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When Julian walked out of the police station with Saul, camera flashes burst across the entrance so violently that the world seemed to stutter.
“Mr.
Moretti, your mother is close friends with Faith Hill.
Did she know about your intimate relationship?”
“Did you destroy the equipment to protect Faith Hill’s reputation?”
“Were compromising photos of Faith taken?”
“Will she appear on the magazine’s cover?”
“How would you describe your mental state?”
“Mr.
Moretti, why are you refusing to answer?”
Questions surged at him like floodwater.
This time Julian said nothing.
He had a criminal case hanging over him, and Saul had already warned him to avoid answering questions whenever possible.
Even after he got into the car, the reporters refused to let go.
They crowded in front of the vehicle, pressed camera lenses to the glass, and kept snapping until the shutters sounded like rain on metal.
The standoff lasted nearly half an hour before the car finally pushed through the crowd.
“That was one hell of a welcome,” Julian said.
“That is how American media works,” Saul said, lighting a cigarette.
“If you accept the benefits of mass attention, you live with the harassment.
If they find your address, they will try to buy your trash.”
Then he leaned forward.
“Jimmy, take the reporters on a few laps around the city, then send Julian home.”
If media was this powerful, Julian needed allies inside it.
Unfortunately, the company’s business now put him in direct competition with the news giants behind many of those reporters.
Hadley was still too junior to help much in the short term.
Traditional media would not say a kind word about him unless forced.
Within a year, he could easily find himself trapped in the same public-opinion swamp that had swallowed Hugh Hefner.
The way out, however, was simple.
In 2007, traditional media had not yet shown real weakness.
Plenty of people still got the day’s news from papers.
Soon, that habit would change completely, and the real power over public attention would move toward technology platforms.
Julian had been an independent media creator in his previous life.
Social networks were not mysterious to him.
Out of habit, he reached for his phone, then remembered how early the year still was.
There was no App Store to open, no polished blue-bird app to download, and Twitter was still a rough web-and-SMS toy rather than the machine it would become.
For now, the phone went back into his pocket.
He checked his messages instead.
Danielle was waiting for him at home.
Hadley had called six times and sent four messages.
I contacted people at my network and softened some of the language.
At least our coverage should be closer to neutral.
I will reach out to reporters I know at a few other outlets and try to help contain this.
Julian, I am really worried about you.
Please tell me you are safe once you get out.
At three in the morning, Julian finally knocked on Danielle’s door.
She opened it herself.
Faith stood behind her.
Neither woman had slept.
“Thank God,” Danielle said, looking him over from head to toe.
She checked him the way she had checked him years earlier after he came home from a school fight.
“Julian, I am sorry,” Faith said, guilt plain in her voice.
“I should never have let things go that far in the truck.”
She had watched Julian grow up and had never felt guarded around him.
Add the things he had said, the future he had promised her, and the wine, and Faith had become far bolder than she normally was.
In daily life, she was still relatively conservative.
Once the door closed, all three of them fell into an awkward silence.
For Julian, the situation was absurd.
He had crossed a line with one of his adoptive mother’s closest friends.
For Faith, it was even worse.
Before he came back, she could almost avoid the reality of it.
Now, standing in the same room, she opened her mouth several times and found nothing useful to say.
Danielle, trapped between them, finally spoke first.
“Julian, from now on, you need to treat your Aunt Faith properly.
No, I suppose she is just Faith now.”
She looked as if she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
In their world, labels mattered less.
Famous people had survived messier arrangements.
“I have called her that for years,” Julian said, unable to resist.
“Why change now?”
Faith glared at him.
“Fine,” Julian said.
“Danielle can keep calling her little sister, and Faith can start calling Danielle Mom.
Everyone gets their own lane.”
Danielle’s face tightened as she fought not to laugh.
She quickly changed the subject.
“So when did this start?”
She still found the whole thing unbelievable.
Without those two reporters, who knew how long she would have been kept in the dark?
“That is a long story,” Julian said lightly.
He did not care much, but Faith was his mother’s friend.
She deserved some dignity.
“Then I will make the decision,” Danielle said suddenly.
“You two get married this year.
Faith, you have always wanted a child, haven’t you?”
“When the baby comes, I will be the godmother.”
As soon as she said it, Danielle realized the arrangement sounded wrong from almost every angle.
“Wait.
No.
That may not work.”
Julian looked at Faith.
Faith said nothing through the whole exchange.
If anything, she seemed to be letting the conversation carry her.
What had happened that afternoon had moved her more deeply than she wanted to admit.
She had not known about Julian’s record-company motive.
From where she stood, he had fought those men for her.
And as Julian had said at lunch, she had already wasted the first half of her life.
Why not cherish what was in front of her?
She could keep seeing him.
“It is late,” Danielle said, reading the room and choosing retreat.
“I am going to bed.
You two talk.”
She was clearly in a hurry to imagine grandchildren.
“Do not lock your door,” Faith said before turning away.
Julian went to his room.
He had barely lain down when the door opened quietly.
Faith had changed into a pale lavender silk nightgown.
She had showered and put on perfume, leaving a soft, deliberate scent in the room.
She sat on the edge of the bed and began talking as if to herself.
“Danielle is impossible.
I am so much older than you.
How could this possibly go anywhere?”
“I do not care,” Julian said.
“Do you?”
“I…”
Faith stopped.
“You are saying that as if I am older than you,” he added.
She pinched him through the blanket.
“I am thinking about you,” she said, flustered.
“And I am telling you I do not care.”
The blanket twisted between them.
“Julian,” Faith whispered later, her voice soft in a way he had not heard before.
“Would you give me a child?”
“One is not enough.
How about three?”
“Trying to kill me?
At my age, having a baby would take half my life…”
The rest of her sentence dissolved into a breath.
Near dawn, Julian turned on the lamp.
Faith lay with a pillow under her hips, knees bent, her body angled with deliberate seriousness.
“Is this yoga?” Julian asked, genuinely baffled.
“The internet says this position improves the odds,” Faith said, looking deeply satisfied.
She had put gravity to work with admirable dedication.
Julian laughed under his breath and left the room.
In Danielle’s study, a white flat-panel iMac from 2002 sat on the desk.
Danielle usually used it for professional music software.
Julian turned it on and opened Twitter’s website.
In plain terms, it was a public microblog.
The user base was still tiny, and the service would not even spin out as its own company until spring, but the shape of the future was already visible.
Julian registered an account under his own name and linked it from Playboy’s official website so readers could confirm it was authentic.
Then he refreshed the public timeline and watched the chatter roll past.
One repeated phrase was everywhere:
Julian Moretti photos.
‘What photos?’
He clicked through and discovered that someone had recorded his fight with the reporters from start to finish.
The problem was that he had not finished getting dressed when he jumped out of the truck.
The blurred area over the image was comically large.
Female users on the site had gone feral.
Each refresh brought more public replies.
Julian had not become famous yet, but the nickname Python was already starting to spread.
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Ready for more?
I hope this chapter drew you further into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.