The Sex Was Great But... (14 page)

Don't get me wrong. I know it's pathetic, this fantasy of mine—loving a girl called Holly with her perfect face that adorns billboards all over town. A star who lives in a house in the Hollywood Hills and wouldn't piss on me if I were on fire were it not for the fact that fate threw us together and now she wants to boost her ratings by doing a makeover on me.

And the most pathetic part of it all is that it's not just sex. I don't just want to shag her, which at least would make sense to everyone, including me. I want to hold her against my chest and align my heartbeats to hers. I want to smell her hair. I want to throw her, squealing, into the swimming pool. I want to take her clubbing, give her shout-outs, watch her dance. I want to make her euphoric with my music.

But it's never going to happen. The whole loving Holly thing is lunacy. Holly is right: our relationship isn't a relationship at all. It's sex. Also Nancy had been mentioning Ted a lot. Nancy reckons that Holly should forgive and forget and let Ted back into her life. Given that Holly seems to do whatever Nancy tells her, I figured it's only a matter of time.

As I came out of the lift into the car park, and pressed the auto-unlock key for the Porsche, I thought about what Tifanie had said about Kev—about him needing me. After
a few minutes arguing with my better self (or was it my worst?) I concluded that I had to go to him.

Even though Holly would flip if she knew what I was contemplating, I needed to go see him.

I switched off my cell phone so no one could reach me. Dissent—that was what I was after.

W
hen I interviewed Leo for the final show I tried to pretend we'd only barely met. Even though the final interviews were always done live on the program, I had insisted that this one take place in the office. There was a lot that could go wrong, and if anything did I wanted it going wrong in a controlled environment. Nancy was still insisting that Leo had to make a live appearance on the night. I agreed, but there was no way I was going to let that happen.

I was cute, flirty and casual. Leo was in turn intense and silly, mucking around and deliberately misinterpreting my questions. It would still look okay with editing, but I was angry. We had an argument.

He said he felt reduced! Reduced—who says they feel reduced (apart from every spoiled star in this town including me)?

We squabbled briefly about why he felt reduced (him) and how childishly he was behaving (me).

“Look, it's just sex,” I told him, sounding like a vamp but not feeling like one.

Tonight we're going public with Leo at the charity fund-raiser, and after that we'll finally have all the material we need for the show. All the “before” footage has been edited already, along with each step of his makeover. There'll be a camera at the event, covering Leo's attendance at a glamorous Hollywood fund-raiser, and once that's in the can Leo is free to return to London and I can get back to Normal.

Normal. It sounds like nirvana. It sounds like my worst fears.

When I get home from my appointment with Larry the telephone's ringing.

“Guess who, baby? I can't tell you how thrilled I am that you called,” Ted gushes.

I can think of a lot of things I would like to have said like, I didn't call you. I would never have called you in a million years. But you don't pick people up on stuff like that in L.A. I used to think Ted was insincere, but the truth is he's just overly sincere—about himself. Ted really cares about Ted in a way no one else ever can.

He said he wanted to let me know that he was going to be at the charity ball that night. He didn't want either of us to be uncomfortable. He said he hoped we could let bygones be bygones. In Hollywood that means, Please don't
talk to the press about how horrible I was to you. As much as Ted had hurt me, you can't afford enemies in Hollywood, so I let him talk about the ranch he'd just bought and acted like I gave a shit.

“I'd love to take you there, Holly. You can ride there, swim in the river. It's sensationally peaceful.” Ted was the sort of person who said stuff like that—“sensationally peaceful.” He was so L.A.—a fake, but a real fake. We talked superficially about our lives, covering all bases except for the ones that mattered. I didn't mention Leo and Ted didn't mention my mother.

Despite all the water under the bridge of our friendship we were professionals; we knew where to go and where not to go with one another. Scratch away at Hollywood lies, and you find the real lies hiding underneath.

After I put the handset down Conchita waddled into the room, duster poised.

“Mr. Leo!” she cried. “Mr. Leo! His teacher is here and him not here!”

I followed her out to the poolhouse, where Nile was standing in his white robes and black popsocks, his face like thunder.

“He must have been delayed,” I offered, acting as if the last time I saw him I hadn't stood by while my gardener attacked him with hedgetrimmers. “Let me try his cell phone,” I suggested, like I was the nicest, sweetest person in L.A.

Nile kicked at some of the flowers in the flower bed.

Conchita glared at him and clenched her duster.

“The traffic's real good out there today, too,” he said, in a sort of under-his-breath type way. I hate people who talk
under their breath. The expectation that I'm craning to hear, hanging on their every utterance. What a creep.

“I hope nothing's happened to him,” he lied.

I began to panic, though. What did he mean, he hoped nothing had happened? What sort of thing could have happened? My mind threw up a thousand possibilities as the automated operator at the other end of the line informed me that the cell phone I was dialing had been switched off.

“I can't reach him on his phone,” I said to Conchita, my voice betraying my panic.

Nile casually repeated his hope that nothing had happened.

Conchita looked like she wanted to hit him, too.

I made a silent decision that if she threw the first punch I'd throw the second.

