he solemnly confessed that our relationship wasn’t working.
I told him that I didn’t care about his hard partying and assorted infidelities.
“I know the difference between love and fun,” I assured him.
“Maybe I love fun,” he replied. From the way he smiled smugly to himself, I could tell he would use that line in a song, either boasting about his hedonism or lamenting it self-pityingly.
A voice called him back to the set.
“So long Gabe,” he said, then hung up. I imagined that phrase might inspire a song too, a wistful ditty about how he broke the heart of a devoted, but hopelessly dull lover.
Within an hour, Kevin called to fire me. Along with the position as Amandine’s PA, he offered a generous severance package, including rent free use of Tommy’s pied-a-terre in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen for one year, contingent upon me signing a non-disclosure agreement. Though Tommy idolized Amandine, I only knew her by her biggest hit, “Locked Inside,” and her unibrow, of course.
My first two weeks of working for Amandine had been a breeze compared to working for Tommy. There were no tantrums, no threats of self-harm, no barely coherent calls asking to be picked up from strange addresses in sketchy neighborhoods.
To prepare, I had memorized her Wikipedia page and streamed all her albums. The first time I showed up at her Christopher Street penthouse apartment, she muttered, “hey,” dropped a key in my hand and told me to fill the fridge because her son, Kurt, was coming. “He likes bologna and vegetables,” she said, by way of guidance. Kurt, I recalled from Wikipedia, was the youngest of her four children. She had never married, and each child had a different father.
When I returned, she was gone, but had left a Post-it on the refrigerator door. Her guitar needed to be taken in for repairs and Kurt wanted a dinosaur Lego set.
I would finish a task and she would give me a new one, either by note or text. Most days, I didn’t see her at all. After the incident in Phoenix, our relationship changed. She called me a few hours after she landed back in New York. The story had already broken.
“Hi Gabe, sorry to bother you. I know it’s late,” she said, her voice shaky.
Her reputation was of a strong, defiant woman. She challenged the patriarchy before it was fashionable, while her female peers pranced around in skimpy clothes, embodying sexy subservience. Still, being universally despised would affect anyone.
“Call me anytime, for anything at all,” I said.
“Cut the spineless Jeeves shit,” she said.
“Sor-.” I stopped myself.
“Sorry, that was rude. I mean, just be real with me. Don’t be afraid,” she said. In half a minute, she had gone from sheepish, to irate, to reassuring. I was flummoxed.
“I’m not. I’m, just, um,” I stuttered.
“Look, I need your help. I’m forty-three. I’m not savvy with social media. I only maintain my accounts because I’m contractually obligated to. You’re twenty-four, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, surprised she cared enough to know or remember.
“Is there a way to block people’s comments? I don’t let online harassment get to me, but my kids can see it,” she said. She didn’t mention the incident in Phoenix directly, but she didn’t have to.
“Sure, it’s easy. But disabling the comments can seem like…”
“Admitting defeat,” she said thoughtfully.
“Exactly. It’s better to just delete the negative comments. It is tedious, and involves regular monitoring,” I said.
“I’ll pay extra, fifteen grand more a year. You can have a new title: Social Media Manager,” she said.
“Sounds great,” I said. I doubted she would be delegating my current responsibilities to someone else, which was fine. Tommy had consumed my life for six years. I had no friends of my own, few strong interests. Without someone else to focus on, I would feel lost.
“Starting now, I guess,” she said.
“I’ll need your passwords,” I pointed out.
“They’re all the same: Fridakahlo123, capital ‘F’,” she said. Drawing a connection between Amandine and Frida Kahlo’s unibrows, I let out a “hah.”
“You caught me. I stole it from her,” she admitted.
“You wear it better.” I risked a joke.
“Aren’t we audacious?” she remarked. I laughed, then realized she had hung up.
I went to work at once, signing into her Instagram account. Her last post, a snippet of her rehearsing for Phoenix Indie Fest, had amassed three thousand and nineteen comments. The one with the most likes, eight hundred and twenty-one, stated simply, “You belong in prison.”
After three hours of meticulous censoring, the only sentiments remaining were ones of support, “Stay strong!” “Your music saved my life!” “Time to cancel cancel culture!” Anyone perusing the comments would believe most people were on her side.
