The Moonstone Starlet

Chapter 5

When Elia walked into the locker room in Detroit the following Thursday she was greeted by loud cheers from most of the team. Adam went so far as to pick her up as he hugged her and spun her around. He said he had really missed her because none of the women in Finland were as beautiful as she was. She told him it made her really uncomfortable for him to do that when he wasn’t fully dressed

“Why didn’t you respond to any of my texts?” Versteeg asked with a huge grin on his face.
She had received several pictures of someone mooning the camera from Kris.
“How the hell does a person respond to that?”
“She doesn’t respond to my texts either Steeger,” Burish added.
“No girls ever respond to your texts Burish” Sharp joked.
“What did you do while we were gone?” Patrick asked innocently.
“Obviously she just cried continuously cause she missed us so much,”
“That’s actually true Kris, I have a picture of you under my pillow and I take it out and look at it and cry. That and watch the Notebook. Umm...I went to trivia at Vines on Thursday with some people, went to a Cubs game, played soccer on Sunday. Other than that, yeah, crying over Versteeg. I’d ask what you guys did in Helsinki, but I already got all your pics so…”

Bill the cameraman came in.

“Alright guys, I am going to just hang out in the background, you do your pregame thing, I’m not going to speak to you or anything,” she looked at Toews, “just sit over here and watch.”
“I’m going to be watching you too, cause I missed your beautiful face,”
“Burish stop talking.”

Elia put headphones on to listen for the audio the camera and the mics were picking up. It was actually pretty boring for a while. Sharp sat on the bench listening to music bouncing a tennis ball off the ground in front of him, sometimes he would throw it at Burish who always seemed to be ready for it. Madden meticulously re-laced his skates. Suddenly Duncan Keith came in and made a long loud wolf howl, which scared the shit out of Elia and nobody else even flinched. She noticed Versteeg, Hossa and Jordan Hendry were dressing right to left. Right sock on, then left. Right skate, then left skate. She felt a vibration in her pocket. It was a text from Jeremy.
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said in the voicemail and I just can’t accept it.”
What? she thought.
“It’s not up to you to accept or not, it already happened” she texted back. She looked over at Toews, who was sitting on the bench just staring straight ahead. Elia had been like that before big races. She would be chatty and goofing off up until an hour before a race and then she didn’t want to speak to anyone or say anything. Once everyone was dressed they went out to the ice to warm up.

Another text message.
“Being in a relationship means making decisions together”
“You are insane.”She typed back.

Elia walked out to the end of the tunnel and watched the crowds fill in to the area. Once warmups were over the guys got off the ice and the stadium went dark. Spotlights started swirling all over the stadium. The crowd went crazy. Elia couldn’t be on the bench during the game, so while the light show was going on she moved to a seat in the 3rd row. The light show lasted about five minutes total, and afterwards the anthems were sung. As soon as the puck dropped the Hawks went full intensity. She had seen some of the pre-season games, but they were nothing compared to this. Unlike a baseball game, every fan in the stadium was completely focused on what was happening in the game. There was not a dull moment in the game, and Elia was on the edge of her seat the whole time. Even though the Blackhawks lost, it was thrilling.

Two days later the Blackhawks played the Avalanche on home ice. Dustin Byfuglien and Tomas Kopecky had invited her to drive to the game with them. She got to Dustin’s house in Roscoe Village at 4:00 and they headed to Kopecky’s house. Instead of Tomas coming out, they went up to his place for a while. Buff and Kopecky wanted to stand around and chew tobacco before they left.
“That is so gross, you do that before every game?”
“Yeah, you want some?”
“No, no way.”
“You’ll like it!’ Kopecky insisted.
“I’m not getting fooled again with that stuff, I tried it once in when I worked at a camp in Missouri and it made me throw up so bad,”
“You won’t throw up this time then. Come on, we have to do this it’s a tradition, are you in or not?”
Elia, against her better judgement, gave in. It was horrible. More horrible than the first time because now she was mostly sober. The three of them stood silently in Kopecky’s kitchen chewing tobacco for a few minutes, then finally got into Buff’s car again and drove to the United Center.

It was a great game and eventually went into overtime.The Hawks won in a shootout when Toews, Kopecky, Versteeg and Ladd scored. Elia invited all the guys back to her condo for a party to celebrate.

