The Valley of the Shadow
by Betty Plotnick
May, 2002






"Nice earrings."

Britney's hand flew up to touch her earlobe, and a stray finger jostled her sunglasses. "Oh, God. They're too much. Are they too much? Too sparkly?"

"On you, honey? No."

"Gracias," Britney murmured to the housekeeper who closed the door behind her. She wasn't used to having staff around while she was at home, but as far as Christina was concerned, they were half the reason to be rich. Other people did everything at Christina's house -- cooked and cleaned, answered doors and telephones, maybe even filled the bathtub. Britney had no proof of that, but it seemed like a very Christina kind of thing, having a bath drawn up.

She took off the glasses as she followed Christina through the house, and then had to fumble them back on in a hurry, because Christina was eating her breakfast on the back porch, where the pool caught the morning sun and flashed it like a mirror straight back up at them. Britney hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, and while the sun glittering off the silver coffee pot and picking out reddish highlights in the lake of syrup left on Christina's china plate made a pretty effect, it also made her headache that much worse.

Christina gestured to the empty wicker chair across the table as she sank down into her own. "Have some waffles. God, it's nice to have people over who aren't fucking anorexic. If I have to hear one more thing about carbohydrates."

"Thank you." She wasn't hungry, either, but she took one waffle and buttered it, eating it like toast. "So I guess you didn't get my messages?"

"No, I did," she said casually.

"Well. Um." Christina arched an eyebrow, but Britney was coming up without much to say. Are you coming? wouldn't do, because obviously she wasn't; she was still wearing her nightclothes, a short white robe and shorter red gown, her hair blown sleek and straight. Why aren't you coming? probably wouldn't net her anything, because Christina rarely explained her actions. Of course, she rarely needed to, after all these years. "I would think you'd want to be there," she finally said, disingenuously. She didn't really think that, but this was a role she was comfortable with: the gentle challenger, the voice of the group's collective conscience. "You knew her better than any of us."

Christina shrugged, sopping up the rest of her syrup with a mini muffin. "And I liked her. But I'm still not going."

Why not was still on the tip of Britney's tongue, and still she couldn't quite deliver. "Atlanta has that hamburger place -- with the onion rings that you like? Remember?"

"I have a nail appointment," she said dryly. That wasn't, Britney knew, the reason she wasn't coming. Christina liked to play with her when she was being like this, too Southern to come right out with what was on her mind.

"Don't make me go by myself." It wasn't the admirable, grown-up tactic, but Britney wasn't proud. She'd always been the darling, the baby, the one who was still pretty while she cried, and an advantage was an advantage.

But this time Christina only rolled her eyes. "So don't. Take your mother."

"She has things to do here; she can't just go out of state for the day."

"Take your boyfriend."

"You really haven't been reading the papers, have you?"

Christina gave her a long, curious look, and then shrugged. "I thought maybe it was exaggerated. You're really...? Hm. Well, make Fee go; that's what we pay her for."

"She's on vacation."

"I'm on vacation. Take Willa."

"Lance won't let her go." Britney couldn't quite keep the annoyance out of her voice at that, which made her feel guilty. Lord knew she loved Lance, and he was smart, a better manager than most of their real managers, but sometimes he thought that made him one of them. He got to acting like he was part of the group, instead of just an ex-backup vocalist who happened into the job of Willa's pretend boyfriend. "He says it doesn't make good political sense."

Christina pointed at her with her fork. "Lance knows what he's talking about. Listen to your friend Lance."

"Maybe I don't want to listen. And maybe I don't want to think about political sense. It's a funeral, Christa! It's, like...sacrilegious or something to make it about politics."

"Baby girl, it's not me and Lance that make it that way, so don't pout at me."

"So you're saying that you would go to the funeral if you were black."

"Yes. That's what I'm saying. But I'm also saying that after five years of hearing about how the three of us are industry-generated knockoffs of everyone from the Supremes to Destiny's Child to, hello, TLC, who just got a lot richer because we're a lot whiter, I don't want to kick it all off yet again by being photographed at that goddamn funeral. They're always going to take their shots at us, but I don't have to load the gun for them."

"And Lisa -- "

" -- is dead, my darling. She doesn't care. Or she understands. Or something. Anyway, she's not going to come and haunt every ex-opening act who doesn't sign the guestbook. God, don't give me those eyes. Look, go with JC; he's got absolutely no sense at all."

"He's not in town. He's...on that junket. Remember?"

Unexpectedly, Christina jerked out the cloth napkin that was tucked under the edge of her plate and threw it to the ground for dramatic effect. "Oh, that's just too nice. That's really cute. Can you just please tell me what the hell is wrong with everyone I know? We're supposed to be so savvy and talented and such clever human beings, and take a look around you, behold us all working night and day to ruin our own careers. JC Chasez, musical genius, packing up his baggage and taking it on the road so he can be more available to the most recent of his chorus line full of abusive and unavailable boyfriends. Willa, still faking it with her gay best friend in order to avoid dealing with the fact that she's spent the last year and a half obsessed with her abusive and unavailable drunken asshole of choice. Little miss bad girl; get two vodka cranberries in her and she'll still cry her eyes out over Nick. Maybe it's good for her writing, I don't know. And you -- superstar, darling, you're fabulous. Best acting lessons and singing coaches that money can buy, the best tits in the business. Isn't it ironic how most people think your talent is real and the breasts are fake?"

