Adored (36 page)
But oh no, Mr. Fucking Integrity, Mr. I Have My Own Career and I’m Not Your Sidekick, was too damn insecure to make the effort.
It wasn’t until after two that Max finally emerged from his room to forage for some more food. Things seemed quiet, and indeed, when he opened his study door, he could see that the living room was empty.
Moving into the kitchen to grab a cold drink, he noticed two empty champagne bottles on the table beside an overflowing ashtray, and followed the distant sound of semi-drunken laughter out through the kitchen door and onto the terrace.
Turning the corner to the western side of the house, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Siena, topless and giggling, was swinging from one of the low branches of the cypress tree. Admittedly, the photographer was shooting only her back—this was
US Weekly,
not
Playboy
—but on the other side of the tree, a whole gaggle of assistants and lighting guys were sprawled out on the lawn, mesmerized by her little exhibition. Hunter was nowhere to be seen.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Max roared, dropping his plastic glass of iced tea with a clatter and vaulting down from the terrace onto the grass below.
Everybody spun around to stare at him, including Siena, who promptly lost her grip and fell with a shriek into the arms of one of the assistants, a boy of about eighteen who could barely breathe with the excitement of having Siena McMahon’s bare breasts only inches from his face.
She was laughing so hard at first that she could hardly see her enraged boyfriend, let alone respond. That champagne really had gone straight to her head. Extricating herself with some difficulty from the dumbstruck boy’s lap, she collapsed on the grass, rubbing her ankle and giggling. “Damn. I think I’ve twisted my ankle,” she moaned. “It really kills.”
“Put this on,” Max commanded, pulling his old gray T-shirt off over his head as he advanced furiously toward her. “You’re making a fucking spectacle of yourself, as usual. And where the fuck is Hunter?”
Siena took the T-shirt and held it against her chest but didn’t put it on. “He went out,” she replied flatly. Everybody else had fallen silent. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. “His pictures were all finished.”
“But yours weren’t, I see?” snapped Max. “They just wanted to get a few more shots of you with your tits out for their private collections, I suppose?”
Siena sat rubbing her swelling ankle in shock. She hadn’t thought she was doing anything wrong and couldn’t understand his sudden outburst of hostility.
“I wanted some shots of her outdoors, looking natural in such wonderful natural surroundings,” interrupted the photographer in a high-pitched, high-camp whine. “We’re only photographing her back, sweetie, no need to blow a gasket.”
“Who the fuck asked you?” said Max rudely. “Go on,” he shouted, while the nervous group on the ground scrambled hurriedly to their feet. “Get out, the lot of you. The shoot’s over.”
“No, it isn’t!” said Siena, standing up a little unsteadily and flinging Max’s T-shirt on the ground defiantly. “Just who do you think you are, Max, telling everybody else what they can and can’t do? Who made you judge and fucking jury?”
Naked except for her skimpy orange bikini bottoms, and less than half his size, Siena nevertheless managed to look very intimidating when she was angry. Sexy but scary. The crew skulked farther back into the shade. “You’ve seen me topless on the beach a hundred times.”
“That’s different,” he muttered darkly.
“Why?” she challenged him. She was on a roll now. “Because this time I’m in a magazine? My fucking
back
will be in a magazine? Because I’m trying to promote my film and my career? Because this is what I do for a living?”
Max stood facing her in uneasy silence. He knew he was right to be angry—of course he was angry, dammit—but he didn’t
exactly
know why. He didn’t know how to defend himself when Siena started yelling at him. It was like she’d turned the tables on him, and managed to seize the moral high ground, when
she
was the one in the wrong. He felt desperate, trapped.
“Well,
I
think she looks beautiful,” piped up Johanna, the fat journalist, who had a problem with aggressive men and wanted Siena to like her.
“Compared to you, everyone looks beautiful,” whispered one of the lighting guys to his friend, who stifled a giggle.
“Do you?” said Max sarcastically. “How fascinating.”
Siena felt her eyes welling up with tears. Her anger was spent, and now she just felt miserable. Max had seen hundreds of topless shots from her modeling days and never batted an eyelid. She couldn’t understand why he was being so nasty to her now.
“Okay, everyone,” she said, her voice trembling with unhappiness and barely contained emotion. “He’s right, that’s enough for today. Thank you all for your time.”
Embarrassed, they all began gathering up their equipment in double-quick time. The fat journalist scowled pointedly at Max in a show of sisterly solidarity and passed Siena her bikini top.
“It’s a terrific interview, my dear,” she said in a stage whisper, squeezing Siena’s hand encouragingly. “Don’t you worry. You can see the copy before we run it in September, in case you want to make any changes.”
“Thanks,” said Siena weakly.