Elia lived in a warehouse converted loft in the West Loop on Jackson. From the entryway door they walked down a short dark hallway that opened up into a large room of high ceilings, with a kitchen on the left, and the living room. Just to the right a ramp traced the wall and went up to walkway that ran above the kitchen. The long wall of the top floor condo was floor to ceiling windows opening onto a rooftop garden and looking east over the city. Kane set some pizzas they had picked up on the coffee table in between the couches and turned on the tv. Versteeg, Campbell, Seabs and Byfuglien started setting up the Nintendo controllers. Antti sat down in a leather arm chair. Elia went to the kitchen and started setting out plates and drinks.

Sharp and Toews had never seen Elia’s condo before and looked around. On the north wall was a fireplace. Atop the mantle sat four silver trophies, and above them a large framed photograph of a girl on a horse, arms outstretched in the wind, riding past the finish line of a horse race. The wall left of mantle was covered with photos of Elia and Amaryllis in the winner’s circle, Elia riding in other competitions, and various ribbons and trophies. “There is nothing here from her movies,” Toews remarked to Sharp. Toews walked over to the couch and sat down with the guys while Sharp walked to help Elia carry things out to the seating area.

“What was it like? When you won it all?” He asked her.
She thought for a moment.
“It was the most pure moment of happiness I’ve ever felt. I remember at the time thinking, I will remember this moment for the rest of my life. But now, when I think back on it, on that whole year, from the Breeder’s Cup juvenile, through the prep races and then the Triple Crown. It all seems like a dream. Sometimes I relive it in my dreams, and when I wake up, I wonder if it ever even happened at all. It is transient and endless all at the same time.”

Everyone had stopped to listen to her. There was a sadness and longing in her voice. Her eyes were staring down but she wasn’t looking at anything, her mind was far away. She spoke as if it were something she had lost long ago, and had given up trying to find it again. And then she was back, and she pushed a smile through.

“You’ll see, when you guys win it all in the spring.”

For the next hour everyone ate pizza and played video games. As the night went on more people showed up, some guys brought some girls, some girls brought some other girls, and soon it was a full blown party. Elia and Burish went out to get more alcohol and came back with a keg, a few bottles of Champagne, a bottle of vodka and a bottle of scotch. They spent the next half hour trying to hook up the keg to the tap under the counter in the kitchen. Kaner kept shouting that he only knew how to do keg stands.

Someone had turned on the tv again and E! News had started. Versteeg was on the couch with Campbell and a couple girls when a story about Elia came on. “Hey El, you’re on tv!” Kris yelled drunkenly.

“Are Elia Downs and Jeremy Renner in splitsville?” A clip of Elia and Jeremy at the Hurt Locker premiere played on screen. “Sources close to the couple say Elia flew to Boston last week where Jeremy is filming the Ben Affleck movie “The Town” in an attempt at a final reconciliation. Jeremy is tired of Elia’s inability to communicate and fear of intimacy a friend of the pair has told E!. Elia has famously stated many times that relationships are just not for her, and she prefers to ‘do her own thing’.
But wait, there’s more.”

A photograph appeared on screen of a brunette pushed up against a pinball machine with her legs wrapped around a young man wearing a backwards Bruins cap.

“Elia was seen partying in a bar Tuesday night with Ben, where a witness snapped this picture of Elia caught with a mystery man. Witnesses said it was definitely Elia and not actress Rebecca Hall who is also starring in the Town because Rebecca is almost six feet tall, taller than the guy in the photo, and that Elia did leave with the man out the back of the bar.”

There was a look of confusion on everyone’s face as the show went to commercial break.

“Wow that’s weird, I don’t know where people come up with this stuff,” Elia started to say.
“Were you in Boston this week?”
“No, of course not. This is probably something made up by Jeremy’s PR team because he doesn’t want everyone to know I dumped him.”

Elia looked around the room and her eyes landed on Kane. She looked down, crumbling under his stare, then back up at him. He gave her a “What the fuck?” look.

“Hey, you guys won tonight! Let’s get some champagne in here!” She shouted. Everyone was sufficiently distracted by celebrating the win with champagne. Elia downed the whole glass of Glenlivet scotch in her hand and walked into the kitchen where Burish was trying to open the champagne. His right arm was around a blonde girl in a tight blue dress, and he dropped the bottle on the counter. The second attempt worked better but the shaken bottle sprayed as it opened, all over Jonathan Toews.

