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“No, it’s fine. I can be with you until five p.m., then I have an appointment I can’t miss, I’m afraid.”Otherwise, Mario Bianchi will ensure that is all the cover she’s going to get from me, ever.
“Great!” She seems delighted as she takes a delicate sip of her water.
“Will your friends be joining you? I’ll need to know who’s going to be around and when.”
Her faces falls. “No. They won’t.” She casts her eyes down so I can’t meet them, or attempt to read them. I don’t press further; it isn’t my business.
“What about your parents? I mean, your mother and your manager?”
“My mother will be staying in Miami until the first live show. My manager will probably come and go. I have no sight of his schedule so it’s difficult to know when he’ll be here.”
“Do you have an assistant?” I ask, surprised at how small her entourage is compared to the last time she showed up.
“Yes,” she nods. “Sort of. I share her with my manager, but most of the time I tend to look after myself.”
It strikes me as odd how alone this girl appears to be, despite having millions of fans around the world who would kill to be around her. And I don’t use the word ‘kill’ lightly. I’ve been in this business long enough to know to what exact lengths some people will go to get close to their idols.
“Have you eaten?” I ask, changing the subject. She unclenches one of her hands and reveals an empty protein bar wrapper. “That’s it?” No wonder she’s as slender as a rake.
“For now,” she grins. “I’d drop dead if this was all I lived on.”
I narrow my eyes, confused.
“Have you seen any of my performances?”
I refuse to feel mortified by the fact I haven’t. Knowing exactly what she does on stage does not make me a better bodyguard. “No.”
She doesn’t seem at all offended by this. “Well, I dance a lot. So I eat a lot. You don’t need to worry about that. All you need to worry about is whether or not someone’s coming up behind me with a machete.” She bursts into laughter, clearly having cracked herself up.
I allow myself a grin, then get straight back onto more professional footing. “It’s not machetes you need to be concerned about—they’re hard to miss. Have you ever had a problem with stalkers? Or have there been any threats I need to be aware of?”
She takes another sip of her water then closes her eyes in thought. When she doesn’t open them for a while, I ask if she’s ok. Her eyes ping open. “I’m counting.”
“That many, huh?” I shouldn’t be surprised. This kind of thing is par for the course for someone as high profile as Aurelia Bird.
“Since my first single,Break His Heart,came out five years ago, I’ve had forty-nine stalkers.”
“Forty-nine?” I feel like my eyes are popping out of my head.
“Ten a year, on average, some more threatening than others. They definitely got worse this last year though when I began to make changes to my image.”
“What kind of changes?” I ask, clueless.
“Changes that reflect the fact I’m no longer a kid, you know? I can’t continue to be this cutesy, do-good, girl-next-door ‘til I’m fifty. No one wants to see that,” she laughs again. “My lyrics are more mature now, I got a new choreographer, and a new stylist. Sometimes it’s just subtle things like, I don’t wear pigtails on stage anymore.” She flicks her hair about to make the point. “And my make-up is a little heavier.”
My mind is reeling trying to take in this whole other language I’ve never been interested in before. Coming of age, I guess it’s called. I came of age earlier than most, after Mom left. I didn’t have to put strategic thought into it like Aurelia is doing; it happened seemingly overnight. Then again, I wasn’t confronting a potential billion dollar impact on my income.
“So, anyway,” she continues, “Turns out some peoplereallydon’t like that. They want me to stay virginal forever.” She shakes her head. “And of course, they think because I’m in the public eye, they own me. Not all of them, just a select few.”
I want to say I can’t imagine what that must be like, but I don’t. I’ve worked with other celebrities who’ve struggled with stalkers and threats, but never in such high numbers. I don’t want her to think I’m not qualified to be her detail, so I say nothing and instead open my laptop to take down some notes.
“We managed to get restraining orders out on most of them, a couple are serving time,” she shrugs. “There are a couple I need to keep an eye on.”
“Like who? Have they made specific threats?” I ask, my fingers flying over the keys as I catalog every word.
“Not yet. At the moment, it’s mainly name-calling. I’m a whore, and a slut, of course.”
“What makes you say ‘not yet’?”
