Emily had spent the past year and a half writing several new scripts, and every time she tried to get an agent, she got knocked back.
‘But you’ve a name.’
‘I’ve a bad name,’ she corrected. ‘Everyone remembers that the studio passed on Hostage. I’m in a worse position than a total newcomer. It’s an unforgiving town.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Dunno. Too ashamed. Me, the big success story. And I kept hoping things would improve. You know?’
I did, as it happened.
Only ten days ago, Emily had managed to place her most recent script with a new agent. But he was with a much smaller agency which didn’t carry the same clout with the studios.
‘His name is David Crowe. He’s gone out with my script. He’s trying to get a buzz going and see if he can kickstart a bidding war. And I’ve heard nothing.’
‘But he’s only just gone out with it.’
‘Things happen very fast in this town, or they don’t happen at all. It’s working my last nerve,’ she said. ‘If this doesn’t take off, it’s over for me.’
‘Don’t be mad. You’ll just pick yourself up and try again.’
‘I fucking won’t, you know,’ she said grimly. ‘I’m burnt out. This city has me in shreds. The casualties are everywhere. You’ll see… And I’m skint,’ she added.
‘How?’ I was shocked. She’d got a huge fee for Hostage, which she didn’t have to return when the studio passed on making the film.
‘I got paid nearly three years ago and two hundred grand, after taxes and agents’ commission, doesn’t last so long. And don’t think I was too high and mighty to look for commissions writing B-movie, straight-to-video crap. I even pitched for a porn film!’
‘To be in it?’ Were things really that bad?
‘No, to write it. But now that you mention it, I’d probably have had more luck if I’d auditioned to star in it. Even they turned me and my studio pedigree down. I couldn’t get arrested.’
‘Oh, my God.’
‘It’s been a horrible eighteen months,’ she admitted. ‘The day that Beam Me Up Productions –’
‘Who?’
‘Exactly. Some C-list, outer-space merchants operating out of a Portakabin in Pasadena. The day they passed on my pitch to do the fourth sequel to Squelch Beings from Gamma 9 was my blackest day so far.’
I was crippled by the magnitude of her problems. It was too hot, I was too tired, and I wanted to go home. But home no longer existed.
‘Oh Christ, Christ, Christ.’ She looked suddenly stricken. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I’m terribly sorry… What a thing to be doing to you! Let me make you something to eat.’
She flung together a salad and opened a bottle of white wine. Mercifully, she seemed to cheer up.
‘Things aren’t so bad. I can always go back to Ireland and get some film work there, now that I have a lot of contacts,’ she chattered.
She paused. ‘Do you know who I see the odd time in the course of work?’
Something in her tone alerted me.
‘Who?’
A beat. ‘Shay Delaney.’ It was clear that she’d been waiting for the right time to tell me.
‘How?’
‘He’s a producer with Dark Star Productions. An –’
‘– independent film company,’ I finished for her. I’d suddenly remembered what the name had meant to me when he’d told me who he worked for.
‘He has to spend a lot of time over here.’ She sounded almost defensive.
‘I suppose he does. People who work in movie-production companies tend to.’ She looked puzzled and I said, ‘I met him. Last week.’
‘No way!’ As Emily marvelled at what a coincidence that was, I hunched over my salad. Was that why I’d been so keen to come to Los Angeles?
7
I awoke in darkness to the rattle of machine-gun fire. My blood was pounding. I listened for more sounds – shouts, moans, police sirens – but nothing.
Were not in Kansas any more, Toto.
Lying in the blackness, I admitted the bitter truth. I was sorry I’d come. I’d expected to feel magically better, but how could I when I’d brought myself and my failed life with me? And living in someone else’s house – even a good friend’s – was tougher than I’d expected. Despite the eight-hour time difference, I hadn’t got to sleep for ages because Emily had the telly on so loud. I’d seethed in my bedroom (which was actually her office), wishing she’d turn it down. But there was nothing I could do –it wasn’t my house. When a raucous blast of canned laughter had exploded through the thin walls, I’d experienced a violent longing for my life with Garv. I couldn’t live like this. All at once, I was ready to admit that splitting up had been a terrible mistake and that business as usual could resume with immediate effect. I was used to harmony and being able to turn off the telly whenever it suited me.
