Sunny Side Up

During the lunch interview I ask Ms Adams what she thinks of Amy Winehouse. She says she thinks she was a porn baby. I ask what this means and she tells me that a porn baby is a child conceived accidentally by its adult actress mother during filming. I suspect she doesn’t really mean it; it’s just something clever, albeit cruel to say, something fitting due to Amy’s drug habit and lady of the night-like appearance. I say she is the way she is because of her good for nothing husband, I say he ruined her, introduced her to this bottom feeder lifestyle, maybe because she was so talented and he couldn’t bear to see her succeed. Or he was just an asshole.

Ms Adams shrugs and takes another sip of her mint tea, staring listlessly out the cafe window. It’s a warm morning, the kind you always wished for when you were young, the kind you could rarely enjoy now.

I ponder the menu, in the mood for something sweet. She, Ms Adams, tells me of the time when she was 9, I think syrup waffle, vanilla ice cream. When she was 9 her name was Melissa Goodman. She lived in a nondescript neighbourhood somewhere near the Hollywood sign. She lived with both her parents who were married, to other people. Two dads and two moms. It was confusing when she was younger but as she grew up she learnt to hate them all the same. What chance did they honestly attempt to give her to come out right when most kids had only their actual parents and still turned out bad? Melissa Goodman sometimes thought she was lucky, blessed, she tells me, until she received an unwelcomed surprise in the form of an unrelated brother. When she was 9, she tells me, Devon, said unrelated brother decided he wanted to learn how to drive, without a teacher. He made Melissa open the garage door and keep a look out for any adult-type figures and give him fair warning if she saw one. Melissa stood dutifully in the driveway, wanting desperately to impress and befriend this monster who had invaded her home, her things, and her life. She hardly had an inkling of how he came to be in the first place but she knew she had to accept him and learn to live with him, even after he hit her over the head with a golf club giving her 15 stitches, even after he poured steaming water all down her leg.

As her head was turned to the right, squinting into the sun she heard the roar of the car’s engine, nervous, she turned quickly to the left to make sure no one was coming and before she had time to look straight ahead or run out of the way, Devon had reversed right over her.
She spent 5 weeks in hospital and not once did he come to visit, or apologize. Both sets of parents put the calamity down to silly children’s games gone wrong and not a word was said regarding it ever again. Well, at least not in the presence of Melissa Goodman, who left home approximately 7 years later.

I listen attentively as I try to picture Ms Adams as that little girl on the driveway. I imagine what her natural hair colour must have been, I suspect ash blonde but I can’t be sure. I try to imagine innocence in her eyes, hurt and disappointment are easier to place there.

I ask her about her upcoming wedding and she sighs, almost woefully. I say almost because she is about to wed an extremely wealthy man and I can tell she is more than ok with this happening. Her first husband, he was a pig of a spectacular kind; he died of a heart attack mid orgasm. Ms Adams happened to be overseas at the time, at a spa in Jamaica after citing exhaustion.

“Boy don’t try to front I (I) know just just what you are (are are)...”

Ms Adams begins to tap her fingers on the linoleum table surface, humming to the pop song playing softly on a speaker somewhere far away.

“You got me goin’...”

The yellow haired waitress walks by and I put my hand up self consciously to get her attention. She looks at me, arching her left eyebrow expectantly. I say I want the chocolate brownie, with chocolate ice cream. Oh, and another cup of coffee.

“You’re oh so charmin’...”

I’m looking forward to it she says. She had the dress custom made of course, its silky white. She says she thought of a different colour, not white, as she is hardly a virgin any longer, but she figured it just seems more wedding-y with a white dress and all the traditional trimmings. She had no desire to now, after 34 years, be different. That is the last thing she wanted, she said.

“But I can’t do it...”

I make a note in my inconspicuous notepad. What is your fiancé like, I ask. She shrugs that nonchalant shrug and half smiles half scowls.
From what I gather he’s a busy man, a late worker, something to do with finance. I’m half listening now.

“U womanizer...”

I wonder vaguely when this song will end as my brownie is placed in front of me together with a hot cup of caffeine. How long has it been playing?

How long have I been sitting in this cafe with Gabriella Adams, with all her world famousness and beauty?

The marriage soon to take place seems insignificant now as I sit across from her, seems uninteresting in comparison to her herself. How she got to where she is now is a question I feel I don’t need to ask, I feel I know the answer, it seems obvious. I resolve to just enjoy and savour my remaining moments with her, pushing aside tempting questions into her infamous personal life and exploits. She seems medicated, sedated, probably she is and I don’t care because like so many in the world around us I am just happy to be here in her light, sharing her air, watching her every move. She doesn’t look happy, in the real sense of the word, but that’s what we want, isn’t it?

This woman, this seeming antithesis of the almost tragic Amy Winehouse, stares out into the day and I wonder what she wonders.

What is the truth?