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The press was ravenous when it came to Diana, from the moment she entered the life of Prince Charles until the night that she died. And though, in the end, they were partly responsible for her death, her relationship with them was more transactional than Diana’s most ardent worshippers would like to believe. She had learned that the paparazzi were both the best way to exact revenge on the royals by allowing them to photograph her when she was doing the work that did indeed matter to her—comforting the sick, lobbying against landmines—but also a way to invite them in, so to speak, after the divorce when she was gallivanting about town with new men and A-list celebrities. The press was her power.
So, I created two video montages of headlines and photographs, ending, of course, before the cataclysmic car accident, but including tabloid grabs of her and her lovers, including heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, and the infamous bathing suit pics of her on Dodi Fayed’s yacht. (How well did Diana understand the clout of the media? She herself had alerted the Sunday Mirror to have cameras at the ready when the yacht was off Corsica.) One montage scrolled behind me when I sang “Don’t Sleep in the Subway,” and one dotted a he-said/she-said routine I wrote for Nigel and me. Occasionally during the latter montage, when Nigel was presenting Charles’s side or the queen’s perspective, I would scan the faces of the people in the audience in the first or second row. Without fail, the headlines that would cause them to lean forward, their countenances intense, were not the ones of Diana consoling the dying and comforting the sick, but the ones of her caught by the paparazzi looking inconsolable or bereft, when her marriage was crumbling and the royal family saw the rift as but a crack in a wall to be spackled.
It will sound rather unsporting of me to say this—a bit of a sly boast, since I look like her—but she was always going to be tabloid fodder because she was winsome and lithe, even when the world around her was an incomprehensible thrum of sadness and despair.
* * *
After Artie died—suicide or murder, it didn’t matter—all discussion of a memorial service for Richie evaporated. Conversational dry ice. One moment, it was a date we were waiting for that we would pencil into our calendars, and then it was gone. No one, least of all me, ever broached the idea of a double funeral or double memorial service for both brothers. All of us at the BP and, I imagine, anyone who knew the pair was in a survival mode of sorts.
* * *
Futurium didn’t have an office building. It had a half of a bloody warehouse. It was on the outskirts of an executive park west of the strip off Highway 582. I’d passed it when I’d driven Betsy and Marisa to Summerlin and she’d pointed it out to me. It was a massive, unassuming block of concrete beside a bunch of four-story office buildings, clustered in a complex and surrounded by the usual Vegas array of motorcycle dealers, fast-food franchises, and liquor stores.
I looked at it now from the sky on a satellite map on my tablet, a club soda beside me in my cabana. It was August 31, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Diana’s death, and my two shows that night would be emotionally fraught. There would be weeping from the diehards. I zoomed in on the building, knowing my sister was inside it. Then I scrolled across the map to the structure where Marisa was starting school. Today was her first day.
And in the offices of the Buckingham Palace, Eddie was doing his best to keep the lights on—“business as usual”—and meeting with lawyers who represented the Morley estate and their real estate appraisers.
It was a big day for everyone, it seemed.
I ordered poolside crudités and hummus, because this make-believe princess who once in a great while purged never bothered to vomit celery and carrots. Then I texted Yevgeny, asking him where he was. I told him I missed him, and regretted the text the moment I sent it. It wasn’t because it was untrue, but rather because it was too honest. I feared roping him into the madness of my life and revealing how fragile my career really was or sharing too much of my sordid family history. But I thought if he had the time, I might give him a call and see where the conversation went. Perhaps I would be willing to bare more than I anticipated once I heard his voice.
* * *
I am not so cynical that shows on the anniversary of Diana’s death don’t leave me moved. The first year I was in the little BP showroom, my eyes filmed up in moments where they weren’t supposed to. I’m sure part of the reason I was wrecked was the fact I had a Vegas residency and people were coming to see the show. I understood the BP was not the MGM Grand, but there were tribute performers who would have killed for what I had. But a part of me also felt the pain of the remarkable woman’s death.
Because she was remarkable. It’s why people loved her then and love her still, and why generations before me were so devastated when she died so suddenly. So tragically.
It’s why so many of us—yes, I include myself—exploit her. I am not oblivious to what William or Harry or even Charles would feel if they ever saw my show, and the way I have fabricated a hologram and manipulated memory for my own purposes. What the prince said about love could also be said about truth: “Whatever ‘truth’ means.” Truth is open to interpretation. There is a cruelty, conscious or not, to the musicals and the TV series and the documentaries and the novels. There is a cruelty to what I do. After all, those people who knew and loved her are still alive. It’s not as if I am resurrecting Anne Boleyn.
But she’s irresistible: woman scorned wins big against the patriarchy—excuse me, royal family—and then dies in needless, heartbreaking fashion. It’s why I strive to be kind to her memory and always take her seriously as a human being.
It’s why I am given so many keepsakes every year on the thirty-first.
And the year that Betsy came west was especially fraught because it was the twenty-fifth anniversary. My dressing room was inundated with flowers and memorabilia. That night I sat alone for a long moment amidst it all, grieving. I thought of her sons and grandchildren, and I thought of the people whose lives she had touched, and tried not to delude myself into believing I was anything more than a conduit to the ethereal magic of the People’s Princess.
* * *
My Prince Charles—Nigel—and I went to the BP’s Tower of London pub after my second show, because I was knackered by the anniversary. Also, I like the vibe in the Tower, and I’d noticed that one of my favorite bartenders, Cassandra, was among the trio tending bar there that night. Half the time she didn’t bother to charge me.
We were both drinking gimlets, which was a tradition we’d shared since the first time he had joined me onstage. The gimlet is one of those classic gin drinks that expat Americans glom on to in London.
A beautiful bar is a beautiful thing, and the Tower was a beautiful bar. It was where I had brought Yevgeny for our first drink. I stared at the bottles of booze behind the bartenders, each row impeccable, each label a study in artistic design. Barware offers wonders in ritualistic and aesthetic artistry: the highball glasses, the martini glasses, all the different kinds of wineglasses and champagne flutes and brandy snifters. I considered whether I was wasting my time on uppers and downers and an occasional eating disorder: perhaps I should just become a full-on, no-holds-barred alcoholic and hang out in taverns and pubs.
“We had some possible buyers in the house tonight,” he said. “People interested in buying the BP.”
“Well, that is one fuck-all of a damp squib,” I said.
“That expression’s too arcane even for me, and I grew up in the UK. What in the world is a damp squib?”
“A squib is a bomb. A damp one doesn’t explode. Have you never heard that term?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. A little before my time.”
“How did you hear about the buyers? Who were they?”
“Possible buyers,” he answered. “Possible. Bud told me,” he added, referring to our security chief. “They weren’t international—they were all American, I gather—but their names sounded like a gathering of the UN General Assembly. Greek, Italian, Irish. Even Russian. A party of five. Four men and a woman.”
“What were their names?”