But was that a good enough reason to try again? Probably not, I decided reluctantly.
I did eventually go to sleep, but now I was awake.
Another crackle of machine-gun fire caused my heart to burst against my ribs. What was going on out there?
If only I could go home, I yearned. But I suspected I had to stick it out. Everyone would think I’d cracked up if it came out that I went to Los Angeles and only stayed a day. And this wasn’t just about me – it was clear that Emily needed someone around. Christ, maybe we’d be going home together, a duo of failures. We’d have to sit in a special cordoned-off area on the plane in case we infected the other passengers.
A noise at the window made me jerk about three feet off the bed. What was it? The branch of a tree banging against the glass? Or a roaming madman on the lookout for a girl to torture and murder? My money was on the roaming madman. After all, this was Los Angeles, full, by all accounts, of pathological killers. I’d read one or two Jackie Collins novels in my time and I knew all about psychos who think in italics.
Not long now. Not long before revenge would be his. And then they’d be sorry they’d laughed at him and refused to return his calls. He was strong now. He’d never been stronger. And he had his knife. The knife that would do his deft bidding. First he’d cut off her hair, then he’d cut off her jewellery then he’d start opening her skin. She’d beg, she’d plead for mercy, for the agony to stop. But it wouldn’t stop, because this time it was her turn for the pain, this time it was her turn…
I began to sweat. These clapboard Californian houses were so flimsy and I felt the vulnerability of being on the ground floor very keenly.
Slick with fear, I had to turn on the lamp and look on Emily’s bookcase for something to read. Preferably something light, to take my mind off my imminent dismemberment. But because I was in her office, all I could find were textbooks on the art of scriptwriting. Then I saw the bundle of pages on the desk. Plastic Money, her new screenplay. That’d do.
Two pages in, I was gripped, the roaming madman forgotten. The story was about two women who pull off a jewellery heist to pay for plastic surgery for their daughters, so that they’ll have better luck with men than they did. It was a comedy, a thriller, a love story and, most importantly for Hollywood, it had the requisite schmaltzy bit. (‘But I love you, Mom. You don’t have to buy me new boobs.’)
Just before I fell back to sleep, I thought fuzzily, I’d option it…
When I woke up again, I got the fright of my life – the sun was shining, pouring lemon light into the room. With a pounding heart I wondered, Where the hell am I? The last nine months galloped towards me, gathering up awful memories and whooshing them at me, until I remembered why I was in this strange sunny place. Oh yeah…
Emily was in the kitchen, clicking away at her laptop.
‘Morning,’ I said. ‘Are you working?’
‘Yes, on a new script.’
‘A new new one?’
‘Yeah.’ She laughed, then got up and began making herself what I would later come to know as a protein shake. ‘I don’t kn
ow if it’s any good, but I’ve got to keep pressing on with it just in case Plastic Money doesn’t work out.’
What a nightmare, I thought. To cheer us both up, I said, ‘Isn’t it a gorgeous day?’
‘Yes, I suppose.’ She sounded surprised. ‘But they’re all like this. So did you hear the fireworks last night?’
‘Fireworks?’
‘Yeah, for the Santa Monica festival. But you were probably out for the count.’
‘No, I heard them.’ Then in a mortified rush I blurted, ‘But I thought they were machine guns.’
‘Why would you think they were machine guns? Christ in the marketplace!’ Her face was stamped with distress and concern. ‘You are in a bad way’
She was behind the table and wrapping her wiry little Emily body around mine, and I was so touched by the contact that for the first time since I’d left him, I was able to cry. All my tears had been packed tight inside me, frozen and out of reach until now.
‘I’m so sad,’ I choked. ‘I’m so sad. I’m just so sa-aa-aaad.’
