The Sex Was Great But... (23 page)

T
he sick thing about money is, if you've ever had it and then you lose it again you've got to readjust to being poor, and that's not as easy second time around.

Here's the thing: when you're shit broke, and begging spare change just to get by, there's a sense of security in knowing that you can't get any more broke. There are no bailiffs at the door, no red letters flying through your letter-box, just poverty—and after a while you relax into the comfort of that poverty. Actually, after a while you start feeling kind of smug in your impenetrable fortress of nothingness.

Getting back in the swing of sharing a sofa with a guy
who doesn't change his socks was hell. The upside was that Snore had been given his marching orders by Tifanie, so at least it was only Kev I was kipping down with now. The downside was it was Kev I was kipping down with.

Tifanie was over the moon. She'd got her part in the series
and
a deodorant commercial—it was streamers and margaritas in Apartment 96. As she no longer needed the financial help, she decided that it was time to get rid of her “baggage.”

She said she'd only let Kev stay on because he'd agreed to paint the apartment for her.

“Kev? Paint an apartment?”

“I know. Dumb, huh?”

I think you've probably gathered by now that the work ethic gene was absent in Kev's DNA.

“So now you want me to—?”

“Would you, Leo?”

It was a bastard of a job. The palm trees on the Las Vegas wall were specters that refused to die. And to think I used to love this wall and the promise it held of hot sweaty nights in casinos on the blackjack table. My very own
Ocean's Eleven
fantasy.

Nine coats later and the trees were still giving me the finger.

“You still fucking around with that wall?” Kev remarked one day after coming in from an afternoon on the crack. It was a week before my flight to London.

“Yeah, you bastard, I'm still at it.”

“I can still see a tree or two.”

“Thanks for that, Kev.”

“No problem. What's the time? I just came back to catch
South Park.
”

Kev never had got round to selling the Rolex because he'd lost it. My guess was Snore had pinched it, but I didn't like to say.

“It'll turn up,” Kev would insist whenever there was a lull in conversation—he could tell it was on my mind. “I know I put it somewhere safe. Definite.”

For some weird reason I had started to worry about Kev and what he was going to do when I was gone. I couldn't imagine Tif wanting him around forever now she'd scored her dream job in a reality series. When I talked to Kev about my concerns he went mental.

“Fuck off—don't worry about me. I'll be all right. I'll find a riot somewhere. I hear things are well kicking down South Central. I reckon there's a G7 coming up in Canada soon and all. Don't you worry about me, Monroe, you worry about yourself. I'll make some new mates at the riot.”

I told him I'd send him the fare back to England once I got some money myself, but he said he never wanted to go back. “I'm like a shark, me. Always swimming forward, never backward.” He mimed a fin with his hand and demonstrated the sort of thing he meant.

There was no doubt about it. I was going to miss Kev because no one else could say stuff like that and not get laughed at.

He settled himself on the sofa with a beer. “Saw another of them billboards on Melrose when I was on the crack just now, didn't I?”

I'd been staying with Tif for three days when the bill
boards and the bus stop advertisements had started appearing all around town. The first one showed up on the bus stop where I'd first met Holly.

I woke up, went out for a coffee, and there it was—wham—in my face.

 

All About The New Man In Holly Klein's Life!
Exclusive In This Friday's
L.A. Times
.

 

It cut me up a lot more than it should have. I imagined Holly in her garden, perhaps on the rope swing, chatting intimately with the interviewer about her profound love for Ted. You really know you've been screwed when your girlfriend gives an exclusive to the
L.A. Times
about her love for another guy.

Kev didn't say anything. Well, he wouldn't, would he? He can't read. But Tif had quite a bit to say on the matter.

“You can't leave without saying goodbye to her.”

I acted all casual, as if I hadn't given the matter any thought. I was doing my eleventh coat over Las Vegas at the time, so I just kept pulling the roller over the wall so she couldn't see my expression, which would have given me away for sure.

“Come on, Leo, give her a call. She's nice. She paid for Nile, remember?”

