by Rick Copp
He was right. My boyfriend was healing from three bullet holes in his body, and I still couldn’t resist inquiring about my chances for a big career comeback.
After a little more protesting on my part, Charlie laid down the law. I was going to call Wallace back and reassure him that I would be at the Old Apollo on Monday for the first cast read-through of the play. Isis would move in to tend to Charlie’s needs, and if he made significant progress in his recovery during the next month or so, both of them would eventually fly over to see the show before it closed.
But if I had known I would encounter more violence abroad than from the horrific shoot-out in Westwood Village, I never would have agreed to the plan.
Chapter 3
I almost missed my British Airways flight from Los Angeles to London because I lost track of time going over my long list of instructions for Isis, who would be de facto nursemaid in my absence. I wanted Charlie to be well taken care of while I was gone, and Isis was one of the few people I trusted to get the job done right. The day before, we had made our biweekly pilgrimage to Price Club, where she stocked up on bottles of soda and canned goods and wrapped meats that would feed a small Iraqi village. I swore I wouldn’t have blinked twice if one day I found out Isis was part of some survivalist militia group who packed their basements with food and ammo, waiting for the right opportunity to overthrow the government. Isis spared no expense (especially since the bill was going on my American Express card) to ensure Charlie’s comfort. She bought four packages of Snickers bars (twenty-four per package) since she knew they were Charlie’s favorite (so much so we named our dog after them). She also splurged on fresh linens, a small library of best-sellers, and a brand new TiVo machine so Charlie could rest and still not miss the week’s newest installment of Donald Trump’s runaway hit The Apprentice.
With Isis moved into the house and the cupboards fully stocked, I felt safe kissing Charlie good-bye and climbing into the chauffeur-driven Town Car for the forty-five-minute ride to Los Angeles International Airport. Unfortunately, I unwisely suggested to the driver he take the Hollywood Freeway to downtown and change to the 110 freeway south, which hooks up with the 105 Imperial Freeway that is a straight shot to the airport. Figuring downtown would be a ghost town on a Saturday night, I was startled to discover that Justin Timberlake was playing the Staples Center, and traffic was at a standstill as hordes of teenyboppers and their parents clogged the freeways in both directions. I nervously watched the precious minutes tick away as the frustrated driver pounded on his steering wheel, muttering curses under his breath.
When we finally made it to the international terminal at LAX, I had less than an hour to make it through check-in and security and onto the plane. Compounding my unfortunate situation were three heavy-duty Samonsite bags crammed with three months of clothing and skin products. If I missed this flight, I would have to wait until morning to catch the next one, and that would put me into London dangerously close to the time I was to report to the theater.
I didn’t have time to call Charlie as I was herded through the security checkpoint and ushered to the aircraft for immediate takeoff. Luckily the producers had sprung for a business-class seat, so I was able to stretch out and flip through Us magazine as the plane taxied for takeoff. After a brief pause, we shot down the tarmac, lifted up, and sailed over an endless sea of twinkling city lights before jetting out over the Pacific, looping into a turn, and heading east.
There was still a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that I shouldn’t be leaving Charlie in his condition. But he was so insistent and almost happy to see me go. I guess I had been a wee bit insufferable after landing this high-profile play, not to mention more than a little overbearing when he arrived home from the hospital. With worried thoughts of Charlie swimming around in my head, I was out within minutes. I hadn’t planned on sleeping during the entire flight, not with a new Al Franken book to laugh my way through. But not only did I miss the shrimp cocktail and beef Wellington, the free-flowing merlot and most importantly, the hot fudge sundae, I squinted my eyes open to sadly discover I had slumbered through most of a Sandra Bullock romantic comedy the in-flight magazine described as “uproarious” and “delightful.” Okay, so that wasn’t much of a tragedy. But I do like to keep abreast of what my fellow actors are doing. I smiled to myself, wondering if Sandra Bullock would be jealous that I was appearing in a play with the incomparable Claire Richards. Who wouldn’t want to share a stage with such a theatrical legend? Of course, I would no doubt be willing to switch places with Sandra if it meant garnering just one of her fifteen-million-dollar paydays.
