“Maybe it should gain more traction,” I said. “Feed the press. Give them something easy so they’ll stop going for what’s hard. This is it. If they want a scandal, it’s this one. Set up that meeting with Harper.”
“Better idea,” she said, smiling at the plan. Ruchi was a publicist first and foremost because she was an agent of chaos. She loved the frenzy. “She put her call in the papers. Let’s answer her back on a stage.”
Amos hummed. “Do it at the MTV party this weekend. I was going for ‘Heartbroken Sweetheart Hopeful for Happiness,’ but I’ll pull something else together. I’m thinking something that says: ‘Karma’s a Bitch, and So Am I.’”
———
So there I was, hair straight and slicked down my back, large opals studded through my ears to remind everyone thatIwas the successful one in this equation. The dress was a simple black shift, which was not my usual color—too harsh against my white-blond hair. But it pulled attention where it was needed—to the heels, curved and razor sharp, a hint of new-age absurdity and so difficult to walk in I suspected I’d be barefoot the moment I left the carpet.
There was a hint of the Diana revenge dress to it, and it was over the top in the way that would come to define Amos’s style—or rather, the style of Amos DuPont (his mother’s surname, apparently—he claimed it better encapsulated his brand). A style that was audacious and daring and said,Yes, we really did that.
And I was the face of it.
I wasn’t sure what the party was, some MTV thing that attempted to position itself as one of culture beyond music.
The carpet was chaos. Instead of reporters joining us in neatly organized lines with assigned times for each of us, they lined up behind the barricade of the photo drop and yelled their questions.
“Nadine! How are things going with your boyfriend?”
“Which one?” I tossed back, pivoting on one of those spearhead heels. “Oisín, or the guy I supposedly stole from that bitch Harper Moore?”
That’s all it took. Swearing was quite the escalation, especially to an American press who still counted “F-bombs” in their media. Everyone wanted to know who had caused it. Everyone wanted to know why.
From that moment, you couldn’t say one of our names without hearing the other within, nestled in its contours, echoing beneath every sound.
Harper had reached up to claw her way out of anonymity.
And I’d leaned in, grabbed her, and hauled.
A FATAL FEUD
Jasmine McKenna:It was probably one of the most iconic moments of the ’90s.
Amos DuPont:Those shoes. I dream of them.
Jasmine McKenna:I was a junior reporter at the time, and Heywood was up-and-coming but not yet the attention-grabbing phenomenon she became, so I was assigned the article. It was an opportunity for me as much for them—if I could turn Moore and Heywood from a spat to a legendary rivalry, it would bemyarticles making the front page. So I went digging.
Seated on a veranda looking over a Californian vineyard, Stephanie Cameron—actress, philanthropist, model, entrepreneur, fashion designer, and a dozen other titles that can most accurately be distilled into “heiress”—addresses the camera.
Stephanie Cameron:I had a few cameos onCity Girls, which is how I met Harper. She was new to town and our fathers knew each other, so you know, instant new bestie. That interview was a throwaway line that was taken way out of context. But Nadine was such a diva that one admission by an unknown actress turned into a storm. Harper never wanted any of this, but Nadine? I think we all know she’d do anything for attention.
A road lit by flashing cameras and pointed headlights, the crumpled hood of a black Mercedes, shattered glass and a trail of blood. More blood, on marble this time, the camera jostled as people rush about, finely dressed, a gala turned to chaos. Nadine Heywood, head ducked, shielded by her hands as she pushes through trails of paparazzi.
Amos DuPont:Please, they were both just as bad as each other, that’s the point. Nadine was unflappable until suddenly she wasn’t. I never saw anyone get to her like Harper did.
The screen splits. On one half: Nadine and Oisín hand in hand at theTrellispremiere. On the other, Harper on her own red carpet, a tattooed arm snaking around her waist.
Jasmine McKenna:It’s not the first time a relationship has fallen victim to their obsession with each other. That’s the legacy of all this: wreckage, havoc, and complete annihilation.
Kayla Alexander:Joel never stood a chance.
March 1996
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE OSCARS I WAS IN A CAR WITH Ruchi driving to Bel-Air. I’d moved to Santa Monica by then in what was only supposed to be a temporary rental—four bedrooms on a small plot of land that they’d stacked up high so that the roof terrace looked out across the ocean and shaded the pool that curved beneath. I bought it off my landlady the following year and have been there ever since.
Harper, on the other hand, seemed to move around a lot, so that as the years went on she always knew how to find me, while I traced her like an obsessive fan, savoring the hints of her like pinpricks on a map.
Traffic was awful, even for LA, and by the time we rolled in I was frozen from the intense air-conditioning that I now associated with California. I was tired, and I was pissed off before I’d even spoken to her.
