‘Here’s mine.’ Troy’s eyes were trained on a valet guiding a jeep towards us. He swung an arm around Emily. ‘Baby girl, we’ll talk.’
Then an arm around me and a touch on my cheek from the steep-trap mouth. ‘And you, Maggie, enjoy your down time.’
He slipped the driver a dollar, swung himself up into his jeep and was gone.
It was midnight. As we drove down Sunset we passed one of the gyms with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. There were still people on the treadmill running to nowhere.
10
The next day was a Saturday and the tight wires of my work ethic unwound and gave me a little relief. Today I really could go to the beach and sunbathe legitimately without feeling like a skiver just about to be caught.
David Crowe’s call had utterly transformed Emily. Her hopeless lethargy had completely disappeared and activity was the name of the game. After breakfast, we climbed up into her car and drove the two blocks to the aircraft-hangar-sized supermarket. From my years in Chicago, I knew how fabulous American supermarkets were, but even so, I was sure they didn’t carry the magnificent array of fat-free products they had here. Everywhere, packaging screaming ‘0 per cent fat’ jumped up and accosted me. I’d found it impossible not to be affected by the pervasive body-beautiful ethic, and virtuously bypassed the occasional cluster of full-fat doughnuts or ice-cream, and instead bought blueberries and salad and sushi. And wine, of course. Emily insisted. ‘I must take good care of myself at this important time,’ she said, flinging a few bottles into our trolley.
As we wheeled our purchases back to the car, I was startled by someone yelling, ‘Hey you!’ I turned to see a dirty, bearded man, dressed in rags. ‘Hey, you girls, are you listening?’ he called angrily. ‘A body lies under a fire escape. Male, Caucasian, mid-thirties.’
‘What’s up with him?’ I asked nervously.
‘He’s always here.’ Emily wasn’t even interested. ‘Roaring and shouting about mad stuff. He’s bonkers, God love him, but quite harmless.’
We were barely home and unpacking our groceries when Lara burst through the front door and flung herself so hard at Emily that the pair of them scooted halfway across the room. ‘You the maaaaaan!’ she cried. ‘I’m so happy about the pitch!’
Apparently she was in the neighbourhood because she’d been to her yogilates (whatever that was) class. She offloaded flowers and an affirmation card and a Native American something on to Emily to celebrate the good news.
Then she turned, saw me and exclaimed, ‘Go girl! You look so tan. Hanging out at the beach?’
‘Yeah,’ I said shyly, flattered by her admiration. It was good, coming from her, a walking ray of light.
Lara stepped closer and said thoughtfully, ‘You know what? Your hair is so great.’
Already I’d started to pick up on LA intonation. Telling someone that something is ‘so great’ is actually a criticism. ‘Your script is so great,’ – but we’re not buying it. ‘Your friend that I went on the blind date with is so great,’ – but she bored me to death and I hope I never see her again.
So when Lara told me that my hair was so great, I was pleased for a second, then I wasn’t. ‘So great,’ she repeated. ‘But your bangs’ (she meant my fringe) ‘are too long. Hello,’ she laughed softly, parting my fringe with her long nails, moving hair out of my eyes. ‘Are you in there? Hey, there she is!’
‘Hi.’ I was close enough to see her contact lenses.
‘You know what?’ Consideringly, she weighed the end of my hair, curling it under with her palm. ‘We’ve gotta get you to my hairdresser. Dino, he is like, the best. I’ll call him now.’
Already she was halfway across the room, fishing in her handbag, and I breathed out. She’d been standing too close but I’d been afraid to move, what with her being a lezzer. If it had been anyone else I could have stepped back, no bother, but I didn’t want her to think that I was uncomfortable around her and her lezzerness. Political correctness is a minefield. The palm pilot was out, she was tapping on her little cellphone, then talking. No waiting around. They do everything so fast here.
‘Dino? Kiss, kiss, baby. I want to schedule in my girlfriend with you. She has the best face and she needs a great cut. Tuesday?’ She looked up at me with her aquamarine eyes. ‘Maggie, Tuesday, six-thirty?’
I felt overrun, taken over. I quite liked it. ‘Sure.’ Why the hell not? ‘Tuesday is good.’
‘I got reason to celebrate too,’ Lara said, clenching a fist in the air. ‘Two Dead Men has finally dropped out of the top ten!’