When the 767 touched down at Heathrow on a late Sunday afternoon, it was chilly and cloudy with spotty rain. Typical English weather. After a brutal couple of hours waiting in line at customs, securing my three oversized bags, and fighting off some German tourists for a taxicab, I settled back for the ride into London. I had only been to the city twice. Once when I was fourteen and we shot a TV movie in London based on our hit sitcom. It was all the rage at the time. All the shows were doing it. Family Ties Vacation and The Facts of Life Down Under (which was a publicly demanded sequel to the widely popular The Facts of Life Goes to Paris). Ours was cleverly titled Go to Your Room at Buckingham Palace and had to do with our vacationing family unraveling a convoluted plot to discredit the queen of England. We were so busy shooting a tightly packed fifteen-day schedule I never got to explore much of the city’s offerings. A few years later, when I was nineteen, I figured it was time I “bummed around Europe” but I only briefly skirted through London. There was a cute twenty-five-year-old Austrian named Arno who was waiting for me in Salzburg with promises of a memorable Sound of Music tour, so I wasn’t about to waste a week bopping around jolly old England.
Once Murder Can Be Civilized was up and running, my plan was to make use of my free time and really see the city and its surrounding areas. My father’s side of the family dated as far back as the Boston Tea Party. They originally fled the mother country to escape exorbitant taxes, which is what some in my family still attempt to do to this day. I had a deep familial connection to the British Isles and was anxious to soak up all it had to offer. My father, Clyde, a fervent genealogy buff, had e-mailed me the names of family members whose descendants might still be living in villages north of the city. I had printed out his information and stuffed it in my luggage. There was a lot to do while I was here.
The taxicab pulled up to the famous landmark front entrance of the Savoy. I was blown away by its opulence. I had read up on this historic hotel that opened its doors to the public in 1889. Throughout the following century and beyond, the Savoy sparkled with glittering parties and hosted a number of dignitaries and celebrities such as Sir Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Charlie Chaplin, and more recently, U2.
After I checked in, Arthur the friendly bellhop, in his late seventies and wearing a dusty gray suit with black stripes and a thin charcoal tie, entertained me with a bouquet of colorful stories as we rode the elevator up to my floor. He claimed to have been working at the hotel in the mid-fifties on the day Marilyn Monroe held a press conference at the Savoy when she came to Britain to star in The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier. He also said he once brought up a bottle of champagne to Elizabeth Taylor, who spent the first night of her honeymoon at the hotel with Nicky Hilton.
Once Arthur’s shaky hand inserted the key into the old-fashioned lock and pushed open the door, I followed him inside to find a deluxe suite with a plush king-size bed, fresh flowers and fruit on an antique oak table, and a breathtaking view of the river Thames. We were going to have to sell out every last performance if the producers were ever going to recoup the pounds spent on this room.
Arthur leaned in conspiratorially and said, “I’m not supposed to talk about other guests, but this is the room where Elton John stayed once.”
“Really?” I said, a fool for gossip. “How was he?”
“A total gentleman,” Arthur
said. “But one night he answered the phone while running his bath. These baths fill up fast, mind you; there was a flood, which caused considerable damage to the rooms below!”
“Oh my,” I said, anxious to e-mail this tidbit to all my friends back home. Arthur then launched into a litany of amenities at my disposal, and after a long-winded speech stretching well beyond the time it took Halle Berry to thank all the African Americans who helped make her Oscar win possible, Arthur was finally ready to take his leave. I overtipped him, mostly due to his generous Sir Elton story, and after he finally left I began to unpack.
I was thrilled with the abundance of closet and drawer space to put away a three-month wardrobe. Once that was done, I calculated just how late or early it was back in Los Angeles and picked up the phone to dial an operator and phone home to Charlie. Before I got an answer, there was a knock at the door. I was hoping Arthur remembered another juicy bon mot, perhaps a Bette Davis temper tantrum because room service put mayo on her club sandwich or Madonna getting noise complaints from the adjoining rooms while having nasty sex with Wesley Snipes. I was ready for anything. But when I opened the door, the last thing I was ready for was to be staring into the smiling face of Claire Richards.
“Jarrod, darling, you made it!” she said as she planted a perfectly theatrical kiss on my lips and swept into the room carrying a bottle of Dom Perignon. “Is this a bad time, love?”
“No . . . I mean . . . no,” I stammered like a shy schoolboy.