“I'm sure he's just stuck in traffic,” I said, a little too briskly. I was sounding borderline hysterical.

“Traffic's real good today,” Nile reminded me. If it had been possible to jab him in the eye and not have my ass sued off me I would have jabbed Nile till his eye bled.

I was reminded of all the times in the last few days that Leo had begged not to have to see Nile again. Why couldn't I have stood up to Nancy? I am a very bad person.

I was always hassling Leo—bossing him around, making him do stuff he didn't want to do—and for what? The more passionate our lovemaking the night before, the colder I'd be with him the next day. I suspected that it was my way of retracting all the kisses and caresses I'd lavished on him the night before, because my rational business-minded side insisted that I had to do
something
to draw the line.

Nile was moving from one foot to another like a kid waiting to be dismissed. He'd be paid for the missed class and he knew it, but he wanted the afternoon off so that he could go and diss me to all his friends and clients.

“You may as well go,” I told him, and Conchita ushered him off the premises with her duster.

The last time Leo and I spent the night together, he asked me if I'd ever been euphoric.

“What do you mean, euphoric?” I asked.

“You'd know if you've ever been it,” he assured me.

“I suppose I would,” I agreed, matching my breathing pattern to his.

“Can you hear the beat?” he asked, as my heart rate syncopated with his.

I nodded, but didn't speak for fear of loosing the rhythm.

“That's what I do see—I line up the beats.”

I didn't know what he meant, so I listened to our heartbeats and entwined my hand in his.

“I want to make you euphoric, Holly Klein.” I thought maybe he already had, but I didn't want to say.

Sometimes I imagined he said things to me only to find he was actually asleep. Once I imagined that I heard him say, “I think I might be falling in love with you, Holly Klein.”

Actually, I think it's the other way around. I think I'm falling in love with him, and how am I meant to push him away if I'm in love with him? Because I have to push him away. Eventually he has to go back to London, back to his crappy world of DJ-ing and market stalls and his marijuana-addled mother. He has to leave.

But he wasn't meant to leave now!

He wasn't meant to leave before the final night!

That's how I justified doing something I never do and let myself into the poolhouse. It was always cool in there during the day, and I flopped down on his unmade futon. Leo doesn't let the cleaner make his bed. He says made-up beds give him nightmares.

The first thing I check is the fake Rolex his mother gave him. He has kept it in there since I gave him the real one. Before I've even opened the little drawer he keeps it in I know what I will find.

Nothing.

And, knowing how much that cheap piece of crap means to him, I really start to panic.

I
took the lights at Wiltshire on amber. There was hardly any traffic today. I checked the time on my watch—sorry, my Rolex—still the one my mum gave me. I keep it for sentimental reasons even though Holly's bought me a real one, which I keep in my pocket.

My mum would think that was daft, wearing a fake Rolex when I had a real one. The Monroes were never a sentimental bunch. But this fake Rolex is the one thing of value I've managed to hang on to during my time with Kev, and it has become a kind of talisman—and, well, okay, so today I
was
feeling sentimental. What can I tell you? I'm flawed macho.

Unfortunately the fake Rolex didn't keep good time, so
I had to fish the real Rolex out of my pocket. Fuck, it had gone three already. That meant even if I drove back to Holly's I'd miss my acting class. Actually, who gave a fuck?

Holly would go ballistic, obviously.

I can anticipate everything she'll say when Nile turns up and I'm not there—which is easy, because she won't say anything. Holly is the only person I know who can go ballistic without saying anything. I had a girlfriend once who went ballistic if I didn't make her orgasm. Auntie Lucy is the queen of ballistic behaviour—she once smashed her telephone up with a hammer when the operator was unable to find a listing for drug dealers.

But Holly beats them all in terms of how bad she makes me feel—not that fear of a silent tantrum is enough to make me turn around and drive back to face Nile. Fuck Nile. Fuck the lot of them. I didn't want to be Mr. Fancy Pants. In the words of Kev—this worm was fucking turning!

I put my foot down hard on the accelerator and suddenly, without actually meaning to, I was sailing through a red light and horns were blaring all around. I glanced in the rearview mirror for police, but it looked as though I'd got away with it. I exhaled.

A few hundred yards down the road I discovered I'd breathed too soon. The siren started up. I patted the cocaine in my pocket—yep, it was in there all right. Right beside the Rolex and Holly's credit card. Well done, Monroe, that will look real good for you!

I was sweating as I got out of the car, anticipating my fate. I'd been stopped and searched by the boys in blue enough times before to know the drill, and everyone's
heard stories of LAPD brutality. Remember Rodney King, I told myself. English coppers are more likely to tickle you than slap you about. But these constables (or whatever they call them here) of Los Angeles, with their pumped up pecs, shiny badges and
Vogue
model looks are like something off
Baywatch.

They couldn't have been more charming. We discussed the handling of Porsches and the gearshift of the latest model. We shook hands and, after a joke warning, my cocaine and me drove off with nothing more sinister than a friendly wave.

