‘Nice dogs,’ I nodded at the Freds.
‘Oh yeah?’ The man laughed. ‘Thing is, guy who made them had a grudge against the studio. When it rains, it looks like the dogs are peeing.’ Then he cheerfully waved us through.
Empire Studios looked very different to Hothouse. Hothouse had been high-rise glass and steel, but this studio looked like it had been built in the thirties: rows of unassuming-looking, white, two-storey buildings. It reminded me of a holiday camp.
Not that it meant that Empire was any less successful or powerful than Hothouse, it just meant it had been around for longer. And the reception area was covered with posters from mega-successful movies, just like it had been at Hothouse. The only difference was that this time it didn’t thrill me. It all felt like a nasty sham and though my knees were wobbling the way they had done there, this time it was from fear, not excitement.
‘Take a seat,’ the text-book-beautiful receptionist said.
Are you OK?’ I whispered to Emily, as we sat down.
‘Yeah, I just feel like I’m dreaming.’
‘Try and stay awake,’ I encouraged desperately.
‘I’ll try.’
A few minutes later, we were met by Larry Savage’s assistant, a pleasant-looking woman called Michelle.
‘I loved your script,’ she told us warmly. ‘I truly loved it.’
It was all I could do to stop myself from curling my lip at her.
‘This way, please,’ she said, walking us through the heat to Larry Savage’s chalet.
I’d seen Larry Savage – briefly – once before at the Club House, and he looked just like I remembered: an identikit Hollywood executive. He had the tan, good teeth, well-cut lightweight suit and – no doubt – a convincing line in bullshit. I’d become very cynical very quickly.
He was on the phone as we were ushered in. ‘I don’t freakin’ care,’ he was shouting. ‘We test-screen the ass off it. If no one salutes, then it’s straight to video.’ An angry pause, then he yelled, ‘No, you kiss MINE!’ Then he clattered the phone back into its cradle and turned to Emily and me. ‘Actors,’ he said, with a rueful smile.
‘Yeah,’ I rolled my eyes sycophantically, then effected introductions.
‘All righty. I read your script,’ he began.
I almost put my arm up to shield us from the avalanche of fake compliments. Funny, edgy, great dialogue – hadn’t we been here before?
‘I hated it!’ Larry Savage declared.
Now I hadn’t been expecting that Then I wondered if it was going to be one of those ‘I hated it so much I want to pay you three million dollars for it’ riffs?
Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
‘I hated it,’ Larry repeated. ‘Me, I like animals!’
‘So we’ve heard,’ Emily slurred beside me.
I gave her arm a sharp little pinch.
‘Fred, Babe, Beethoven, now that was a movie…’ Larry sighed wistfully. ‘But the studio is looking for smart.’ He bitchslapped the script in front of him. ‘This is real smart.’ He managed to sound glum about it. ‘It’s sassy, snappy, pacy. But I got an idea, hear me out here!’
We nodded. Not that it made any difference, he fully intended to have his say. ‘These girls in your movie go on the run. How about their pet dog goes with them, stows himself away in the trunk of the car, they discover him when it’s too late to bring him back, but they’re real happy. Then he tips them off when the rangers are coming. Y’know, he wakes ‘em by pulling the bed clothes off with his teeth.’ Suddenly Larry started speaking in falsetto. ‘“What’s up, Chip? Had a bad dream, boy? Go back to sleep, boy. Oh, you won’t? You think the rangers are coming. Wake up, Jessie, wake up!!!”’ He returned to his normal voice. ‘The pet doggie saves the day. Got a problem with that?’ he barked (appropriately enough) at Emily.
Mutely, she shook her head.
‘Terrific’ Suddenly he was all smiles. ‘I look forward to working with you. Your people will be hearing from my people.’
Then, an arm around each of our shoulders, he was walking us back out into the too-bright sunshine.
As Emily lurched to the car, she mumbled, ‘Did I dream that bit?’
‘The bit about the dog saving them from the rangers?’
‘No, the bit where he said my people would be hearing from his people.’
‘He said it all right.’
‘But nobody ever says that in real life.’
