Excerpt from Celebrities in Disgrace

The Tonya moment has passed. Newsweek, Time, and People have moved on to less important cover stories and we are left with an inner emptiness too deep to be fathomed all at once.--Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe, February 1994

He stapled his face over hers. In the subzero dawn of Skate-Off Day--7 A.M. in Lowell, 1 P.M. in Lillehammer--the staples shot back at him, the kiosk's corkboard as ungiving as ice. So Daniel reflattened his Xeroxed flyer over Kathryn Byrne's professionally printed flyer. All around Lowell, all winter, he'd stapled up his own name: Daniel Sanders. Today, Daniel was posting new flyers that displayed only his own face. Starting here, outside Kathryn B.'s pinkly lit window. He formed a mittened fist. Kathryn Byrne: so sweet-seeming last night on the local-yokel news. Daniel Sanders hammered his fist onto his stolen stapler. It bit.

In the beginning, in fragile clippings his mother had saved, there was Patricia Hearst (my terrorist-heiress, Daniel thought fondly) whom he'd loved most as Tanya (never more lovely and wanton than in those blurred bank-camera shots: "Tanya" wielding her SLA assault rifle, her red wig becomingly tousled, her wide formerly blank eyes wild); then: a valentine-faced murderess for his own times, Pamela Smart (Pame, Daniel knew her nickname to be, as in pain plus fame), and now: sweet-seeming dark-haired Nancy Kerrigan. Another ice princess poised, like Patricia Hearst, to turn Tanya? Daniel Sanders lowered his staple gun with a jerk. Was it mere coincidence that Nancy Kerrigan's archenemy skating rival bore that same fateful name? Tanya, Tonya.

Something wooden thumped. Daniel pivoted in the crunchy virgin snow. Ghost clouds--shower steam?--curled out from Kathryn Byrne's suddenly cracked-open window. Daniel stuffed his stapler into his backpack and reached for another Hershey's Kiss. Frozen like bullets. Half-accidentally, he pulled out too his foil-wrapped condom. Which he slipped into his jeans' front pocket. For easier access, tonight. Seventeen years old, and this his first condom. For courage, he thumbed another chocolate under his muffler, into his mouth.

Hi, I'm Daniel Sanders and I'm "famous" too. Maybe you've seen my name?

Sucking hard, he retightened his muffler over his new John Lennon goatee. Which made him look eighteen, at lest. Her steam spiraled in the cold air. Daniel shivered, picturing Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding aspin in their sparkly Olympic Skater skirts. Did Kathryn Byrne, who hoped to play Nancy K. in an upcoming TV movie, possess that same superhuman energy?

Daniel intended to find out tonight. What Kathryn B. possessed, inside.

Impulsively, he lurched down her unshoveled sidewalk. Halfway to her window, he stumbled. Like, he remembered as he fell, Kathryn's spastic sister. A Home Movie clip the news had shown with Kathryn's interview. Daniel pulled himself up. Shin-deep in snow, he drew a big breath the way he did before Groups. As he trudged forward again, he listed to himself the Groups he had duped, making those earnest folding-chair circles believe he was one of them.

Teens with ADD; Children of Convicts; Teens with STD; Phone Sex Anonymous.

He slowed his steps, bit his Kiss. Her marbled-pink window only a few feet away now, and open. With a rush of chocolate saliva, Daniel recognized the pink as terry cloth. A mere towel and a pane of steamy (inside) frosty (outside) glass separated him from her. He hugged his numb arms, wide awake for once.

Most mornings he killed sneak-reading People in Star Market, seeking out celebrities brought low enough for even him in his unwashed underwear to look down upon. His longtime pastime; his specialty. Claudine Longet, Pete Rose, Michael Jackson, Woody Allen. Celebrities in disgrace.

In cold, all sounds carry. Through the killingly still air, Daniel heard--more clearly than Kathryn in her shower? --Kathryn Byrne's phone ring. One elongated buzz. Daniel swallowed his dwindling Kiss. At the second buzz, he staggered into his last snow-slowed steps. Clumsy and urgent like that sister of Kathryn's who wasn't--what Daniel's mother said about him--all there. Nobody, Daniel thought as he halted under Kathryn's iced-up lit-up window, home.

Copyright 2001 by Elizabeth Searle. All rights reserved.