Tif was over the moon with Nile. She saw him at his studio in Beverly Hills, so I didn't have to come into contact with him, which was one consolation, but she was always going on about him like he'd invented the latest new fad diet or something.

“You don't even know her, Tifanie.”

“You did shag her, though, didn't you, man?” Kev waded in.

We both ignored him.

“She didn't know me from Eve, Leo. She didn't have to pay for Nile. She must be nice. Come on, have a heart. She's meant to be a friend. So what if she's met someone else? Get over yourself. She's still a powerful player, Leo.”

“A powerful player?”

Tifanie stared at the floor sullenly, realizing she'd struck the wrong note with me—the last word in unpowerful players. “Yeah.”

“And this is meant to make a difference to me?” I sneered, rolling over the fronds yet again. “What do I want with a powerful player?”

Kev did the fin thing with his hand in front of my face. “Be like the shark, man. That's my advice. Forward, never backward.”

“Fucking palm trees,” I swore. “It'll be such a relief to be back in London so I don't have to look at these bollocky fucking palm trees again!”

Tif shook her head. “Leo, listen to yourself. You're in classic denial.”

Kev crunched the beer can in his hands and headbutted it into the kitchen. He was watching our argument the way he always watched strangers arguing in the street. Like we were there solely for his entertainment.

“Look, she's with some wanker big shot now,” I told Tifanie. “She doesn't want to see me. I was just a shag, a bit of rough she picked up off the street.”

“Yes!” Kev punched the air with his fist. “I knew you were shagging her, man. Didn't I say? I said you was—”

“Oh, shut up, Kev!” I threw the roller at the wall and stormed out.

The Holly story came out the day before I was due to fly out. I saw the paper everywhere but I didn't buy it. Just the same, I walked past the newspaper stands a hundred times more than I needed to.

She was with Ted now, and if I was really big-hearted I'd wish her the best. But I wasn't big-hearted; I was bitter and sick with self-pity.

Ted was walking around town, holding Holly's hand in public.

Ted was kissing her the way I'd never been allowed to—in public.

He was giving interviews and talking openly about their love life.

Their relationship was something to be proud of, something fluent and real to celebrate. What Holly and I had was a dirty secret we couldn't tell anyone.

Tifanie came home late that day, waving the
L.A. Times.
“Did you get it? Did you see it?”

Kev and I were spread out on the sofa, staring at the last remaining albino palm tree on the wall. I was hot, and defeated by the paint job.

“I did all I could,” I told her, pointing at the wall. “But that last palm is not going to shift.” There was no way I was going to acknowledge her question.

Tifanie wasn't going to be defeated either. “Check it out,” she said, flicking through to find the relevant page. I stared at the palm tree, taunting me from the other side of the room, and ignored her.

“I think you're going to want to look at this, Leo.” She
nudged me, holding out the newspaper, and I looked and there it was.

A full-page picture of me, holding Holly's hand, leading her into the charity bash at the Mondrian. I scanned the article, which speculated that maybe I was the reason Holly Klein was pulling out of
MakeMeOver.

I
n movies there's always a bit before the end when you think all is lost. Maybe the
über
-hero isn't going to make it after all. Maybe that cute puppy won't be rescued from the burning building. Maybe the planet
will
be blown up and everyone is going to die.

Screenwriter's call this point The Big Gloom—the penultimate scene, when the audience is so depressed and negative about the hero's chances of saving the day they almost can't bear to watch the screen anymore. And that's how I felt. The week after Leo left, I felt so depressed and negative I didn't want to go on.

The phone rang incessantly; mostly it was my damage control people, informing me that they were failing to
control the damage. The new season of
MakeMeOver
was about to begin and the news that I was refusing to renegotiate with the network had been leaked to the press.

I called up Jack at home, after Nancy and I had our talk, and told him where he could shove his idea for the show on Leo. He said the station wouldn't be renewing my contract and I said that was good news as far as I was concerned because I wasn't interested in renewing it anyway. Nancy clapped from the sidelines and afterward we had a tequila shot party.

As it happened, the next day Jack was ankled by the network anyway. The day after that a story appeared in
Variety
stating that Jack Harris had categorically
not
been ditched by the network. His manager said he was taking a sabbatical in order to progress his relationship with his new son.