“Ahh! Hey its cool, we probably have a lot of extra clothes in this place. Come upstairs I’ll find you something to change into.” Elia grabbed Toews by the arm and led him up the ramp.
“Unfortunately I think my guy friends are a bit shorter than you but it will work while we wash your stuff.”

At the top of the ramp straight ahead were a few steps, a small hallway and two doors. They took the door on the right which led to a fairly large guest bedroom. They walked to the closet which was surprisingly full.
“Was this your boyfriend’s closet?” he asked.
“No, Colin Farrell is one of my best friends, he stays here a lot when he comes into town. When I go to California I’ve got a room at his house. I just hate staying in hotels, you know? He won’t mind if you borrow something.”
“This is a pretty cool condo,” he said as he grabbed a pair of sweat pants and a tshirt.
“Yeah, it was the first expensive thing I bought, I was still in high school, I don’t know what I was doing really. I just wanted to get away from my parents. I barely stayed here the first several years. Do you want to see the coolest part?”
“Sure.”
“Ok after you change.”

Jonathan went into the attached bathroom to change, and afterwards they went across the hallway. First Elia stopped at a closet along the wall that housed a washer and dryer and threw Toews’ clothes in. At the bedroom door, Elia put her hand to a key pad next to the door and a lock clicked open. Inside was a huge bedroom with very little furniture, bare white walls and white washed floors. A large but plain, unmade bed was pushed up against the wall of windows. Below through the windows was the first floor roof garden. Next to the bed was a large desk with a computer and a couple monitors. There was a bucket with paint brushes in the corner next to a pile of canvasses. Some books were stacked up along the wall.

“So this is my room,” She said, walking around.
“And up here,” she led him to the right along a wall to a door in the corner, “Is my own private rooftop deck.” They went outside. It was smaller than the other deck, more intimate. On the right was a curtained gazebo with lounge furniture. A lot of trees and plants shielded the deck, with only a small section looking out to the city on the left.

They looked out over the skyline in silence for a few minutes.
“Why don’t you have any of your film awards in the apartment?” Jonathan asked, cautiously.
Elia looked at him, a little surprised by the question. The animosity between them had been a wall. He hadn’t even spoken a single word to her since the ice bath incident.
“I actually have the screenplay that one me Best Original Screenplay framed somewhere downstairs. I don’t know...I have the Oscars in a drawer in my desk actually. The Golden Globes and Spirit Awards and stuff are at my Mom’s house. I just...I never wanted this to be my life.”
“Why? You are so talented--”
“--I know, and I feel ashamed sometimes that I have this ‘gift’ everyone says and I don’t even care. Like I am so ungrateful when there are people that would want this so bad. If I could have kept riding, if I hadn’t...I wouldn’t be a movie star or anything. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, you don’t want to hear about this.”
“No its fine, I...I want to know,”
She hesitated.
“When my doctors first told me I shouldn’t ride anymore, I didn’t believe it was really serious. I thought I was well on my way to my comeback, and I had really bad headaches still, but I thought it was getting better. And then there were concussions...And then I didn’t care, because if I couldn’t ride, then what was the point. So I just kept doing it.” Her words were starting to slur a little, and Jonathan realized just how drunk she was, as her words poured out incoherently.
She paused. “But I changed my mind, and I had to start a new path...For a long time I was in the middle, and I couldn’t leave my past behind and I couldn’t accept this new life. I didn’t want people to see me as just a movie star. I didn’t want to be remembered, and I think that I thought I could stop it from happening if I just hid it all away. That as long as I didn’t let it take over I could still hold on to my dream, that it was still possible.”

He thought she might cry then, but she held it in.

“I’ve never told anyone that before. My head hurts. I think i’m going to throw up.”

She did. In the bathroom at least. He looked through her medicine cabinet for some tylenol to give her, but it was completely bare except for nyquil.

“El, do you have any Ibuprofen?”

She shook her head. “I don’t keep any pills. I can’t have them.” He helped her walk to her bed and made her drink some water before she laid down to sleep. He sat with her until she fell asleep.

Notes