Max was just standing there, bare-chested, looking at her as though she were the lowest form of life. Of course, it was fine for
him
to stand around with his top off.
After what seemed like forever, he turned away from her without a word and walked back into the house. Seconds later, he was back with a blue Nike sweatshirt on and his wallet and car keys in hand.
“Where are you going?” asked Siena. She now felt utterly vulnerable and afraid, unable to recapture the anger and defiance that had protected her before. All she wanted was for Max to turn around and tell her he loved her. He didn’t even have to say he was sorry. Just not to go.
“Out,” he said angrily, without breaking stride.
She tried to run after him as he got into his battered old car, but she was barefoot and nursing her sore ankle and couldn’t keep up once she hit the pebbles and shingle of the driveway. “Out where?” she called desperately after him. “Max, I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Please!”
He seemed to stare right through her, and with one violent rev of his ancient engine, he screeched out of the driveway, leaving a distraught Siena standing in a cloud of angry dust.
She was still standing there ten minutes later when Hunter arrived back home and got out of his Mercedes looking cheerful and relaxed with a bag of Whole Foods groceries under his arm.
“Siena,” he said, his voice all concern as he registered the forlorn, frightened look in her eyes. “What’s wrong, lovely one? What happened?”
Crumpling into tears, she fell gratefully into his arms.
“It’s Max,” she sobbed. “He’s gone. Oh, Hunter, I think he’s gone for good.”
Max drove along the coast road to San Vicente and headed east toward Brentwood, Beverly Hills, and eventually, West Hollywood. Lining the route were sumptuous homes in every style from mock Tudor, to Nantucket Craftsman, to glass and concrete modernist boxes. The blazing afternoon sunshine poured down its life-giving energy on the orange and lemon trees that grew in every garden, overflowing with abundance and color, fruitfulness and life.
But Max barely registered his glorious surroundings as he rattled along in his Honda, the car that Siena had once been too mortified to set foot in but now loved as a battle-scarred old friend, the same as he did.
He felt confused. And angry.
Angry at Siena, and angry at himself.
Fuck.
He banged his fist so hard against the dashboard that the instruments started to spin out of control.
Why.
Why?
Why had he lost his temper, why did she have to show off in front of all those people, why didn’t he know anymore if he was even right or wrong to feel so fucking furious?
His temples were starting to ache from the ceaseless, berating, conflicting voices in his head. He swerved, narrowly missing a huge SUV heading for the beach. He could see the Brentwood housewife in his rearview mirror, shaking her fist at him. Silly cow. He’d had it up to here with rich, spoiled women.
If only he could get a break, he thought bitterly. If he could ever have one hit play, or one half-decent film funded, maybe this wouldn’t be happening? But that was stupid. What did his fucked-up career have to do with a houseful of arse-licking media parasites and Siena exposing herself to half of Santa Monica?
He couldn’t think anymore. He needed a drink.
Without realizing it, he looked up to find that he had already turned onto Wilshire and was now practically at La Cienega. The digital clock in front of him told him it was still only half past three, too early to go to Jones’s and hide away in a dingy red booth, unnoticed, to drink himself into oblivion. He’d have to go up to Sunset and try one of the hotel bars.
Veering sharply left, he found himself looking at a hundred-foot-tall picture of Siena—the face of Maginelle—plastered onto the white west wall of the Mondrian Hotel and chuckled bitterly. If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know what was.
Five minutes later, he had left his Honda with a disdainful white-suited valet out front—they were more used to Ferraris and Aston Martins, he supposed—and made his way through the lobby to the Sky Bar.
By six o’clock, this famous poolside hangout for L.A.’s movers and shakers would be starting to get busy. By eight, burly doormen would be turning away all but the most beautiful women and most powerful men in Hollywood. But at a quarter to four, Max had the place almost to himself, with only a sunburned family from Pennsylvania and a party of German businessmen to prevent the pretty, sarong-clad waitresses from giving him their full, undivided attention.
He sank down exhausted on one of the oversize cushions underneath the famous potted trees on the deck, and ordered a sour-apple martini.
“They’re pretty strong, you know,” said one of the dark-haired waitresses after watching Max guzzle down his fifth drink as though it were 7-Up.
“So am I.” He grinned at her inanely, already drunk. “I’ll have another, please. May the best man win!”
“Bad day?” she ventured, offering him a bowl of wasabi peas and taking his empty glass.
Max shook his head. “Not really.” He gave a hollow laugh and flopped back on the cushion. He tried to look up at her face, but it was hard to see because of the sun, so he shut his eyes. “More like bad year. Bad life, really.”
