The Sex Was Great But... (22 page)

“It's okay, Joseph,” I reassured him. Joseph looked at me dubiously before looking Jack up and down. He was eyeing him up like Jack was some kind of rapist—no doubt remembering his same-sex tongue-kiss of the night before.

Leo climbed out of the pool and I could feel him turning my soul inside out with those brilliant green eyes of his. I bit my lower lip, remembering all the kisses we had lavished on one another, all the sex and all the secrets and all the times I didn't tell him the things I really wanted to tell him. The things I'd told Ted. Like…I love you, Leo Monroe.

“Holly here's been filling me in on the makeover she's been doing on you.”

Leo glared. “Oh, yeah…has she now?”

“Should make quite a show, my friend.”

Leo looked at me, but he didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The way he looked at me said it all. I'd set him up. I'd betrayed him. I'd been false and selfish.

Jack proceeded to rant about programming slots and advertising, but it felt like there was just Leo and me there.

“Excuse me while I get a towel,” Leo said evenly, cutting Jack off midflow. Then he walked into the poolhouse and shut the door.

“Get this—we do the whole segment with Mike Monroe hits as the backing music. What happens to a guy when his dad dumps him? Get it?”

“I don't think that would be totally appropriate,” I said, when I was sure Leo was out of earshot.

Jack shrugged. He seemed to increase in ridiculousness with every second he spent in my company. If anyone needed a makeover it was him.

Leo didn't come out of the poolhouse for what seemed like forever, so I decided to knock on the door—not that I had a clear idea of what I was going to say or do, especially with Jack hovering.

As it was, I didn't have to say or do anything. The door swung open as I was about to knock and Leo stormed out. He was wearing jeans and the black hat with earflaps that he'd had on the day we met. He looked cool and sexy and he smelt of limes and safety and all the times we'd made love. I wanted to reach out and touch him but he grabbed my wrist.

“Don't worry. I've left all the stuff you bought me. Some of it's not even been worn. You can probably take it back…get a refund. I'll take the car and I'll return it to the garage where Joseph fills it up.”

I closed my eyes as regrets flooded through my brain, disabling my ability to explain. “Don't,” was the only word I managed to get out.

“Hey, wait a minute—where's he going?” Jack asked. “He can't leave! I don't know what you said to him, but you'd better sort it out. You'd better get him back. I want that show. Has he signed anything? You'd better have secured his signature.”

He waved his left arm in the air, as if trying to grab a dream, and poked the other one (the one holding the cigar) in my chest, which caused his kimono to fly open. “Human interest—that's what the viewers want.”

I tried to say something (I don't know what), but he told me to speak to the hand.

“Jack, listen to me. The thing is—”

“Am I listening?” He put his hand to his ear, as if straining to hear a butterfly flap its wings in Chile.

“Well, Jack—”

Pointing the cigar an inch from my nose, he said, “Three words, princess. Make. This. Happen.”

That was when I finally resorted to something I'd promised myself years ago I would never do and burst into tears. I'm not in the habit of crying around men, and certainly not in the habit of crying around network executives. In my experience tears make men say and do things they then go on to resent you for afterward.

My mother always cried a lot, especially when she was
drunk. She always said tears were a woman's most powerful weapon when it came to emotional blackmail. But Jack didn't respond like a man threatened with a powerful weapon. I got the feeling that he was pretty used to girls crying around him. Perhaps he even enjoyed it. He flicked his cigar into a flower bed and a moment later climbed in the back of the car that had come to pick him up.

I went inside to call Wilhelm for advice. The phone rang and, thinking it might be Leo, I dived on it, but it was Jack calling from his cellular phone. “I forgot to mention, Larry rang earlier.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Larry was my agent, and when your agent talks to your network head it's either very good news or very bad news. I didn't need to flip a coin.

“Yeah, he's been trying to get hold of me to discuss your contract, so I thought I'd give him a call now and tell him how excited I am about the Leo Monroe makeover.”

“Jack, leave it.”

“Don't forget that your option comes up again next month. If the Monroe story comes off I doubt we'll have a problem with renewing it.”