‘Rock on!’ Emily exclaimed, and a general air of celebration prevailed.
Two Dead Men was a spoof gangster comedy film. What had it ever done to Lara?
‘Tell Maggie the story,’ Emily urged.
‘You want to hear it?’
‘Course!’
‘OK! As you know, I work in a production company, and one of my many, many duties is to do script reports. Like, read them, say what the chances of making a good movie are. Anyhoo, two years ago I get this script on my desk, it sucked and I totally trashed it. And the name of this piece of crap? Two Dead Men. Only one of the biggest comedy movies of the year!’ Her high spirits were infectious. ‘The day I read in Variety that Fox were going into production on it was one of the worst days of my life. I have prayed so HARD for it to bomb. I have SWEATED when I’ve seen the weekend grosses. And I came this close –’ she held up her thumb and first finger, leaving a tiny space between them,’– to losing my job.’
‘But you’re entitled to your opinion,’ I said.
‘Nuh-uh.’ She shook her head. ‘Not in Lala land. One strike and you’re out.’
‘I saw the original script too,’ Emily said. ‘And Lara was right, it was crap. I don’t think the writer meant it to be a comedy, but because it was so bad everyone assumed he had to be joking.’
‘But it’s all OK now,’ Lara beamed.
All of a sudden a low, rumbling vibration began. I felt it before I heard it and it built with alarming intensity. For a minute I thought it was an earthquake and that my mother had been right. How very annoying.
‘Gaaaagghh,’ Emily groaned. ‘They’re at it again. Drumming to the Rhythm of Life. Gobshites!’
‘Who?’
‘Next door. Mike and Charmaine and a load of professional adults who should know better. Banging Native American drums and hoping to find happiness. They do it on purpose to annoy me.’
‘You should never have stolen their “Armed Response” sign,’ Lara said.
‘Don’t I know it! Well, I’m left with no choice but to go shopping and buy something to wear to The Pitch. Any takers?’
Shopping! Apart from a sun-product splurgette in the duty-free, I hadn’t bought anything for ages – not since my life had gone belly-up. I experienced a little rush, feeling alert and almost normal, which intensified when it transpired that they both wanted to go to Rodeo Drive. Going to Rodeo Drive was what I should be doing, what anyone who came to LA would do, instead of sitting like a lost soul on a lonely beach. OK, so maybe it was a little out of my price range, but a girl could always dream. And use her credit card.
As we left the house, the Goatee Boys were also going out.
‘Hey, Lara!’ The one with the shaved head exploded in admiration. ‘You are the bomb, man, toadally the bomb!’
‘Thank you, Curtis.’
‘No, I’m Ethan. That’s Curtis.’
‘Hey.’ Curtis shyly raised a plumpish hand.
‘And I’m Luis.’ A pretty, Latino boy, with Bambi eyelashes and a neat little beard, also waved. ‘And you are the bomb.’
‘I was really hoping,’ Emily said wistfully, ‘that when term ended they’d pack up and leave and we’d get some proper neighbours in. But it looks like we’re stuck with them for the summer.’
The Goatee Boys were going out in their orange wreck. Luis placed his hand on the car roof, vaulted daintily through the open car window and arrived neatly in
the driving side. Then Ethan placed his meaty hand on the roof on the other side and also swung in, feet first. But things weren’t so easy for plump Curtis, who got stuck Winnie-the-Pooh-like in the window space.
After we’d helped shove him in, we got into Lara’s car (a shiny silver pick-up truck about a mile long). The sky was blue, the silvery palm trees were swaying in the gentle breeze and I had a bit of a tan – all in all, things weren’t so bad.
I’d half imagined Rodeo Drive to be a type of celebrity compound. Almost a theme park that you’d pay an entrance fee into. Instead, like Sloane Street or Fifth Avenue, it was just a road of famous, expensive shops, staffed by those skinny, snotty cows from central casting. I was well out of my league –I’d worn my very best ‘city-girl’ get-up and was ostentatiously carrying my expensive handbag like an Access All Areas badge of accreditation, but I was fooling no one. After the first two or three places I confided gloomily to Lara, ‘I hate the people who work in these shops, they always make me feel like shit.’
‘There’s a trick to it,’ she sympathized. ‘You gotta march in like you own the place, look evil and bored and never, ever ask the price of anything.’
