I Heart Hollywood (7 page)

After the fantastically professional start to my morning, I made it to Toast with some dubiously applied blusher, a smudge of mascara and about three minutes to spare. According to my itinerary from the delightful Cici, Toast was a ‘very LA brunch spot full of very cool people.’ The implication of course being that I was very much not one of those people. And she was right. Fragile-looking waif girls dressed in skinny jeans, Ugg boots and The World’s Biggest Sunglasses were stacked seven deep around a relatively ordinary looking café at the side of a relatively ordinary looking road. Maybe even slightly skanky road. It certainly wasn’t the glamorous LA I was expecting. For the want of an approved outfit and a size zero figure, I stuck on my sunglasses and strode past the tables full of girls pushing food around their plates.

‘Hi there, welcome to Toast. Do you have a reservation?’

There was a girl on the door with a clipboard. Of a café. On a Sunday morning.

‘Hi, erm, yes, I do.’ I scrabbled around in my beautiful handbag (at least that looked as if it belonged, even if I didn’t) for the bit of paper that I’d rammed back in there during my scramble out of the cab. ‘I’m a little bit early…’

‘We’re very busy, if you don’t have a reservation…’ Door Girl looked me up and down in a not particularly flattering fashion.

‘No, I do, it’s under someone else’s name—James Jacobs, maybe? I’m meeting James Jacobs. It might be under
The Look
, as in the magazine?’ I tried my most charming smile. It did not help.

‘Sure, honey. James Jacobs,’ she said. I really didn’t like the extra-long pause between the words ‘James’ and ‘Jacobs’. I waited until she took a grudging look at her list, then raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow so high that it was practically lost in her highlights. ‘Oh. You’re Angela Clark?’

I nodded and smiled again, trying not to look like a smug cow. Bwah ha ha ha.

‘OK then, if you’d like to follow me? We’ve saved James’s favourite table. He’s not here yet but can I get you some coffee?’ Scary Door Girl transformed into Lovely-Door-Girl-slash-helpful-waitress and I wondered if I hadn’t just been a little bit paranoid. Maybe, just maybe, she was human after all.

‘That would be great. Cream and sugar please,’ I said, sitting down at James’s favourite table, which was thankfully hidden away in a corner at the back of the café, inside and away from the crowds.

Door Girl frowned. ‘Cream
and
sugar? Sure…’

Maybe I wasn’t imagining it. Surely as the only person there that couldn’t possibly be a relation of the Olsen twins, they ought to be welcoming me and my ability to ‘do dairy’ with open arms? Jesus, no one else sitting in that place had eaten in a month.

Everything on the menu looked delicious but my appetite had vanished. In just minutes, I’d be meeting James Jacobs.
The
James Jacobs. Who needed cinnamon pancakes and sliced bananas when you had six foot four of sex god coming to see you for breakfast? That was if he turned up. I had been three minutes early; he was now seven minutes late. I took out my newly acquired BlackBerry, playing the ‘I’m waiting for someone’ game for everyone to see. Scrolling through the messages, I looked for something from Alex. He hadn’t called me back. And what was it, two in the afternoon in New York? That was so not on. Shouldn’t he be pining for me by now? I tapped out a text message, deleted it, tapped out another, deleted it before settling on the perfect breezy ‘missing you’ message.

‘Hey you, having brunch at Toast, yummy. Miss you A x’

I frowned at the sent message icon. Truly, I was a writer for a reason. Words were my tools. Tools that I wouldn’t need to be using if my celeb didn’t arrive soon. Nibbling on a piece of bread that the increasingly suspicious-looking Door Girl had set down in front of me, I weathered another forty minutes of sympathetic glances, not-so-subtle whispering and three cups of coffee before my phone rang.

‘Hello?’ I answered the unfamiliar mobile number in a heartbeat.

‘Hello, Angela? This is Blake, James Jacobs’s assistant?’

‘Oh hi, I’m at Toast, am I in the wrong—’ I started.

‘Yeah, James isn’t coming? His flight was delayed and he can’t make it?’ Blake continued.

‘I—are you asking me or telling me?’ I was a little confused by the way all of Blake’s sentences ended in a question.

‘He’s totally sorry and we’ll call you later with a new meet-up address? Bye.’ And he hung up.

Door Girl was on me like a hawk. ‘James isn’t coming?’

‘Ah, he can’t make it.’ I waved my hand airily, as though I was stood up by movie stars so often that it barely registered on my radar.

‘So just the check?’ The piece of paper was already in her hand and I could see she was itching to slap it down and fill my table with some Lauren Conrad-alike lettuce nibbler.