I know I should have been relieved to be on the right side of the law and all, but the truth was the copper's courteous caution hurt me more than a good going over with a baton and a set of knuckledusters. Couldn't they see who I really was? Couldn't they tell I was the kind of guy who took drugs, who went clubbing, who didn't give a shit?

Five minutes later, though, the roof was down and I was feeling all Steve McQueenish as I started thinking about this conforming thing and how wrong I'd got it. I've always thought it looks dead easy, see. Deep down I have to admit that I've always looked down on conformers for how easy they have it. Can't think for themselves. Conforming is all about copying what others around you are doing. Now, that can't be so hard, can it?

What you don't realize is that even though conforming looks boring and soppy and easy, that isn't the point. What I didn't understand was that by conforming you agree to give up parts of yourself for the greater good of conformity. Bits of you are sacrificed—great chunks of what makes you who you are have to be relinquished.

And you want to know the worst of it? No one expects you to care about the fact that bits of you are being sliced off. In fact, they congratulate you every time you say goodbye to another part of who you are. “Well, done, Leo,” they praise, when I talk like Dinny. “Don't you feel better now?” they coo, when my teeth have been made to look like a Ken doll's. And the truth of it is, no, I don't feel better. I feel like a traitor; a sellout to who I really was and to who I want to be.

The car handled brilliantly. I've never been much into cars, but driving back from Glastonbury sometimes I used to wish I were driving something that handled better than my mum's succession of crap cars. She used to get them cheap a month or two before the MOT ran out, drive them into the ground and abandon them. There are a lot of dead cars clamped around our estate, and most of them are ours. Driving the Porsche made me feel like the flash git I looked…but I didn't care.

Passing the Hollywood Cemetery, I started to feel a wave of nostalgia for all the times Kev and I used to come here, so I decided to pull in and write that postcard to my mum.

I waved to the guard at the gate on the way in, trying to remember his name. Joe? Cliff? Dave? Not that he'd recognize me nowadays, but Kev and I used to come here all the time.

The cemetery is about the most peaceful place in L.A. “In Hollywood the only people you can rely on are the dead,” the guard used to say to us whenever we dropped by.

Kev and I often used to come here to smoke a spliff on
the shores of the lake. Kev has a thing for Cecil B De Mille on account of the fact that he was interfered with by a geezer called Cecil once when he was a kid. I said with a name like that he should have seen it coming.

Rudolph Valentino, Peter Finch and Nelson Eddy are all buried here, or rather stored in the cold marble corridors of the mausoleum by the lake. It's a strangely real place for L.A.

One night Kev, Tifanie and I spent a night on E, waiting for the cemetery's famous ghost, the Woman in Black, to put in an appearance. It was Tifanie's idea, obviously. She even wanted to bring a Ouija board and have a séance, but Kev and I took the piss. We never found out if the Woman in Black turned up, though, because we ended up crouching behind a headstone, spying on two guys humping one another.

Tif and I had to put our hands over Kev's mouth to stop him screaming with laughter. Afterward we fell asleep on Mr. Young, loving father and son.

It seemed like a lifetime ago now. What the hell had happened to me?

Lying on Mr. Young, just writing the address made me homesick. I couldn't think of what to say; it all seemed too wet.

 

Dear Mum, wish you were here…

 

Oh, Christ, I wouldn't wish L.A. on my mum; besides, she'd never leave her market stall at this time of the year. Auntie Lucy would probably fit right in here, though; after all, she practically invented the casting
couch, although I doubt any of the guys she took advantage of knew what sort of role they were auditioning for.

In the end I just wrote that she could expect me home soon, and not to let any of her deadbeat boyfriends touch my guitars or records. Then I added a P.S.:
Hi to Auntie Lucy.

As I squeezed my P.S. in the corner, I remembered how Holly had been shocked when she'd first discovered I was literate. I licked the stamp and stuck it on the postcard. Mum has always let me lick the stamps. Even now she saves the letters she needs posting until I come home just so I can have the thrill of sticking on the stamps.

Neither of us sees anything weird in that.

Mum still cooks for me when I'm home, and fills me a hot water bottle when it's cold. She still does all this stuff for me because in the beginning she found caring for a kid so hard and I think now she likes to show off. Motherhood isn't a vocation, she used to tell me, it's a bloody sentence.

She had to work at motherhood because it didn't come naturally, and now that I don't need her mothering skills, she still wants to fuss over me. I think it's because motherhood is a battle she's won, and my mum hasn't won at many things in her life. Why should I mind if she still thinks it gives me a thrill to lick the stamps on her letters?

That done, I made my way toward the Hollymount Apartments. Turning into Vermont Avenue, I only narrowly avoided scoring a direct hit on a skateboarder, snaking lazily through the traffic. He gave me the finger. I would have given me the finger, too, I thought, as I found a parking slot opposite the apartment block.

My adrenaline was coursing now—maybe it was just the
sense of
déjà vu
I got as I pressed my face against the window of Vinyl Fetish to see what was kicking inside.

The owner stared at me for a bit, probably thinking I reminded him of someone. I almost waved, but managed to control myself. You can never go back—well that's what Kev says anyway.