by Victoria Fox
Lori shivered. She crept back upstairs but it was hours until she got any sleep.
47
Aurora
‘Fuck Strike Records,’ announced Casey Amos, drawing on a fat joint before offering it to Aurora. ‘I’ll talk to my dad and he’ll talk to his people, piece-o’-cake.’
They were in the basement home-movie-theatre at Roland Amos’s Venice Beach pad. Casey was sprawled across a leather couch, his hand buried deep in a bucket of gummy bears. Aurora had only known him a month but had learned already he was as addicted to them as he was to his bags of white powder and pills.
Nepotism, one of the words Pascale had taught her, sprang to mind. Above, she felt the weight of Roland Amos’s success bearing down on them: framed platinum discs adorning the walls, all those photographs of the famous mogul grinning alongside hallowed names of the music industry, going way back to the big guns of the seventies and eighties.
‘Forget it,’ said Aurora. ‘Rita’s on the case.’
Casey raised an unconvinced eyebrow and she didn’t blame him. Strike Records was pissed off. She had aborted on three meetings now and clearly they deemed her too much of a liability. OK, so the first time was her fault, she accepted that, but the second occasion she swore Rita hadn’t even told her about (even though Rita claimed she’d been drunk and hadn’t remembered). The third she turned up at the wrong address and spent an hour in traffic across town. Everyone had left by the time she got there and all she had to show for it were several fuming messages from Rita on her iPhone. ‘You ‘re falling apart,’ her agent had blasted. ‘What’s going on, Aurora? What’s the matter?’ As if she could tell Rita. As if she could tell anyone.
Nepotism. What was the difference between pulling favours from Strike because of Tom Nash’s kudos, and Casey’s promise that his dad would help her out? Absolutely nothing.
‘Good luck with that,’ said Casey, groping in the bucket of gums.
Aurora toked heavily on the joint and sat back. Justin Bieber’s new music video filled the screen and Casey snorted in a derogatory way and ate more bears.
‘Who gives a shit anyway?’ she muttered. ‘I can’t sing.’
‘Since when’s that got anything to do with it?’
‘It’s kind of the point, isn’t it? I can’t dance, I can’t perform. I haven’t got a musical bone in my body.’ Bieber’s hair was mesmerising.
‘Crap,’ said Casey. ‘It’s in the genes.’
She gulped. Genes.
‘Success, the right connections,’ she conceded. ‘Not talent.’
‘Who gives a rat’s ass about talent?’ Casey gestured to the screen. The sound of him chewing on the gummy bears was all of a sudden intolerable. ‘My pop looks out for me. Sure, he’ll bring me in on the big time. I’m hardly the schmuck who’s gonna complain.’
‘What if you wanted to do something else?’
‘Like what?’
‘Something different.’
Casey shrugged. ‘What’d be the point?’ He retrieved the roll-up and sucked on its end, lying back to eject a thin stream of smoke.
They sat in silence for a bit. The Bieber video ended. Aurora asked, ‘How do you separate who you really are from the person you’re supposed to be?’
Casey screwed up his face. ‘Huh?’
‘Imagine you were born on the other side of the world, to different parents, in a whole other life … What then?’
‘Fuck all.’
‘How can you be sure?’
He reached for her. ‘Wanna gimme a blow job?’
‘Get screwed.’
He was unoffended. ‘Quit complaining. Enjoy what you got. Millions would.’
Aurora had an unexpected longing for St Agnes. Much as she’d whinged about it, right now she wanted nothing more than to sit up in her dorm talking to Pascale after lights-out. She wanted to ask Pascale everything she knew about JB and Cacatra and Reuben van der Meyde, but at the same time was loath to acknowledge that Pascale might have been privy to the facts all along and that made her as deranged as her cousin. Fran Harrington had messaged her last week saying that Pascale had been accepted into a top college in Geneva and had acquired a boyfriend twice her age who played in a folk band. That part of her life seemed now like a daydream, which was ironic since it was the only part of her life where she’d felt engaged. Her friendship with Pascale had been the anchor she’d never known, one that forced her to assess things where she’d never assessed things before. LA, the people here, they ate her up.
