The Sex Was Great But... (21 page)

L
eo was standing by the sink in the kitchen with his hand under the cold tap when Jack and I walked in. He was still wearing the trousers of his tuxedo and the shirt. Only the buttons were undone, and I couldn't help zoning in on the tight muscles of his abdomen. He didn't look up.

Ted was there too, wearing another one of my robes and holding an ice pack against his mouth.

Conchita was fussing around with kettles and pots without actually achieving anything. She looked guilty as hell and she wouldn't meet my eyes, so I looked from Ted to Leo, hoping for an explanation there.

Neither of them would look at me either, though.

Jack helped himself from the fridge—something that would normally send Conchita into a fit. She's obsessed with her kitchen and she doesn't even approve of
me
going to the fridge.

“Your father was here looking for you,” Jack grumbled to Leo.

“Yeah, I heard.”

I grabbed an Evian out of the fridge. “Why didn't you tell me your father owns a radio station?”

He shrugged. “I didn't know, did I? And anyway, that's why he left my mum and me—to make it big. We were holding him back, see.” He looked at me with his clear green eyes and smiled. “I didn't go with his image as front man in a big rock and roll band.”

I knew he meant his remark as a criticism of me as much as his father.

Ted took the ice pack off his face and said he had to go. His lip was puffed up and bloodied.

“My God! What happened, Ted?” I asked, looking from Ted to Leo.

Leo turned the water on harder and ignored me.

“I walked into a door,” Ted explained.

Conchita made a muffled squawking noise.

A quiet fell on the room as we all absorbed what Ted was saying—or rather
wasn't
saying. No one walks into doors right? That's what women say if their husbands hit them.

Leo turned off the water and as I watched him shake his hand off at the sink I noticed it was swollen up to twice its size.

He saw me looking at it but didn't offer any explanation.

“I'd better be going anyway. I've got a lunch date,” Ted announced, glancing nervously from Leo to me and then to Leo again.

“Are you sure? What about some breakfast?”

“The man said he wants to go!” Leo snapped. “What's your problem anyway?”

What was my problem?
Er, let me see. My houseguest's face is smashed up and so is your fist?
“Nothing,”
I snapped. “Absolutely nothing is the matter? Why would there be?”

Leo wiped his hand on a kitchen towel and glared. “Glad to hear it.”

A few minutes later I went to see how Ted was. He was in the spare bedroom, changing back into his own clothes, putting his keys and wallet back in his pocket.

“We should get together sometime?” I suggested.

He said he'd like that. I asked him again about his face. “And tell me the truth this time, Ted. I don't believe you walked into a door. That is so lame. What was Leo's hand all swollen up for?”

He sat on the bed. “Don't go crazy, right?”

I shook my head, but I was already sensing that I would—go crazy, I mean. Let's face it, I was halfway there already.

“I think he got upset when he walked in and saw me there in your kitchen, wearing your robe. Put two and two together and came up with five.”

This was unbelievably outrageous. How had I got Leo so wrong? “But to hit you! That's totally unacceptable!”

Ted looked alarmed. “God! No! Hang on a minute;
you've totally got the wrong idea. Leo didn't hit
me.
He hit the fridge.”

We stared at each other for what seemed like ten minutes.

“But your face?”

“Conchita opened the door on me when she came running in after him. It really was just an accident.”

I wasn't sure I believed him. I mean, I believed that it was possible, but you had to open a door pretty damn hard to cause that amount of damage. She would have had to know he was there and she must have practically torn the door off its hinges to bruise his face like that. Which, now I considered it, sounded very Conchita. “Are you sure, Ted?”

“Positive.” He smiled and took me in his arms. “Honestly, if that jerk had hit me I would have hit him back.”

I relaxed a bit, relieved that Leo hadn't done this. “Still, I feel terrible. Your lip's all puffy. What's your lunch date going to think?” I stroked his bruised face.

He laughed. “I think Leo wanted to hit me, though. If anything, Conchita just got there first.”

