How to be Famous

by Alison Bond

  ‘Forget Fabien,’ said Davey. ‘Honestly, Melanie, he wouldn’t be any good for you.’

  The moth of hope sizzled against the hot glass. Melanie tried to look indignant. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at him. And I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘Fabien and I are just friends.’

  ‘Like you and me?’ asked Davey and then, out of nowhere, he stroked her arm in an unmistakably suggestive manner. He gave her a penetrating look that made her feel instantly naked.

  She was so surprised that she couldn’t think of anything to say. His fingertip on her forearm burnt her like the tip of a recently lit match. Her breath, and the rebuttal she knew should be forthcoming, escaped her. In a flash she was back in the jungle, back in the heat and the lust, with drums pounding in her head. Fabien who?

  And then Davey moved his hand and it was as if it had never happened.

  The strange moment passed effortlessly by. It seemed that in Los Angeles making sexual advances, for she was quite certain that’s what Davey had made, was just taking flirtation to a higher level, another example of Hollywood excess. If she lived here long enough maybe she’d get used to it. It probably didn’t mean anything.

  When it started to get dark and Melanie announced that it was time for her to get going Fabien hardly looked up, shouting that he’d see her at work tomorrow.

  It was Davey who walked her to the door. When they said goodbye Melanie had a strong feeling that he was about to kiss her and as he leant in, she braced herself to reject him.

  ‘Come by any time,’ he said and his kiss landed on her cheek. ‘Or maybe you’d like to see a movie sometime?’

  ‘That’d be nice,’ said Melanie.

  Afterwards she realized she had used very inauspicious words to accept her first date with a married man.

  17

  ‘Max Parker’s office?’

  At the start of Lynsey’s second week they let her answer the phones. ‘What is the point,’ said Max, ‘of having a British accent in the office if we don’t use it?’

  ‘She’s not ready,’ said Sheridan.

  ‘British accents sound naturally clever, she’ll be fine.’

  Under Sheridan’s heavy stare Lynsey answered her first call. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, nodding at Sheridan.

  ‘No, no, no!’ said Sheridan. ‘You can’t do that. You say who it is, so Max can hear; even when it’s for me, you yell it. It might be someone who’s avoiding him.’

  ‘It’s your pilates instructor,’ yelled Lynsey and felt the glow of a tiny victory.

  It was four o’clock in the afternoon and Lynsey was starting to feel that maybe, just maybe, she was finding her feet. She picked up a ringing line hoping that it might be another superstar – she had almost lost it when ‘Tom’ called for Max earlier in the day.

  ‘Max Parker’s office?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Lynsey, please.’

  ‘Speaking.’ Her first call, how exciting.

  ‘It’s Serena. I missed you after the thing. Sorry, I got caught up.’

  Lynsey’s first thought was that Riley was right. Serena had called just as he predicted she would. She must be showbiz, like he said.

  ‘Are you busy?’ said Serena. ‘I need some advice. Could you meet me later?’

  ‘I won’t finish until about nine.’ Sheridan had offered to show her the filing system; she was pretty sure it was an offer she was expected to accept.

  ‘That’s fine. I know a place near you, on North Hamilton, it’s a juice bar. Do you know it?’

  Lynsey didn’t, but was slightly affronted that this girl, a stranger in this city just like her, knew a local juice bar before she did. ‘I think so,’ she said.

  ‘Great. So I’ll see you there.’ It wasn’t a question. Serena hung up.

  Serena was already waiting for Lynsey when she arrived, and told her the whole Scar story from her point of view. ‘So what do you think?’ she said.

  ‘Honestly?’ said Lynsey. ‘I think that’s the luckiest thing I ever heard. Here, let me touch you, some of it might rub off.’

  ‘No, I mean I should get paid, right? For the video?’

  ‘Uh, yeah, probably. Did they get you to sign anything?’

  ‘They gave me this,’ said Serena and handed over a standard release form. ‘But that just says they can use my image, it doesn’t say they’ll pay me. I said I wanted to give it to my agent.’

