Catie Disabato - The Ghost Network

Nix wanted to see Taer but refused to go into the city where Molly Metropolis’s touring staff waited impatiently for marching orders. Their anxiety made Nix anxious, so she texted with them to keep updated on the gossip and goings-on, but didn’t participate in their stilted social gatherings. At Nix’s insistence, Taer returned to Flossmoor to walk down the snow-caked dirt paths of the park that bordered their junior high school, where Nix used to get high with other field hockey players during the off season. Taer and Nix had a lot to catch up on. They found, as they shared stories about terrible roommates and awkward sexual awakenings, that they had grown more similar since high school. They had both come out during college, and they bonded over their high school friends’ similarly shocked reactions.

When they got cold, they stopped at the Flossmoor Station Restaurant and Brewery, a refurbished train station with hearty portions of bland Midwestern cuisine and windows that rattled each time a Metra train pulled into the working station next door. The girls took off their mittens and, clutching pints of the excellent house Hefeweizen, moved on to more intimate conversation. Taer told dirty little stories about parties that developed into groups of students making out and having sex during Oberlin’s cold, dark Winter Term. Nix talked about fake I.D.s, Chicago clubs, and mounds of cocaine.

Eventually, Taer turned the conversation to Nix’s relationship with Molly Metropolis and the fallout from her disappearance. Taer recorded the discussion,* even though Nix asked for their chat to be off the record. Taer assured Nix that she wouldn’t give the Tribune her quotes “but if they ask me to get something specific from you, and I already have it, I can just ask you about it. Plus, there are laws to protect anonymous sources, if you want to become an anonymous source.”

“I think they would guess my identity,” Nix replied, a little angrily. “But fine. And you have to buy my drinks, then.”

Taer was using the Tribune as a scapegoat during that conversation. Her editors at the paper never solicited her for more quotes, and she knew she wouldn’t be asked for them. Taer recorded the interview for her own purposes. Regarding this recording, she wrote, “I’d better keep track,” though she avoided explicitly spelling out her motivations for doing so.

As they ate potato skins and drank a second beer, Taer and Nix intensely debated whether or not Molly Metropolis had disappeared as a publicity stunt. Taer thought Miranda Young might be trying to kill off Molly Metropolis, to make way for a new character or to return as herself: “So, ‘Molly Metropolis’ disappeared, and that’s part of the canon of the story of Molly Metropolis that Miranda Young is writing — like, the end of a narrative, a cliffhanger, sort of an end. Then she comes back as like, the Thin Black Duchess or something. ‘Molly Metropolis Is Alive and Well and Living Only in Theory.’ ”

Letting the David Bowie reference go by without comment, Nix disagreed. “She wouldn’t do that to her family and they don’t know where she is.”

“Maybe they’re in on it.”

“No, they are really freaking out and I’ve met them — they’re not like Molly.”

“I mean, you’re the one that knows her, obviously, but are you telling me she wouldn’t pull some Brian Slade — style shit?” †

“She would but I don’t think she did, and if it was a game she wouldn’t wait so long to come back,” Nix said. “Besides, ‘Molly Metropolis’ isn’t some Ziggy Stardust thing. She’s not so split personality about it. Calling herself Molly is like me calling myself Gina. It’s really just a nickname.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s so much less fucked up than you think it is.”

“Okay.”

“You want it to be fucked up,” Nix said.

“No,” Taer replied, defensively. “I don’t care what it is. I just want to know about it.”

This conversation, and similar ones that followed, were no more meaningful than a speculative blog post; Taer’s investigation into Molly Metropolis’s disappearance truly began several days later, on January 24, when Nix asked Taer if she wanted to visit Molly’s last hotel suite.

By the end of January, SDFC was ready to give up the ghost. They had already let go of most of the touring staff, but continued to pay for Molly’s hotel room at the Peninsula because Applebaum had been using it as a PR office and media war room. Applebaum stayed in Chicago for ten days waiting for Molly Metropolis to reemerge, but ten days was her limit. She needed to return to Los Angeles. Applebaum called Nix, asked her to clean out Molly’s hotel room, and offered her an entry-level position on one of SDFC’s publicity teams. Nix declined the offer because she wanted to stay in Chicago, but agreed to clean the hotel room so Applebaum would keep her on the payroll until the end of the month. Nix had signed several non-disclosure agreements assuring SDFC she wouldn’t reveal details of Molly’s private life to outsiders. Nix says she shouldn’t have invited Taer to join her, but at that moment she didn’t care.

The Peninsula Hotel is only half a block off the Miracle Mile, a short walking distance from the Millennium Station and the nearby Millennium Park. Nix rode the Metra Electric Line from Flossmoor to the Millennium Station at Randolph Street, while Taer waited for a Green Line L train in the cold, shivering in her jeans, wood-heeled boots, and coat. Taer transferred from the Green to a Red Line train to downtown Chicago.

They met in the lobby of the hotel. With their cheap coats and messy hair, they did not blend with the Peninsula’s upscale clientele, ‡but they walked confidently through the carpeted halls of the top floor, linking arms at the elbows and flirtatiously bantering, while a concierge led them to Molly Metropolis’s penthouse. When they walked into the suite, giddily tripping over a pair of ankle boots, they saw that all the rooms had been ransacked and Molly’s belongings were scattered across the floor. Taer and Nix assumed the mess was the result of a police investigation, but they were wrong.

The CPD had combed through the suite and confiscated anything that could be evidence of some kind of wrongdoing or could hint at a reason why Molly would willfully disappear, but they had done so neatly and without haste, according to both the officers’ written reports of the investigation and my interviews with the same officers after the fact. They had taken Molly’s laptop, her cameras, and several articles of clothing, but they hadn’t been concerned with finding “clues” among Molly’s shoes and clothes because Molly’s hotel suite wasn’t officially a “crime scene.” In fact, at the time, the CPD believed that Molly had probably vanished willingly, either as part of a publicity stunt like Taer had suggested or as a way to escape the pressures of public life. §

Nix started sorting through the clothes, folding and packing them neatly. Taer couldn’t fold the shirts well, and Nix quickly became frustrated with her messiness. She sent Taer away from the neat piles, tasking her with collecting all the far-flung items. Taer began gleefully exploring the hotel room mess. She sidestepped a pile of lingerie and peeked into a closet, looking for Molly’s stage costumes. She didn’t find them; they had been stored at the venue and shipped back to SDFC’s offices in New York. The costumes Molly officially owned would eventually be turned over to her family, who in turn donated them to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, where they were featured in a special exhibit which debuted at the 2012 Met Ball. Her best outfits and accessories — her LED glasses from the “Light Brite” video, the black leotard with metallic sleeves she wore in the “New Vogue Riche” music video, all of her insane Johan Van Duncan Haute Couture shoes — are now enshrined and on display.