‘I know, I know, I know.’ On a loop.
The grief that, until then, I’d only caught out-of-the-corner-of-my-eye glimpses of suddenly revealed itself to me, and I felt the full weight of all our blunted hopes. The end of a marriage is the saddest thing in the whole world. Surely no one gets married thinking that theirs mightn’t make it? I had an image of a twenty-four-year-old me and a twenty-five-year-old Garv and our innocent trust in the future, and it was killing me.
‘All the hope we had and it did us no good.’ I pressed a lump of kitchen paper to my leaking face. ‘I had to go, Emily, I didn’t have any choice, it was so awful. He would have left if I hadn’t. But now it’s all go-onnnne.’
‘I know, I know, I know,’ Emily murmured. ‘I know.’
‘I thought I could never again feel as sad as I did last February,’ I coughed with tears. ‘But I doo-hoo. It’s sadder than the hungry babies in Angela’s Ashes!’
‘Sadder than Mary going blind in Little House on the Prairie?’
‘Yeah. Sadder.’
But the damage was done. She’d made me smile. After she’d mopped me up a bit and got me to blow my nose, she tempted, ‘Will you have a protein shake? It’s a local delicacy.’
‘Go on then.’
Emily whipped me up a (frankly, delicious) shake and we sat outside in the tiny, sun-drenched back garden, and I was feeling a little bit calmer until she decided to have another go at making sense of me and Garv.
‘The thing is, it all feels a bit premature. Too sudden.’
I sat in silence while my arm got hotter and itchier.
‘Nothing ends this cleanly,’ she insisted.
‘It’s not clean.’
She tried to jolly me into engaging. ‘You’ve missed out vital parts of the breaking-up process. What normally happens is you go for counselling, you have to have at least two attempts at a reunion. They’ve got to fail really horribly, and if you think you’re bitter now, it’s nothing compared to how you’ll be then. Then it’s allowed to be over.’
‘It couldn’t be more over now because he’s… with….’ – I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘sleeping with’ – ‘someone else. I could never trust him again. Or forgive him.’
‘I understand,’ she started. ‘But it’s because of the –’
‘Please, Emily!’ I started out sounding snappy but quickly moved to desperation. ‘It’s over and I need you to believe me because I can’t keep going through this.’
‘OK. Sorry.’ She seemed glad to stop. She looked exhausted. ‘So what would you like to do today?’
‘Dunno.’
‘I’ve to see my accountant about my IRS returns this morning,’ she said. ‘You’re welcome to come with me, or I could drop you to the beach.’
I didn’t want to be on my own. But how stupid would it be to sit in an accountant’s office while Emily went through her tax returns? The sun was splitting the stones and I was a big girl now.
‘I’ll go to the beach,’ I swallowed.
‘How are you fixed for money?’ Emily asked. ‘Not that I’m looking for any,’ she added quickly.
‘Well, Garv said he’d cover the mortgage for a month and I’ve my credit card. No way of paying it off, though, until I get a new job.’ For some reason this worry wasn’t as potent as it usually was. ‘And I’ve a bit in my current account.’
In fact, my Ladies’ Nice Things account was quite healthy. Though I’d been spending too much lately, I’d been doing it from our joint account and it struck me that maybe I’d been stockpiling money in my own account, somehow anticipating the split with Garv. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.
‘Why are you asking me about money?’
‘I was thinking you might like to hire a car while you’re here.’
‘Can’t I get the bus?’
A funny noise made me look up. It was Emily, laughing.
‘What did I say?’
‘“Can’t I get the bus.”’ Next you’ll be offering to walk places. You’re a tonic!’
‘I can’t get the bus?’
‘Not really, no one gets the bus. The service is beyond shite. Or so I’m told, I’ve never actually experienced it first-hand. You need a car in this town. There are some great pick-up trucks for rent,’ Emily said dreamily.
‘Pick-up trucks? Do you mean jeeps?’
