Fairy Tale Interrupted (6 page)

Although mostly freaks wrote to John, I think he got more letters than Santa Claus. At first, I’d just collect them and leave them in a carton on his desk. But one afternoon, I peeked into his office to see if he wanted something from the deli and found
him opening an envelope with his engraved letter opener, a considerable stack untouched before him. Realizing how much time his mail consumed, I took on the task myself, for which John was wordlessly thankful.

I had to sift through mountains of Valentines and Christmas cards, photos and requests for autographs, packages and paranoid delusions, before arriving at his charity invitations, bills, and business correspondence. Imagining dark and lonely apartments where the writers furiously scribbled their mad thoughts, I felt sad for these people.

Early on, one particularly insane-looking missive landed on my desk. The address was written in tiny, precise capital letters on a nondescript white business envelope. The letter rambled on about homosexuality and other topics that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And the stationery felt sticky to the touch. I gagged and pushed the letter aside.

Later that day, John saw the empty envelope on my desk and smiled. “Ah, Robert,” he said.

“Do you know him?”

“Sort of.”

Hearing that he knew the guy, I was relieved I hadn’t made fun of the crazy letter. Maybe he had an eccentric friend in a mental institution. Who knows?

“He’s been writing to me since I was at Brown,” John said. “He’s nothing if not resourceful.”

“Phew. I thought you were going to say he was your long-lost friend.”

John looked at the letter for a beat before turning back to me.

“No,” he said. “But if you’re nice, I’ll fix you up with him.”

It wasn’t just weirdos who reached out to John. Known for his sense of obligation to give back, he received many solicitations to lend his name to charitable causes. He couldn’t respond to all or even most of the requests. But reading a particularly confident and upbeat letter (along with the cutest photo ever) from a ten-year-old boy about how much he loved his five-year-old brother, who had Down syndrome, I felt I had to do something for this kid. He was collecting business cards from famous people to raise money for his brother’s school. “You would love my brother, too, if you ever met him,” he wrote. After looking at that photo for what seemed like forever, I went into John’s office and said, “You know I never ask, but I can’t put this request down.” After reviewing it, John said to leave it with him and he’d “figure something out.” Not only did John send a business card and buy an ad in the program but he also wrote a personal letter to each of the brothers.

John was generous, but he wasn’t nuts. He 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, because
I 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 tightly articulating my name. Stepping into his office, I realized it was worse than I’d feared. John was behind his desk, white-knuckling the paper. He was so mad that I tried a preemptive self-effacing remark to avoid getting chewed out.

“I’m so humiliated,” I said.

He wasn’t having any of it. “How do you think
I
feel? Like people don’t think I’m dumb enough already.”

I swore to him and to myself it would be the last time I was so careless.

But being a decent assistant isn’t just about making your boss look good. I had to understand John’s motivations and aspirations so that I could act on his behalf without embarrassing either of us. As with any relationship, figuring him out took time—and my screwups sometimes offered the best insight into the real John.

When John asked me to make a lunch reservation for two at La Grenouille, the legendary French eatery, I made the rare mistake of completely forgetting to call. He was planning to ask Marie-Josée Kravis, the glamorous economist wife of the billionaire financier Henry Kravis, to join him on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization that fights poverty in New York City. John knew the elegant philanthropist would feel at home at the upscale restaurant. However, when they entered the dining room, the maitre d’ had no reservation listed for John Kennedy.

John called the office from a pay phone (this was before cell phones) and lit into me.

“They don’t have my name down. There’s no reservation,” he yelled. “What am I supposed to do, take her to Hamburger Harry’s?”

I knew I’d messed up, but John’s anger surprised me. He was always so laid-back. Had I misread him? Was he really an entitled asshole? I don’t know if I was caught off guard or simply scared by his fury, but either way, I lied to him.

“I-I don’t know what happened,” I stammered. “I made the
reservation. Even if they don’t have your name, won’t they just seat you anyway?”

I mean, what restaurant couldn’t find space for John Fucking Kennedy Jr.? Most places would bring a carpenter in to build a table just to have him sit in their restaurant.

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t just waltz into La Grenouille without a reservation,” he said.

