Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper (32 page)

“It’s intense,” Meg said. “We were in a yurt—a big one—twenty-four/seven. They kept it quite dark, and we tried not to talk. During the day we practiced and fasted—just water and some sardines if we were desperate. At night we processed the guided motivation CDs that the Studio sells. Sometimes a crew of us was sent out to work on buildings. The isolation is interesting at first, and some people say it really helps them focus and renew their commitment to the Studio. But after a while I hated it. I lost track of time. And there wasn’t much opportunity to rest. I couldn’t focus in my practice. All I could think about was food and sleep. I was barely a person.”

“How long were you there?”

“Just over six months,” Meg said, “but there are some people who’ve been there for years.”

“So Buddy was right. It’s really true. People are held against their will. That’s completely illegal,” Aurora said. “We can shut them down.”

“Except it wasn’t against anyone’s will,” Meg said. “I wasn’t kept prisoner. I chose to be there. I had a lot to figure out. I didn’t belong in your world, and I couldn’t obey Geoff anymore. I didn’t know what to believe. I
wanted
to be there . . . until I didn’t. I was lucky Buddy’s guys showed up when I was on work detail. At that point I didn’t think I could stand another minute.”

“Is Patricia in Fernhills?” Buddy and the other active ex-members had made a big deal of her disappearance, but Geoff liked to say “She still pays her taxes. Guess she has a right to privacy like anyone else.”

“There was definitely no sign of Patty.” I thought of Patricia often now. She had, I thought, tried to warn me that there was a dark side to the world I was entering. Now that odd, stiff woman was lost to it. Patricia’s whereabouts were a mystery I would never solve.

Meg was very clear about one thing. If I was going to escape my marriage, we would have to blindside
everyone
—including Rob. Meg didn’t know what might happen if I threatened to leave.

“Lexy let her intentions slip, and look where she is now. We don’t want to find out what happens if you cross him. We know for sure that One Cell doesn’t want you to leave. That’s what Geoff’s meeting with Allison was all about.”

Meg spoke with conviction. She said that Cap, Leo, and I had to physically escape. Our departure had to be so secret, sudden, and public that neither Rob nor One Cell could stop me.

“Also,” Meg said, “if you do get out, don’t expect to keep working as an actress.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Aurora. “I’m sure the Studio is all-powerful, but Lizzie is a great actress, and she’s totally famous. She’ll always have work.”

“Not when ACE turns on her. They’ll squash your career, if that’s what Rob wants. Both ACE and One Cell will do anything for Rob. Once you move forward with this, you can’t change your mind.”

The Safe House
might never see the light of day. ACE had the power to kill it. Hell, movies fell out of production because an executive had a headache on the wrong day. “I’ll risk it,” I said. It wasn’t a hard decision. My boys were more important.

M
y father issued directives from Chicago, and Aurora, Meg, and I sprang into action, setting up the logistics of my exit. We had three months to get everything in order before the Venice Film Festival, where I would make my escape.

“Is all this necessary?” I asked the first time we met in the under-ventilated, windowless waxing room of a hair salon that was a Buddy White–approved safe zone. How real was the danger? It was just so hard to believe One Cell would hurt me or imprison me. That sort of scheme belonged in Rob’s movies or the books I loved. True danger was on the slopes of Everest, or in a lifeboat at the whim of the tides, or outside the steep walls of a merciless prison. It was impossible to see myself in relation to any of that. Me! Lizzie Pepper from Chicago! My biggest worries were supposed to be sunspots and bad hair days. I couldn’t see Rob, even with all his gloss and movie star perfection, taking part in such a plot. Rob would never let something happen to me. But . . . would he enter a state of denial and let someone else take care of the problem? Yes. And was I a problem? I was about to be.

“People get divorced all the time. Even high-profile people. Can’t I just call a lawyer and be done with it?”

“Look, you’re not going to be tied up and carried off to Fernhills,” Meg said, “but Rob has infinite resources. He can fight you as long and hard as he wants.” This was how he would control me—with our children. If he used them, he could make me do anything he wanted, and he knew it.

As per my father, I needed to leave all at once, with a place to stay, money in the bank, and witnesses to make sure the story was told right. My departure, like every other milestone Rob and I had passed, would be a press event. For once, I
wanted
my private affairs in the press. The world would know that I had left; they would see us together, mother and sons, landing in New York—our home. We would control the optics; we would be out of the Studio’s reach; and Rob would have to scramble to assemble a legal team. And so we launched Operation Free Lizzie.

I’d never paid much attention to the infrastructure around me. Now I made it my business. I sent an e-mail to Cap’s drum teacher, canceling a lesson because I “thought Cap was overscheduled.” But I deliberately left it on my calendar. Then, on the afternoon of the lesson, I innocently said to Jordan, “Doesn’t he have drum class? It’s on the calendar?”

“No, we decided to cancel, remember? You told me Cap’s overbooked.”

“Oh, of course. Thank you. I completely forgot.”

Jordan was reading my e-mail. Confirmed.

I called Aurora and asked her what she thought I should get Rob for his birthday. She made a few suggestions, one of which was golf clubs.

“Hey, that’s actually a really good idea. Rob keeps saying he wants to try golf.”

A couple of days later I asked Jake if he had any ideas for presents for Rob.

“I think I heard him mention wanting to try golf,” he said.

Rob often said he thought golf was a waste of perfectly good grass. Jake was monitoring my phone. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly a violation. It was Hollywood protocol that assistants listen in on calls. But Jake didn’t say, “I heard you mention golf clubs to Aurora.” Privacy was an illusion that we all upheld. By establishing a new barrier of technology around myself, I wasn’t just leaving Rob, I was reclaiming the personal space that most people take for granted.

