So Pretty It Hurts

“I keep coming back to the eating disorder angle. There’s definitely a fatality rate connected with that. Your heart can give out from the strain.”

“Keep me posted twenty-four/seven, okay? You’ll write the main story. When the issue hits Thursday, I want you to do most of the TV for this. We could get you on sooner, but I want to sell as many copies as possible, and that means waiting for the right moment. The fact that you were at the scene is perfect. Everybody’s going to be eating their hearts out.”

I hoped so. From what I’d been hearing, sales had been sluggish this year, and it would be nice to see a boost.

As soon as I was back in my cube, I wrote an update for the Web site and then typed up a timeline of the weekend. Over the next few days it would just be too easy to lose track of the sequence of events. I met with the art department after that and reviewed the layout they were putting together for the story, and I also touched base with one of the writers working on the sidebar about Devon’s life—just to make sure our stories didn’t overlap in any way.

Next it was time to focus on writing my piece for the magazine. Back at Scott’s, I’d e-mailed one of the interns and asked her to pull together everything Buzz had done on Devon in the past. A stack of magazines, with colored Post-its poking out from the pages, had been left on the floor by my desk.

As I thumbed through the past issues, I soon saw that about 80 percent of the coverage of Devon was devoted to her fashion acumen. Buzz is notorious for its weekly “Fashion Tragedies” spread, where celebs get slammed for the lame job they sometimes do getting dressed, but one person always gets singled out under the heading: “She Got It Right!” Not infrequently that person was Devon. She’d had a knack for putting together a totally hip look in a way that seemed completely effortless. Nothing was ever matchy-matchy, and though all the pieces appeared to have been plucked randomly from her closet, the final result was the embodiment of cool. She’d been a risk taker, too, and when major style trends were traced back, she was frequently at the epicenter. There was one shot of her from a while back in suspendered jean shorts and a black Amish-style hat. If I’d worn that outfit, people would have wondered if I was attempting to reprise the Harrison Ford role in Witness, but on Devon it was edgy and fab.

What was interesting to note was that though Devon had been model thin, there weren’t any shots that suggested an eating disorder. The problem must have reared its ugly head again only recently.

As for actual articles on her, there wasn’t much. Devon had kept a fairly low profile, and just as I’d known, she’d never agreed to interviews, so the press had little to play with. There was a flurry of stories a few years ago when she was arrested at Heathrow for carrying a small bag of pot. She’d ended up with a suspended sentence. And between February and August of this year there were about five or six photos of her and Tommy together— sucking face in the street, leaving clubs looking shit-faced. You know, the typical model-and-rocker-in-love shots.

But then a picture of Devon from an issue a year ago this past November suddenly snagged my attention. She was striding along the street in SoHo with her coat flopping open. Over her photo was a slug that asked, “Isn’t that a bump?”

I had to admit she did look pregnant—but I’d worked long enough at Buzz to know that things in photos weren’t always as they seemed. For instance, someone’s breasts could appear enlarged or their nose slimmed, but it was due to the angle of the camera, not plastic surgery. I rolled my chair over to Leo.

“See this photo,” I said, shoving the page in front of his face. “Can you get me other shots from that same day?”

“There are lots better shots for your story, you know. I mean, she was just shopping that day.”

“I don’t need it for the layout—I think it might be significant for another reason.”

“Yeah, okay. Give me a few minutes.”

While he searched, I left a message for one of the top eating disorder experts, whom I’d made a note of during my Internet search on Sunday. I also checked online for pieces that simply mentioned Devon. When she first burst on the scene eighteen years ago, she was referenced frequently, particularly in articles about pop culture. She was heralded for her haunting beauty but also criticized for propagating the heroin chic look. Initially she seemed just naturally scrawny, but about two years later, when she was eighteen, there were rumors of anorexia—and the photos seemed to back it up. But within a year or two, she seemed to have a handle on the problem.

“Here you go,” Leo said about ten minutes later, handing me a batch of photos he’d printed out.

There weren’t many shots from that day—apparently just one roving paparazzo had captured her during her SoHo shopping spree. But what was remarkable is that she looked pregnant in every single picture.

I wheeled my chair back over to Leo.

“Do me a favor, will you? Tell me if you think Devon Barr could possibly have been pregnant at this moment in time.”

“I’m a gay man,” Leo said. “I try not to think about anything that goes on down there in a woman.”

“I’m not asking you to take a Lamaze class with me, for God’s sake.”

He sighed and flicked his eyes over the photos.

“Well, I don’t think she looks so pregnant someone is going to get up and give her their seat on the subway —if Devon Barr ever even took a subway—but there does seem to be a noticeable protrusion there.”

Jessie, who’d just hung up the phone, slid her chair over and asked what was going on. After I explained, she took one of the photos from me and studied it.

“Maybe it’s just belly bloat—from PMS,” she said. “Some women really get a paunch there.”

“This is more than I can bear,” Leo moaned. “I feel like I’m in a Midol commercial.”

“You know who would know?” Jessie asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know.”

She meant the team who worked on Juice Bar, the hardcore gossip section in Buzz. Under Mona Hodges, the section had been particularly venomous, often running unattributable quotes. Nash had toned it down just a hair, but it could still be cruel. The whole magazine was filled with gossip, but this was the ugly rumor stuff. Let me put it this way: If you ended up on their radar and they determined that your life was worth covering, you were almost better off going into the Federal Witness Protection Program.

I’d already made one enemy on the Juice Bar team, so I decided to target another member of the squad, an unctuous, preppie guy named Thornwell Pratt, who had chatted me up a couple of times lately. I was never sure if he was being flirtatious or just thought I might have info he could use.

After grabbing a cup of coffee I popped over to the Juice Bar area. It was toward the back of the floor, far away from the bullpen, as if the work they did required grade-nine security clearance or gave off a toxic odor that needed to be contained as best as possible. I would have expected to find Thornwell with two phones to his ears, but he was just sitting at his desk staring off into space, with his elbows on the table and his too-small chin in his hands. I imagined a caption above his head: “The Day the Rumors Stopped.”

“Hi there,” I said as charmingly as possible, hoping to detract attention from the fact that with my matted, unwashed hair, I looked about as good as a yak.

“Well, don’t we have a big story this week,” Thornwell said, leaning way back in his chair. He had the prep thing going today—blue-and-white-striped shirt, sleeves rolled; khaki pants.

“Yeah, pretty incredible story, isn’t it? You never covered Devon much, right?”

“Not really. She was actually a bore for someone so self-absorbed. She never talked to the press, and she tended to date B-level people. There was that one little drug bust at Heathrow a few years back, but that blew over pretty quickly.”

“I was checking out some pictures of her from last November, and I noticed she looked pregnant in one. We even implied it might be a baby bump. Anything to that? I mean, could she have been pregnant at the time?”

He studied me with an amused, superior air and then shook his head slightly, as if my approach had involved a blunder of judgment on my part. I suddenly flashed on the scene in Silence of the Lambs in which Hannibal Lecter scolds Clarice for becoming too eager in the interview after doing so nicely at the start.