Hmph.
From there I went back to Austin’s house—which I was able to confirm was his house after watching an old episode of Cribs (US was very impressed with this reporting)—and decided that this time, instead of just circling the sprawling, fenced-in property protected by dogs, I’d walk up to the buzzer at the gate and try my luck.
“Hello?”
A voice, but not Austin’s.
“Hi, I’m Christine from US Weekly. I was hoping to speak to Mr. Austin for a moment.”
“He (unintelligible) can’t (click, static) who (unintelligible).”
I leaned in closer to the fisheye camera lens and put my ear to the callbox.
“What?”
He repeated his broken-up mumblings.
Eventually I was able to gather that this was a house manager, and Mr. Austin was asleep. It was 1 p.m. I said I’d come back later, and scooted back to my car.
Next stop: The private airport that celebrities usually use.
I set up camp in the airport’s little restaurant, which offered a good view of the tarmac and of the runway that I’m told is the preferred one for stars.
As I ate a tuna salad and chatted up the aviation enthusiast next to me, I saw a bunch of photographers crowding the fence near one of the planes.
Was it Britney?!
“No,” my neighbor told me. “There’s an aviation convention this week. They’re taking pictures of the planes.”
Oh.
I asked my waitress, any sign of Britney?
“No. Our noise guy, Mario, usually tells us when he sees celebrities. Obama was here last week. But no Britney.”
I gave her my number to pass to Mario, and then hit the road again.
I was a bit disenchanted at this point. Though the process had been fun, I was now feeling like it was a waste of time and that I was kind of a bad person for contributing to the Britney furor. I went home to lie down.
Then I checked in with my editor in New York. This was Monday, deadline day for the magazine, so they desperately needed whatever they could get by 10 p.m. She asked me to go back to the house, and maybe back to the Four Seasons, to see if she did stay there.