  ‘Do you have an agent?’

  ‘Would I be here if I had an agent?’

  Serena was slightly rude. If Lynsey was reading this correctly then Serena was asking for a favour. Yet she was being so cold and single-minded, without even a ‘How have you been?’, just questions about money. If Lynsey had been a less altruistic person the last thing she would have wanted to do was help. But then she did like to be helpful.

  ‘Well,’ said Lynsey, ‘I can probably get you some names but, to be honest, I’m just getting to grips with all this myself.’

  ‘I don’t have time to do that,’ said Serena. ‘You know about this stuff, right? Will you call them for me?’

  ‘And say what?’

  ‘Say you’re my agent and ask for, I don’t know, is five thousand dollars too much?’

  Lynsey was considering it. If Serena wanted five then she should probably go in at eight or thereabouts. She stopped herself when she realized it was impractical.

  ‘I work for CMG,’ she said. ‘I could get into trouble for doing that. Misrepresentation.’

  ‘Look, I just need someone to make the right noises and I can’t do it myself. Just this one time. I’ll give you ten per cent and then I’ll start looking for a real agent.’

  Five hundred dollars was a lot of black trouser suits and a decent VCR. She might even get a second-hand car with that and her first pay cheque. How hard could it be?

  ‘Okay,’ she said, thinking that if it got too tricky she could walk away. ‘But don’t call me at work, I’ll call you. I’ll need your national insurance number.’

  ‘My what?’

  Lynsey searched her head for the comparable thing over here. ‘Your social security number.’

  ‘I don’t know it off by heart,’ said Serena. She was fourteen, she didn’t have one she could use, but she’d get one.

  ‘Okay, well, just let me know. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  Serena scrawled down the number of the hostel, thinking that with five thousand dollars she could move out and get her own phone, not one that she had to climb down three sets of stairs to get to and that didn’t make outgoing calls. She was about to leave when Lynsey asked her one last question.

  ‘Wait! What’s your second name?’

  ‘You’re So Vain’ was playing in the background. ‘Simon,’ she said. It was the first thing that came into her head, but she liked it.

  Lynsey called the production company and pretended to be Serena’s agent. She went in at ten and to her great surprise they settled almost immediately on eight and a half. Maybe she should have gone in at fifteen. She didn’t know that the company would have been prepared to go to twenty. Serena Simon was in almost every shot they planned to use.

  One of the best things about Los Angeles, in Serena’s opinion, was the huge number of easy targets that were just walking around. They even advertised. She had found a flyer at the hostel advertising a psychometry afternoon in Venice Beach and was currently sitting in an anonymous hotel meeting room waiting for their hostess, Anoushka.

  Serena looked at her fellow psychometrists. One man and fourteen women. She knew exactly what she was looking for. Someone who didn’t work and wouldn’t ever need to. She figured that anyone with an afternoon free to try to feel the psychic energy of inanimate objects would be unlikely to use their social security number on a day-to-day basis. The man had obviously come straight from work, he was still wearing his name badge, and that immediately ruled him out. That was unfortunate be
cause Serena had always been better at manipulating men. But there were a couple of Hollywood wives who looked promising.

  She didn’t want to be fourteen. She didn’t want the restrictions and inevitable reputation that came with being a minor to hold her back. She wanted juicy roles dealing with adult emotions. She wanted people to take her seriously and exploit her sexuality without feeling that they had to dress her in high necklines and low hems to placate the perv watch brigade.

  Before she had a chance to further assess her prey Anoushka appeared. Ablaze with self-adoration she took her place at the podium in front of them and, in a somewhat affected manner, looked intently into each set of expectant eyes in turn.

  When she stared at Serena, Serena stared right back. Her almond eyes were wide and innocent.

  ‘We have a good group here,’ Anoushka said and flicked the wide sleeves of her kaftan so that they fell cleanly, almost to the floor. ‘Let’s begin.’