‘This isn’t real life.’
It was only when we were clambering into the car that we noticed that neither of us had had to pitch to him.
‘After all our practice,’ I laughed. ‘But it’s probably for the best.’
‘So how d’you think it all went?’ Emily asked, dazedly. ‘Any chance he might buy it and save my life?’
I considered it – there had been no talk of fast-tracking, green-lighting, three thousand screens or major stars. But Mort Russell had done all that and it had amounted to nothing, so who knew? And did Emily really want to rewrite her witty, sexy script as Chip, the Wonder Dog? But before I got to say any of that, Emily had fallen asleep on me. She slept for the entire hellish journey home, so she never knew that I took a wrong turning on the 405 and ended up halfway to Tijuana, passing turn-offs to all sorts of dodgy neighbourhoods before I managed to turn around.
Once back in Santa Monica, there was still no rousing her, so I had to call in on the Goatee Boys and get Ethan to help carry her from the car. Which was almost more trouble than it was worth, because he made me take her arms and insisted that he’d carry her legs, and I knew, just knew it was so he could look up her skirt. Then, when we’d flung her on the bed, he suggested hopefully, ‘We better undress her. Like, in case she can’t breathe and stuff.’
‘No! Thank you, Ethan! Goodbye!’
I wanted to get rid of him fast, because as we’d stumbled into the house I’d noticed there was a message on the machine. It had to be from Troy. And sure enough, when I hit ‘play’ a man’s voice said warmly, ‘Hey, baby…’ I exhaled with relief. But another second in, my reprieve curdled into bitter disappointment. This wasn’t Troy. It was Lou, Emily’s commitmentphobe. But what the hell was he doing ringing her? According to her prediction, she was never going to hear from him again. And here he was, calling her ‘dollface’ and suggesting that they catch a movie tomorrow night.
Abruptly all hope departed, like air from a burst beachball. For the past two days I’d been pumping myself with faith, warding off doubt – and suddenly I had no defence. Why hadn’t Troy called me? It was Monday afternoon, almost evening – I’d last seen him on Saturday morning and he’d said he’d call me. Well, I’d asked him to call me and he hadn’t said no. But I hadn’t heard a word. Why?
At that, my worst suspicions began to multiply like bacteria in a Petri dish. Had I a horrible body? Was I boring? Had I not been good in bed? After all, I’d been out of practice for so long that I could have been atrocious and not known. But he’d seemed to enjoy himself. Then again, Mort Russell had seemed to love Emily’s script and hadn’t. Was this city just one big hall of mirrors, where nothing was what it seemed?
Immobilized by despair, all I could see ahead of me was an empty, burnt-out future. Then I remembered the vile day I’d had: anyone would feel discouraged after it. I tried hard to generate a tiny amount of positivity. Troy was probably just busy. Emily had said he was fanatical about his work. And the night we’d spent together, he’d really seemed to like me. We’d had fun. He would ring me.
Just about convinced, I turned my attention to the telly, and spent several catatonic hours in front of it, too tired even to eat. At around eleven, I heard noises from Emily’s room. She must have finally woken up. When I went in, she was sitting up in bed like a princess.
‘You know what, Maggie?’ And her smile was anxious. ‘I had the strangest dream.’
28
The night’s sleep wrought an astonishing change in me and I came to full of benign thoughts. Tr
oy was going to ring me today, I just knew.
For once, my mood matched the weather. Most mornings since I’d come to Los Angeles I’d woken up with foreboding, shocked on a daily basis at finding my life so altered. But today my expectations were as sunny as the elements.
Emily was in the kitchen cradling a huge, crackly cello-phaned bouquet. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Lou sent them. What’s he up to?’ She was genuinely perplexed. ‘This must be some new mutation of the commitmentphobe syndrome. They knew we were getting resistant to the One Fantastic Night thing, they knew we expected never to hear from them again, so they’ve had to raise their game. He wants us to go out again tonight. Well,’ she laughed, ‘he must think I’m a bigger fool than I look!’
‘You don’t think for a second that he could be sincere?’