‘Casey, can I tell you something?’
‘Shoot.’
‘I don’t think Tom and Sherilyn are my real parents.’
He turned on her with red-rimmed eyes and laughed before realising she was serious.
‘I think they adopted me when I was a baby, but I don’t know how or from whom.’
He struggled to ascertain if she was for real. ‘Get fucked.’
‘I think they couldn’t have kids of their own, for whatever reason, and they wanted to cover it up so they had to get a baby they could pass off as theirs.’
To her surprise, he scoffed. ‘Bullshit.’
‘You couldn’t possibly know.’
Casey ran a hand through his hair. ‘Look, man, it’s natural. I’ve wondered before. Hasn’t every kid? Parents suck. You’ll get over it.’
‘This is different,’ Aurora persevered. ‘I feel it. I feel it’s the truth. But if I face the truth then that means the whole of my life’s been a lie.’
His eyes were stoned.
‘Casey …?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Please say something.’
He held out the bucket. ‘Wanna candy?’
Aurora summoned her courage for where she was headed next.
‘I think they ordered me.’ She checked his reaction. ‘Like, in a catalogue or something.’
He laughed with good humour. ‘That’s crazy.’
‘Is it?’ Her hands were shaking so much she could barely light her cigarette. ‘I mean, supposing … supposing someone really, really rich had this idea to make money, and set up this agency to get kids and have people pay for them. Famous people. People like our parents.’
‘They’d never get away with it.’
‘But what if they pretended they were something else?’ She paused, wondering how close to the line she could go. ‘Like a rehab facility. Because that’s how they’d target the vulnerable ones who thought there was something missing in their lives.’
Casey had zoned out. ‘Pretty cool idea,’ he said.
‘It is, though, right? That’s the point. It’s clever. Massive sums of money. Couples who are so loaded they’re prepared to pay anything. What else are they going to spend it on but the one thing they can’t buy? Except now they can, Casey. Now they can buy it.’
Casey raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘And you think you’re one of these kids, that it?’
‘You make it sound like I just told you I got abducted by aliens.’
‘That’s about as weirdass as it sounds.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’
He nodded to the screen, where another young starlet was flaunting her new single. ‘She could be one, too?’ Seconds later, another, from elite Hollywood stock. ‘And him?’
Aurora pictured the parents. ‘Yeah …’ she said, considering it. ‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘Why would your folks do it?’
So many times she’d been over it, trying to think of a reason. What could possibly be worth that level of deceit? What were Tom and Sherilyn concealing?
‘I don’t know.’
Casey snorted. ‘You’re funny.’
‘Listen to me,’ she pleaded. ‘Mom and Dad are like strangers. They don’t do things together, they don’t even see each other; they have zero in common and it’s like we’re stuck in the same house and none of us know how we got there! I’m telling you, their marriage is weird—’
‘Every marriage is weird.’ He
peeled open his bag of tobacco. ‘Don’t get married.’
‘It’s more than that. It’s my life. This—’ she waved her hands about ‘—it’s all wrong!’
Casey cocked his eyebrow. ‘You positive you’ve gone through puberty?’
‘You know what?’ She bit back tears. ‘Forget I said anything.’
He scooted up next to her and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I gotta tell you straight. It sounds nuts.’
Aurora angled her body away from him and concentrated on smoking. She knew her claims ran out of steam at this point, unless she had the proof to back them up. Even when, next year, she saw the couple she’d witnessed at Reuben van der Meyde’s house parading a baby to the press that wasn’t theirs, it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference.
‘I guess so,’ she said emptily.
Across town, Tom Nash was enjoying his fortnightly spa session at the Springs Central Resort in Beverly Hills. He liked to relax, sweat it out in the sauna and steam before being pampered, having his hair treated and his skin peeled. He deserved it. Thanks to a string of acclaimed concerts, he had single-handedly secured the Nash name as the most bankable in the business. He’d worked his ass off to make the fans, and the label, happy. This was where he got to cash in—a little rest, a little recreation. A few of the treats he liked best.