The line went dead.

“I wondered how long it would take him,” Wilhelm declared when I opened the door to him later.

Dressed in a ball cap and massive sneakers with the laces deliberately undone, he looked like a geriatric Beastie Boy. Before he was even inside he was firing up a big joint and telling me to smoke it. The last time I smoked marijuana I ate three packets of Oreos and disconnected all the phone lines to my house.

“Paranoia is not something I need right now, thanks all the same, Wilhelm. Anyway, what do you mean, you were wondering how long it would take him? How long what would take who?”

“Before Mike Monroe turned up.”

“Hang on a minute—how do you know Mike Monroe turned up?” I've heard of the Hollywood grapevine, but this is ridiculous.

“Let's just say I used to supply Mike with substances back when him and the boys were touring. Mike and me go way back, and as soon as you told me that Leo Monroe was staying with you I simply put two and two together. I knew it was Mike's boy from the get-go.”

“But I didn't tell you Leo was staying with me. We never discussed Leo.”

“Didn't we? Oh, well, there we are. I must be psychic.”

“No, you're not. You're not a bit psychic. You took too many mushrooms, remember? Psychotic, maybe?”

“I won't lie—well, not compulsively anyway.” He laughed. “No, but seriously, I do love a good mushroom. Oh, well, it must have been Nancy. Yes, she's very indiscreet. It must have been her that told me.”

“You and Nancy hate each other,” I reminded him. “You don't talk.”

“I don't know where you picked up that idea, darling.
Me,
hate Nancy? That's absurd.”

“Well, she hates you,” I said, on firmer ground.

“Hate, hate, hate! Hating the word hate, baby,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Hating the word hate!”

“I hate you,” I spat.

Wilhelm threw himself into the big white sofa and
rested his feet on the glass table. “Can you get over the hate thing, babe? It will only age you.”

“Oh, shut up,” I told him.

“Okay, if you really want me to, but I just thought you might want to know that Nancy and me have been lovers for years. I'm her personal philosopher.”

“Don't be ridiculous. His name's—”

“W. Exactly. That's me. That's the name I use for my philosophy practice. Actually, my personal philosophy practice is proving a lot more lucrative than the Emotional Anarchy, darling. You're my last patient from the Emotional Anarchy period.” He then proceeded to laugh again.

I was ready to hit him. “You knew that Mike was Leo's father and you never said anything?”

“Hey, wait a minute. Don't kill the messenger. I passed the info on to Mike. It was up to him, not me.” He paused to fire up his joint, which had gone out.

“What about Leo?”

“Never met the guy. He means nothing to me. Less than nothing. The sum total of zero. Do you realize who Mike Monroe is?”

“He owns a radio station or something.”

“Better than that. Mike smoked a spliff with Jimi the night he died.” He stuck the joint between my lips.

“How could you not tell me about knowing Leo's father?”

“Smoke the joint and chill, girlfriend. We'll attack the causes after we've dealt with the effects.” Then he stood on the glass coffee table and yelled out, “It's a war!” Taking the joint from me, he took a long hard toke on the thing himself.

Conchita wandered in with her trusty duster and sniffed the air ostentatiously. “Where Mr. Leo?” she demanded. “His nutrient shake ready.”

“Mr. Leo's left us, Conchita—” I tried to explain, but I didn't get far. She pretty much went bananas after the word “left.” If Leo had been there he would have felt compelled to hold a paper bag against her mouth.

“Have a toke on this, Conchita,” Wilhelm advised, easing her into a chair. Once settled, she practically swallowed the reefer whole.

“So, another man's gone and left you, hey, Holly?” Wilhelm sighed, shaking his head as if he was very, very disappointed in me.

“Always they leave her,” Conchita added, pointing her finger at me accusingly. “Always.”

I glared at her while Wilhelm laughed himself stupid.

“Perhaps you want to get going to your sister's, Conchita?” I said. “It's after twelve now,” I reminded her through clenched teeth. She always goes to her sister's on her day off, and even though it wasn't her day off I was prepared to make an exception.

