Five Minutes of Fame

         I enjoyed fame.  Loved it.  It was only five minutes, OK, maybe five days, but it was a great high, even though it was a only a little fame.  

There were posters for my new book, Silverstone all over London and I'd been interviewed on TV and radio. Now the BigTime, International Bestselling Author was flying to New York from London's Heathrow Airport.   In a hectic, I’m-gonna-miss-my-plane-rush, I skidded to a stop.  The Heathrow Airport bookstore had a big display of Silverstone, with Formula One, Indy, wow, and Phoenix. All my books were up there with the top best sellers.  I snapped a couple of pics and ran for my plane.  

 By the time I landed, fame was over.

          Never mind.  The good parts of the books still feel good.  Here’s a short scene from Silverstone (aka Spin). A couple of real superstars who suffer from way too much fame, Forrest and Virgin have been doing a PR shoot at La Tour D'Argent,in Paris. Forrest bolts for his hotel, exhausted, grieving for his friend.  Virgin follows him into the taxi.

      The paparazzi ducked under the barriers and she had to push her way through the photographers holding their cameras high, lights popping.  And it was one of those shots, the one of her pushing through the crowd to get to me that the PR folks sold to the British Papers.  That was the shot that Panaguian said was pure genius.  She caught my arm and whispered in my ear.  "You are a real prick," she said.

    I told the driver the Crillon. Virgin rolled down the window. 

inside the Crillon

     "Don't get the wrong idea," she said, leaning out the window and waving to the crowd, the camera lights flashing like fireworks.  "I am not running after you like some little puppy."  She rolled the window up and sat back.  "I flashed on going to the show at Catafalque.  Where some stinko little snapshooter is going to catch me and this Coquille in a shot together and I am going to look like dead parrot next to her."

    "You look fine," I said.  In the semi darkness of the back of the taxi she looked fresh, beautiful, all eyes and mouth.

Virgin Lookalike

    "So how do you think I am going to look next to a 19 year old kid?  Sometimes these days I get so tired," she said rubbing her eyes. 

    Virgin sat back in the taxi seat, sulking as we crossed the river.  "You ever use any of that stuff?"  she said, looking out the window at a tourist boat, lit with candles gliding under the bridge.

    "What stuff?"

    "That Formula One stuff, dummy.  The stuff we're supposed to be pushing."

    "It's a trick," I said.  "I think they make it out of floorwax."

    "I got a bottle,"  she said, turning her head at the last minute.  "You want to see if it works?"