‘Nearly goddamn killed me,’ he told Stuart Lovell, his producer. The men liked to unwind in each other’s company. ‘Don’t know if I’ve got it in me to do it again.’
Stuart had been a high roller at Strike Records for years. He was mid-forties, heavy-set with dyed jet hair and a fleshy, pale face. A poor surgery job had left his complexion stretched and mask-like, on a bad day, to his alarm, like the hovering apparition of Michael Myers in Halloween. He was a family man, a regular john, with a model wife and two teenage sons. He reeked of money, hard earned by others and kept safe in his pocket.
‘You won’t have to once we get Sherilyn back on track,’ he replied, reclining against the wall of the men’s private room. The air was so thick with eucalyptus that it was impossible to see further than a few inches. He could barely make out Tom’s outline on the bench opposite.
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ said Tom, breathing in deeply through his nostrils, the mint stinging. He could feel his hairline melting, beads of perspiration gathered on his scalp, making it itch. ‘I’m not sure she’s going to let us get her back. She’s in a bad way.’
‘We can’t afford to sustain dead weight,’ said Stuart bluntly. The men had known each other intimately for years and could talk candidly. ‘What we want is the Nash family package. That includes Sherilyn and Aurora.’
‘I know,’ said Tom, weary of the women in his life. ‘We’ll get there.’
The other man stood. Beneath Stuart’s white towel, a rock-hard erection sprang.
Tom’s breath caught. He always felt the same, no matter how many times it happened. Like the kid he used to be checking out copies of Mr Gay America in his bedroom when he was twelve, hearing his pop’s tread on the stairs as he bundled the magazines beneath his mattress, pulse racing, fumbling with his open fly, praying they’d never be discovered because you just couldn’t be a guy who liked guys. It wasn’t an option. He had to like girls, with their skin too sweet and their stupid laughs and their sticky lips.
Gays were sick. They had an illness. That was what he got told. An affliction to be cured.
Now, he felt once more like that terrified boy. As if he was about to be discovered, that queasy feeling in his stomach, a mixture of disgust and thrill.
‘Come to me,’ he croaked, licking lips that, despite the steam, had gone dry.
Stuart obliged. Kneeling between Tom’s legs, he peeled away the towel and dipped his head. Tom always took a while to get hard. Even after the many years this routine had claimed, the fear of their being interrupted stalled his abandon.
Both men knew there was much at stake.
As his dick vanished into the record producer’s mouth, Tom surrendered to a surge of pleasure. He grasped Stuart’s head and closed his eyes, forcing his swelling hardness against the back of the other man’s throat. This was his only release, the only discreet way. He came quickly, in abundance, heart hammering, sweat pouring. A tear seeped from his eye.
Like clockwork, always the same, Tom rose from the bench and turned. He raised his ass and spread his legs. Seconds later, a piercing ecstasy.
He vowed to savour every second. Night and day he craved cock, a non-stop preoccupation with the thing he was denied. Instead he was forced to play happy families, all-American nice-guy, straight as an arrow. Ever since his career took off twenty years ago.
It was a long time to deceive the world.
His palms slipped on the bench with the force of Stuart slamming into him.
For now, at least, his wife and daughter were the furthest things from his mind.
48
Stevie
Bidi Reiner, for a short while Bibi Posen, emerged from the Truman Associates offices on Sunset, just in time to spot a woman hurrying past on the opposite side of the Boulevard with her face buried in the pages of a gossip magazine. For once, Bibi’s photo wasn’t front-page news.
Lunch with Phyllida Colt, the agent with whom Marty King had put her in touch, had been inspiring. As Bibi breathed the warm noon air, thick with the heady fumes of ambition, she replayed Phyllida’s kindness when she had confessed her work in Linus’s pet projects. To her relief, and just a pinch of alarm, the woman hadn’t been surprised. Bibi wasn’t the first actress in LA to come equipped with a difficult past and she undoubtedly wouldn’t be the last.