There was no point in being angry with Christina. She just...got like this sometimes. In the morning especially. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong with you, too?"

She looked surprised at first by the way Britney could keep her self-possession now, when not so many years ago she cried during every fight any of them had. Then she looked a little impressed, smirking and lifting her coffee mug to Britney in a toast. "Very good question. Let me think. Me. Well, I have seven notebooks full of songs that I'm too insecure to let anyone see. I haven't had a date in over a year. I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself on an eight-month hiatus. And I'm a bitch."

"Occasionally. I have to be on the plane before long. Thanks for breakfast."

"Don't mention it. It's nice that you're going by yourself. Really, I think it's good for you. For all of us. To be alone sometimes."

Britney nodded. They'd agreed to this already, when they agreed to the hiatus. Britney wanted her solo album, Willa was on the verge of nervous exhaustion after coming down from Celebrity and On the Line and the tour all without a break, and when Christina said we've hardly been apart for seventy-eight hours this millennium, sweeties; we desperately need our own time, they all three agreed. They agreed; Britney remembered that. Only now, she couldn't remember why she'd agreed, or why she thought having her own time would be a good thing at all. Writing wasn't the same without Willa; shopping wasn't any fun alone; nothing seemed to feel the way it should without Christina. This must, Britney realized, be what lonely feels like. She'd lived so long on a bus that it was practically just a word in the dictionary to her, until now.

"I don't like it," she said. "Being alone. I don't." Christina pursed her lips, sympathetic but silent. Eventually Britney realized that she wasn't going to say anything.

The housekeeper let her out, and Britney sat in her car where it was parked in Christina's circle driveway, digging through her purse until she found cigarettes. At least she could be sure there weren't any damn photographers hiding inside Christina's well-guarded gates. The hotel in Australia had seemed so remote, but apparently not, and there had been health warnings on the TRL crawls to their last video and even two days' worth of jokes on Jay Leno. Just her luck.

She smoked her third-to-last cigarette, and then she leaned her head back and let herself cry a little bit, six or seven tears and a little snuffling, that was all. Christina could be so damn selfish, the way she harried everyone else for being unhealthy and hard to live with, while she was so fiercely guarded about whatever her pain was all about. She knew everything about Britney and Willa, and pretty much everything about everyone around them, but it wasn't a balanced kind of thing. It had never been something that cut both ways.

She'd touched up her makeup in the rearview mirror and started on her second-to-last smoke when she heard the front door, and Christina's voice. She looked up. Christina looked practically ready for an appearance, talking on her cell phone and moving with that sharp, trotting gait that she'd developed to keep up with Britney and Willa's much longer legs, dressed in leather pants and a sheer-sleeved black shirt with her hair clipped sedately back. She snapped the phone shut and hopped up on the passenger door, then slid into the seat. "Oh my God." Britney couldn't help reaching out to touch that flat, shiny tail of hair. "You look so...Gwyneth."

"Well, you can't go Cher to a funeral, can you? Which, by the way -- the earrings, Brit. Too much."

"I knew you'd do the right thing." That wasn't strictly true, but Britney didn't care. She felt almost giddy, and she leaned across to smack kiss after kiss on Christina's face until she laughed and managed to get her arm up defensively.

"Oh, please, come on. God." She snatched the cigarette out of Britney's hand and pitched it off onto the concrete; that was the general extent of Christina's anti-smoking lectures. "Willa's going to meet us in Atlanta."

"What did Lance -- "

"Britney, honey, fuck Lance, all right? You just have to know how to talk to Lance. Did you know he's taking her to Tibet? Can you believe it? She wants to be enlightened, or some such shit. I swear, this industry hasn't been the same since Madonna started taking yoga."

Britney couldn't help but giggle. "You sound, like, a hundred and ten sometimes, you do know that, right?"

"I feel a hundred and ten sometimes. Why do you put up with me, anyway?"

Because we shared a dressing room when I was eleven, Britney could have said, and a bathroom when I was fourteen. Because you taught me how tampons work and how to get around New York on the subway and how to drive. Because you never let me buy bad shoes and you never talk for hours about your new diet and you can watch Titanic a hundred times without complaining and you have a voice that makes me forget to breathe. Because I know you're still afraid of the dark. Because you're the only person who didn't make fun of me when I changed my mind about premarital sex with Justin. Because for every single one of the best moments of my life for the last ten years, you've been three feet or less away from me, close enough to touch.

"I just don't know," she said pleasantly, and started the ignition.


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