For the first time, I wondered where I stood. It hadn’t seemed relevant before. She was my employer, not my friend. But she had opened up to me, albeit slightly, and I found myself liking her. I assumed she wasn’t racist, since she admired Frida Kahlo and showed no hostility towards me, a Latino. Obviously, assaulting a child beggar was abhorrent. I chalked it up to her being unstable, which was apparent just from her music, the way she seethed, cooed and shrieked with such intensity, often within one song.
Judging from the Early Life section of Wikipedia, she had a turbulent childhood. She didn’t get along with her mother and stepfather, was shuffled between various relatives. At thirteen, she ended up in Freehold, New Jersey with her birth father, an “oft-hospitalized” Vietnam War veteran. While in high school, she discovered a love for music. At sixteen, she was playing hooky to busk in Asbury Park. At eighteen, she was signed to a label.
Working as a PA, I met many celebrities. Most were crazy. It wasn’t fair to judge them by a normal person’s standards. No normal person could create anything as beautiful as Amandine could, or Tommy could. I tried to imagine Tommy grabbing an innocent child in a blind rage. I was able to, easily. I had no trouble forgiving Amandine. I had forgiven Tommy for worse.
Over the next few days, Amandine was less aloof, calling instead of texting, sometimes joking with me. A friendship seemed to be burgeoning. Then, one afternoon, everything changed.
She called when I was answering her emails, a dispiriting task. Bookings cancelled her. Employees quit her team. Even her yoga instructor dropped her, fearing her “destructive energy” would contaminate the studio.
“I need you right now!” she shouted the moment I picked up.
“Okay,” I said, alarmed.
“Bring your car,” she added.
“My car’s in L.A.,” I said. Technically, it was Tommy’s car, his spare one.
“Shit, okay. Just come.” She hung up. I was at Amandine’s apartment in fifteen minutes. Thinking it was an emergency, I opened the door with my key.
Sylvia, Amandine’s fifteen-year-old daughter, sat on the living room couch staring at her phone. I hadn’t met her yet. I had seen photos of her, though she looked very different now. Her hair, once long and blond, was in a crew-cut and dyed lime green. She had become skeletally thin. Most jarringly, her eyebrows were completely shaved off. She glanced up.
“Mom, some guy just let himself in. Can’t tell if it’s your new lackey or baby daddy number five,” she called out.
Amandine stormed over from the guest bedroom holding a suitcase. She set it down in the foyer and turned to me.
“I apologize on behalf of my incredibly rude daughter. She’s been a complete bitch for the last two days. Fortunately for both of us, she’s flying back to London to be with her father,” she explained.
“Don’t call me that!” Sylvia stood up.
“Please, I’ve been a bitch my whole life. I’m proud of it. Just strive for strong bitch, not evil one,” Amandine replied.
“No, ‘she!’” Sylvia shouted.
“Oh God, not this non-binary thing again.” Amandine sighed exasperatedly.
“I can wait outside,” I offered, inching back towards the door.
“No, I’m ready right now. I’ve been ready since I got here.” Sylvia marched over, snatched the suitcase and darted out the still open door.
“I booked a flight from JFK. Since you don’t have your car, can you ride with her in the Uber and make sure she goes through security?” She removed her phone from her pocket and ordered an Uber. “Be careful, she’s a slippery one,” she warned.
“They,” I instinctively corrected her. She blinked at me blankly. The elevator pinged. As I hurried down the hall, Sylvia entered the elevator. The doors slid closed. I dove inside, catching Sylvia pressing the door closed button. Busted, Sylvia only smirked.
After riding in silence inside the Uber for ten minutes, Sylvia abruptly turned to me.
“I’m not really non-binary. I mean, not right now. I could change my mind,” she revealed.
“Then why do you tell your mother you are?” I asked. Despite their contentious relationship, she reminded me a lot of her mother. Both were smart, feisty and had an aversion to authority.
“Because it shouldn’t matter, and it does to her, and she’s a complete hypocrite,” she spat. “She’s all, fight the system, but gender norms, that’s totally fine. She says capitalism is evil, but has no problem being rich. She writes songs against child abuse and racism, then assaults a Latino boy asking for a dollar.”
