Bad Girls

by Rebecca Chance

  ‘Oh, no problem!’ Julie’s smile didn’t fade, her voice remained just as cheerful. ‘We’ll take a raincheck.’

  She stood up too, ushering Skye to the door.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she said, as she opened it. ‘You get in touch when you’re free for dinner, and then we’ll talk about more casting opportunities, OK?’

  ‘Sure,’ Skye said, trying to handle this as smoothly as Julie was.

  At least I can show this bitch I’m a good actress, Skye thought wryly as she left the room. The receptionist glanced over at her, and Skye read something in her expression; it was too fleeting a moment for Skye to decode all of it, but she sensed that the receptionist was perfectly aware of how Julie ran her particular brand of casting couch, and was assessing Skye to see if she’d taken up Julie’s dinner invitation.

  I wonder what she had to do to get her job? Skye wondered, as she slung her knockoff Louis Vuitton bag over her shoulder and headed out of the office. Did she have to make Mr Tanaka happy while Mrs Tanaka watched?

  Waiting for the lift, she sighed, a long deep sigh that seemed to be pulled up right out of the soles of her feet. This is how it’s going to be, isn’t it? Now everyone’s seen that damn video clip, they’re going to want a piece of me in return for any opportunity I get.

  Skye couldn’t blame anyone for making assumptions about her. Plenty of actresses got their breaks just this way, by making nice with some producer or director or casting agent. But one thing the therapy sessions in rehab had done for her, much to her own surprise, was give her a sense of self-worth she hadn’t even realized she was lacking.

  Just because I had sex with Joe doesn’t mean that I’ll screw a casting agent’s husband just to get a damn callback so the director can make a pass at me. Whatever anyone else thinks, I had sex with Joe because I wanted to. Because I really, really wanted to. And it was wonderful.

  God. Joe.

  Skye heaved another deep sigh.

  I can’t stop thinking about him. I can’t stop missing him. And I bet, since he left rehab, he hasn’t given me a thought.

  I’m the biggest fucking idiot in the world.

  Amber

  ‘Joe Jeffreys! Boe môj – my God!’

  Slava pressed her hands together, the freshly painted red nails gleaming.

  ‘Joe Jeffreys, ringing you!’ she chanted like an incantation. ‘Boe môj, we did well to come to Hollywood!’

  ‘We didn’t exactly choose to come, Matka,’ Amber pointed out drily, picking up the jar of Lancôme Bienfait sunscreen and patting some more on her face. They were sitting outside by the pool, and though they were sheltered by a big white canvas umbrella, Amber was, like most models, very careful about sun damage to her skin.

  Slava waved this objection away with a flick of her fingers. ‘We should come to Hollywood many years before,’ she said. ‘Joe Jeffreys! Forget Tony! Joe Jeffreys is much better!’

  ‘Poor Tony,’ Amber commented, putting on her sunglasses and lying back in her chair ‘After all he’s done for you.’

  Slava ignored this, as she ignored everything she didn’t want to respond to.

  ‘You say Joe Jeffreys will marry this woman who goes with other women?’ she asked. ‘So he will need sex. Men need sex.’

  Women need it too, just as much, Amber thought wistfully, an instant image of herself and Dr Raf twined together flashing into her brain, flooding her body with a warmth much stronger than the LA sun.

  ‘He sees you at the restaurant, and he rings you!’ Slava went on.

  ‘His assistant rang me,’ Amber corrected.

  Slava made a loud tutting noise.

  ‘You make things difficult,’ she said crossly. ‘After you go to that place, that hospital—’

  ‘Rehab.’

  ‘You come out of there and you are different. Difficult,’ Slava complained. ‘You talk back to me. I don’t like this. This is not how good Slovakian daughter behaves.’

  Before her overdose, before rehab, this would have wounded Amber to the quick. But now, it was strangely easy to resist. Amber didn’t argue; she simply didn’t respond. Instead, she slid a cigarette out of the packet on the table and lit it. Slava darted a look sideways at her, assessing the situation, and wisely decided not to push her complaints any further.

  ‘So! His assistant rings you!’ she said, reaching for the pack of cigarettes herself. ‘And what does the assistant say?’