‘Just the check,’ I nodded. Bloody movie stars. I should have had the pancakes.

Chapter Four

‘I can’t believe that asshole didn’t show,’ Jenny said as we tore down West Third Street in the ridiculous red Mustang convertible that I had told her not to rent but now sort of secretly loved. What I most definitely did not love was Jenny’s driving. She had chosen to confess that she hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since her last LA excursion years ago, and it showed. As if driving in LA wasn’t scary enough.

‘I called Mary and apparently it’s not a big deal,’ I said, clutching my seatbelt tightly. ‘Apparently celebrity schedules are “fluid”. I’ll catch up with him later.’

‘I can’t believe James Jacobs is so unprofessional. I’m kind of heartbroken.’ Jenny whirled around a corner and through a red light. No matter how many times she told me you could legally turn on a red signal, I still closed my eyes. ‘I think you’re in need of retail therapy, honey, and I am the Dr Laura of retail therapy. I’m taking you to the best shopping in LA.’

‘I’m sure he had his reasons, but since you’re offering,’ I said, envisioning a
Pretty Woman
-style storm of Rodeo Drive, laden with stiff cardboard bags. ‘Let’s do some shopping. Show me some swank, Jenny Lopez.’

‘OK, here we are,’ she whooped, pulling into an underground car park.

‘But we just left the café.’ I was puzzled. We couldn’t have been driving for more than two minutes.

‘So?’

‘Well, where are we?’ I pushed up my sunglasses to take a look around in the dark. Rows and rows and rows of cars. I suppose it was Sunday, it made sense for people to be at their church. ‘Wouldn’t it have been faster to walk?’

‘Jesus Christ, they ought to throw you out of the city.’ Jenny squinted in the low light and swung the car recklessly across two empty spaces. ‘What did I tell you about people never walking in LA?’

‘And this is it? A shopping centre?’ I just could not believe it.

‘The Beverly Center, honey.’ She scrabbled around in the glove compartment. ‘This is
the
mall in LA.’

We could have been in Milton Keynes. ‘A shopping centre?’

‘Hey, did I rock up to LA with like, two T-shirts and a ski suit?’ she asked me. ‘No. But you did, so you need to do some shopping. So hush up and get your ass into Bloomingdale’s.’

Once I’d got over the disappointment that was ‘the mall’ and had drunk my body weight in Jamba Juice, I started to focus on the task at hand.

‘So tell me everything that happened with Joe,’ I mumbled through the silk BCBG paisley maxi-dress that Jenny was trying to pull over my head in the Bloomingdale’s changing rooms. I already had an olive green Roberto Rodriguez number, a yellow Phillip Lim 5.1 shift, black Kerrigan silk dress and half a dozen T-shirt dresses from Ella Moss, Splendid and James Perse hanging from the wall that Jenny had decreed were ‘keepers’. So far I’d managed to distract her from the swimwear section.

‘Nothing to tell,’ she said, standing back, head cocked to one side, trying to work out what was wrong with the dress. ‘Nothing happened.’

‘The dress is about a foot too long, Jenny,’ I explained, hoping to get that look off her face. She looked so disappointed in me. But that could be because she had already clocked my non-matching underwear, something Jenny and my mother felt very strongly about. ‘And what do you mean “nothing”? He didn’t make any sort of move?’

‘Nothing,
nada
, zip,’ Jenny pouted. ‘I don’t know, he just wasn’t taking the hint. And the dress isn’t too long, it’s BCBG—you’re too short. Try this. How’s the phone sex going? I bet Brooklyn is really good at the dirty talk, right?’

‘Shut up.’ I blushed inside the column of silk that was being yanked up over my head. ‘I actually haven’t heard from him yet.’

‘Really?’ Jenny didn’t even try to cover up the surprise in her voice as she zipped me into a very tight, very blue French Connection strapless mini-dress. ‘But didn’t you call him last night? You know, when you ditched me.’

‘I didn’t ditch you,’ I squeaked—the dress was tight around the old rack. ‘And no, I couldn’t get through to him. It’s fine, we’ve only been here for—what—a day? And he’s working all hours on the new record. The record company are pushing them to get it out at the end of the year or something.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ she replied, slipping on the BCBG dress and looking like a goddess. Bitch. ‘I just wish he wasn’t so keen to talk to you every single time you’re out and I’m in the tub.’

‘Hmm,’ I was officially not thinking about it. So far, my star-studded Hollywood adventure had been nothing but a disappointment, and wondering what Alex was doing two and a half thousand miles away was not going to help me have any more fun.

‘Jenny, if I wanted to go somewhere really glam, where would you take me?’