“You only have one mom. Besides, everyone’s a hypocrite,” I said. Even that remark, I knew, was hypocritical; I was estranged from my own mother. She hadn’t accepted me being gay, and really hadn’t accepted me taking up with a rock star. “When you die from drugs or AIDS, I won’t go to your funeral,” she vowed during our last conversation five years ago. Sylvia gave me a sidelong glance.
“Oh, she’s already got her claws in you, I can tell.” She laughed. “She’s beautiful and talented; it’s easy to become infatuated with her. But up here, she’s twisted.” She tapped her index finger to her forehead. “If you’re lucky, she’ll tire of you before she screws you up too.”
“I’m gay,” I said.
“So was baby daddy number three,” she remarked, unfazed.
I sensed that, like her mother, Sylvia derived pleasure from her provocations. I refused to indulge her with a reaction. She lost interest in me, turning her attention back to her phone. Glimpsing the screen, I recognized her Instagram profile picture, a creepy, cartoon rabbit with fangs. I remembered her because her attacks had struck me as strangely personal. “Now the whole world sees your warped soul too!” one had read.
Once we arrived, I walked her to security and stood watch until she passed through. From the way she glanced back at me slyly, feigning nonchalance, I suspected she planned on bolting. I received a text from Amandine.
“My bodyguard’s already there. He’ll approach her after security and accompany her during the flight.”
I guessed she was tracking Sylvia through her phone. I gave the message a thumbs-up tapback. I imagined Sylvia’s outrage when Amandine’s bodyguard greeted her, having been outsmarted by her mother. But Amandine couldn’t keep Sylvia under her control forever, and I was fearful for her future.
Three dots appeared.
“After all that shouting, I’ve got a migraine. Do you mind picking up Excedrin and stopping by?” she texted.
“On my way,” I replied. She gave it a “love” tapback.
When I opened the door to her apartment, I noticed she had changed. No longer in loungewear, she wore a strapless, red, silk dress. She had applied full makeup. Apparently, she had plans later. I was struck by her beauty.
Feminists applauded that unibrow, but it wasn’t really so brave. She could get away with it because she was stunning. She had a slender, but still curvy figure. Her face was perfection, with big, round eyes, a petit, upturned nose, sharp cheekbones and heart-shaped lips. She could probably pull off a jagged scar running from forehead to chin.
I handed her the box of Excedrin. She stared at it, seeming confused, then set it down on a table in the foyer.
“Extra strength, I need it,” she proclaimed, giving a smile so radiant it was hard to believe she had a headache at all. “Thanks for taking Sylvia to the airport. How was she?” she asked.
“Fine. She was mostly quiet,” I replied.
“That’s not surprising. She’s only a terror with me. She adores her father. Why wouldn’t she? He owns a chain of pubs in the UK. He spoils her, hires tutors to basically do her homework for her. Am I so awful for wanting her to develop character?” she asked.
“When she’s older, she’ll appreciate everything you did for her,” I said, hoping it was true, and hoping Sylvia reached adulthood in one piece.
“Did I really do enough? I love being a mom. It gives me greater joy than anything, even music. I should have devoted more time to parenting, less on my career. What was it all for? Now my legacy is in ruins,” she reflected.
“People still love you, and your kids love you. I bet you’re a great mother,” I said sincerely. She was cool, but also caring. Even if some of her ideas were old-fashioned, she was certainly progressive compared to my own mother.
“Thanks.” She smiled. “Would you do me a favor?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Come, sit with me,” she said, gazing at me with what looked like longing.
I remembered what Sylvia had said about Amandine wooing me, me falling for her. Suddenly, the idea wasn’t so absurd. She walked over to the living room. I followed her, my legs seeming to move of their own accord. I sat on the couch.
“Relax,” she said. That command I couldn’t obey. My heart raced. My stomach was tied in knots.
She disappeared down the hall. A moment later, she returned holding a guitar. She sat on a chair across from me. I thought back to the early days of my relationship with Tommy. Tommy used to write songs for me, would serenade me at impromptu moments like this.
“I’ve been working on this song. Can I get your honest opinion?” she asked. I nodded, then gulped.
“I felt the love you lacked,
The hope you didn’t have,
Couldn’t hold myself back.
I had no right, but I’m not wrong.
Might this song still find you,
So you’ll see yourself as I do?
A prince, hid under rags,
A treasure, not trash.
