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Tyler Stitch IV followed the middle-aged man down the motel corridor until he stopped at one of the doors, opened it, and turned on the lights. "Here she is," he announced.

Stitch peeked around the doorway before entering, and couldn’t believe what he was seeing, even though it was exactly what he was told he would see. It was her. She was lying there naked (but with a blanket over most of her), on a motel bed, tied spread-eagle and with a ball-gag in her mouth. Her infamously blue eyes right away locked onto the two men, and there was not a hint of fear in them. The tell-tale cloudiness that accompanied the disease was only barely discernible. If she struggled against her bonds, it was a slow, undulating test that moved down her body like a wave – a macabre but sensuous pantomime of slo-mo sex.

"That’s her," Stitch said, still surprised. 

"No shit," the middle-aged man said. "Look." He walked over to her and pulled back part of the blanket, revealing the small tattoo of a butterfly too close to her pubis to photograph and publish anywhere in the mainstream media. In fact, there had been some debate in the industry as to whether or not the tattoo was really there or just a publicity story. "You’re a fan, right? You know what this is." He pointed at it as if it had been painted there and was still wet.

"Yeah," Stitch said, nodding and looking closer. "That’s really her." 

There was the sound of a gunshot from outside. The middle-aged man looked toward the door quickly, then back at Stitch. "Another one," he said. "We better get a move on. There’s a mob of those things reported in this area. My boys and I want to get the hell out of here. Got the money?"

"Yeah, sure, but wait a minute," Stitch said. "Tell me how she got here? Then I’ll pay you and you can get out. Wait – you’re just going to leave her here?"

The middle-aged man shrugged. "Yeah," he said, like the question itself was stupid. "What else am I going to do with her? I’m not going to shoot her, for God’s sakes. I can’t. But I can’t just turn her loose, either. She’s not going to recover."

"Yeah, I guess you’re right," Stitch answered. "But tell me how she got here."

The middle-aged man sighed impatiently. "What’s it matter?" he said. Then he relented. "Okay, but then we have to finish," he said. "We didn’t do anything illegal, if that’s what you’re asking.  And mind you, if I was a crook or something it would have been very easy to just shoot you and take the money. No one’s around to interfere. That’s Route 1 out there, and I’ll bet you didn’t see any traffic at all coming down here, huh? Everyone’s gone. Cleared out. Understand?"

Stitch nodded.

"Okay," the man continued. "I’m her manager – or I was. Those guys outside: bodyguards. They’re my people. I’ve been trying to save her career for months through the drugs, the drinking, the vomiting, the weight gains, the assault and battery charges, the shoplifting charges, the pills, the drunk driving, the train-wreck TV appearances, the marriage, and the binges … binges on everything. She got to where she was going to die – I mean, before all this. She was incoherent for two days. Garbled everything. I’ve seen it before and I knew what was going to happen, so we wrestled her into a car, and then a jet, and then rehab. Saved her life. And she fired me." He shrugged. "But that happens in this business. The drugs were talking, and there was a pretty good echo from the bulimia. I figured that after a few days she’d at least be … kind of normal … functional … you know?"

Stitch nodded. It made sense to him.

"So I went to see her in the rehab facility as soon as they said over the phone she could see people," the man continued. "And the bitch fired me, for real this time. Right on the spot, in front of her new manager, even. It was that weasely prick Pfaltz, too. She said she was tired of paying all that money to someone – me – who was just an overpriced pimp. And that was it. You’d be surprised how much she still owes me – besides her life." He shook his head in disgust.

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