So in the next sparse, high-ceilinged emporium, I picked up a handbag – because handbags are the new shoes – and tried to look evil and bored, as instructed. But I can’t have been too convincing, because the starved, glam-haired assistant dismissed me with a contemptuous eye-sweep. Then her radar picked up Emily, the label babe, and everything changed. ‘Hi there! How are you today?’
‘Good!’ Emily said. ‘How are YOU?’
Do you know, for a minute, I thought they actually knew each other, until your woman continued, ‘I’m Bryony. How may I help you today?’
On the rare occasions when those girls do speak to me, I’m far too intimidated to answer. In fact I usually leave immediately. (And what’s with the ‘today’ thing? When else was she planning on helping? Next Tuesday?)
I replaced the beautiful bag on its plinth. But clearly I hadn’t done it right, because Bryony shot over and, with brisk, angry swivels, moved it half an inch back to its correct position. Then she took a little cloth and polished off my handprints. I felt so humiliated that for a minute I thought I might cry.
‘Just remember,’ Lara murmured into my hair, ‘her clothes are borrowed. She couldn’t buy that sweater she’s wearing if she worked here for a year.’
Meanwhile, Bryony had descended on Emily, who was flicking through the hangers with a trained eye. Then Emily was being led to the changing-room, where she started trying things on, flinging them off again and firing them back in crumpled balls at the snotty cow.
‘You look GREAT,’ Bryony insisted over and over, but Lara kept up a constant stream of ‘Hmmm. Let’s see it in a different colour. What about the longer skirt? Does that come in a cross-over style?’
Bryony was run ragged carrying out her suggestions.
Eventually I tentatively suggested, ‘How about a smaller size?’
‘Yeah,’ Lara praised, when that sent Bryony racing back to the rails. ‘Now you’re getting the hang of it.’
We made Bryony bring different styles and different sizes –even shoes and handbags – until it seemed that Emily had tried on every item in the shop several times. Painstakingly, she narrowed her selection down to a shirt-dress and jacket, then beckoned us both into the huge changing-room and shut the heavy wooden door. ‘I’m skint,’ she hissed. ‘Is it very wrong to spend a month’s rent on a suit?’
I was all for telling her that of course it was and that she could get a perfectly fine get-up in Banana Republic for a tenth of the price – and not just because I didn’t want Bryony to get the commission, I’m not that mean, but out of concern for Emily’s finances – when Lara said solemnly, ‘You’ve got to spend money to make money. Gotta look the part for the pitch.
‘Sorry Maggie,’ she said to me. ‘I’d love it to be like that bit in Pretty Woman –’
‘“Big mistake”,’ I quoted eagerly.
‘“Big HUGE mistake.” Yeah.’
Then Emily understood. ‘Oh God, was Bryony a bitch?’
‘Yes,’ said Lara. Then to me, ‘But Emily’s pitch is totally important and she does look great in these clothes…’
‘Oh-kay.’
‘So what’s it to be?’ Lara asked Emily.
‘I’ll get the suit, but not the shoes.’
‘Your call’
‘Well, maybe the shoes, but not the bag.’
‘Whatever.’
‘No point spoiling the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar, I suppose.’
‘Excuse me?’ Cow-face had returned.
‘I’ll take the lot.’
Just before we left, Lara picked up ‘my’ handbag, manhandled it roughly and put it back all askew and covered with handprints. ‘Thank you,’ she beamed over her shoulder at Bryony.
‘Thank you,’ I said to Lara.
As we wandered along the street, Emily laden with carrier bags, I indicated a man strolling past us. ‘Isn’t he the image of Pierce Brosnan? He could get a job impersonating him.’
Lara and Emily took a look. ‘It is Pierce Brosnan,’ Lara remarked, and they continued up the street, clearly unimpressed.
‘Where next?’
‘Chanel?’
But the Chanel shop was closed because some famous person was inside buying the place up. Madonna, according to a small crowd of Japanese tourists clustered outside. Magic Johnson, a rival group insisted. No, no, a third cluster were adamant, it was Michael Douglas.
Perhaps it was for the best that it wasn’t open, Emily said. She’d done enough damage.
‘It’s five o’clock, let’s go for a drink,’ Lara suggested.
‘The Four Seasons?’ Emily said. ‘It’s close by.’
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t!’ I exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘Don’t suggest going for a drink at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills like it’s not a big deal.
‘Sorry,’ Emily said humbly.
‘Yeah, sorry,’ Lara said.
