Life with My Sister Madonna (26 page)

I am sure that Madonna has prepared him in advance for being in the spotlight—the screaming, the shoving, the adulation surrounding her. But he is scared and out of his depth. I can also tell that she is rolling all over him, metaphorically speaking. And I find it symbolic that he lags behind her on the red carpet. He allows other people to get physically between him and Madonna and doesn't stand his ground. He's a decent guy, but I fear that in the end Madonna's insatiable need for attention is going to suck the life out of him.

She has now bought six apartments in the same New York building and joined them together. I design a spiral staircase, add a huge gym, a media room, an additional master suite, and a rose-marble steam room.

Her relationship with Carlos progresses. In January 1995 we spend a few days in London, where she is singing “Bedtime Story” at the British Music Awards, and I design the set and direct her performance. We build a grid; she stands on it; light, smoke, and air rise up; and her hair blows in the air. She now resembles an angel, soaring through the sky, and she is terrific.

Soon after, she signs to play Evita in Alan Parker's movie of the same name. I am delighted for her, as I know she has always dreamed of winning that role, a role I consider ideal for her.

I have a new boyfriend now, Kamil Salah, a lean and handsome young man of Tartar descent, a salesperson at Prada in Manhattan. For the next two years, we see each other sporadically. Like Carlos, he is really sweet, and Madonna likes him. But, just as she once observed, I need a man who is more his own man, and not overly compliant or obsequious. Kamil sets no boundaries, and I know that they are necessary for me if the relationship is to endure. In the end, the challenge isn't there, and we split, but remain good friends.

In mid-2006, I receive a call from Kamil. I know he is about to publish his book,
Celebrity Dogs
, and I am excited for him. When he calls, my first thought is that he is going to tell me about the plans for the party his publisher is giving for the book launch.

Instead, he tells me that he has colon cancer and that it has spread to his liver. I am in Miami and take the next plane to New York to go see him. He is clearly terminal, but I do my utmost to talk to him in the most positive terms about his prognosis. We spend two days together, then I have to fly back to Miami for work.

Two months later, he is dead, at age thirty-one. His book is published posthumously. I attend his funeral in Leesburg, Virginia. At his grave, I meet his grief-stricken parents. Standing by Kamil's grave, I can't help thinking about my mother, and some of my other great friends who died in their prime, but above all I think about Kamil, who never had the chance to live out his full potential.

 

I
N EARLY
1995, I spend a few months staying with Madonna at Castillo del Lago. We wake up one morning to find that a small, silk, red-and-blue Persian rug, worth around $5,000, is missing. I check the house and find that a door has been jimmied open.

I've told Madonna so many times that she needs security, but she has always ignored me. This morning's theft of the rug, however, has proved me right.

“Madonna, we've had a break-in, and someone has stolen the Persian rug. At least that's all they took, and nothing else. You really do need security,” I tell her firmly.

“No, we haven't had a break-in,” she says. “It was a ghost that took it.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, I'm serious.” And she is. “I keep hearing weird sounds at night. This house is haunted.”

I tell her she's crazy, that she needs security, but she keeps insisting that she doesn't. Her rationale is based partly on finances and partly on not wanting someone around her all the time. Unfortunately, it turns out that I was right.

 

O
N
A
PRIL
7, 1995, while I am in New York working on the apartment, Liz calls me and tells me that a stalker, an ex-burglar named Robert Dewey Hoskins, has been caught at Castillo del Lago. He is utterly obsessed with Madonna and, a few months before, hung around her gate, left her a letter saying, “I love you. You will be my wife for keeps,” and threatened her with certain death if she refused to marry him. This freaks Madonna out so much that she finally hires a security guard.

This time around, Hoskins jumped a security wall and was shot in the arm and pelvis by Madonna's newly hired security guard, Basil Stephens.

Fortunately, she wasn't at Castillo that day.

I call her immediately and ask her if she is okay.

She tells me she is, and I am vastly relieved.

I'm happy when she tells me that from now on she will have security 24-7.

 

T
HE CASE AGAINST
Hoskins comes to court, and to Madonna's horror and mine the judge decrees that Hoskins can remain in court when Madonna gives evidence against him. Her attorney, Nicholas DeWitt, has done his best to have Hoskins expelled from the court while Madonna gives evidence because, in his words, “Mr. Hoskins really wants one thing in this case more than anything else. He wants to see the fear he has instilled in her.”

I agree, but after Hoskins's attorney, John Myers, claims that Hoskins has a constitutional right to face Madonna in court, asserting, “He's entitled to be in the courtroom, just like in any other case,” Madonna's proposal that she give her evidence on video is rejected out of hand.

The following day, she takes the witness stand against her stalker. I feel really bad for her. She looks justifiably tense and nervous, but is determined not to betray her fear to the loathsome Hoskins, and I am thankful that she succeeds.

“I feel sick to my stomach. I feel incredibly distressed that the man who threatened my life is sitting across from me and has somehow made his fantasies come true. I'm sitting in front of him and that's what he wants,” she says, and wisely closes her eyes so she doesn't have to meet Hoskins's gaze.

In court, where Hoskins is charged with one count of stalking, three of making terrorist threats, and one of assault, Basil Stephens testifies that he has seen many people attempt to scale Castillo del Lago and come face-to-face with Madonna, but that Hoskins was different.

According to Basil Stephens, Hoskins was determined, fearless, and refused to leave the property. Evidence is put forward that Robert Hoskins had come to Castillo del Lago three times in two months, and that he twice scaled the walls and sprinted through the grounds.