  They were asked to produce the personal items they had brought with them. Serena took off her watch and handed it to Anoushka.

  One by one the items were passed around the room. In turn her fellow psychometrists reacted with varying degrees of spiritual enlightenment.

  ‘I can feel so much pain,’ said Alan, the man with the name tag, as he handled the wedding ring of a woman proudly holding the female hand of her new lover. The women looked at each other and smiled ruefully.

  Alan, encouraged, ploughed on. ‘It is a band of pain. I feel trapped.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the expensive blonde who was next in the circle as she fingered the wedding band with perfectly manicured nails. ‘I just don’t feel anything.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Anoushka. ‘Some people are more spiritually sensitive to these things.’

  Serena noticed that the expensive blonde looked ashamed of herself and sat back in her chair, dejected. She was a potential target and so Serena made a mental note of her reaction. The blonde wanted to be special. Who didn’t? And Serena would make her feel like the most spiritual blonde in California.

  Anoushka took Serena’s watch and held it in her hands. She closed her eyes for a long time and the group watched entranced as a solitary tear slid down the side of her face.

  ‘Whose is this?’ said Anoushka.

  Serena raised her hand. ‘Mine.’

  ‘No, but whose is it? It’s not yours.’

  Serena looked around the circle as every set of eyes span in her direction as if they were waiting for the next line in a Greek tragedy. She felt defensive. Yeah, so they would love the answer, so what? It didn’t mean anything. Anoushka just got lucky, that’s all.

  ‘It was my mother’s,’ she said.

  Predictably the group gasped on cue and for a sickening moment Serena thought they were about to applaud. But Anoushka didn’t gasp, she just nodded like she had known this all along and even though Serena tried to avoid her look of immense sorrow she felt drawn to the warm, brown eyes that seemed to understand.

  ‘You miss her very much,’ said Anoushka.

  ‘I do,’ said Serena.

  Anoushka reached across the circle to hand the watch back to Serena without passing it around. The group seemed to respect that something deep was going on and if anyone was disappointed not to have a chance to tap into all this fabulous pain they didn’t speak out.

  Eventually, the session drew to a close and when someone suggested coffee nearby Serena was the first to agree that was a wonderful idea.

  She targeted the expensive blonde straight away and quickly found out that her name was Carmel and she was married to the second string centre for the LA Lakers. She showed Serena pictures of her husband like a new mum shows pictures of her prize-winning baby.

  ‘And this is us in Barbados,’ said Carmel. ‘And here’s Joe on our wedding day.’

  ‘He’s gorgeous,’ said Serena. And he was; a big hunk of a man with shoulders as wide as Carmel was tall.

  ‘We’ve been together since high school,’ said Carmel. ‘He’s my honeybear.’ She kissed the picture.

  ‘What’s his sign?’ asked Serena.

  ‘He’s a Capricorn, like me. But he has a lot of Scorpio in his chart. Who does your hair? I love it.’

  ‘I do it myself.’

  Carmel laughed. ‘I mean the colour.’

  ‘It’s natural.’

  Carmel’s eyes went as wide as baseballs. ‘No! Are you serious?’

  Serena could feel them drifting away from the matter at hand. Not hair colour but the crucial importance of stars and planets to a person’s life. How odd that it should be Los Angeles, a place with such materialistic values, that was always first to latch onto new spiritual trends. As if a daily dose of yoga could make up for secretly coveting your neighbour’s BMW or a nightly incantation would justify lying about your age. You could be as superficial as you liked because as long as you knew your rising sign nobody could accuse you of being shallow. ‘A Capricorn, that’s a good match,’ she said. ‘What’s his number?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘You know, his number. Numerology, that’s my thing, didn’t I say? Come on, let’s do yours. What’s your date of birth?’

  Twenty or so minutes later, having used a system loosely based on what she could remember from all those cheesy teen magazines she had trawled through to win a competition, Serena pronounced that Carmel, a seven, and Joe, a one, were made for each other.