The Four Seasons had classical art and huge vases, swagged curtains, thick carpets and mucho, mucho gilt. It all seemed very patternedy. My mother would have loved it. As we walked into the bar, a man holding court around a table shouted, ‘Billy Crystal is the best goddam director in the whole world!’
‘Just in case we didn’t know you worked in the movie business,’ Emily muttered.
We found a squashy couch and ordered Complicated Martinis and they brought us a little dish of Japanese crackers. As the drink took hold we got a bit carried away.
‘It’s all starting for you,’ Lara promised Emily. ‘Look at Candy Devereaux. One minute she’s waitressing and thinking about getting the bus back to Wisconsin. Then she writes a dream script and now she’s charging a hundred thousand dollars a week, doing script surgeon.’
‘Prada will send a truck of stuff over and whatever I want will be mine to KEEP,’ Emily said gleefully, stretching out on the couch.
Fantasy stuff and yet… In other jobs you’re supposed to toil away patiently and incrementally better your lot. But I got the feeling that things worked differently in this town: your luck could turn on a sixpence and you could shoot from the gutter to the stratosphere very, very quickly. I was distracted by a girl passing by with a cleavage as deep as the Grand Canyon. Talk about silicon valley – those breasts couldn’t possibly be real…
‘Can I have a part in the movie?’ Lara asked.
‘Sure!’
‘When Lara first came to LA, she was an actress,’ Emily told me.
‘So how come you’re not now?’
‘I didn’t have what it takes.’ She tipped her head back and funnelled crackers into her mouth from her fist. ‘I wasn’t thin enough. Or beautiful enough.’
‘But you’re really beautiful.’
‘She’s hot for me,’ she drawled.
Emily gave her a ster
n look, which was interrupted by Lara’s cellphone ringing. An animated chat ensued, then Lara snapped her phone away. ‘It’s Kirsty, she’s nearby, she’s going to join us for a quick drink.’
Emily made a face. ‘A quick alcohol-free, dairy-free, sodium-free glass of water served with a slice of organic lemon in a lead-free glass.’
‘She’s OK,’ Lara said.
‘Yeah. She’s just so virtuous and humour-free. And she thinks she’s gorgeous.’
‘But she is.’
‘That’s no reason to go round showing off.’ Emily directed this to me. ‘We were all talking about who would play us in the story of our lives – yeah, I know, but it’s an LA thing – and Lara there, beautiful Lara there, says Kathy Bates. I say ET in an afro wig, Justin says John Goodman, and even Troy says Sam the American Eagle from The Muppet Show, and who does Kirsty say would play her? Nicole Kidman, that’s who. Says people are always mistaking her for Nicole. She wishes. Well, before she gets here, can I show you something?’
She opened her handbag and slowly produced a keyring. I recognized it. It was from the shop where she’d bought the clothes; it even had the logo, picked out in rhinestones.
‘I’ve been a bad girl,’ Emily said, but she couldn’t hide a grin.
‘Oh my God,’ Lara groaned. ‘You have got to stop!’
‘You stole it?’
‘Liberated it, I prefer to say. Hey, I’m really stressed right now.’
‘I know, but could you not just do a relaxation tape or something?’ I said.
‘You’re just jealous,’ Emily accused.
‘I know,’ I admitted humbly.
I’d only shoplifted once in my whole life – a choc-ice from a newsagent’s. I hadn’t even wanted it, I much preferred Cornettos, but they didn’t have any and Adrienne Quigley had dared me to do it. Anyway, wouldn’t you know it? – I got caught. The man was very nice about it and said he’d let me off if I promised never to do it again. Which meant I had to spend the rest of my teenage years looking on enviously as everyone else returned from trips into town with their bags crammed with all sorts of stolen booty: earrings, lipsticks, glittery nail polishes, a length of electrical flex and a handful of screws from a hardware shop. It was Emily who’d nicked the screws and the flex, because she just shoplifted for the thrill, whereas Adrienne Quigley shoplifted to order. I was sick with envy at their daring (and the free stuff, apart from the screws and the flex), but I knew for certain that if I tried it again, I was bound to get caught –and bring everyone else down with me too. There’s just something about me. Each of my sisters could get away with brazenness because Claire was feisty, Rachel was funny, Anna was away with the fairies and Helen was fearless. But me – all I had was obedience, it was my only survival tool.