Oh, how I’ll cherish…”
I stood up. She stopped. She looked up at me, eyes wide with surprise.
“I’m gay,” I declared. I had assumed she had guessed. I wasn’t exactly flamboyant, but nor was I the manliest of men. I didn’t know a touchdown from a field goal, a Foo Fighter from a Fall Out Boy.
“And?” she said, her tone annoyed.
“I’m just, I was thinking, you know, listening to it,” I stammered, afraid I had misjudged her intentions. She perked her brow, awaiting my answer. “It sounds like a love song,” I said, my cheeks burning.
She burst into laughter, setting her guitar down. Mortified, I felt like running out of her apartment.
“I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you. I promise,” she said, finally containing herself.
“I should go. I have a lot of emails to get through,” I said.
“Shit, I really offended you.” She frowned.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“It’s not so ridiculous. You are very handsome. You look like Gavin Rossdale, with those big, doe eyes. He was my first crush,” she said. I blushed, flattered, no longer uneasy, since she clearly wasn’t interested in me. Tommy used to compliment my eyes too, but hadn’t for years.
“The song’s not about you, though. It’s about what happened in Phoenix,” she said. I sat back down. She took a deep breath. It seemed she would finally reveal what had prompted her to attack that boy.
“I’m not Britney. ‘Locked Inside’ was my only top ten single. My new albums barely crack the top thirty. No one’s ever cared enough to probe too deeply into my past. I’ve mentioned in interviews how I was bounced around among relatives growing up. I’ve never gone into the gory details,” she said.
“I’m sorry you had to live through that,” I said earnestly.
“I didn’t, that’s the thing. I didn’t live through it. I didn’t survive, not really,” she said.
“Obviously, you did,” I said, puzzled. She shook her head, no.
“When I saw that little boy in Phoenix, the way he acted, well-trained, knowing exactly what tone to use, what face to make to appear helpless and innocent, I recognized myself as a child.” Her voice became flat, emotionless. She turned her gaze from me, staring off into the distance. “He was a puppet, and someone bad was pulling the strings.”
“You think he was being abused?” I asked. She was implying that she had been abused too, but I left that part unspoken. She nodded.
“I wanted to grab him, take him home with me, make sure no one ever exploited him again. I still can’t stop wondering, what if I held on? Even now, I hate myself for letting go.” Her mouth twisted into a rueful grimace.
I believed her. Her actions finally made sense, jived with what I knew of her character. She was crazy, but she was still a good person.
“Do you want to know why my mother sent me away? It was because I learned to defend myself against her and her husband. They were afraid I would kill them; they were right to be. I fantasized about it constantly. I stole a kitchen knife and kept it under my bed…” Her voice trailed off. She was completely still for a minute. Her mind was somewhere else, somewhere dark and hopeless.
“Why don’t you tell everyone the truth?” I suggested.
“What, like on Doctor Phil?” she scoffed. I didn’t see why not. One viral clip on TikTok making her look sympathetic might salvage her reputation. “I won’t stoop to that,” she asserted.
“There’s no shame in…” I started to say. Her glare silenced me.
“My father was a decent man,” she said, offhandedly. “My biological father,” she clarified.
“That’s important, to have someone,” I said. She nodded, then related the story of their relationship.
“My mother left him when I was an infant. I didn’t see him again until I was thirteen. My grandparents tracked him down, basically dropped me at his door. He was a recovered addict with mental health problems. Vietnam had messed him up. In the end, it killed him. He died twelve years ago from a cancer related to Agent Orange.
“He could tell, off the bat, that I had endured some trauma. Maybe it was because he knew the kind of woman my mother was, or maybe it was because he recognized my PTSD symptoms. A loud noise would make us both jump a foot in the air. He never asked what happened to me. He understood I didn’t want to talk about it.
“One morning, I refused to leave my bed to go to school. My classmates picked on me for being weird. Even if I hit them, it didn’t make them stop. They provoked me on purpose, relished seeing me punished. That morning, I just gave up. I closed my eyes, clutched my pillow, and wouldn’t budge.
“My father sat down beside me. He held a pendant with a rectangular, blue sapphire stone framed in silver. I recognized it because he wore it all the time. I assumed it had sentimental value since he owned no other jewelry.