‘Seriously, would you get over it? I know this is a mall but it has the most stores, it’s where everyone shops,’ she said distractedly, holding out a Nanette Lepore petal pink number and a navy Theory shift. ‘I mean, we’ll totally hit Melrose, maybe The Grove before we go, but The Beverly Center has everything…I saw Britney here once. Before the whole head-shaving thing, when she was allowed out alone. And you can’t afford Rodeo Drive, I know what you make.’

‘No, I mean something really Hollywood?’ I tried not to pull a face at the pink dress. ‘A real, genuine LA experience.’

‘Uh, maybe lunch at The Ivy? Drinks at La Deux?’ she held up the pink for my approval. ‘I guess maybe LAX or Hyde or somewhere if you wanted a club. I’m kinda out of the loop on where’s hot.’

‘Lunch actually sounds really good.’ I held up a deep red Elizabeth & James number, Jenny nodded in agreement and stuck the pink dress back on the end of a random rail. If we had to discuss every shopping decision out loud, we would have no time to cover the other, almost equally important subjects in life. ‘Is The Ivy nice?’

‘Uh, I guess?’ Jenny draped the red silk across herself, slipping her head between the hanger and the dress before heaving a pile of dresses into my arms. ‘You should get these. Joe could probably get us a reservation. I’ll get Daphne to meet us there.’

I clapped happily as Jenny wandered off to get better reception on her mobile, the red silk still swishing around her neck. So what if I’d been stood up by my movie star? What man could compare with Jenny Lopez, shopping and a super-swank restaurant for lunch?

‘Can I set up a changing room for you?’

A helpful shop assistant appeared at my elbow and held her arms out to take the masses of silk and jersey that I was cradling. I paused for a second and thought of my feeble wardrobe back at the hotel. And then of my credit card limit. And then of my feeble wardrobe back at the hotel.

‘Actually, could you just take them to the counter?’ I asked. She nodded gleefully and literally ran across the shop floor. Sneaking a peek in my bag, I checked my mobile. Well, certainly not Alex, still nothing. I sighed and swung my bag around my back. I was going to need dessert.

It turned out that my interpretation of the real Hollywood and Jenny’s interpretation of the real Hollywood were very different. I couldn’t argue with the fact that The Ivy was exclusive and swanky, but unlike genuine A-list haunts in New York, there was no quiet dark entrance, designed to keep the undesirables away through sheer intimidation. Instead, it was slap-bang in the middle of a main road, nestled in between a row of shops and smothered by tourists and star-spotters. McDonald’s on Oxford Street was less conspicuous.

Flashbulbs clicked and buzzed all around us as we pushed our way up the little footpath leading from the street into a pretty little country cottage. I paused on the patio and turned back towards the sidewalk—paparazzi waving, shouting and screaming. Blinking back towards the restaurant, I followed Jenny through the calm, quiet and unwaveringly beautiful diners, none of whom appeared to actually be eating; instead they were concentrating very hard on pretending that they weren’t a living breathing version of the ‘Spotted’ page in
Heat
magazine. Trying to navigate a safe route through the wrought-iron tables and chairs and dozens of stiff cardboard carrier bags, I saw a hand shoot up at the back of the patio and wave us over.

‘Jesus, why on earth did you want to meet here, J doll?’ The hand belonged to Jenny’s friend Daphne, who introduced herself and greeted us both with extravagant kisses. ‘It’s such a circus.’

‘Angie wanted a real LA experience.’ Jenny peered over the top of her sunglasses at me. ‘And she got it.’

‘This isn’t really what I was expecting,’ I said, switching my attention from the heaving crowds back on the pavement to Daphne. ‘I was thinking, well, I don’t know. Glamorous? Swanky? LA is weird.’

‘Yeah, get used to it,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind, I ordered. I’m fucking starving.’

Given that the majority of The Ivy’s clientele appeared to be the exact same group of blondes I’d seen at Toast that morning, who had just about had time to go home and get changed into little sundresses and rich old men instead of Ugg boots and gym boys, Daphne stood out a mile. Just like everyone else here, she was undeniably beautiful but, unlike anyone else, she was a vision of retro beauty. Her black shiny hair was coiffed into a Betty Paige bob and her porcelain skin made my English-rose-slash-pasty-Brit complexion look as though I’d been in the Bahamas for six weeks. Teamed with the most precise eyeliner and perfect ruby red lips I’d ever had the privilege to behold, Daphne was an arresting sight. Jenny had told me she was an artist and a stylist, but I hadn’t figured that her talent with a paintbrush would run to her eyeliner. Next to her polished perfection, I felt as if I’d turned up in my decorating clothes.