Beneath the Blonde (17 page)

Gaelene set off, scone in hand, dripping warm butter and raspberry jam down the front of her fourth form school jersey. The one she was supposed to keep for school. Clean for the winter term. The one she’d put on this morning, late, to leave muggy Auckland, grabbing whatever she could as her mum yelled from the front door that the weather was cooler down the line and her dad honked the car horn,
anxious to get away, get their duty done. Get it over with, impatient to get home again two days later.

Gaelene took the short cut through the school to the dairy. Past the sandpit where she and Shona had played as best-friend five- and six-year-olds, past the monkey bars where Shona spun around faster and faster, one leg knee-clamped to the bar, the other straight out behind her, two short pigtails hoping the Olga Korbut image would make the physical impossibility a reality. She finished her scone and started to climb the wooden log stairs up to the play fort in the Standard’s play area where as “big kids” they had made homes and wars and battleships, when she heard scuffling on the floor above and two voices in low, stifled moaning.

Gaelene was fourteen and though she had no experience to tell her so, she knew that the sound, so easily mistaken for pain or trouble, was not the sound of distress. Or at least not the sort of pain you were meant to complain about. Gaelene did not know what she was hearing, but she knew enough to move more quietly, to hold her own breath tight, to creep up to put her eye close to the knot in the wood that would allow her access to the source of the sound. Up close, the sap smell of untreated pine stabbing her nostrils, she watched John and Shona fucking. Fucking on the top floor of the play fort, open sky cold above them, shielded from the empty school grounds by a four-foot wall. She stood there for three or four minutes, fascinated and moved. And disturbed. Then she crept away as quietly as she had come. As quietly as John came noisily. As quietly as Shona, fourteen-year-old girl fucking the sixteen-year-old visiting cousin she had asked to enlighten her, did not come at all.

The day turned and Gaelene did not find Shona at the dairy and when they met the next day they had little to say to each other and Gaelene went home to the city, glad deep in
her heart that she now lived in a place where she had no history and the by-product of this gladness was that she had even less reason to talk to Shona. And the following year when John came visiting his cousins, back from boarding school, he, unlike Gaelene, was revelling and blossoming in the uncovering of his own history and now he was Hone and now he did not have much to say to Shona either.

Saz arrived at Heathrow via a crowded, tunnel-stopping tube journey in time to join Greg and Siobhan at the check-in. She managed to get a few minutes alone with them while they queued; Dan and Steve, who’d arrived far earlier, were having another “quick half” in the bar. It took little time to give them the basics of her latest information. Siobhan scoffed at the possibility of Kevin being involved, though Saz noticed that Greg seemed to take it more seriously and was relieved she had contacted the police about him. When she told them about meeting Linda, omitting the details of lager cans and the suede jacket, Siobhan seemed genuinely puzzled that her stalker should be a woman and insisted that Greg write down every one of the few physical details in his notebook. She fretted for a few minutes more, scanning the hall for tall, dark-haired women and then, seeing Steve and Dan round the corner from the bar, she went straight into dippy blonde mode. She picked up her bags, planted soft full kisses on both Saz’s and Greg’s mouths, sending Saz’s stomach on a Ferris wheel turn and flounced up to the now free counter where she demanded a window seat, non-smoking, extra legroom upgrade from Business Class to First for herself and Greg. She got it too. Saz of course, would have to slum it back in company-paid Business with the boys.

A confirmed US-ophile, Saz had always loved the flight into
any American city—the descent into the vast country, alternately terrifyingly empty and then crammed full of people, the knowledge that she was about to step foot, not just on a land, but a whole continent. She adored New York; the pace and adrenalin of Manhattan fitted her rhythms almost as well as the tight-fitting black leather dress she’d bought in Greenwich Village last time they were there. Molly had taken her away for a little post-operative rest and relaxation following an extended period of surgery. The new method of grafts had left her considerably happier with the look and use of her legs but rather more depressed about the prospect of several more years of treatment until her doctors would consider her “well”. Molly diagnosed basic depression in her girlfriend and suggested R&R in New York as the cure. The Rest she’d managed while sleeping on the plane there, the Relaxation she had collapsing on the way back, the three days in between had been pure acceleration. Ideal for London blues. Saz also loved San Francisco—the roaring, polluted Pacific, the dirty rainbow flags of the Castro, she even quite liked the pretentious coffee bars and the timelapsed hippies still mooching their way around Haight. She’d visited Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Detroit and found something moving or charming in every city. For work she’d crisscrossed Northern California, Nevada and even ventured into parts of Idaho. At gatherings of friends and acquaintances in London, she was used to finding herself the only guest standing up for America, always the one to find some piece of real gold under the tackiness. Saz still believed in the Statue of Liberty, four trips out to the Island hadn’t dented her enthusiasm for the sight of her stained copper green, though each time she was disappointed to be reminded again that Liberty isn’t quite as big in real life as she looks spread across a cinema screen in glowing technicolour. To Saz, America was still a land of excitement and adventure. Until, that is, she went to LA.

In LA, Saz realized what people were talking about when they said they hated America. Only somehow what she felt was worse than hate. She didn’t hate LA because she couldn’t summon up enough feeling about LA to actually emote enough to hate it. She just didn’t get it. She couldn’t see the point. With Siobhan and Greg locked up in meetings all day, she had no choice but to sit by the pool alone or, on their free day, play with Dan and Steve in their over-large hire car as they tried to understand the plastic tinsel of the city. They were as perplexed as Saz. For people who had just lost one of their best friends (and in Dan’s case, not long after losing his lover) the guys weren’t too bad company. Every now and then one of them would point out a shop or restaurant that Alex might have liked—or have liked kicking shit out of—but in general they concentrated all their efforts in trying to enjoy what they could of this, their one day off in the angel city. Well-meaning people at the record offices had told them the things to do. They went to look at the Hollywood sign and there it was, shrouded in hazy smog. They followed directions and drove through Beverly Hills and up past the big fancy houses in the canyon, they went to Rodeo Drive, they looked at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but as Steve pointed out to Saz when they retrieved the car from yet another $5.00 a day vacant lot carpark, “If I’d wanted to reconfirm my view that rich people have no taste and shouldn’t be allowed to spend all that money so badly, I could walk down Bishop’s Avenue at home. I didn’t have to come all the way here to find that out—and as for Rodeo Drive, it’s so bloody short!”

Dan added that it may have been short, but he’d spotted at least three hair-implanted queens trotting up and down the street which was taken by Steve as a sign to turn the car around and get his own bald pate out of there as fast as he could.

After lunch by the hotel pool they walked down to Venice
Beach and Steve wondered aloud why anyone would choose to put Camden Market next to the Pacific Ocean, thereby spoiling both. Saz tried not to be grumpy, Dan tried to have a fun time and Steve tried not to mind that the bronzed, blonded barbie-doll people were obviously shocked by his looks. But both boys had been seriously thrown by Alex’s murder and it hung at the back of every strained and sarcastic comment they made. Sitting on a bench looking out at the Pacific, Dan finally said, “I’m sorry, kids, this isn’t going to work. I can’t talk about Alex and I can’t not talk about him and it just feels so fucking wrong to be here without him.”

Steve nodded and laughed, “Yeah, he’d have been really good at ripping the shit out of this place. All this sunshine—he’d have fucking hated it. Fucking loved hating it!”

They both laughed and Saz, sitting a few feet away on the sand, turned to see the broad, bald, tough Steve lean his head onto Dan’s shoulder where a clean white T-shirt awaited his tears.

By the time they arrived back at the record company offices they were very relieved to find an extremely bouncy Siobhan waiting for them. She insisted that she do the driving back to the hotel and all three were able to push away the silence that had grown between them in the sound of Siobhan’s giggling excitement at everything around her—particularly the dozens of pet washes they passed—that, combined with their own terror that she was about to kill them as she kept forgetting to turn into the right lane when she took corners.