  ‘Joe wants to see me,’ Amber said, knowing how excited this would make her mother. ‘And he set up an audition for me. Tomorrow morning.’

  Slava’s eyes nearly popped out of her head in shock.

  ‘An audition?’ She gripped the arms of her chair, using them to turn to face her daughter fully. ‘Like, for a film?’

  Amber nodded. ‘He thinks I’m a natural.’

  With trembling hands, Slava reached out to the table, grabbed the yellow plastic vial of Vicodin, shook out a pill with the ease of long practice, and tossed it to the back of her throat, following it down with a swig of the clear liquid in her glass, which Amber had deliberately not sniffed, for fear of what it might contain.

  ‘For a film!’ she practically sang in delight. ‘Joe Jeffreys will put you in a film!’ She clapped her hands, her heavy rings clinking together. ‘Láska! This is better than anything!’

  ‘Matka,’ Amber said so firmly that her mother looked at her warily. ‘I am not going to have sex with Joe Jeffreys. I’m not even going to date him.’

  ‘But—’ Slava’s face froze.

  ‘He’s a really nice guy,’ Amber said, ‘and I like him a lot. And if he wants to help me get a part in a film, that’s fine. I have to make some money somehow, and I don’t mind trying to act. But I’m sure that Joe won’t expect me to have sex with him in return for helping me. He’s not that kind of man.’

  ‘They’re all that kind of man,’ Slava muttered.

  ‘No, Matka, they’re not!’ Amber stood up angrily. ‘There are nice men out there – I’m just sorry you never met any!’ She shook her head, as if getting rid of a cloud of flies around her. ‘I’ve got my therapy in a couple of hours. I should go and get ready. And on the way back, I’m going to stop at that deli on Laurel Canyon and buy some food, and try to cook us dinner.’

  Slava’s eyebrows shot up to the white roots of her hair as Amber turned to go inside the house.

  When Matka realizes I’m not going to have sex with Tony either, she’s going to throw a fit, she thought, going upstairs to her bedroom to change out of her swimsuit. But I won’t. I won’t do anything any more that I genuinely don’t want to do. That’s the rule I made for myself in rehab, and I’m sticking to it.

  And I can’t imagine having sex with anyone but Dr Raf. Ever again.

  The audition Joe Jeffreys – or, to be more realistic, one of his swarm of managers or assistants – had set up for Amber was on a studio lot. Despite the amount of shoots she’d done for the most prestigious clients in the world, she couldn’t help but be excited as the car turned into the main entrance to Paramount, the security guards leaning down to check her ID against a list, then waving her through. Low, white-painted buildings stretched away as far as the eye could see, flanked with palm trees. Crawling along, the car passed what looked like the New York street set for Friends, recognizably Manhattan but much cleaner and newer-looking than the real thing. Beyond it Amber could see the soundstages; one had its main doors open, and, craning her neck to look, she saw it was as big as an aircraft hangar, bright floodlights trained on a stage inside, the rest of the interior pitch-black by comparison.

  People are shooting a film, or a TV series, or a sitcom there right now, she thought. And I might be part of that soon.

  It was a natural route, model to actress, though not many succeeded: for every Charlize Theron and Cameron Diaz, there were many more who had never jumped the first hurdle, or – like Cindy Crawford or Elle Macpherson – had tried and then conceded defeat. Amber had never considered it herself.
But then, she’d been focusing all her energies on just making it through the day, ensuring she had enough drugs to keep her medicated. Now that she was clean, she could feel energies rising up in her, longing to find an outlet.

  The driver had located their destination, the offices of Clearwater Productions, a little cluster of white bungalows with louvered window shutters, surrounded by carefully landscaped banks of flowering cactuses and palms. It looked pretty enough to be a home, rather than one of the many offices of the production companies that had development deals with Paramount and worked out of their enormous studio space.

  Amber alighted from the car and was nearly run down by two golf carts buzzing past. This was the way high-ranking people who worked in the studios covered the distances between soundstages and offices, zipping past the peons who had to walk. Amber did a double take when she realized that the driver of the second one was Matthew McConaughey, looking even more gorgeous in real life than he did on screen, tanned and golden. Even with his sunglasses on, he was instantly recognizable. And, clocking Amber’s beauty, he whistled as he went past, tipping the bill of his baseball cap to her in appreciation.