“Would you mind not talking when I'm laughing? I find it very distracting.” Wilhelm snorted through his yelps of hilarity.

“No, I stay. I worry for Mr. Leo.” She said this to Wilhelm, not me.

Overnight I had become enemy number one in my own home. Even I hated me.

“He's a big boy, Conchita. I'm sure he's fine, and I'm even more sure he wouldn't want you worrying,” I soothed.

“No, I want Mr. Leo back with me. Back home where he belongs!”

Wilhelm took a big suck on the joint and stood up on his chair. “No, Conchita! You must make war on what you
think
you want. Emotional Anarchy! Never give in, Conchita!” Smoking pot had never been good for Wilhelm's sense of proportion.

“I thought you said Emotional Anarchy was over,” I reminded him nastily.

“No, what I actually said was that it isn't lucrative.”

“Same thing.”

“That's your problem, Holly. You think it's the same thing. Life isn't a game of Old Maid, you know. Emotional Anarchy is still in the nascent stages of discovery. You must make war on your belief system, Holly. Make war.” He made a loud cry as he stood on the coffee table again. “It's all lies!”

“I'm not finding this very relaxing,” I told him, applying pressure to my temples with my fingers.

“Don't pull the Hollywood Princess shit on me, girlfriend,” he warned. “I don't care about your feelings. I'm not even sure you know how to have them.”

“You're so fired, Wilhelm, or W, or whoever you are.”

“Oh, go masturbate,” he said, flopping onto the sofa and resting his head in Conchita's lap. “Welcome to Hollywood, where the sun always shines and even the cockroaches have agents.” He giggled maniacally.

“You're stoned,” I said.

“So what? Tomorrow I'll be straight, but you'll still be fake.”

“No, you won't. Tomorrow you will be stoned too.”

“Fair comment.”

Conchita stroked his hair and put the joint between his lips. She was grinning like a schoolgirl. I was worried about what Joseph would make of all this, and the paranoia of the weed had me imagining him walking into the room with his hose or even his hedge trimmers.

We smoked some more pot, and soon Wilhelm was singing “Every Stars a Winner” while Conchita giggled mentally.

Despite joining in on the second joint, I still didn't feel in the least bit chilled. I looked around at the room we were in, the people I was with, and felt completely hollow and alone. Wilhelm, or W, or whoever he was, was ridiculous. Even Conchita giggling at nothing was ridiculous. I had surrounded myself with ridiculous people.

My life was ridiculous.

I left Wilhelm and Conchita to feast on Cap'n Crunch in the kitchen and drove myself to Nancy's. I had to face her sometime about what we were going to do about Leo's makeover segment and our careers generally. Also at the back of my mind I was half hoping/half terrified that I'd find Leo there.

I suppose I was disappointed and relieved in equal measures when I discovered she hadn't seen him since he'd dropped her off the night before. I told her what had happened—about how Mike had been round, and how I'd told Jack about the makeover and how he'd been such a jerk. Nancy didn't seem too fazed, but then after what I'd been told by Wilhelm I wasn't surprised.

“Darh-ling, I was
so
drunk I slept in my shoes,” she explained, when I asked her where she thought he might have
spent the night. “How would I know where he went? All I know is he got quite nasty with me when I tried to give him a nice little blow job.”

“How ungrateful!” I told her.

“That's what I said.” She laughed. “Let's go drink margaritas and forget about the little shit, darling! Who needs him? We've got all the footage we want. I've seen the edited footage and we've got a huge hit on our hands. By the way, your mother's little scene last night has cost her her program. There was a clause in her contract stipulating that she didn't touch alcohol. So, see, all our cares and troubles are over!”

She started whistling a little tune as she tossed margarita ingredients in the blender.

“No, they're not!” I told her. “That's just it, Nancy. I don't want to forget about Leo,” I insisted. “I don't care about the stupid show. I want to know where he is. I want to tell him I'm sorry and…and after that I want to tell him that I'm, I'm, I'm—”

“You're what?” she asked quietly.

“I'm in love with him, Nancy. I'm in love with Leo.”