“Oh, come on now,” said the girl, with a skeptical raise of the eyebrows. “I’m sure things aren’t that bad. You look fit and healthy to me, and you’ve obviously got money to burn on these.” She leaned over and handed him another neon-green martini, which Max grasped with a surprisingly steady hand.
As her shadow fell across his face, he opened his eyes and glanced up at her flat brown belly, exposed between the top of her sarong and her tight white T-shirt. He was surprised to find he had an almost overwhelming urge to sit up and lick it.
Fuck. He must be drunker than he’d thought.
“Call me if you need anything else,” she said, and before he had a chance to marshal his incoherent thoughts into any kind of a response, she had shimmied off toward the Germans.
He closed his eyes again for a moment, then opened them to find himself being shaken, gently but firmly, by another saronged nymph, this time a blonde with the most enormous pair of tits Max had ever seen.
“Sir.” She leaned down low over his face and shook him again. “Excuse me, sir,” she repeated more loudly.
Max sat up rather too suddenly and felt a wave of nausea hit him like a punch in the stomach. “It’s six-thirty, sir,” the girl was saying. “You’ve been out for a couple of hours. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to settle your bill. Unless you want something else to drink?”
He rubbed his eyes blearily and tried to focus, but it was no good; the bar and pool were spinning around him like horses on a carousel.
Good, he thought. He wasn’t hungover yet, he was still drunk. And the only thing to do when drunk, of course, is to keep drinking.
“I’ll have another martini, angel,” he said, patting the seat beside him. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute first though, and tell me your name. I’m Max.”
The girl smiled. He was an attractive guy, and she was sure she recognized him from somewhere. An actor, perhaps? Or a producer? Even better. Maybe he could help her out.
“I’m Camille,” she said, extending her hand and looking deep into his eyes. “But we’re not allowed to sit and chat I’m afraid. I’ll get you that drink.”
Max took her hand and held on to it, partly because he wanted her to stay and partly because he hoped it might stop her spinning. She had a beautiful face, but it was hard and, he suspected, lightly surgically enhanced.
When he’d first moved back to California from England, he used to think that all that inner-beauty stuff was a load of crap. But the more time he spent in Hollywood—watching pretty young girls rushing out to surgeons to have themselves carved up, then propping up the bar at the Standard or Koi every Friday night, trying to snag some producer or millionaire, sleeping around and wrecking marriages and families wherever they went—the more he had come to recognize a certain inner ugliness that truly revolted him.
Normally, he wouldn’t have given a girl like Camille a second look. But the combination of the martinis, her incredible breasts, and his renewed fury at Siena—how could she have
humiliated
him like that—all drew him toward her like a moth to a flame.
“I really have to get back to work,” she giggled, trying to remove her hand from Max’s bearlike grip.
“You’re far too beautiful to be working here,” he slurred, releasing her. “What are you? Actress? Model?”
“Both,” Camille replied matter-of-factly. She knew she was beautiful and wasn’t about to contest his assumptions. “What about you?”
“I’m a director,” said Max, and even in his drunkenness, he clocked the light of interest switching on in her eyes. Poor girl! She probably thought he could help her find work. If she had any idea how broke he was, she wouldn’t be giving him a second look.
“Listen,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “my shift ends at eleven. If you want”—she bent down and lightly brushed the back of his neck with her long fingers, making his hair stand on end—“we could go somewhere afterward. To talk.”
“Great.” Max smiled wolfishly, throwing caution to the wind.
That was a conversation he was definitely looking forward to.
Back at the beach house, Siena sat miserably on the sofa and scraped out the last dregs of a huge tub of rum-and-raisin ice cream. She was wearing an old pair of gray sweat pants, a big Aran sweater of Hunter’s, and a pair of Max’s hiking socks. Her hair was scraped back in a messy bun, and what little makeup she’d had on had long since been cried away, leaving her usually porcelain-white complexion red and swollen.
“You look terrible,” said Hunter, not unkindly, emerging from the kitchen still holding the portable phone. He’d been on the phone to Vancouver for almost two hours, chatting with Tiffany. “And what’s this crap you’re watching?”
Siena moved over on the sofa to make a space for him and he dutifully sat down and put a brotherly arm around her.
“It’s not crap, it’s HBO,” she said, not taking her eyes off the screen. “Anyway,
you
can talk about making crappy television!” she joked, then instantly regretted it when she saw his face cloud over. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that,” she backtracked. “I just wanted to try and distract myself, that’s all. I mean, it’s past midnight. Wouldn’t you have thought he’d be back by now?”