As Bibi hailed a cab she realised that life, just at the point where she’d been ready to give up on it, had got suddenly, incredibly, better. Since her break to Cacatra, she’d felt more like herself with each day that passed. It was true what they said: the place did work wonders. Dirk Michaels, in spite of an aversion to him that would never abate, had been right about the breakthrough spa treatments. They had left her relaxed and reinvigorated, ready to retake control.
Quite why Dirk had been willing to organise it with van der Meyde in the first place continued to baffle her, but she wasn’t about to turn down a favour from a man who ought for ever to be in her debt. She preferred to imagine Linus’s death had stirred a realisation in him, made him repent the nature of his professional sideline and private kicks. Though, she doubted it.
Bibi’s apartment in Westwood was a million miles from the grandeur of Linus’s place, but she loved it all the same. She hadn’t been able to consider staying in the Beverly Hills mansion, even though her lawyers had told her she was entitled to it. She would sooner have one untainted room than a hundred filled with bad memories.
A brown square package was waiting in her mailbox, addressed in a neat block of precise, handwritten capital letters. Puzzled, she shook it. It made no sound. Tucking it under one arm, she fumbled for keys with her free hand.
Once inside, she tore the parcel open.
It was a disc, packed tightly in cardboard and bubble wrap, catching the light like a jewel presented on a velvet cushion. There was a typed label across the front that read: PLAY ME.
Mystified, Bibi fed it into the stereo and listened.
In London, winter was approaching. The days were getting shorter, the nights edging in, the dark snap of November crackling in the air. Stevie missed the British weather. She missed rain and hot tea and fires and crumpets and the smell of the tube when it was wet.
Coming back after all this time was strange. The capital seemed smaller than it had when she’d left, three years ago a towering, oppressive, inescapable city, something she realised now had been more to do with her than it.
Wednesday morning she was filming at St Paul’s. They’d closed the roads from Aldwych and from Bank, but that hadn’t stopped fans crowding around the square’s perimeter, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the actio
n, though Stevie suspected it was less for her than for her romantic lead, a tortured RADA disciple who had a reputation for brooding shyness but had actually taken more women to bed over the past six months than anyone could count.
Her character was required to run down the famous cathedral steps, setting the pigeons aflutter, into the arms of Impatiently Waiting RADA. Pigeons didn’t sound poetic, but they lent a lack of fuss to the scene. The grey birds against the grey sky against the celebrated grey dome, in which Stevie’s buttercup-yellow coat glimmered like a lucky penny. But the pigeons were sent AWOL by crowds and crew, leaving the space atypically empty and more post-apocalyptic than die-hard romantic. Cue take after take, waiting for the birds to land long enough for her to incite their dramatic departure.
It meant she was running late by the time she left for her appointment on Great Portland Street. As Stevie’s car pulled up outside the private clinic, nerves sharpened. She had deliberately waited till London to get checked out because her doctor was a friend, a woman she trusted, and if it was bad news she wanted to hear it from a source she knew over a jaded LA physician who saw more women with fertility problems than she’d had hot dinners.
‘It’s good news, Stephanie,’ said Dr Hayashi, putting her out of her misery straight away. ‘You’re functioning normally. There’s every reason you can conceive a child without treatment.’
Stevie raised her eyes briefly heavenward, which was hypocritical since she was atheist. ‘Thank you.’ She sat down.
‘Like we discussed, I recommend your husband gets checked.’ Dr Hayashi regarded her kindly over hornrimmed glasses. ‘Which means you’re going to have to talk it over with him in the not-too-distant future …?’
‘I know.’
Xander wasn’t even aware she’d made this appointment. Following his admission about JB Moreau, Stevie had found it difficult to communicate with him at all. When the time came for her to fly out on location, she’d been secretly relieved. She needed time away to think. For, while Xander’s story was one she had to trust, she couldn’t help feeling there was something about it that didn’t add up. She was tired of secrets. Marriage was meant to make you feel secure and safe, if in nothing else then in the knowledge of your partnership. Right now, indeed for the past six months, she’d felt anything but. And Xander knew it.
