But Enough About Me by Jancee Dunn Read Free Book Online Page B

acting abilities on that day, because I stared back at him with the kind of unblinking worship that even the actress playing his medieval sweetheart couldn’t have reasonably conjured up.
    Then we jumped into a car to head for the Ivy, while Mel and his sturdy English driver joked around the whole way. At the restaurant, he was funny and affable and occasionally ate off of my plate. The food sharing went one step further after he ordered some spinach. As he talked, tiny pieces of spinach took to the air, gently mingling with my fish, like a garnish of chopped parsley. I didn’t mind.
    As we chatted away, a manager stole over and whispered discreetly into Gibson’s ear. It seemed that the paparazzi had been notified and were massing outside of the Ivy. As we got up to leave, Gibson instructed me to keep my head down. “Don’t smile or wave,” he said. “Don’t make eye contact. Just get into the car as quickly as you can.”
    When you see photographers jostle a celebrity, it seems exciting, but it’s actually disorienting and—when a lot of them have gathered—frightening. As we attempted to get to the car, hordes of hollering photographers blocked our way, flashbulbs firing. It was chaos. Head down. No smiling. Gibson grabbed my arm and propelled me decisively forward, in a very Braveheart manner.
    â€œMel!” they yelled in the tumult. “Who’s the girl?” I suddenly realized that they assumed that he was cheating on his wife, Robin, with me. Which, for a man who fended off strippers, had to be a little bit of an insult, let’s face it.
    â€œWho is she?” screamed one photographer. They surrounded me as I attempted to open the car door, one of them stomping on my foot as he got pushed. Gibson’s driver quickly forced the door open and shoved me inside. My heart was jumping as though I’d had a hit of crack. How did people get used to this? They pounded on the door of the car and chased us down the street as we pulled away.
    When I returned to my office in New York, there was a packet of pictures sent by a news agency waiting in our photo department labeled “Mel Gibson and an unknown woman.” I am smiling. I am making eye contact. I look as if I am atop a float in a parade.

4.
    If you were to look at my past jobs, you’d see there is scant evidence that my life’s work would involve running from photographers. You certainly can’t find any in the series of “character-building” jobs I was forced to get by my folks when I was a teenager. I was, of course, too timid to get a cool job—working at a record store or being the camp counselor all the kids looked up to. My sister Heather was far savvier, landing a coveted job at an English chocolate shop in the Short Hills Mall. “We can’t sell them if they’re damaged,” she would say when I would come to visit. Then, with a quick blow, she’d crush some cream-filleds. “Oops,” she’d say coolly, pushing the flattened blobs toward me. Heather, a sugar fiend, often got high on her own supply, and eventually the place went out of business. Coincidence? She also worked at the local cinema. The owner was some shadowy, little-seen figure from Newark, and the teenage manager was her best friend, Kerry. Heather recycled tickets to sell and pocketed the profits, and, as she did at the chocolate shop, hauled home bulging bags of candy, Sno-Caps and Reese’s peanut butter cups and Junior mints.
    Job interviews gave me crippling performance anxiety, so I took the kind of gigs for which you basically just have to show up. My hellish trifecta of summer posts began with Morey LaRue dry cleaners. While other kidswere out mowing lawns in the sunshine, I retreated into the airless chill of Morey LaRue, with its noxious odor of industrial chemicals and b.o.-scented oxford shirts. A small bonus was that in the summer, there were fewer customers, so I