A firm shake of the head. ‘I do not. Because if he did mean all that stuff about telling our grandchildren, that would be the worst. To have grandchildren, you first have to have children and you know my views on – Oh, Maggie, I’m sorry!’
‘It’s OK.’
‘I just wasn’t thinking –’
Just then the phone rang and I jumped to answer it, knowing, with the same certainty that one and one equals two, that it would be Troy.
It turned out to be David. Well, I’d never had great psychic powers, that gift had gone to Anna.
David was once again sweetness and light. Not a mention of yesterday’s rage – and certainly no apology. ‘Hey, Larry loved you two!’
‘That’s funny,’ I said stiffly. ‘We barely opened our mouths. Has he found out about Mort Russell passing?’
‘Don’t know, but who cares now? You girls hooked him.’
‘Did he tell you he wants to make it as an animal movie?’
‘Details, details,’ he dismissed airily. ‘I gotta great feeling about this. Stand by for good news.’
When the phone rang again, I let Emily get it. Then I was sorry, because this time it really was Troy!
My heart gave one big, almost painful thump and my anticipation built and built as Emily went on for ages, filling Troy in on the dramatic events of the previous day. ‘It’s déjà vu’, she exclaimed at him. ‘I’m still waiting for the phone to ring. Same shit, different studio!’
I pottered around in her vicinity, waiting for Troy to finish being polite to her and get to the real business of the call. But on and on they went, and I stopped pottering, I was wearing myself out. So I plonked myself in a nearby chair until finally she got round to making winding-up noises. I half got up, my arm stretching for the phone, which is when Emily did something unfathomable. She hung up. It seemed to happen in slow motion, her finger hovering over the red disconnect button, then moving in for the kill. Completely at a loss, I goggled at her and at the phone, which should still be connected but for some incomprehensible reason wasn’t.
‘What?’ Emily looked confused.
‘Didn’t he ask… didn’t he want to talk to me?’
‘No.’ Then, still staring at me, ‘Oh shit.’
‘Oh shit’ was right. Troy’s message to me could not have been clearer.
‘Maggie, I didn’t…’ Emily squirmed and her manifest anguish belittled me. She pitied me and even though she’d commiserated on the end of my marriage, for a reason that I couldn’t articulate, this stung a lot more.
‘Maggie, I didn’t realize you were expecting… something from him.’
‘I wasn’t.’ My voice was barely there.
She was wrestling with some dilemma. With mortifying gentleness, she said, ‘There’s something you’re probably better off knowing. When I called him on Saturday, Kirsty answered the phone.’
‘You don’t know for sure that something’s going on with them.’ My defiance was pathetic. ‘And even if there is, he might decide he preferred me.’
‘You’re right.’
That did it. ‘I think I want to lie down for a while.’
‘No, Maggie, please…’
But I closed my bedroom door and redrew the curtains that I’d flung open with such anticipation less than an hour before, and climbed, fully clothed, between the sheets. This is what it’s like, I understood. This is what it’s like to be single and out there. I mean, I hadn’t really thought that Troy and I would end up together and that I’d stay in Los Angeles and live happily ever after. Not for more than five seconds, anyway. But I hadn’t expected it to be a for-one-night-only extravaganza either.
So much for living dangerously; it wasn’t half as nice as people made out. Unless the fault was in me. Maybe it was an acquired taste, like olives. I should probably just keep at it until I’d learnt to enjoy it.
Some time later, Emily tiptoed in. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she whispered. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Humiliated?’
‘Yip.’
‘Rejected?’
‘Yip.’
‘Betrayed?’
‘Yip.’
‘Not good enough?’
‘Yip.’
‘Lonely?’
‘Yip.’
‘Ashamed that you lay down and gave it up so easily?’ I closed my eyes.
Lord, did she have to be so graphic.
‘Not ashamed that you lay down and gave it up so easily?’ She sounded puzzled.
‘Yes, ashamed.’
‘That’s what I thought. Didn’t think you’d changed that much. Have I forgotten anything?’