  And that looked like the guy from Twilight next to him, in the check shirt, Amber thought as she crossed the street, looking out warily for more fast-moving golf carts driven by screen gods.

  She couldn’t help smiling. It was lovely to be a pretty girl in the Hollywood sunshine, walking across the Paramount studio lot, movie stars whistling at you as they buzzed by. It was great to be in the moment, to appreciate life’s pleasures as they came along, without being so fuzzy and distracted by tranquillizers that it was all you could do just to put one foot in front of the other. And it was downright wonderful to be free of the endless worry all addicts had: is it time for my next fix? Have I had enough, or do I need one more pill to get me through? And am I running out – do I need to ring the doctor now for a new prescription or can it wait till tomorrow?

  She pushed open the door of Clearwater Productions, the clammy chill of air-conditioning hitting her as soon as she stepped inside.

  I hope I look OK, she thought, but she could tell by the receptionist’s reaction to her that she looked more than OK. There was a shift in manner as the young man caught sight of her, a deferential homage to her appearance in his instant offer of green tea or mineral water while she waited. Amber wasn’t vain; but she knew that her beauty was her main currency, and she needed to assess constantly how its value was holding up.

  Wrapping her feather-light Armani silk cardigan around her to ward off the cold blast of air-conditioning, she stepped through into the waiting room he had indicated. And then she stopped dead, amazed at how happy she was to see the girl sitting on the white leather sofa, leafing through a copy of W, wearing a tight white T-shirt and khaki miniskirt that showed off every curve of her body.

  ‘Skye!’ she exclaimed.

  Skye looked up, her blue eyes widening at the sight of Amber.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, her reaction not as instantly positive as the other girl’s; there was pleasure in it, but also wariness. Skye was clearly remembering the terms they had parted on at Cascabel.

  Amber took a deep breath, processing her own feelings. Skye was really nice to me, she remembered. She looked after me when I first came into Cascabel, when I was in withdrawal and feeling awful. And she lashed out because was jealous – Joe was mooning after me while he was having sex with her. I can’t blame her for that.

  ‘Let’s start again,’ Amber heard herself say, crossing the room to Skye. ‘Friends?’

  Skye dropped the magazine, jumped up and hugged Amber, her head barely coming up to the taller girl’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ she said, pulling back to look up at Amber. ‘I should never, ever have said it – it was in confidence – there’s no excuse—’

  ‘Forgiven and forgotten,’ Amber said, as the receptionist came in with her green tea. ‘Thanks,’ she said, flashing him a smile that clearly dazzled him.

  ‘Honestly,’ Skye said, rolling her eyes. ‘I thought I was good at getting guys to wait on me until I met you.’

  She plopped back down on the sofa, curling her slender brown legs underneath her.

  ‘So! What’s up?’ she asked, leaning forward as Amber took a seat in the armchair across from her. ‘What’s been happening with you? Wait!’ Her pretty pink mouth opened in a perfect O. ‘What the hell am I saying – what are you doing here? Did they, like, let you out for the day or something?’

  ‘I left Cascabel early,’ Amber admitted. ‘I’m doing day therapy now.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ Skye’s blonde curls tumbled over her face as she leaned even further forward, her blue eyes focused on Amber’s face. ‘What happened? Ohmigod, it wasn’t anything to do with me and Joe, was it?’

  I can’t tell her anything about me and Dr Raf, Amber decided in a split second. I so wish I could – she’s the closest thing I have to a friend. But she let me down before when I told her a secret. And it’s not just my secret to share. Dr Raf could lose his licence.

  ‘I had some clashes with Dr Lucy,’ she said, amazed at her own capacity for lying – well, not exactly lying, just taking the truth and twisting it a bit. ‘And there was an awful lot of fuss after those stories in the press about you and Joe. Dr Raf had a lot of emergency meetings, and he asked Dr Lucy to take private sessions with me, and we really didn’t get on,’ she continued, inspired now by her powers of invention. ‘So I thought I’d leave and do day therapy instead. It’s all working out well. My new therapist is great, she really is.’