Hunter took the empty ice-cream bucket and spoon out of her hands and pulled her tightly into his embrace. He hated seeing her so upset, but it wasn’t as if this were the first time Siena and Max had had a humdinger of a fight. Every time it happened, she convinced herself that this was it, that it was over—a bit like the way he used to be with Tiffany—and every time she took solace in a vat of Ben & Jerry’s. For someone so crazy and spirited and strong-willed, she could be very predictable at times.
“Not necessarily.” He tried to sound reassuring. “You know Max. He’s proud and stubborn to a fault. He’s probably spending the night holed up in some horrid motel, wishing he hadn’t been such an idiot but too pigheaded to pick up the phone and call you.”
“I hope so,” said Siena, but she wasn’t convinced. Hunter hadn’t seen Max’s face when he’d stormed out. He was angrier than she’d ever seen him.
“And I really don’t think overdosing on ice cream is gonna make you feel any better.”
Siena managed a weak smile. “That’s because you’re a man and you don’t know anything.”
“Oh,” said Hunter indulgently, stroking back a stray strand of her hair. “I see.”
“How is Tiffany, anyway?” she asked, trying to muster some interest in anything other than Max and his whereabouts. “Still having fun up there?”
“Yeah,” said Hunter, a huge grin bursting across his face at the thought of his girlfriend. “She’s loving it. Not so much Vancouver; she says the city’s kinda dead. But the show, all the guys she’s working with, that’s going great.” He sighed. “I miss her, though.”
“I know you do,” said Siena who, despite herself, still wished he didn’t.
“I’m off to bed anyway, sweetheart,” he announced. “I’m beat. And if you’ve got any sense, you’ll turn in, too. Trust me, Max will be back with his tail between his legs before you open your eyes.”
He stood up and held out his hand to pull her to her feet. She let him help her, glad as always of his physical presence and the closeness and comfort it never failed to bring her.
“Okay,” she said, turning off the TV and throwing the remote down on the couch. “You’re probably right.”
He bent down and kissed her tenderly on her forehead, nose, and dimpled chin, just as he used to when they were kids.
“Of course I am,” he said. “You just wait and see.”
Across town in East Hollywood, Max sat bolt upright in Camille’s bed, stone-cold sober.
Jesus Christ. What had he done?
Bleakly, he ran back over the evening’s events in his mind. He’d kept on drinking at the Sky Bar till she’d finished her shift. By then he’d been far, far too smashed to drive, which gave him a perfect excuse not to have to show Camille his battered old car. This was particularly important, since by the time they left together, he had managed to convince her that he was a super-rich producer and director, and the only reason he didn’t want to take her home to his palatial pad was that it was at the far end of Malibu, he needed to pick up his car in the morning, and didn’t it make more sense to go back to her place instead?
He didn’t know if he was a frighteningly good liar, or if Camille was just particularly gullible. Either way, he felt an avalanche of guilt crushing him mercilessly when he thought about it.
She lay beside him now, her tousled head resting on a makeup-smeared pillow, her naked body still glistening with sweat, and her face flushed with drowsy post-orgasmic delight. Seeing Max’s pained expression, she reached up and rested her hand gently on his bare back. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Oh God,” he wailed, staggering out of bed and pulling on his boxer shorts and shirt. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, sweetheart. But I have to go home.”
“Now?” she said, her brow furrowing in disappointment. “But what about your car? I thought you were going to stay here and pick it up in the morning? You don’t want to get a cab all the way to Malibu at this time of night.”
“I’m not going to Malibu,” he said simply, too caught up in his own guilt and panic to spare much of a thought for her feelings. Buttoning up his jeans, he began scanning the room for his socks and shoes.
“What do you mean?” demanded Camille. She had sat up in bed now, and Max noticed that her enormous silicone boobs didn’t fall so much as a millimeter but remained fixed ridiculously in front of her, like glued-on beach balls. He thought of Siena’s beautiful, natural breasts and wanted to cry. What was he doing here?
“Look, like I said, I’m sorry,” he repeated harshly. “I lied to you. I’m not a producer or a millionaire, and there is no house in Malibu.”
Camille’s mouth dropped open, and she glared at him. That, he supposed, was where the L.A. girls’ “hard” look came from. From being used and lied to and taken advantage of by guys like him.
“I’ve been a total jerk, and you didn’t deserve it,” he admitted, slipping on his shoes and grabbing his wallet from the bedside table. “But the truth is, I have someone at home. Someone I love more than anything.”
He forced himself to look at her. Her eyes were ablaze with hatred. “I have to go. I’m sorry.”
She looked back at him with utter contempt. “Fuck you,” she said quietly, and rolling over, she pulled the covers up over her head to block him out.
There were a few seconds of silence, then she heard the door creak open and close with a soft, guilty click. Under the covers, she could feel her rage bubbling up to breaking point, and bit down on her lower lip so hard it bled.