Following my father’s instructions, Meg created what she called a “mirror” of my life. I had two phones and two computers—the new ones were in Aurora’s name. I lined up a second driver and a second nanny in New York—both of whom had been vetted by Secret Service standards and were hired by “Aurora Janevs.”

I started calling Lewis, my driver, directly, to establish a “new normal.” I also opened a bank account that our money manager didn’t have access to. I made up something about a discount at Barneys that came with new premium accounts and crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t raise a red flag.

There were light moments—Aurora showed up to one meeting in a “Run, Lizzie, Run” T-shirt—but for six weeks I had to act as if everything was normal, taking meetings, RSVPing yes for events I didn’t plan to attend, taking the boys to lunch at the Studio, all the while secretly receiving my father’s updates and instructions in coded e-mails on a disposable phone.

Eventually the boys and I moved to the Turtle Bay town house. Rob, away in Turkey, was unfazed. He liked New York, and had no idea the city was going to be the boys’ and my new, permanent home. My father contacted a friend from business school who was launching a new private school in Brooklyn. They registered both boys—under false names—for the
incoming kindergarten class. My father helped the school design a private back entrance, which my corporation, Pepper Mills, paid for. I wouldn’t even have a chance to tour the campus until after I’d broken free. Meg—who was now on my undercover payroll—rented an apartment in Brooklyn Heights. She scouted out an Episcopal church that I would join the minute I could. These footholds in New York would make up for my previous intermittent presence in the city. We hoped the court would forgive my short-term residency when they saw that I planned to stay.

It felt good to be far from the One Cell stronghold; far from the city that ACE practically owned—a limitless power network that would do anything for Rob. New York felt safer. It was an illusion, of course. No matter where I was, Rob had his allies. But it comforted me to think that after it all went down, if I succeeded, our New York life would distract Cap and Leo from what for them would be the biggest change—that if all went according to plan, I would win full custody. They would see even less of their father than they already did.

It was an awful summer. I barely slept. I lost weight, and my skin broke out in hives. At times, when I was with Aurora or Meg, the detective drama felt like a game, but every night, after the boys and I Skyped with Rob, I went to the bathroom and threw up, aching for my sons, whose perfect world I was about to tear apart.

A few times I almost got caught, and sometimes I lost track of who and what I was trying to escape. Our new driver/bodyguard, Max, was a friend of Aurora’s who wasn’t on the payroll, and who had signed his life away in confidentiality agreements. One Thursday, I decided to take advantage of Lewis’s day off to check out the apartment in Brooklyn Heights that was to be our new home. I threw on a blond wig that was attached to a baseball cap (it was higher quality than it sounds), but Cap refused
to wear either the Jedi mask or the fox mask I’d brought for him and Cap. (“Mama, it’s just not
appropriate
.” The kid was five going on sixty.) Leo ended up wearing them both.

By the time we got downtown, we were being followed. I don’t blame Max’s inexperience. I should have known it was an impossible idea. The potential repercussions of my recklessness were terrifying. If the paparazzi took pictures of us, someone on Rob’s team might notice the new car and new driver. It could blow everything. Rob. Geoff. Lewis. Jake. Liesl. Jordan. The list of people I didn’t trust was endless.

There must have been ten black SUVs surrounding us. We had to lose them. In a panic, I texted my father, who suggested I head someplace with security, where the paparazzi couldn’t follow.

Doctor’s office w underground garage? Office building? Hotel?

k
, I wrote back. Then I realized I knew exactly where to go. Rob’s project. The New York Studio. I’d never been, but I knew it was on West 17th Street, just off Union Square.

We nearly drove past the construction site—I was expecting a tall building like the emerald Studio in Beverly Hills—I only knew we were in the right place when I saw the Studio’s logo on the signage posted along the rent-a-fence. Max pulled up to the gate. The guard recognized me and waved us into an unfinished parking lot. The chain-link fence slammed shut behind us. It wasn’t exactly a fortress, but it would have to do. Max pulled over to the side, avoiding the piles of construction materials. An attendant walked toward the car, then, recognizing me, gave a slight wave and went back to his post. Even in New York the One Cell staff knew the drill: They never approached us unless beckoned. I prayed nobody would notice that Max wasn’t Lewis.

We were safe. And yet we were hiding in the belly of the beast. Max turned off the car, and, in the backseat with the boys, I hid my tears behind my sunglasses.

It was only that night, safe at home, after the boys were asleep, when I thought to wonder why the project that Rob had been working on so diligently throughout our marriage was still only an empty lot. The site had felt like a refuge because it was so unexpectedly quiet. Where was the hammering and drilling? Why weren’t there workers? I called Meg on my safe phone and asked her if she knew anything about the project.

“It was supposed to open last year,” Meg said, “but they’ve been saying it’s about to open for the last five years. And now the three Herman-Schmidt brothers, who gave nearly half a million dollars to the fund, are accusing Teddy Dillon of delaying the opening so she can keep raising money. They’ve raised a hundred million dollars for it already, more than enough for the building, and the Herman-Schmidts are suing her for not using their donation as promised.”

How was this possible? If there was one thing I’d never doubted about Rob, it was that he had a good heart. The New York expansion was the embodiment of that—his great project to change the lives of an underserved community. After all those business trips he’d made to check on the project’s progress . . . no wonder he hadn’t let me get involved. If this was true, that his efforts were an elaborate con, then I’d been played for a fool.