  ‘Jeez, it is all my fault, sort of!’ Skye said, her hands rising to her face. ‘I’m so sorry, Amber! The idea that you got stuck with that bitch because of me! She always hated you!’

  Amber couldn’t help smiling. ‘She wasn’t my biggest fan.’

  ‘Are you kidding? She couldn’t bear the way Dr Raf looked at you! She was always gunning for you!’

  Amber couldn’t help blushing at this.

  ‘I’m amazed Dr Raf put you with her,’ Skye said, shaking her head. ‘Men are such idiots. Oh!’ Another question occurred to her. ‘What about Petal? They didn’t let her stay, did they? That would really piss me off.’

  ‘No,’ Amber said. ‘They kicked her out the day you two left.’

  ‘Good.’ Skye sagged back on the sofa. ‘If that little bitch got to stay, I’d’ve been furious.’

  ‘She needed help,’ Amber pointed out, sipping some tea. ‘She was really messed up. All that dad stuff.’

  ‘OK,’ Skye said militantly, ‘but being messed up didn’t stop her spying on me when I was having sex, did it? And recording it! Who does that?’

  ‘You,’ Amber said promptly.

  Skye froze in shock, momentarily stunned. Oh no, Amber thought in panic: did I just go too far?

  And then Skye’s face cracked up and she burst out laughing. ‘You got me!’ she admitted through her giggles. ‘Oh God, I can’t smudge my makeup—’ She patted gingerly round her eyes.

  ‘But you know something?’ she went on, calming down. ‘Sure, I recorded the damn thing. But I was never, ever going to sell it. I mean, not after I got to know Joe.’

  ‘Really?’ Amber was taken aback.

  ‘Nuh-uh.’ Skye shook her head vehemently, her blonde curls dancing. ‘Crazy, right? I should’ve just got out of there the day after we did it – when I had it on tape – and taken it straight to the Investigator. They promised me this huge bonus if I did. There was a contract and everything.’ She sighed.‘Only I had to go and fall for Joe. What a moron. As if a huge movie star like him would give a shit about me when we got out of Cascabel.’

  ‘You mean,’ Amber said, her brow creasing, ‘that if Petal hadn’t videoed you on her phone—’

  ‘I’d have stayed put and hoped Joe would want to go on seeing me after rehab,’ Skye sighed. ‘We had such an amazing connection. You know when that happens?’ Her blue eyes went dreamy.‘When you just
touch someone and all these sparks go off? But not just sex – even though you totally don’t get that feeling with many people. It’s when you just want to be near them all the time. When you feel you can say anything, and they’ll get you. When you’re just so relaxed with each other, straight away. It’s like magic. And I know it sounds totally lame to say I thought I had that with Joe Jeffreys – like I’ve got a stupid crush on a movie star – but I really did. And I thought he felt something too.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘So of course,’ she said sadly, ‘I blew it. I’d never have taken that tape to the Investigator if Joe had tried to give me his number, or take mine, while we were getting kicked out. If he’d shown me the slightest sign that he wanted to keep in touch, I’d’ve hung on and waited and waited for him to call.’ She sighed again. ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Amber said hopelessly.

  ‘And now here I am, doing the rounds of auditions,’ Skye said, ‘and because everyone’s seen the video – which the Investigator didn’t even pay me that much for – the casting directors and producers I’m seeing are making it very clear that unless I play nice with them, they won’t even give me a callback.’

  ‘Oh, Skye . . .’ Amber knew very well what it was like to have people expect sexual favours in return for jobs. She reached out and squeezed Skye’s hand in sympathy.

  ‘And I won’t,’ Skye said, squeezing Amber’s hand back. ‘I just won’t do that any more.’

  She smiled feebly at Amber. ‘I suppose rehab did help me after all. Who’d’ve thought it?’

  ‘You’re doing the right thing,’ Amber said quietly.

  ‘Yeah? I hope so. But guess what? My agent rang me this morning. I got offered a Hustler shoot. A hundred grand. Full-frontal.’

  ‘You can’t do it,’ Amber said immediately.

  Skye ducked her head. ‘I did ask if I could only do topless,’ she said, ‘but they said full-frontal or nothing.’

  ‘Skye, you can’t,’ Amber said very seriously. ‘Once those photos are out there, you can never take them back.’