“He said getting out of bed was hard for him too. Despite his mental struggles, he made a good living as an electrician. He said every time he left the house, he felt a wave of anxiety. Every time, he had to fight the urge to turn back. Then, he told me his secret.
“He said, he was actually dead. Of course, I didn’t believe him. I thought he was having a breakdown right then and there. That alone made me sit up and consider catching the school bus. I barely knew him at that point. Though I kind of liked him, I couldn’t say with certainty that he wouldn’t murder me.
“‘Look,’ he said. He turned that pendant around, unlatched the back and showed me that he was telling the truth. The stone was hollow. It encased a small pill, half yellow and half white. It looked old. There was no coating around it. If you touched it, you would get powder on your fingers.
“‘Cyanide,’ he explained. I scooted back, terrified. I thought he was pranking me, but he didn’t laugh. He said that this pill, which he had carried around since he was a private in the army, allowed him not to be afraid of anything. No matter what happened to him, no matter how bad things got, he always had an exit…”
“That’s horrible,” I said. I found it tragic: the one positive figure in her life ended up being a sicko too.
“You think so?” she asked pensively.
“I mean, it’s not his fault. He wasn’t well,” I said.
“I suppose,” she said. “So, divulging my past is the only way to salvage my career?” She sighed.
“Pretty much,” I said.
“Won’t happen.” She crossed her arms petulantly.
“You owe it to your fans,” I pled. “That song’s not enough. It could be about anything. I thought it was about me,” I said, with a laugh. She laughed, then shook her head, smiling to herself.
“I’m an idiot,” I said.
“No, it’s just funny,” she said. She paused, hesitating for a moment. “You saying you thought it was about you. It made me realize, maybe it’s about you too.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I smiled, thinking she was somehow teasing me.
“Not on purpose, but subconsciously. I wrote it about a boy I wanted to save from a bad situation. I saw his pain. I had to help. I couldn’t stop myself,” she said.
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“Do you remember the Humanity First concert in Edinburgh?” she asked. I nodded. Tommy had performed, one of dozens of artists. Tommy had disappeared for a few days leading up to the event, leaving his team, myself included, a nervous wreck. We debated calling the police, but surmised the sort of illegal escapades he was up to. He missed the first rehearsal, but showed up for the second, looking wobbly and exhausted. I made sure he slept, ate and drank copious amounts of water. In the end, he turned out a great set.
“You were there? Sorry, I didn’t notice. I had my hands full,” I said.
“Tending to your junkie boyfriend. I saw,” she revealed. I winced, taken aback.
“Tommy approached me backstage after my performance with a bouquet of flowers. He thanked me, said my music got him through his miserable teen years. I was a fan of his too. That’s why I had been watching him for several days, you and him together,” she explained.
“You told him to leave me,” I guessed. I knew how Tommy worshipped her, thought of her as a goddess. He would have followed her advice as if it were doctrine. After the Humanity First concert, he became distant. He evaded my kisses. He turned his back to me in bed at night. He would hardly look at me, and when he did, his eyes conveyed resentment and shame. He broke up with me a week after that gig.
“I told him that he would destroy you, and if he cared about you, he should set you free,” she disclosed, her tone nonchalant. “He was worried about how you would support yourself. I said I’d take you on. I knew Kevin managed both of us and could coordinate everything.”
“Wow,” I said, in shock.
“Maybe you don’t see it yet, how he was exploiting you. You will,” she assured me. She removed her cell phone from her pocket and looked at it. “Sylvia’s boarded,” she noted, ready to move onto a new subject.
“So, you observed me for, like, two days, and decided you knew what was good for me, took it upon yourself to break up our six-year long relationship,” I reiterated. Anger rose inside me. She really was like a goddess, ruining my life on a whim, never giving it a second thought.
“Six years? You poor thing.” She shook her head sorrowfully. I couldn’t stomach her self-righteous condescension. I leapt up.
“You had no right!” I shouted.
“Was I supposed to just stand there, watching you suffer?” she asked.
“You don’t think I’m suffering now? I lost everything, my job, my home, the man I love!” I snapped.
“I gave you a new job,” she pointed out. “And perhaps, I can be more to you than just an employer.” She reached her hand to mine, gently caressed my fingers.
I flinched back. I gaped at her in disbelief. My first instinct was correct. She was trying to seduce me, with her makeup, her sultry dress and that beautiful song.
