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T H E I N T E R V I E W
Juanita Moore: Mr. Lasky, thank you for speaking with me today, and sharing your story withChannel 7 Action News. I know rehashing what happened to your family can’t be easy for you to talk about.
Cam Lasky: [squinting] Do you mind turning those lights down?
Juanita: Those lights are necessary for our viewers to see your face, and people are clamoring to see you. You haven’t spoken to the media for months now, and for those of us who have been following your story, we are eager to hear it from your own lips, a firsthand account of what happened and how you’ve survived the months since. You’ve become quite the celebrity, though—
Cam: I believe the proper term going around socials these days iscelebrity asshole. Can I say that on TV—asshole? We’re not live, are we?
Juanita: No, we’re not live. My editors will cut that one out, but if you wouldn’t mind keeping your answers PG, it will save them a lot of work later.
Cam: [doesn’t respond]
Juanita: As I was saying, the narratives that have come out since the home invasion haven’t exactly painted you as a hero of this story. You are the aggressor, the fraudster, the money-hungry villain.
Cam: Too bad I don’t have a mustache or I’d twirl it.
Juanita: Here are just a few of the stories circulating about you: that you’re involved in the mob, the head of a satanic cult, that your kitchens served as clandestine meeting spots for a ring of international child traffickers—
Cam: Now, that last one’s just ridiculous. And absolutely untrue. They all are.
Juanita: But still. Having all these unfavorable stories written about you must feel...
Cam: Invasive. Intrusive. Annoying. People love to make stuff up, don’t they?
Juanita: I meant the criticism.
Cam: [shrugging] I’m used to it by now.
Juanita: The BBC did a series on America’s biggest grifters and cited you as a classic example of an American businessman who will stop at nothing to succeed. Netflix is currently in talks to resurrect the showAmerican Greed, with your story dominating their first three episodes. And a poll floating around Facebook last month declared you the most hated man in America behind Pharma Bro, Martin Shkreli.
Cam: Well, since Facebook says it, it must be true.
Juanita: And yet for months now, you have refused to talk to the media. Our many phone calls and emails and texts were left unanswered. You threatened legal action if my producer or I didn’t leave you alone.
Cam: All true.
Juanita: Until yesterday, when out of the blue you contacted me to request an interview. You were quite insistent, in fact. Why is that?
Cam: Well, I guess I figured it was time to set the record straight.
J A D E
2:51 p.m.
I’m pulling into the Westmore Music Academy lot when I spot him, the man leaning against the building’s brick and carved concrete sign. Pocked skin. Black-rimmed glasses. Skinny shoulders hunched against the rain. Atlanta is getting plowed with the tail of a tropical storm stalled over the gulf, blasting soupy heat all the way up to Tennessee, and he’s wearing that same cracked leather coat like it’s January and not early August, his hands shoved deep in the pockets as if for warmth.
I gun it up the hill hard enough to make my tires squeal, tapping a button on the steering wheel. “Call Cam.”
While the call connects, I glance in my side mirror, trying to pick him out of the trees and shrubs.
The grocery store. The nail salon and yoga studio. Yesterday at Starbucks, he passed me a stevia packet before I could ask for one, which makes me wonder how many times he’s seen me there, stirring sweetener into my coconut latte.
Cam’s deep voice booms through the car speakers. “I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you in thirty?”
My husband always answers, even when he’s busy.Especiallythen. This is our steadfast rule ever since our oldest, Beatrix, took a spill on the playground when she was four, knocking herself out and breaking her arm in three places. Cam was in the middle of a renovation at the Inman Park restaurant at the time, covered in construction dust and arguing with contractors whose every other word wasover. Overdue, overworked, over budget. Thirty times I called him that day, frantic and bouncing in the back of an ambulance while comforting a scared child and trying to keep a fussy toddler on my lap. Cam didn’t feel his phone buzzing in his back pocket, didn’t notice the screen lighting up with a long line of increasingly desperate messages from me.
The last one I left as they were wheeling Beatrix into Children’s Healthcare.