Fairy Tale Interrupted by Rosemarie Terenzio Read Free Book Online

wasn’t about to invite his unhinged admirers in for a cup of coffee. Still, that didn’t stop many of them from showing up in person at the office, often traveling great distances to get there. As a result, I was concerned about John’s security. He didn’t seem to worry too much about his personal safety, but it was always in the back of my mind.

    It didn’t take a degree in psychology to distinguish the real threats from the annoying hangers-on—and it didn’t take long to identify the wackos. They wore hats decorated with flowers or carried journals fat with clippings. More often than not they were in the process of saving the world and absolutely had to speak with John. They were his long-lost brother, his best friend, even the mother of his children.

    One woman, who regularly sent index cards with food stamp covers attached to them, insisted he was the deadbeat dad of her kids and wanted to know where her child support was. “I will see you in court, John Kennedy,” she wrote on the backs of the cards, which arrived at the office at least three or four times a week.

    My job was to shield John from the onslaught of freaks, as we came to call them, so I didn’t bother him with these incidents, even though some made for pretty funny stories. Like the lady who brought a suitcase to the midtown offices we later moved into and unpacked it in the middle of the reception area, or the time the receptionist, Aramenta, called to tell me that John’s sister was at the front desk. I knew that couldn’t be right—Caroline of all people would never make an unscheduled visit to the office—but I still raced to reception.

    When I approached the front desk, Aramenta pointed to a heavyset woman in a stained turquoise sweat suit. As I got closer, I saw she was missing a tooth and had no laces in her sneakers. Aramenta, an elderly lady from the South and everybody’s surrogate grandmother, was sweet but not the best security buffer.

    “That’s not John’s sister, Aramenta,” I said.

    “I didn’t think so,” she replied, shaking her head. Like everything else I did for John, my role as his gatekeeper was never officially defined. It just happened naturally. If a particularly ardent fan was in the lobby, I’d pop my head into John’s office and tell him to make a few more phone calls before leaving for the day, or I’d call him at home to say he should maybe hit the gym or run an errand before coming into the office. I used that code, even though he knew what I was talking about, becauseI didn’t want him to feel like a freak himself. John downplayed his fame, and I was following his lead.

    My job didn’t come with a training manual, and relying on instinct occasionally steered me wrong. Once when John asked me to decline an invitation, I fibbed to the hostess that he couldn’t attend her event because he was going out of town for the weekend. That’s the excuse I always used when I wanted to get out of something—but then again, I wasn’t constantly followed by paparazzi. A huge half-page photo of John in the gossip section of the tabloids the following Monday caught me in my white lie. Whoops.

    Many eyes were constantly on him, scrutinizing his every move, whether out of outsized affection or bitter jealousy. So such mistakes made John look bad and me look like a fuckup. Since my actions directly reflected on him, I became more vigilant. There was no margin of error.

    I wish I had been more attentive while typing up a note for John to Mort Kondracke, the veteran journalist and executive editor of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call . I sent such letters out several times a day, so I didn’t think twice about it, until a few days later when I saw it reprinted in the New York Post . I had misspelled Kondracke’s name.

    Oh no, this is bad, I thought. Within minutes of the paper’s arrival, John called me into his office. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding when I heard John’s voice