I sank into his chest for another hug. “You've been so brilliant. I wouldn't have survived the night without you, Ted,” I told him…and I meant it.

He gave me a big squeeze. “He cares for you, Holly.”

I pulled away awkwardly. “Yeah? How would you know?”

“I'm a man. I can see the signs.”

I didn't want to talk about Leo and, besides he didn't really care. That was the whole problem. The whole night had been like a Hollywood cautionary tale: people who
care for people don't run off in other people's limos and sleep with other people's producers.

“Well, anyway, it doesn't matter—it's all over. Probably all for the best,” I said with false brightness.

“Don't avoid the issue, Holly.”

“I don't want to talk about Leo, okay? If he really cared about me he wouldn't have abandoned me at the party, would he? He wouldn't have got drunk. He wouldn't have run off with Nancy in my limo.”

Ted didn't reply. He knew I was right.

“The sooner he goes back home to London the better.”

“Give him a chance, Holly. You won't know what really happened until you talk to him.”

“I don't want to discuss it, okay? Let's talk about something else. How's your face?”

“Not until you promise me you'll give Leo a chance to tell you what happened.”

I'd told Ted about what had been happening with Leo and me after we'd got Jack to quiet down, around four in the morning. I could never have imagined what a blissful relief it was to finally let someone else in on what had been going on. Hollywood is the sort of town where your enemies can turn into your friends and your friends into your enemies all in the space of a night at the Sky Bar.

Ted
had
been a good friend, despite the fact that what he'd told me had made me more certain than ever that I'd been right to write him off as boyfriend material. What I'd never realized about him was that he was a good listener. Listening skills aren't generally among the qualities girls turn to men for. But, probably because of what he'd done—talking to the papers about me—he didn't judge me
or tell me to pull myself together or even warn me of impending physical disfigurement like Nancy would have. He told me about a relationship he'd had before he met me—a passionate romance with a waitress he'd met in Vegas.

“I ended it because she was a waitress. Out of guilt I put her in touch with an agent friend I knew. She's now one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood.”

“But you never told me that!”

“I was too ashamed.”

I only wished I felt able to talk to people sooner—before it was too late, before it drove Leo away.

After Ted and I had hugged goodbye I went back to the kitchen, where Jack's penis was poking out again. I told him to close his kimono. Leo didn't even look at me. Conchita was not happy, either. She was staring at Jack, as if daring him to make her open a door. Her arms were folded tightly (well, as tightly as they could reach) across her ample chest.

“You didn't come home last night,” I remarked to Leo as casually as I could—only it didn't come out sounding casual. It came out sounding accusatory and nagging.

He reached into the fridge and took a bottle of Evian for himself.
“No. Actually, I was shagging your best friend Nancy all night! Man, oh, man, she gives great head.”
Nancy was always boasting about how she gave great head. He didn't
really
say that, though. What he really said was, “I was busy doing something.”

It was the offhand way he said it that disturbed me, and I wished more than anything that Conchita and Jack would go away and leave us alone. I needed to talk to Leo one-on-one, to tell him the kind of stuff that I'd confided to
Ted. I wanted to hear him say that Nancy meant nothing to him. I wanted to turn the clock back and hear him say,
I think I'm falling in love with you, Holly Klein,
again and again and again.

Instead I heard myself asking, “So, were you ‘doing' anyone I might know?”—in a voice that sounded as false as I felt.

Jack, aware only of himself, inquired if there was any chance of breakfast as he poured himself an OJ.

“Don't you have to get back home to your wife?” I suggested, hoping he'd take the hint and piss off.

Conchita gave him a withering look and started throwing ingredients in a blender.

Leo stopped her. “Thanks, Conchita, but I want to have a swim first.”

“You can make
me
one of those shakes, Maria,” Jack threw in. “And a big pot of coffee while you're at it.”

“Conchita! Her name is Conchita,” I snapped, but it was too late. Conchita stormed out, throwing me a look that could fry hearts, and, to complete my frustration, Leo followed.