“Why me?” I finally managed to spit out.
“You’re kind, supportive, patient and responsible,” she said. It didn’t escape me that these were qualities associated with being a good father. She smiled tenderly, oblivious to my disgust.
I shuddered. What disturbed me most was that she might have succeeded. Reeling from my breakup with Tommy, I might have slept with her, deceived myself into thinking we had a future together, a gay man and a woman only out to find baby daddy number five.
“I have to go,” I said. Sylvia was right: she was twisted in her head.
“I wish you saw yourself as I do.” Her face crumpled in dismay. That phrase sounded familiar. I realized she was reciting lyrics from her new song, likening me to an abused little boy in need of rescue. It was deranged. She was the one who needed help, not me.
I headed out. Before I left, I removed her key from my pocket and set it down on the foyer table, beside the Excedrin. When she saw it, she would know I quit. I stole a last glance at her, expecting her to be distraught. She wasn’t even sniffling. She had picked up her guitar. She started strumming. A new lyric or melody came to her. How foolish to think I could actually hurt her. She was a rock goddess, I, a mere mortal.
I immediately stopped at an ATM and checked my bank account. A hundred grand seemed like a lot, but it wouldn’t sustain me for long, not in Manhattan, with no college degree or skills, besides being someone’s lackey.
Over the next few days, I created a Linked-In profile, emailed Admissions at UT Austin about the process of re-enrolling and signed up for online bartending courses. There were a dozen gay bars within walking distance, and looks seemed to be the main criteria for the job. I figured if I was handsome enough for two rock stars, I should get hired at Glory’s Hole in the Wall.
I was invited to interview for two administrative assistant positions, both offering a fraction of my PA salary. A clerk at UT Austin replied that re-enrollment was subject to the dean’s discretion, and I had missed the cutoff for the fall semester. I was told by the bitchy, old queen who managed Snake Pit that I could work Sundays to Thursdays, if I hit the gym two hours a day. “This is Hell’s Kitchen, hun. You’ll need more than a pretty face. There’s three broke twinks for every rat.”
Faced with three options, underpaid office flunky, embarrassingly old undergraduate student, or gay bar eye-candy, the last actually felt the least demeaning. Snake Pit’s manager even gave me a one-month voucher for Blink Fitness.
It was while I was at the gym, watching CNN on the screen attached to my treadmill, that I saw the latest news about Amandine. By then, I felt more pity for her than anger. I even felt some gratitude. Each day, I appreciated more and more how lucky I was to be rid of Tommy.
Special correspondent Dan Wei began by detailing Amandine’s past controversies. She refused to pluck her unibrow in the face of public mockery, challenging prevailing standards of beauty. In her song “Desert Mirage” she criticized the Iraq War, prompting radio stations nationwide to ban her music. While performing her single “Enough” in Rome, she invited victims of sexual abuse by priests to join her onstage. Police cut the concert short, deeming it a “security hazard.” Dan noted that, in each instance, time vindicated her actions.
Footage played of a handcuffed woman being escorted into a courthouse. Dan identified her as Elena Vargas, the woman in Amandine’s viral clip. She wasn’t, as most had assumed, the boy’s mother. She was a cousin of his father; the boy had gone missing four months ago. His parents, Guatemalan migrant workers, hadn’t filed a police report, fearing deportation. After seeing the video of their son, they finally turned to the authorities. Fortunately, the boy was reunited with his parents, and an immigration attorney was working on their case.
In a voiceover, as the viral clip of Amandine played, Dan mused, “How did Amandine realize something was amiss? Is it simply that artists are gifted with a keen sensitivity, able to pick up on subtle cues most of us can’t?”
The video paused on Amandine as she stomped off, scowling bitterly, the boy having escaped. Dan asked if cancel culture had gone too far, if it had become less about accountability than ruining people’s lives for sport.
I wasn’t focusing on his words, but on the pendant hanging from Amandine’s neck, a dark, rectangular stone surrounded by a frame. I thought back to her story about the cyanide pill concealed in the blue sapphire gem. Since the video was in black and white, I couldn’t discern the stone’s color. I opened YouTube on my phone and searched for her performance at Phoenix Indie Fest. Indeed, she wore the same pendant, and it was blue.