As soon as John slammed the phone down, I called the restaurant in tears and explained to some random French guy that I had forgotten to make the reservation, and then I pleaded with him to seat my boss.

“It eez no problem,” he said when I finally took a breath. “They are already seated.”

When John returned from lunch, I was petrified. I’d spent the past few hours organizing files to the point of hysteria. But he just flopped down in a chair, giving me his best puppy-dog eyes, which, as you can imagine, were pretty good, and said, “I’m sorry, Rosie. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I was just embarrassed in front of Mrs. Kravis. I didn’t want her to think I’m an arrogant prick who expects special treatment whenever he walks in the door. It’s just disrespectful, you know?”

I appreciated John explaining why he was upset, but I didn’t quite follow why he was apologizing.

“They cleared the whole thing up at the restaurant,” he said.

“They cleared
what
up?” I asked nervously.

“The maitre d’ said there was a mix-up because a new person was managing the reservations. He brought the book over and showed me that my name was put in for next week.”

I didn’t contradict the maitre d’s story, though I was beyond
grateful to him for covering my ass. I understood why John had been so angry. Unlike some celebrities, he didn’t need to feed his ego by aggrandizing his image. He didn’t throw his weight around to validate his existence; he didn’t have to. There was not one person alive who was more famous than John F. Kennedy Jr. If the hottest movie star in the world was someplace and John showed up, the star would immediately turn into wallpaper. John worked to put people at ease—making reservations, writing thank-you notes, always following the proper protocol. He wanted to do things the right way, and so did I.

As soon as John left my office, I picked up the phone to find out the name of the coolest maitre d’ in the world and send him the biggest bouquet of flowers I could afford. I was learning some manners of my own.

While I was busy learning manners from the master and fending off lunatics, John and Michael continued courting investors for the magazine. We could have carpeted the office floor with rejection letters—all
very
sincere in their regret, mind you, but rejections nonetheless. And so we were psyched when Hachette Filipacchi, the media company behind magazines such as
Elle
and
Car and Driver,
called to request a second meeting. After taking a call from a representative for David Pecker, the CEO, who had said they were interested in making a deal, John hung up with a combination of shock and sheer relief on his face.

“Wow. This might be it,” he said.

The months of knocking on people’s doors asking for money had taken a toll on John and Michael, two rich guys not used to going around town with their hats in their hands. All the
skepticism and doubt brought on by rejection finally gave way to the possibility that their wacky magazine idea might actually change the world—and I would be part of it.

Unless . . . that’s when a terrible thought and very real possibility dawned on me:
What if John and Michael don’t take me with them to Hachette?
We’d never discussed the scope of my job, neither its duties nor its timeline. Maybe, once they got the magazine up and running, they planned on dumping me for someone with more experience or a better education.
What do they need
me
for? Why wouldn’t they want someone more corporate, with some magazine experience?
I thought. The feeling crystallized when John and Michael said they were heading out for a celebratory drink and a strategy meeting.

On my way home, I walked through the small park near the office to clear my head, but even the perfect fall weather couldn’t dispel my anxiety. By the time I opened the door to my apartment, I was in a total funk. I was convinced that I was back at square one; only now when I revised my résumé I’d have to put the title of assistant down as my current position instead of publicist. The white walls of my apartment had never felt smaller.

I had to talk to someone about my situation. The trouble was, not many people knew the identity of my current employer—except for Frank and my family, and Frank wasn’t exactly a model career counselor. John hadn’t asked me to, but I’d kept my role as his assistant secret from most people. I didn’t want random friends asking me for autographed photos or out-of-the-way favors. More important, I was nervous about inadvertently leaking secret information to the wrong person.
So I erred on the paranoid side when it came to concealing my job, telling my friends that I was working for a new PR firm.

Once while talking to a guy I wanted to impress, I bragged that I worked for a magazine.

“Oh, which one?” he asked.

I panicked then and tried to dodge the question. “It’s not one you’ve ever heard of,” I replied dismissively.

“Try me.”

I racked my brain. “
The Congressional Research Tribune
.”

“No, I’ve never heard of that,” he said slowly. “Sounds technical.”