Jack didn't seem the least bit hungover for someone who'd drunk so much. He settled himself into a chair like he was all set to spend the day. “You didn't tell me the punk lived with you.” He started pouring cereal into a bowl.

“He's been staying in my poolhouse.”

Jack leered, as if there was a
double entendre
implied. “So where'd you meet him, then?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Where did you meet this Leo character?” He sat on a
stool and started slurping his breakfast. I watched a lump of cereal hit the silk of my kimono.

“He…erm…saved my bag when a bag snatcher took it.”

“Yeah? A regular Knight in Shining Armor. So, what's he doing living with you? Why isn't he staying with Mike?”

“Well, that's a long story, see,” I began, hoping to put him off. “Maybe I'll tell you another time.” It suddenly felt wrong to be telling him about Leo's makeover. By now the makeover itself seemed wrong.

“I'm in no hurry. Tell all.” He flicked his ear and carried on slurping milk off his spoon.

I turned my back on him and started rummaging through the refrigerator while I thought of how much or how little to say. Did I tell him that Nancy and I had done a makeover on Mike Monroe's son? Leo's father was clearly some sort of big shot, and in the context of his wealth the makeover seemed to lose its point somehow.

But Jack was persistent. I had never had a lot to do with him outside of the occasional meeting, which always took place with my agent. The idea that the network head could be in my kitchen eating my cereal in my kimono was bizarre, to say the least, and yet here he was, expecting an explanation as to why I had Mike Monroe's son living in my poolhouse.

Naturally, being the most stupid girl in the world, I made the biggest mistake of my life and told him.

He roared with laughter till tears streamed down his face. He grabbed me in a bear hug and said, “Well done,” and called me “doll” and “babe” and kissed the top of my head. Erk.

I knew straight away then that I'd gone too far to turn
back. I'd crossed the Rubicon. I'd betrayed Leo, and all the damage control squads in L.A. wouldn't be able to save me now. Before I could stop him Jack was striding outside toward the pool, where Leo was doing his laps. Firing up a cigar, he looked down on Leo as he moved effortlessly from one end of the pool to the other.

He looked up at me at one point and said, “I tell you what, doll, this could be about the smartest move you've made yet. Maybe we won't need Ted after all.”

He began to pace around the edges of the pool. “So, what about footage—before and after. You
have
got footage, I presume?”

We'd taken miles of footage, but I didn't need to tell Jack. “Well… I… That is…”

“Have you or haven't you?”

Never having had Nancy's gift for lying, I admitted that I had.

“I'm telling you, kid, they're going to love it. And the fact that he's Mike Monroe the old rock star's son! Only we don't tell them that part!”

Phew.

“Not straight away.”

Shoot!

“No, we show some bum scrounging spare change on the street, and then we show how we turned it around for him. Only then do we reveal that he's Monroe's son. It will be bigger than the assassination of Kennedy.”

I was staggered. This totally couldn't be happening.

Only it
was
happening, and from the day we'd embarked on Leo's makeover this was exactly what I'd always wanted to happen. I had wanted all along to use Leo to
boost my ratings, to improve my image, to make me appear less shallow. Only now did it dawn on me how wrong this all was.

I scuttled around the poolside after Jack. “Leo's a person,” I reminded him. “A man with feelings, pride, and all that sort of stuff—human emotions, Jack.” Even as I said these words, though, I felt like a hypocrite as I remembered how I'd treated Leo like a bought man. Making love to him at night and treating him like an employee every day.

“Don't give me that crap, Holly. We both know this business.”

I grimaced with shame. He was right. “Yes, but…”

“You want to know the best thing?”

I was pretty sure I didn't.

“I can't get over how perfect this is. Our trump card of the season. Imagine the prestige when the creep turns out to be the long-lost son of Mike Monroe.” He put his head back and laughed so loudly that Joseph came running around from the side with his trusty hose.