Not that I cared. Even though the network wanted to renegotiate, I was still going to walk. I'd had enough of
MakeMeOver.
I wanted to do more than give one-time celebrities a makeover, and so did Nancy. We'd decided that we wanted to change the world after all, only we weren't sure how. Nancy had even taken to wearing eco-friendly hemp clothing and gone vegan with the excitement of our change. Nancy and Wilhelm (or was it W?) had finally gone public with their relationship. We'd agreed that whatever we decided to do we would make sure there was a philosophical slot in it for Wilhelm.

Joseph was standing in the driveway as I drove in from yet another meeting with Larry. My agent was tearing the hair out of his ears, worrying about where I was going to go next. He said there were no other offers on the table, which he viewed as very grave news.

Joseph looked like he wanted to tell me something, so I wound down the window. “Is everything okay, Joseph?”

“Mr. Leo, he good man,” he muttered.

“Right—well, thanks, Joseph. How about raking up those leaves this afternoon?” I commanded, in my most authoritative voice. He'd been telling me that Leo was a very good man every day since Leo's departure.

Unlike Joseph, Conchita wasn't capable of confining herself to muttering. She was more your classic door-slammer.

I walked into the house and asked her for a ginseng tea.

She told me to do it myself and slammed the nearest cupboard door she could find, even though she had to open it in order to slam it. Then she opened and slammed another cupboard door for good measure.

It had been like this since Leo left. My staff were in mutiny.

The doorbell rang, and Conchita went to answer it while I went into the pantry for some ginseng.

I was staggering out of the pantry with the jar when he walked in.

I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there clasping the large glass jar to my chest, uncertain whether it was really Leo and whether it was really happening. I had dreamed of Leo coming back so many times that I thought maybe this was just another dream.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi,” he said back, and then he smiled and the green of his eyes warmed me. It was really happening. He had come back. Just like Nancy had predicted.

The billboards and the article were all her plan. She said that if we put up the billboards and the bus stop advertisements it would prove to Leo that I was over my stupid image obsession. It would prove to him that there was a place for him in my life in the spotlight. “Be like me!” she urged. “Get your love out of the closet darh-ling!”

Nancy had been totally brilliant when I admitted what had been going between Leo and me, although she was furious that I hadn't told her earlier. “You mean you let me make a total fool of myself with him all that time?”

She'd pulled out some of the footage she'd taken of Leo that first day, when Joseph and I had given Leo a power shower by the pool. Watching his white body pressed against the black tiles of the shower confirmed what I always knew. I had always loved him. And that was all that mattered.

Of course it was easy to see that when he was gone.

“Here, I'll take that,” he said to me, taking the jar.

“You came?” I shook my head, still unable to believe it was really happening.

“Saw the paper. Had to find out what all these rumors are.”

“What rumors?”

“That you dropped your show for a lousy Limey bastard.”

We stood there for a while just looking, as if there was one of those invisible glass screens between us. Everything was going to be all right. He was back and my life was how it was meant to be.

He put the jar down and took me in his arms, spinning me around, and as he carried me off down the corridor and into my bedroom suite and undressed me I was dumb enough to think this was our happy ending.

It certainly had all the classic happy ending moments.

We made love.

We orgasmed. (Simultaneously!)

We ate dinner in bed. (We ignored the crumbs.)

We watched
Casablanca.

We made love again.

Then we fell asleep in one another's arms.

This was our fade-out.

As I fell asleep I could see the credits—“Starring Holly and Leo.” “Produced by Nancy Catkin.” The happy ending! The audience was getting up from their seats and leaving, saying to their dates, “It was better than
Notting Hill,
in my opinion.”

But as it turned out I was wrong.

It wasn't our happy ending. There wasn't going to be a happy ending, because this wasn't a love story, or even a romantic comedy. It was a disaster flick, and I'd missed my ten-minute window to save the planet.

When I woke up the next morning there was a note written in his strong neat hand, taunting my small-minded first impression that he was illiterate.

So I gave Mike a call, because I didn't know what else to do.