How about missing my husband? I thought, but didn’t say. Both losses had merged into one and I was grounded by their combined weight. For a while, when I’d been with Troy, I’d danced on Stardust. Now the glitter had fallen from the sky and all was drab and grey again. While I’d been caught up in Troy, I’d flirted with another life, with being someone else.
Now I was back to being me and I longed to scuttle back to the safe haven of marriage, where this humiliation would disappear. But I couldn’t even ring Garv – until I’d found out for definite about Truffle Woman, I’d felt that option was always available to me if missing him got too bad. Now that door was closed. Anyway, wanting to go back to Garv because another man had humiliated me was hardly a healthy reason.
‘Have you any idea…?’ I asked Emily. ‘Why… Troy… might do this to me?’
‘That’s just the way he is,’ she explained earnestly. ‘He likes the ladies but he’s too into his work, not interested in a relationship.’
She didn’t say that she’d told me so. She’s nice that way. Anyway, he’d as good as warned me himself when he’d said, ‘I am baaaad news.’ But he’d been laughing when he’d said it and, like an eejit, I thought the laugh meant that he was joking.
‘He should have left you alone,’ she said. ‘You’re too vulnerable.’
‘Too stupid, you mean,’ I muttered, hating myself for being so naïve, inexperienced, out of practice. I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book – a man had been nice to me and I’d thought it meant something.
‘Don’t be hard on yourself – this is normal, you’re on the rebound! You’re on your own for the first time in years, you’re more than a bit lost, who could blame you for going looking?’
All of a sudden, I was furious with Troy. Him and his concern and his twizzlers and compliments about my hair and calling me ‘Irish’. To think I’d once thought he was ugly, with his long features and his hair-grip mouth. Someone with a nose that size had no right to go round breaking hearts!
And small wonder the sex had been so fluid and unclumsy: he was an expert, the guy had a black belt in riding. Christ, he even had special bondage ropes! What did that tell me about his dedication?
Then I cringed as I remembered the most embarrassing bit of all – to think I’d asked him to… to call me. All those years listening to my single friends and had I learnt nothing?. You never let on you want to be called. If he says he’ll ring you, you’ve to murmur, ‘Whatever,’ like you so couldn’t give a damn. What you don’t do is throw
your hat in the air and burst into ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’. Isn’t it funny how we all know the rules, but we never think they apply to us?
I was going about this break-up lark all wrong. The usual procedure is you feel awful, then a little bit better, then another little bit. And then a big bit. But the more time had gone on since Garv and I had split, the worse I felt. How much further did I have to proceed into this heart of darkness before I came out the other side?
How was Garv getting on with the single life? Was he faring better than me? Or was he as miserable too? Probably not: he was a man, they always seem to find this sort of thing easier. And who exactly was his girlfriend? How serious was it? Those tormenting thoughts which had been dormant for a while were now back in force.
‘I’m giving up on men,’ I said bitterly. ‘Do you know what I’m going to become?’
‘Oh no,’ Emily moaned softly. ‘Don’t say it, because someone round here might take you up on it. Anyway, you have it all wrong. Lesbians are just as bad as men, as far as I can see. They say they’ll call then they don’t. They sleep with you, then ditch you–’
‘I wasn’t going to say lesbian,’ I interrupted. ‘Although it’s a thought.’
‘Νοοοο,’ she covered her eyes.
‘What I was about to say was I’m going to become one of those fabulous single women who go on about choices a lot.’ Bitterly, I pretended to be airy and launched into, ‘“It’s just great being single because I can choose which side of the bed to sleep on. I can choose who I want to spend time with, and who I don’t. I don’t have to waste time on my partner’s boring family or workmates. No negotiations, no compromises.” It’ll be fantastic. I’ll have tons of friends, a huge mother-ship hand bag from Coach, linen drawstring pants and beautifully cut but practical hair.’ Somehow I’d mutated into Sharon Stone.
‘Or maybe I won’t,’ I finished with a sigh. Maybe I’d just end up moving back in with my parents so we could become our street’s version of the Addams Family. I would grow a moustache. Eventually I would bow to the inevitable at the hairdresser’s and ask for an Irish Mammy.