Fearless in the extreme, according to Basil Stephens, Hoskins had said that if Stephens didn't give Madonna his note, he would kill him. Then Hoskins went further and issued his chilling threat: “Tell Madonna I'll either marry her or kill her. I'll slit her throat from ear to ear.” The brave and resourceful Basil Stephens called the police and chased Hoskins off Castillo del Lago land, or so he thought.

But on May 29, Stephens was alone and on duty when Hoskins lunged at him and said he was going to kill him. “I drew my weapon and said if he didn't stop, I'd shoot. He lunged at me again and I fired. He didn't go down. He spun around and lunged at me again, and I fired again and he went down. I was upset. I thought I'd taken somebody's life.”

Hoskins is convicted on five counts of stalking, assault, and making terrorist threats. I am dismayed, however, when he is only jailed for five years. Fortunately, in September, Madonna's involvement in
Evita
means that she is sent to London and is out of harm's way, for a while.

She spends two months in London, recording the
Evita
sound track, and calls me from there. Before she leaves, in person and over the telephone, and while she is in London, we have various long conversations about her relationship with Carlos.

I know that she wants their relationship to last forever and ever and ever and has cried on his shoulder, complaining that she feels that most people are out to rip her off and wants him to understand. Once I become aware of what she's told him, it is clear to me that she is trawling for sympathy. For the absolute truth is that despite the longevity of her career, few people have tried to rip Madonna off. Her concept of being ripped off is checking a balance sheet and seeing that one of her employees is receiving a high salary, even though she originally green-lighted it. No matter how much people deserve it, she gets mad that they are making too much money off her and characterizes them as “ripping” her off.

I know that she has conveyed to Carlos her desire that he pull his weight in the relationship and has insinuated that he should contribute to it financially.

I think she is wrong. Carlos has no money, and he cannot financially sustain a relationship with her. But she isn't ready to confront the reality of their situation because she misses him so much. In fact, reading through the lines of what she's said, she is patently insecure, feels she can't live without Carlos, and has begged him to never stop loving her.

 

U
NTIL NOW
, M
ADONNA
and I have been extremely close, but with the advent of Carlos in her life, we are starting to drift apart. I am not that necessary to her anymore, except as a designer. Fortunately, I am so busy with my own life that I don't mind too much.

By now, I am doing business as C.G.C. Art + Design, and all the purchases I make on Madonna's behalf are paid through C.G.C. and then reimbursed by her, or through her official art adviser, Darlene Lutz.

One morning, I flick through the Sotheby's catalog and notice three nineteenth-century landscapes—nothing major, just decorative items costing a total of $65,000, but perfect for the Coconut Grove house.

I send the catalogs over to Madonna's apartment, with the paintings highlighted. She approves the purchase. Normally, for “small” purchases I would lay out the money myself on behalf of C.G.C., then when the items were delivered to her, Madonna would pay me back.

This time, though, I do have slight misgivings because recently, with her prior approval, I bought two antique French lamps, paid for them with C.G.C. funds, which were, of course, really mine, but when they were delivered to her, she informed me that she didn't like them after all. She flatly announced that I should just take them back to the store and get an immediate refund. After negotiating with the store, they did, indeed, take back the lamps and refund me the money, but the experience was dismaying.

Despite my misgivings, Madonna says she wants the landscapes and tells me to make an offer for them, so I go over to Sotheby's, bid $65,000 for them, and win. Then—with the bulk of my savings—I pay for them.

Invoice in hand, I take the paintings over to Madonna's apartment and present them to her.

“I don't want them,” she says.

I assume she must be joking. “You're fucking kidding me, Madonna.”

“I don't want them anymore and I'm not paying for them.”

As she is well aware, Sotheby's policy is that if paintings bought from them in auction are returned, they will, within a year, re-auction them. If a subsequent sale is then made, they will retain half the proceeds. But for her own reasons, Madonna is obviously pretending that she doesn't know that.

“I can't take them back, Madonna, Sotheby's has a no-return policy. They won't give me all my money back. If they do sell at auction, I'll only get half the money back—and I can't afford to lose the rest of it. You have to reimburse me for the landscapes.”

“I don't care. I don't want them.”

I feel as if I am going to throw up. “But, Madonna, I've spent my own money on them. I don't make the kind of money you make. I never have. I can't just drop sixty-five thousand dollars. That's all the money I have.”

“I don't care.”

“But you can't not care.”

“Sell them to somebody else. If they are worth that much money, sell them to somebody. I don't care what you do. I don't want the paintings. Anyway, I have to go to a meeting.”

She gets up and sweeps out of the room, leaving me standing there, clutching an invoice for $65,000, with three paintings, and feeling as if she has punched me hard in the stomach.

I sink back into the deep purple club chair I'd so lovingly selected for her living room, struggling with a combination of shock and sheer bafflement at what she is doing to me, what this means, and what she has become.

I reason that in her head, she must be telling herself that because I am her brother, I should cope with whatever hand she deals me. After all, I am not only her brother, but also her employee, even though we have nothing in writing. Still, I never dreamed that she would ever treat me with such a lack of caring, lack of respect.

Because I was her brother and because I was honest, no matter how famous she was, no matter how much money I was offered for my story, I never did interviews about her, never talked to people about her. I protected her, lied for her, fired people for her, was loyal to her, advised her on her career, supported her, apologized for her, and loved her.

Today, I suppose, is a milestone. The day on which I first experience the full force of my sister's dark side, her lack of concern for someone whom she purports to love.