  ‘Your numbers are amazing,’ said Serena. ‘Seven is the best. You don’t work, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Carmel. ‘Joe wants a family as soon as possible.’

  ‘You’ll make an amazing mother.’

  ‘Really? You think so? I always worry that I might be too weak and let them walk all over me.’

  ‘No way,’ said Serena. ‘You’ll be awesome. Seven’s a really spiritual number too.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘For sure. Seven seconds, seven years, the world moves in sevens. You’re very spiritually sensitive, I can tell. What’s your social security number?’

  Carmel wrote it down on the napkin between them.

  ‘Wow,’ said Serena. ‘Look at the sevens, look how evenly they’re placed. That’s balance. And the threes, that’s creativity.’

  ‘I’ve always been quite creative,’ said Carmel, thinking of the time that she braided neon ribbon through her hair to match her handbag.

  ‘Well, there you go,’ said Serena as if her point was proved.

  ‘Thank you, Serena,’ said Carmel. ‘You know, I felt pretty stupid in there, like I just wasn’t getting it.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Serena conspiringly, ‘but I think that some people just weren’t taking it seriously and that affects the flow of energy. I can tell from your numbers that you’re very psychic.’

  Reassured of her third dimension, Carmel paid their bill, said her goodbyes and left.

  Serena pocketed the napkin. It’s true. People will believe anything you tell them as long as it’s a compliment.

  Lynsey called and Serena gave her newly acquired personal details and added a few years to her birth date. Not so that she was old, but so that she was old enough. The sooner her face and body started paying her way the better. There could be no greater confirmation that her plans were working out.

  Lynsey closed the contract and signed off on the paperwork feeling like a player. Just a few days in town and already she was making deals. Hollywood was easy.

  Do Not Fear What You Do Not Know

  There is nothing wrong with looking ahead but worrying about the future is a waste of energy. The future is unlikely to be precisely what you envisage. You might think that your life-plan covers all eventualities but then the unforeseen will flip your plan on its backside and leave it scrambling for dignity. Plan, but remain supple. You will always land on your feet.

  18

  Six weeks later and Lynsey was still at Flamingo Park. She didn’t plan it that way. She did look, albeit briefly, for more conventiona
l living arrangements, but after two wasted weekends she negotiated a long-term deal with the manager of the motel and Flamingo Park started to look like a killer deal. Convention never really was her thing. She had shared a couple more beers with Jack and Lou but the breeze had yet to settle and so they still hadn’t played cards.

  Melanie Chaplin was coming to the end of her initial contract and everybody said they were certain to renew. Unless something unexpected occurred Lynsey looked good to spend the next year of her life like this. Working so hard that she didn’t have time for a social life. She left work invariably late and tired and the thought of going out made her weak. There had been a sharp learning curve and a few mistakes, but she was now juggling calls like a pro and had her lunch order – chicken with mango salsa on five-grain bread – sorted. She had four new trouser suits, a VCR and a deposit down on a 1989 Camaro with a brand-new gearbox and four good tyres. She didn’t need a thing.

  Actually that wasn’t true. What she currently needed, badly, was a way out of this hole she had got herself into with Serena Simon. The Scar video was a hit and the record was currently in the charts and getting a ridiculous amount of airplay. Serena was offered more work, presenting an award at a gala, a commercial for the European market, then a short spot on MTV that led to a bigger offer which Serena politely refused. She wanted to act, she said. She had been to a number of auditions and had been offered some small parts but turned them down.

  ‘Just a while longer,’ she said. She was making her money last and hoping for a bigger break.

  ‘Then why go to the auditions?’

  ‘The experience, you never know who you’ll meet.’

  ‘You’re going to start pissing people off if you keep doing it.’

  ‘So do you think I should stop? Seriously, as my agent?’

  Somehow Lynsey was still Serena’s agent. Serena had been approached by many agents, and met with the bigger ones (for the experience) but she insisted that working with Lynsey this way was better for her. ‘If you want to stop, just tell me.’