I stepped off the treadmill. I sat at a vacant leg press machine. I suspected I had interrupted her story before she could finish. Her father held the lethal trinket, explained to her how wearing it allowed him to confront the world outside. His anguish became bearable with the knowledge he could end it in an instant. Had he dropped that pendant into the palm of her hand, this gift of death?
I clicked on a different video, Amandine’s performance at the VMA’s in 2011. There she was, duetting with Bruno Mars. As they leaned into the same mic, that blue sapphire pendant dangled below their heads.
I clicked on an interview from The Today Show. While she pondered Matt Lauer’s patronizing question about women in rock, she idly twirled the blue sapphire pendant in her fingers. Lauer glanced down at it, or perhaps he was admiring her cleavage.
I clicked on her music video for “Locked Inside.” When it was shot, she was eighteen years old. She sat on a stool in a cage, in a striped prisoner’s uniform, strumming her guitar forlornly, her pale skin luminous against the black background. It was an iconic image.
Memory served me right: she wore no pendant. Yet, when the camera lingered on her guitarwork, there it was, worn as a bracelet, the chain wrapped around her wrist. The lyrics hit differently this time. I had always assumed the song was inspired by a cruel lover. Was it, instead, about a cyanide pill?
“You promised me freedom,
Dangled the key to my cage.
Only now, from you, there’s no escape.
‘Cause I’m bound to your fate,
Locked in your blue-eyed gaze.
And I’d choose death,
If I were only so brave.”
I tapped my phone’s screen, pausing the video on her face. I stared at her for a moment. She was so beautiful and so frail, ethereal, like an angel or a ghost. She seemed intangible, existing halfway between life and death. My instinct was to grab ahold of her, make sure she didn’t slip away entirely.
I exited YouTube. I had to check in on her, make sure she was okay. I sent her a text, “Saw the news. Such a relief!”
I waited. There was no response. I did leg presses, keeping the phone on my lap. After two sets, I called her. Her phone went to voicemail.
“Hey Amandine, it’s Gabe. Sorry if I overreacted before. Call me when you get a chance,” I said. After another set, I tried again. I hung up before leaving another message.
Filled with dread, I checked her Instagram, her Facebook, her Twitter and her TikTok. There had been no posts since I last saw her. I signed into her email account. She had almost three hundred unread messages. The last sent messages had been sent by me twelve days ago.
If I had known how fragile she was, I wouldn’t have abandoned her. It had seemed impossible to hurt her. I had thought of her as a goddess, immortal. On the contrary, when she donned that locket, she was perpetually close to death.
Cutting my workout short, I showered and got dressed. My heart racing, sweat pouring down my sides, I ran to the subway station and took the train down to Christopher Street. The concierge at her building recognized me and let me pass. I rode the elevator up.
Only when I stood at her door did I realize that I no longer had her key, having set it down on her table before walking out. I rang the doorbell. There was no response. I knocked. I pictured her lying dead in her bed, the open locket beside her. The public turning on her must have been more than she could endure. I had turned on her too.
I felt so ashamed. I knocked again, weakly. Tears formed in my eyes. She would never know that she was hailed as a hero, that her actions had reunited a little boy with his family.
My phone pinged. I took it out of my pocket. She gave my text a thumbs-up tapback.
I laughed. I wiped my tears away. Still, my unease lingered. I wondered how close she had come to opening that locket. She was able to resist through her public crucifixion, but what if something terrible befell Sylvia, or one of her other children?
In my gut, I knew that this was how her story would end. Someone would knock on her door frantically, to no answer. She would be dead inside, having so much more to offer, beautiful music to create and profound insights to share. That someone wouldn’t be me, I decided.
I turned around and headed home, certain I would never come back. I wasn’t like her. I wasn’t capable of saving anyone. Of course, there was only one Amandine. The world continually mistreated her, but it would surely mourn her once she was gone.
Scott Bassis has had short stories published in The Rappahannock Review, Litbreak Magazine, Poydras Review, The Furious Gazelle, Masque & Spectacle, Punt Volat, The Writing Disorder, JAB, Sweet Tree Review, The Acentos Review, Marrow Magazine, Sandpiper, Trouvaille Review, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Me First Magazine, Image Outwrite, Quail Bell Magazine, The Missing Slate, Jumbelbook, Furtive Dalliance, Rainbow Curve and Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly.