Going La La (10 page)

11

Jesus Christ, it was her
. The girl from the airport. He’d come outside for a smoke and at first he thought he was alone, until he’d heard a sniffle and seen someone leaning against the balcony. It was difficult to see in the darkness, but he could make out the shape of a woman. Slim, tall, great butt. She looked cute, from the back anyway. At first he was going to go back inside, she sounded as if she was crying, but then he’d thought, What the hell, damsel in distress. Maybe she needed his shoulder to cry on. So he’d asked her for a light – the old ones were always the best – and he thought his luck was in when she’d leaned closer and lit his cigarette. She smelled gorgeous and he was right, she was very cute. The odd thing was, she was also
very
familiar. Had he met her before? He’d flicked mentally through his little black book – was she someone he’d worked with, a girl he’d chatted up in a bar somewhere, a one-night stand? Then he’d realised. And he couldn’t believe it. She was the girl who’d tried to steal his cart at Heathrow. The crazy English chick. The woman he’d last seen disappearing out of LAX.

‘It’s you.’ Frankie jumped back as if she’d been bitten. Sucking her singed finger, she scowled at him through the darkness, her initial surprise swiftly turning to annoyance. ‘You’re that bloke.’ She hadn’t recognised him at first without that stupid bloody cowboy hat. But it was definitely him. The lying, cheating, stealing Yank from the airport.

He sighed. ‘Look, about before . . .’

But Frankie wouldn’t let him get a word in. ‘You’re the bloke who nicked my trolley at Heathrow.’ She couldn’t believe it. It was definitely him. Christ, he’d got a nerve. Swaggering over as if nothing had happened, asking for a light.

He rubbed his stubble lazily. ‘Hey, I promise you it was my cart.’ He started smiling. The last thing he wanted was another fight. In fact, he wouldn’t mind calling a truce and getting her number. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, does it? It was a mix-up.’

‘A mix-up?’ Frankie could feel her hackles rising. Was he being deliberately patronising?

‘Well, c’mon, you’d had a few drinks.’ He laughed, trying to make a joke of it, hoping she’d laugh along. He was wrong.

She fumed. The cheeky bastard was still saying it was her fault, and to make matters even worse he was laughing at her –
again
. ‘What are you trying to say? That I was
drunk
?’

Christ, he’d really hit a raw nerve. ‘I didn’t say that.’ He tried to back-pedal, but it was useless. He could feel the situation freewheeling out of control towards another blazing row.

Frankie pounced. ‘You don’t have to. But, for your information, I wasn’t
drunk
. I’d had a few drinks to calm my nerves, that’s all. That doesn’t make me
drunk
.’ Were all American men so bloody arrogant?

‘Hey, OK, I take it back. There’s no need to be so touchy.’ Hell, what was wrong with her? Were all British women this fucking uptight?

‘Well, what the hell do you expect, with people creeping up on me?’ she snapped.

‘Woaah.’ Putting his hands up in surrender, he stepped back. ‘I was only asking for a light.’ Jesus, she really
was
crazy.

Frankie didn’t say anything. Instead she took a drag of her cigarette and began self-consciously fiddling with the catch on Rita’s gold handbag.

He watched her, his temper dying as quickly as it had ignited. She looked so lost and vulnerable. ‘I heard you crying . . . I thought maybe I could help.’

Frankie snapped the bag shut and looked at him suspiciously. What was he playing at? Was this genuine concern or was he making fun of her? She decided on the latter. ‘I don’t need help from someone like you.’

Now it was his turn to get annoyed. ‘
Someone like me?
’ The muscles in his clenched jaw started twitching rapidly with agitation. ‘What the hell do you mean by that?’

Frankie sighed irritably. ‘Look, just leave me alone, OK?’ She glared at him.

‘My pleasure.’ He glared back.

Silence.

The clatter of stilettos and a flash of spangly gold outfit through the foliage heralded Rita’s arrival. Appearing from around the corner, she caught sight of Frankie. ‘Bloody hell, is that where you are? I’ve been looking for you all over . . .’ Her voice trailed off when she saw Frankie was talking to a bloke. And not just any bloke. Her eyes locked on full beam as she realised it was the man from the airport. The Gift from God. The sexy cowboy.
Phwooarr
. Feeling her juices rising, like sap in a tree, she hurriedly began fluffing her hair and pulling down her boob tube – for maximum cleavage effect – as she glanced from him to Frankie, then back to him. Nobody was speaking. Tension hung thickly in the air like stale cigarette smoke. Not that Rita noticed, any scrap of sensitivity she possessed being elbowed to one side by her raging hormones.

She turned back to Frankie. ‘So aren’t you going to introduce me?’ Flashing her mega-watt smile, normally reserved exclusively for casting directors, she peered at the incredibly handsome stranger and giggled coyly.

Frankie gritted her teeth. Introductions were the last thing on her mind. Instead she scowled at her unwanted guest, wishing he’d go away. He got the message. ‘Actually, I was just leaving.’ He looked straight at Frankie, who refused to meet his eye and turned away, before nodding to Rita. ‘Nice meeting you.’

‘Yeah, you too,’ squeaked Rita, who always sounded like Minnie Mouse when she was on heat.

Frankie didn’t say anything. Instead she kept her back turned until she heard the scrape of his boots on the concrete as he walked away.

Unable to wait until he was out of earshot, Rita nudged Frankie in the ribs. ‘Bloody hell, you’re a dark horse. Where did you meet
that
?’

Turning around, Frankie watched as his figure disappeared into the darkness and felt a tinge of guilt. Maybe she did fly off the handle a bit there. Maybe he was only trying to help . . . She dismissed the thought as quickly as it had appeared. What was she thinking of? Of course he wasn’t trying to help, he’d been gloating. He probably thought it was amusing that she was upset. He was that type. One of those clever, arrogant jerks. It was obvious he’d recognised her from the airport and thought he’d try winding her up. Cheeky sod, going on about how she’d been drunk. Well, OK, so she had been a bit, but what had it got to do with him?

‘Well?’ chivvied Rita impatiently, interrupting Frankie’s thoughts.

‘Oh, it’s a long story,’ she sighed wearily, and looked at her empty glass. ‘Can we go home? I’m tired. Too much champagne.’ Her head felt heavy and fuzzy.

‘Oh . . . yeah, of course we can. We’ll get a cab. Dorian never leaves a party before lunchtime.’

Trying to hide her disappointment at the distinct lack of juicy details, Rita linked arms with Frankie and steered her back through the party, towards the entrance and the line of waiting taxis. There was no point trying to get anything out of Frankie when she was in one of her moods, she thought, beckoning a cabbie, but on the other hand when had that ever stopped her.

‘So what’s his name?’ Trying to sound blasé, she opened the door of the cab, gave the driver the address and clambered inside.

‘Who?’ asked Frankie, squeezing in next to her and slamming the door.

Fidgeting with her skirt, which had risen up to her waist, Rita huffed exasperatedly. Wasn’t it obvious? What was wrong with Frankie? Had being dumped made her blind to mankind – and she was talking grade A mankind. ‘That sexy bastard back there.’ She motioned behind them as the taxi pulled out of the driveway.

‘
Him?
’ Frankie thought for a brief moment as they pulled on to Sunset and realised that, although she’d now had two rows with the guy, on both sides of the Atlantic, she didn’t have a clue what his name was. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied lamely.

Rita groaned with frustration. ‘Well, whoever he is, he’s bloody gorgeous.’

Closing her eyes, Frankie leaned her throbbing head against the back of the seat and didn’t say anything. Bloody gorgeous? More like bloody-minded.

Back at the apartment, Frankie lay under the duvet. She couldn’t sleep. Spread-eagled next to her was Rita, wearing black satin eyepatches and industrial-strength earplugs, her face smeared with wrinkle-removing, skin-tightening, pore-reducing, look-eighteen-again-for-only-eighty-dollars night cream. She was snoring faintly. Frankie listened to the rhythmic drone. She was used to sharing a bed with quiet-as-a-mouse Hugh, who would lie in the foetal position all night without stirring. Unlike Rita, who alternated farmyard animal impressions with bursts of kick-boxing.

Nursing a bruised shin, Frankie stared miserably up at the ceiling. It had started to rotate like the drum of a washing machine. She closed her eyes, thinking this might help. It didn’t. It only made her more aware of the half-dozen glasses of champagne fizzing like battery acid in the pit of her stomach. Why the hell did she drink so much? At this rate her newly acquired status, single unemployed smoker, was fast turning into single unemployed
alcoholic
smoker. On second thoughts, single unemployed
depressed
alcoholic smoker was more like it. It was a sobering thought. But not as sobering as the parched, dry-as-a-bone thought that interrupted her self-pity by waving its arms in the air and gasping ‘Water’.

Seized by her boozy thirst, she wriggled out of the futon, trying not to dislodge Fred and Ginger, who were curled up in two tight balls of fluff at the bottom of the duvet, and stumbled blindly across the bedroom, tripping up over Rita’s discarded stilettos. Fuck, she cursed silently. Staggering upstairs to the kitchen, her arms outstretched in the darkness like a divining rod, she yanked open the door of the fridge.

It threw out bright light across the darkness of the open-plan kitchen and into the living room. Blinking as her eyes adjusted, she peered gingerly inside – Rita was not renowned for hygiene – but there was no sign of water, and she’d been told not to drink it from the tap (which ruled out clinging on to the sink, head upside down, hair trailing in the washing up as she clamped her mouth around the mixer tap). In fact the fridge was pretty much empty, apart from a mouldy old half-eaten Domino’s pizza cowering on the top shelf and a bottle of some kind of thick green revolting-looking protein and vegetable shake called Defense Up. Frankie’s stomach waved a white flag in horror, but dehydration and the threat of one hell of a hangover won the day. She took a tentative swig. It tasted like liquidised sprouts. Yeeuchh. She put it back. Defense Up was going to be thrown up if she drank any more.

Defeated, she retreated from the fridge and wandered across the living room to the sofa. Absent-mindedly she looked at her watch: midnight. Back in London it would be eight on a Monday morning. Hugh would still be asleep in bed. She closed her eyes, thinking about him. Any minute now his radio alarm would click on to Capital FM, and he’d lazily roll across the mattress, eyes still closed, and prop his head up against a pillow. And he’d lie there, not moving, until the news had finished, before opening his eyes, turning off the radio, climbing out of bed, stretching in front of the window, yawning twice, running his fingers through his flattened hair and sleepily rubbing his smooth chest. Then, clad only in a pair of Calvin Klein boxer shorts, he’d pad across the landing to the bathroom, check out his stomach in the mirror – full on, side view (relaxed and breathing in) – inspect for any nasal, ear or rogue eyebrow hair (removing any culprits quickly with his tweezers), before disappearing into the shower with the Aveda range for a good half an hour.

She sighed wistfully. His lengthy bathroom routine used to drive her mad, but now she missed it, as only a heartbroken ex-girlfriend could do. If she could just have him back, she swore she’d never get annoyed again. She’d never stand in her dressing gown, tugging at the shower curtain and moaning at him to get a move on, she’d never complain at all the little bits of dental floss she kept finding like wiggly white worms around the flat, she’d never tell him off for using the last of the moisturising conditioner – again. She missed him and she wanted him back.

Suffering both inside and out, she hugged her sofa-cushion boyfriend and stared vacantly at the debris on the coffee table. And that’s when, amidst the jumble of magazines, tissues and clutter that followed Rita wherever she went, her eye fell on something. The telephone.

The temptation was too much. Reaching over, she picked up the handset. It was like holding a loaded gun. For a moment she hesitated . . . Should she pull the trigger?

Of course the answer was no, no, no, no. Don’t Drink and Dial. But it was too late. There was silence on the other end of the line. Then a ringing tone. Her mouth went dry and she tried to swallow. She waited.

Suddenly there was a click and the sound of a voice. ‘Hello?’ It was Hugh.

Her heart raced. Her mouth seemed to seize up. The phone felt like a grenade in the palm of her hand.

‘Hello?’ His voice again. This time more impatient.

She had to speak. She wanted to speak . . . ‘Hugh, it’s me, Frankie,’ she blurted out, the desperation in her voice scotching any hopes she might have had of playing it cool.