That night Cal took them to a tiny restaurant overlooking the ocean where Siobhan rejoiced in the vegetarian, fat-free delights of the Californian menu and Saz secretly rejoiced in Siobhan’s laughter. Saz then shocked Cal by stating that she thought the best use for Santa Monica Boulevard was
probably as a running track and that she’d use it as such at six the next morning to jog up to the hills—or as close as her lungs would take her. The dire warnings elicited by her suggestion almost put Saz off the peanut butter cheesecake she’d been planning for dessert, but she knew she needed something to cheer herself up and as the thought of the creamy goo had kept her going through the interminable music talk all night (that and the slight turn at the pit of her stomach every time Siobhan smiled at her) then she’d have to put the run on the breakfast menu as well. The dinner itself was something of a celebration anyway, in that the contracts were finally signed and the boys were all extremely relieved that Cal had even managed to persuade Siobhan to agree to his suggested replacement for Alex. The other guys had taken Cal’s word that the substitute drummer was good enough until they had the time to look for someone perfect, but Siobhan, throwing another “I need privacy” trauma had raised every objection she could think of. Eventually Greg had taken her out into the office corridor where they exchanged a few very loud and several more very quiet words. And when Siobhan re-entered the room, she’d apologized to Cal and agreed to whatever he thought best. Cal had nodded his thanks to Greg and wisely accepted her apology immediately, knowing from past experience that dwelling on the subject would not only provoke a retraction of her regret, but would no doubt unleash an even greater fury. During dinner Cal didn’t mention the replacement drummer until Saz was eating the last mouthful of her cheesecake and then he merely noted they’d be meeting him at a late breakfast the next day, before the car arrived to take them to their last meeting, followed by lunch and the airport later that afternoon. Then he hurriedly paid the bill and gave kisses all round so speedily that even Siobhan didn’t have time to think of an objection.

Back at the hotel by eleven, Siobhan, a little tired and a
lot emotional, made Greg take her to bed. Saz quietly nursed her sexual tension in the bar with Dan. Steve had evidently befriended one of the other hotel residents because after a quick word with Dan he ordered a bottle of champagne in his room and said goodnight. Dan explained that his cheery handshake indicated yet another waiting shag and was not surprised to see the back of a tall, blonde woman rise from the other side of the bar and follow Steve at a not particularly discreet ten paces. Saz stayed another hour drinking lite beers and listening to Dan’s stories of Alex’s legendary bad temper. Dan went to bed at midnight, and Saz, before she went to sleep twenty minutes later, put in a sleepy, guilty answerphone message to Molly.

Saz woke bolt upright two hours later and lay in the semi-darkness, trying to work out what the motorized noise was that had woken her. She unlocked and opened the patio doors of her room and realized that the sound was coming from the outdoor jacuzzi just around the corner. Knowing that she would never get back to sleep with the irritation of the constant hum, she pulled on her costume and headed out for a moonlit swim herself. She dived in and swam a quick underwater length, coming up at the deep end, closest to the jacuzzi. From the small bubbling pool hidden by a variety of ferns and blossoming trees, she could hear voices, a man and a woman. Saz stood in the water quietly listening, slowly realizing that not only could she hear the sounds of a couple making love, but also that the man of the couple sounded distinctly like Steve. Embarrassed, she was about to turn and swim back to the other end of the pool when she clearly heard him call out “No” over the bubbling hum. She pulled herself out of the pool, started to head towards the jacuzzi and then stopped short. They were fucking. In the water. And Steve had just called out “No”, which had to be
open to some interpretation given the circumstances, and she was about to run in on them. Remembering her job and throwing caution to the warm Californian wind, she charged around the corner of thick foliage to see Steve, partly lit by the orange sky night, his arms outstretched along the sides of the jacuzzi, his face contorted in a mask of pleasure, a blonde head bobbing just underwater, a blow job clearly in action. Steve looked at Saz, Saz looked at Steve, she muttered “Whoops. Sorry” and slunk off back to her room. As she dried herself and got back into bed, Saz hoped she hadn’t entirely ruined Steve’s evening. Or the blonde’s.

Six o’clock the next morning found Saz greeting the hotel desk clerk and heading out hopefully to discover that maybe LA wasn’t only the Baywatch version she’d seen the day before. She wasn’t disappointed to find, as she did in London, that the best time in any big city is first thing in the morning, when the sun is almost up and the air is about as clear as it gets. The breeze was kind and cool, the light behind the hills showed that the sun was starting to think about rising and the sky was not only a soft and unsullied shade of aquamarine, but there were even a few twinkling stars to add to the picture. Saz ran the whole distance up to Sunset, the golden sheet of the Pacific narrowing to a thin silver sliver behind her and, with the sun now fully risen, she found herself breathlessly thinking that the Pacific was a truly fantastic thing and any city so close to such a fine ocean couldn’t be all bad. The thought lasted a good ten minutes, but then the no-bus ride back to the hotel changed her mood. She’d walked a good three miles before one finally appeared to carry her back to the Pacific horizon.