Hunting Britney.
Yes, that’s what I was doing.
I was hunting Britney Spears.
And getting paid to do it.
Word had it she was in Atlanta for some reason, and US Weekly hired me to try to find her.
It felt a little strange to be working for the magazine that for so long had been my guilty and hardly secret pleasure.
But here I was. Professional stalker. Paid parasite.
Sunday was spent trolling the places where Britney might be: the mall, top hotels, hot clubs, the home and studio of record producer, Dallas Austin (whom she was rumored to be meeting with while in Atlanta). After peeking in windows, knocking on doors, and discreetly passing my phone number to waitresses, bellhops, cab drivers, and managers, I came up empty. But US Weekly was still pleased with my work, and asked me to continue looking on Monday.
Overnight, we learned Britney probably flew out of Atlanta on Sunday night (and had been at the same mall as me, just one day earlier). So my assignment shifted. I was now to reconstruct Britney’s day(s) in Atlanta.
The big coup would be to find Dallas Austin—the famed producer who most recently was arrested for possessing cocaine in Dubai, and who also said some … unflattering … things about Christina Aguilera and Joss Stone—because he most likely talked to Britney during her visit and would have inside scoop. But the New York and LA reporters had been calling him for days and couldn’t get through.
I went back to his studio. There, I was let in by an employee, who said he didn’t think Britney had been there, that Austin definitely wasn’t there, but that I could have Austin’s assistant’s number.
He walked into an office and made a couple of phone calls. I admired the Boys II Men platinum records on the wall.
As he exited the office, he began ushering me toward the door. “We don’t know anything about Britney being here,” he said as he directed me into the parking lot and shut and locked the door.
