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90210Insider

Posted on July 25, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

To follow him by the clicking of his heels on the marble floor was to feel like one was in pursuit of a moody typewriter gone miraculously mobile. The way he was avoiding other people in the crowded lobby gave his footfalls a rhythmic resemblance to glitch-pop. Not that he cared, he was too focused on the prize to worry about the how he sounded getting there.

The prize was actually a ridiculously overpriced closet in an office building that housed all the names that were fit to print in the lower half of the Fortune 500 list. It was leased by a blogger with a taste for celebrity gossip and a talent for making the most innocuous comment read like an agreement to collect firewood by a woman’s peers in ancient Salem. More average people and industry watchers had offered up reviews of this one-person enterprise than they did of all the actors and musicians he belittled on a daily basis.

Phrases like ‘the definition of scathing,’ ‘as incisive as a scalpel about to wage battle on a life-threatening tumour,’ ‘definitive and unavoidable,’ ‘scours the universe for unputdownable smut,’ ‘the election is over, the blogosphere has a new king’ were used and reused to define the man who got all the dirt and fuelled all the speculation industry folk or housewives and teenagers could handle.

It was rumoured that the website made more money from advertising than most mainstream media offerings. The site had gone from offering textual speculation to the photographs that supported the speculation to actual video that made new room for fresh rumours.

The man with the irritated heels thought of himself as a defender of one woman’s honour. Though his findings weren’t particularly scientific it appeared, to him atleast, that the blogger took particular pleasure in ripping into his favourite star at every opportunity he got. From criticizing the clothes she wore to scoring leaked pictures of the men she slept with to deriding her roles in movies and bemoaning the songs she sang, the blog did everything short of suggesting that anyone who happened to see her parents in the street should slap them for not having had the good sense to use a condom.

It had taken him the kind of detective work that would have made his prey proud to finally figure out where the blog’s offices were. He was as surprised as most people would have been to find out that the little shit who made a fortune out of other people’s misery was actually housed in a reputable building surrounded by old and new money.

He had to duck, weave and dodge to simply access the correct elevator line. When he was finally in the elevator he found himself in the company of a senator, two businessmen and a supermodel. He had to exercise all of his limited willpower to avoid staring at the supermodel who was wearing just enough to avoid breaking any public decency laws. He was certain that if he were to pick up one of her tastefully done nude calendars he would not have a better sense of what she looked like naked than he did right then from stealing glances at her form in the elevator.

When they arrived at the twenty-seventh floor he was actually able to brush past the dream-girl-to-millions on his way out. She smiled as he passed her and if he didn’t already have the hugest crush on a celebrity whose honour he was there to defend he would have found himself falling for the supermodel’s charms. As it was, he found himself in need of ‘readjustment’ so that others wouldn’t know that he had been on a mind-blowing elevator ride. He found his bearings and strode off in the direction of number nine. When he found the door with no nameplate he rotated his shoulders forwards and backwards five times, cracked his neck and made himself really limber. Then he rang the doorbell and cocked his right fist.

It was a simple strategy really. Everybody knew that the blogger worked alone. Maybe he had photographers on his payroll or maybe he just used some sort of wire service for the pictures while scoring the video himself. Either way he worked alone so the fan expected his nemesis to open the door personally. When he did, the cocked fist would explode in his face, the fan would scream, “Leave Sara alone,” and run as fast as he could.

He heard the locks being disengaged and his body began to quiver in anticipation. The door swung open and he nearly let fly when he realised that he came pretty close to punching a woman.

Not just any woman. This was Sara, his Sara, standing before him in the flesh and frowning.

Her eyes flickered over his still cocked fist and said, “Who are you?”

He was so surprised he had no control over the tone he took, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I work here…Wait, who are you?”

His fist came down in slow motion and his whole arm felt like it was recovering from a strong bout of pins-and-needles. His incomprehension was making him say things aloud, “But this is the office of 90210Insider.”

Her eyes went wide, “What! How the hell do you know that?”

He met her eyes, “You’re 90210Insider?”

She opened the door wide and stuck her head out, checked to confirm that the corridor was empty before she hissed, “Will you please stop saying that!”

“But…why would you write all those horrible things about yourself?”

She grabbed his arm and pulled him inside, checked the corridor and shut the door behind her. She rested against the door and fixed him with a large-eyed earnest expression, “The site is called 90210Insider yeah? If I was never featured they would suspect it was me. This way I never have any secrets because I choose what to put out.”

“I don’t get it. Why?”

“It’s a career thing. I don’t have time to explain.”

He was clearly not processing any of it well. She took him in from head to toe and said, “Are you going to be able to keep your mouth shut about this?”

“I don’t know.”

“How about if you become the unknown guy Sara was spotted giving a blowjob to in some fancy office building?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

“Because the moment you came in here cameras started rolling. I’ll bet you don’t want your wife finding out about this and it can be our secret as long as you keep your mouth shut. This is strictly a one-time thing. Think of it as a reward for all your detective work.”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, “You really are Slutty Sara aren’t you?”

She knelt down and reached for the waistband on his trousers, “No darling. I’m just an actress, who also sings. Think of this as a private performance.”

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