‘No, I mean pick-up trucks.’
‘You mean… like hill-billies drive?’
‘Well, yeah, but new and shiny and without hogs sitting up front.’
But I didn’t want a pick-up truck. I’d been entertaining a pleasant vision of zipping around in a foxy little silver convertible, my hair flying out behind me, lowering my heart-shaped sunglasses and making eye contact with men at traffic lights. (Not that I ever would, of course.)
‘Only tourists and out-of-towners drive convertibles,’ Emily scorned. ‘Angelenos never do. Because of the smog.’
I remembered that Emily had picked me up from the airport in a huge, jeep-style, four-wheel-drive type of yoke. She’d looked as if she was driving a block of flats, and I’d almost needed a rope and crampons to get up to the passenger seat. ‘Pick-up trucks are very now,’ she advised. ‘And if not a pick-up truck, then get a jeep like mine.’
‘But I just need something to get me from A to B.’ And it was all right for her, living in year-round sunshine, but when would I get another chance to take the roof off my car and not get soaked to the skin?
‘You see, your car is how you’re judged in this town. Your car and your body. It doesn’t matter if you live in a cardboard box, so long as your car is cool and you’re in the terminal stages of anorexia.’
‘Well, I think convertibles are cool. That’s the car I’d like.’
‘But–’
‘My marriage has broken up,’ I said, playing dirty. ‘I want a convertible.’
‘OK.’ Emily knew when she was beat. ‘We’ll get you a convertible.’
*
Just before we went out, my mother rang. ‘That entire seaboard could fall into the Pacific at any moment.’
‘Is that right?’
‘I’m only saying it for your good.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Is it sunny there?’
‘Very. I have to go now.’
The beach was no distance, I could easily have walked it. If I’d been allowed. I abseiled down out of the car and away Emily drove, perched high and tiny in her mobile block of flats.
The scene ahead of me looked like a postcard. Bathed in citrus light, lines of high, spindly palm trees brushed the jaunty blue sky. Stretching far away in both directions was a wide expanse of powdery white sand, and beyond that was the glinting rush of the ocean.
We’ve all heard that Californians are gorgeous. That through a combination of good-living, health-consciousness, sunshine, plastic surgery and eating disorders they’re skinny, muscled and glowing. As I arranged my towel on the sand
I suspiciously watched other people on the beach. There weren’t that many –possibly because it was a weekday – but there were enough to confirm my worst fears. I was the fattest, saggiest person on that stretch of sand. Possibly in the entire state of California. God, they were thin. And I was filled with resolve – tinged with despair – that I was going to start exercising again.
Two Scandinavian-looking girls took up a position far too near for my liking. Immediately I wondered if either of them were divorced; I was driving myself mad speculating about the marital status of everyone I met…
They whipped off their shorts and tops to reveal tiny bikinis, flat stomachs and golden thighs, shaped and curved with muscle. You never saw two people more comfortable with their bodies; I dearly wanted to shoo them away.
Their arrival meant that I couldn’t remove my sarong. Time passed, and when I had managed to convince myself that no one had any interest in me, I slid it off. I held my breath, wondering if the lifeguard would jerk with sudden shock and break into a slo-mo, red-rescue-pack-under-his-arm, pounding-rock-soundtrack run towards me and order, ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to leave. This is a family beach, you’re upsetting folks.’
But no drama erupted and I slathered myself in factor eight and prepared to bake; skin cancer seemed the least of my worries. God, I was white! I should have lashed on some fake tan before I came. Immediately this made me think of Garv –I always snapped on surgical gloves before applying fake tan and he used to say, ‘Oooh, matron, a surgical-glove moment!’
Oh, God. I closed my eyes, lulled by the rhythmic rush and suck of the waves, the yellow heat of the sun, the short-lived, skippy breezes.
It was actually quite pleasant until I turned over on to my stomach and found that there was no one to put sun-tan lotion on my back. Garv would have done it. I suddenly felt very lonely and the feeling hit anew, My life is over.