Chapter 2: Marshall Mathers
The light globe kept flickering. Every thirty seconds or so it would almost go out and then turn back on. One would assume that in a hotel this expensive they’d get the lights fixed. Marshall glanced at the ceiling light as it flashed again. Irritated from his loss of concentration, he jumped up and flicked off the light, having only the modern desk lamp to illuminate his work. How anybody could write a rhyme with that thing going on and off every minute, he’d never know.
Scrawled on the hotel notepad in front of him were single rhymes. He’d just been writing down whatever came into his head but the paper was looking more like a war zone than a song. His messy handwriting was at all different angles, barely legible, and smudged from his left hand moving across the page as he wrote.
Lifting up his hand, he noticed the blue smudge marks all the way down his pinkie to his wrist, blending in with his gothic band tattoo. He smirked as he remembered when he woke up with it. He’d been drunk and couldn’t recall most of the night, but when he’d awoken in the morning, his wrist had been given an irremovable reminder of his adventures.
Giving up on the paper, he tore it off the pad and shoved it his pocket. Glancing up, he saw the panorama view of the Los Angeles city skyline. It never failed to take his breath away. He remembered at one of this houses he grew up in, his bedroom only had a tiny window and the view was of the neighbors rusty fence. He let out a sigh, thinking about how far he’d come, so quickly.
What’d been now? Three years since The Slim Shady LP was released… it was fucking crazy. Going from ‘rags to riches’ so to say. His last album had blown up big and there was no going back now. It was a little much on occasion. On one hand the fame was amazing, people calling your name, sold out shows, rolling in green. But he couldn’t go anywhere… not even to the store without being swamped by fans. And what it had done to his marriage… god… his fucking marriage. Swallowing, he cleared his mind, not even wanting to go there. It was too late at night to even start on that subject, if he wanted any sleep.
His ringtone made him jump, slamming his knees into the top of the desk. Pain sparked straight up his legs. Clamping his mouth shut, holding in his grunt, he picked up the phone and wheezed out a ‘hello’. He shuffled, carefully, out from under the desk, rubbing his knees with his free hand.
“Hey, man, guess who?” Paul’s voice was deep on the other end of the line.
“What’s up, Paul?” He said, voice still full of pain.
Paul just laughed, “You sound awful.”
“Hit my knee on the fucking desk,” Marshall bit.
“They never make those things high enough,” Paul muttered, “So I got an email back from another manager over in Miami. He’s a good mate of mine, says he has a girl for your little music video.”
“Yeah?”
“Her name is Riley Stuart,” Paul clarified. “She’s a model. So she’s flying over tomorrow. I talked to the video director today and he says he’ll be ready to start filming by Friday. Can you get your shit together by then?”
Marshall ran his hand over his blonde hair, “Yeah, it’s cool.”
“Great, I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t forget you’ve got that interview at 9.”
“All good.” He cut the connection. At least that was one thing they could cross off the list. Paul must have a lot of faith in this guy. Usually they’d have auditions or something first. It didn’t really matter too much. They’d decided to make the music video for ‘Criminal’ a few months back. Even though it had been a while since the song had been released, it would boost sales again and get his hype up even higher, as Paul put it.
Marshall sat back down at the godforsaken desk and eyed his computer. Paul had said she was a model… With curiosity burning inside of him, he pulled open his laptop and plugged her name into Google. In less than a second hundreds of photos of the same woman appeared before his screen.
He’d snuggled up to a few lightning bolts in his time but…. Riley Stuart was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. When Paul had said ‘model’ he’s expected something more along the lines of a stick-bug but she was absolutely stunning. She was tall and curvy, with long wavy blonde hair. Her tan only accentuated how fit she looked. But out of everything, her eyes struck him. They were an amazing blue, almost too blue to be real.
As he sat back in his chair, just staring at her picture, he had to wonder if she looked like this in real life. Modelling involved a lot of touch ups on Photoshop. Half of the photos of him out there, they’d removed his freckles and brightened his eye color. Maybe his expectations of her were too high. The longer he looked at the image the more it began to shift in his mind. Until eventually, he was convinced he was staring at his ex-wife, Kim.