The second helicopter moves closer, stirring up sand. The guests below laugh as they hold on to their hats and beach umbrellas. The blade’s wind causes several paparazzi to retreat. My foot slips off the chair and I catch myself on the railing. Three feet over is another balcony. Not far. I could jump and go through the next room, down the back stairs to the parking lot. Brett is probably already waiting in the car. I glance three floors down to where high surf pounds the rocky shore. I’ve done my own stunts, like the one in Time Thief, but there was a trampoline and thirty crew guys under me then. Nothing would cushion me now. Bloody, feathered remains of a seagull lie on the jagged rocks below.

“Come on down, doll!” Stubby fingers tug my sleeve. “You gonna’ hurt yourself.”

I pull away and step onto the balustrade. Gauging the distance between balconies, I gather up the folds of my white robe and crouch, focusing on my target landing spot with the concentration of a knife thrower. Already I feel free. I present the paparazzi with my middle finger.

“Geronimo!” I jump.

“Jaks! Look over here,” Nicole cries simultaneously.

I turn automatically to see my best friend, pointing at me. Smiling.

Her arm is draped over the Australian.

He shoots.

The flash goes off in my eyes. And not until my robe billows over my head like a broken parachute do I realize I have missed the mark.

I wish I could say my life played out before me in slow motion, or that I thought of Brett, or my family, or even about how Nicole had betrayed me. But my last thought before striking the rocks is, Thank God I’m wearing nice underwear.

MAIN TITLES

THE REAL TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY OF JACKIE GOLD

INT. HOSPITAL ROOM

4:52 A.M.

DAY 14

Today is my birthday. I was born right here at Sinai Memorial in the east wing exactly thirty years ago, on January 29, 1969. It was the same day that Mia Farrow, newly separated from Frank Sinatra and in India to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, punched out a photographer when he tried to snap her picture at a New Delhi hotel.

My room is shadowed in bluish-gray light. Where the curtains join, a strip of sun laser skims the foot of my bed. I am encased like a mummy up to my neck. The intravenous stands to which I am hooked reflect fragments of my bandaged head and body. Tubes root in and out of my arms and belly; irrigating, hydrating. Blood swishes into plastic bota bags dangling from my sides. An oxygen mask grips the flesh around my mouth and nose like the sucker of a tentacle.