CHAPTER 16
Cate
In the days following my debut in the tabloids, I fielded countless phone calls and emails from friends and acquaintances who had either seen the Post or heard about it. Everyone wanted to know what the deal was with Joe. I told them that we were seeing each other, but that it wasn’t serious. We were just having fun. It added up, of course, because that’s how the world saw him. He was the ultimate good-time guy.
Meanwhile, I kept a low profile. I was too nervous to risk getting caught again, and I told Joe I just needed a few days to regroup. On our fourth night apart, he invited me out with some of his friends and family. I declined, opting instead for my paparazzi-free living room with Elna and Curtis. At the end of the night, he called me from what sounded like a pay phone at a bar.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Brother Jimmy’s,” he said.
“Which one?”
“The one on Second Ave.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling excited that he was so close to my apartment.
“Can I come over? I need to see you. Please?” he said, sounding a little bit drunk. Maybe a lot drunk.
My mind ticked through the calculations—the risk of getting busted versus the considerable reward of seeing him—but decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
“Aw, c’mon. Why not?”
“Because it’s late.”
“It’s not that late.”
“Still. It’ll look like a booty call,” I said.
“That’s ridiculous. You’re my girlfriend,” he said. “It’s not a booty call.”
I sighed, thinking that was easy for him to say when he wasn’t the one getting called a whore.
We talked in circles for a few seconds before I said, “Look, Joe. If you were photographed coming to my place at this hour, exactly no one would construe that as you missing your girlfriend.”
He sighed, then said, “Okay. Well, can I come see you in the morning? Can we hang out for a little while?”
“I really can’t,” I said. “I have to be at work early.”
“What about after work?”
“Maybe. I just don’t know.”
He hesitated, then said, “Cate, what’s going on here? If we’re going to be together, we have to actually be together.”
“I know….”
“So, what’s the deal? Are you trying to break up with me? Already?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Ouch.”
“I’m just kidding,” I said with a laugh. “But the other day really shook me. And right now I just want to hunker down and avoid some slimeball photographer chasing me down the street calling me a whore.”
“Oh, Cate. Shit,” Joe said. “He called you that?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He did.”
“Okay. Look. This is what I was trying to tell you…” he said, suddenly sounding sober—and very serious. “This is why we need to step out and establish ourselves as a real couple. The sneaking around is backfiring. We have nothing to hide.”
“What do you mean ‘step out’? What does that entail?”
“Well. It could be any number of things. We could go to an event together. Do the whole red-carpet drill. Pose and smile, arm in arm.”
“I don’t know about an event,” I said, imagining all the conversations I’d have to have with haughty philanthropist types.
“Okay. We can just go out to dinner…the two of us…and tip off a photographer as to where we are.”
“You mean—cooperate with the paparazzi?” I said, the mere thought filling me with disgust.
“Yeah. But it would be on our terms.”
“How do we do that?”
“Well…One of the guys—Eduardo’s his name—has been following me for years…. But he’s less offensive than the others…. I know he’d do it for us…. Then we can plant an official statement—”
“An official statement?” I said, my heart skipping a beat. “What do you mean?”
“You know…something like ‘A source close to Joe Kingsley confirms that the two have been in an exclusive relationship for several months now.’ That type of thing…which will run alongside our photo.”
“Have you done that before?” I said, thinking of Margaret—and the girls before her.
“No.”
“Then why are you doing it now?”
“Because I wanna protect you.”
“Do I need more protection than the others?” I asked, thinking that there was no way anyone had name-called Margaret—a Harvard-educated blue blood with a bob.
“No,” Joe said. “You’re actually tougher than any girl I’ve ever been with.”
“So why, then?” I pressed.
“Because,” Joe said, “I’m crazy about you, Cate. And I want this to work. More than anything. And if this will help us be together, I want to do it. That’s why.”
It was so hard to believe what he was telling me, but, somehow, I did.
—
That Friday evening, after agonizing about what to wear to dinner, I walked out of my apartment wearing a little black Yohji Yamamoto dress, black slingbacks, and red lipstick. It had been a full week since I’d seen Joe’s face, and my heart skipped a beat when I saw him smiling at me through the backseat window of a shiny black town car.
I quickly opened the door before he could get out and do it for me, sliding in beside him. “Hey,” I said, feeling oddly shy.
“Hi, there,” he said in a low voice. “You look fantastic.”
“You do, too,” I said, noticing he was wearing the same Wilbur ensemble he’d worn in Paris.
We stared at each other for a few more seconds before Joe turned to tell the driver we were all set.
As we pulled away from the curb, I asked him where we were going, as he’d wanted it to be a surprise.
“Aureole,” he said. “I wanted to take you somewhere a bit more imaginative…but it was tough to get a reservation on such late notice.”
“You had trouble getting a reservation?” I said. “That seems unlikely.”
“I didn’t use my own name, dippy.”
I laughed, then said, “So. What name did you use?”
“Myles Savage.”
I laughed and said, “How’d you come up with that?”
“It’s a guy I prosecuted,” he said. “Who I liked a lot.”
“But you prosecuted him anyway?”
“Had to. But I may or may not have fumbled in my closing argument,” he said with a wink.
I smiled. Joe had previously confided that he sometimes blew a case on purpose when he didn’t think justice was exactly being served.
“So how do you feel?” he asked.
“A little nervous,” I said. “But happy.”
“Good. Me too,” Joe said, grinning, before leaning over and giving me a light kiss on the cheek.
A few minutes later, we turned onto Sixty-first Street. Joe finally let go of my hand as we pulled up to the restaurant. I’d been there once before, back in my Calvin Klein days, and I winced remembering how I’d embarrassed myself by eating the fuzzy-hair layer of the artichoke heart. I’d come a very long way since then, but I still didn’t belong here with Joe. I pushed the thought out of my head as the driver started to get out of the car.
“It’s okay, man,” Joe said. “Stay put. I got this.”
“Are you sure, Mr. Kingsley?” the driver said.
Joe said he was sure, then pointed out my window to a man smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk just a few doors down from the restaurant. “There he is,” Joe said. “My guy. Eduardo.”
I nodded, my stomach churning, then checked my lipstick in my compact. It looked fine, but I touched it up anyway, stalling.
“You ready?” he said.
I nodded.
Joe smiled and gave me a thumbs-up before getting out of the car on the street side, then slowly circling around to my door, giving Eduardo time to get in position. The second he opened my door, the car was bathed in camera flashes. As Joe reached down for my hand, I gave it to him, stepping as elegantly as I could out of the car and onto the curb, which is always tough to do in a dress and heels, especially while being blinded.
The next few seconds were, as much as I hate to admit it, a bit of an adrenaline rush—so different from the last time I’d been photographed on the street. This time, it felt more like modeling. Plus, I was ready, and I was with my boyfriend, who was always doing chivalrous things, like putting his hand on my back, guiding me toward the front door of the restaurant, murmuring for me to watch my step. I still didn’t believe in fairy tales—or that this story was going to have a happy ending. But in that moment, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit like Cinderella.
Right as we got to the door, Joe paused, his hand still on my back, then turned to look at me and smile. I don’t think he was staging a final shot. It seemed more like he wanted to reassure me that we’d made it through the gauntlet. In any case, I smiled back at him as the camera flashed one more time.
It would be the image we chose the next day, in a secret meeting with Eduardo right before he sold exclusive rights to People magazine for two hundred thousand dollars. He gave us half, which Joe and I donated to the Kingsley Foundation. It boggled my mind that anyone would pay that much money for one photograph. But what really blew my mind was everything that came after the issue hit the stands.