Claire was much smaller in person, barely five feet four inches. On screen she had such a commanding presence, her tiny size was rather disconcerting. Her hair was cut short, she wore a sleeveless white blouse and flower print skirt, and several gold bracelets jangled on both wrists.
She lifted up the bottle of champagne. “I’m just down the hall. I told them to ring me up when you got here so I could pop by and offer a proper hello.” She pointed to the label. “Nineteen eighty-five. A very good year, apparently.” A bottle of Dom Perignon from the eighties had to be worth in the high hundreds. I searched around for some glasses as I tried to get used to the idea of splitting a bottle of champagne with the incredible Claire Richards.
I heard a loud pop, and white foam flowed out of the bottle and all over Claire’s arm. She let out a hearty laugh as she marched into the bathroom, grabbed a fluffy white towel off the rack, and started wiping herself off. I managed to secure a pair of wineglasses from above the minibar as Claire shot a fast series of questions at me regarding my flight, my opinion of the accommodations, my excitement over the play. I kept my answers brief simply because I was still in a state of shock over Claire’s magical appearance in my room.
Claire filled up our glasses to the rim, then plopped down on the bed and crossed her legs. Her print skirt slid up and I got a clear view of her extraordinarily well-preserved and impressively toned gams. Claire might have been in her late forties, but she had a youthful vitality, a soft face with nary a wrinkle, and a jaw-dropping, incredibly sexy body. If I were straight, my mind would be working overtime trying to figure out how to get her under the covers in a horizontal position.
She tapped her glass to mine. “Here’s to us finally working together, Jarrod.”
At first I thought she must be confusing me with someone else. Another cast member, maybe. But she said my name. Jarrod. How many other actors named Jarrod could she have worked with? She downed her champagne and instantly poured herself another. After gulping down a generous sip, she turned her sparkling hazel eyes in my direction.
“Baby, don’t even go there!” She waited for my reaction, and then howled with laughter.
She knew it. She was familiar with my catchphrase. This was too much.
I must have pleased her with my stunned reaction because she continued guffawing until her glass was empty and she had to focus on filling it up again.
“I’m surprised you even know about the show I was on,” I said, still in a mesmerizing haze of admiration and abject fear.
“Oh, I never saw it, love. I just did my homework when I heard you’d been cast.”
Of course. Somehow I couldn’t imagine Claire Richards delivering a spellbinding performance as Lady Macbeth at the Old Vic and then racing home to watch the episode where I shoplift a squirt gun from the local department store.
“But I think it’s utterly charming,” she said adding a slight lilt to her elevated English accent. I loved that accent. In fact, I always imagined dating a Hugh Grant or a Jude Law, someone oh so very British, and attending tea parties and pheasant-shooting weekends like in Gosford Park. That was long before my world changed forever when I met meat-and-potatoes Midwestern boy Charlie Peters.
Claire pounded me with more questions involving my career. She appeared genuinely interested, and it scared the hell out of me. How could this living legend be at all interested in my humble career scraps? But she was, and it made her eminently likable. Within minutes, we had polished off the ’85 bottle of Dom Perignon. Claire scooped up the phone and ordered three more bottles. Luckily, she made sure to charge the cost to her own room, so there was nothing to compromise my pleasant buzz.
After what seemed like an endless Barbara Walters interview, with Claire peppering me with questions, I managed to turn the tables and grill Claire about her own life and career. She filled out her résumé with enough outrageous anecdotes and sexual escapades to make even Arthur the seen-it-all bellhop blanch. Some of the biggest names in show business were supporting players in the life of Claire Richards. The drunker we got, the more graphic Claire’s descriptions became, and at one point she made me promise to take a certain knighted actor’s astounding penis size to my grave. By midnight, we were best friends. And sloshed. The room was spinning, and when I stood up to open the last bottle, Claire had to grab my arm to keep me from falling over. We erupted into a fit of giggles.
Suddenly there was a loud rapping at the door. I covered my mouth, fearing it might be some snotty English lord or uptight duchess from next door put out by our loud partying. Claire gripped the bedpost and hauled herself to her feet and stumbled toward the door. I hid behind the swath of nylon curtain that draped down over the window overlooking the Thames.
Claire looked back at me as she reached for the door handle, snorting as she twisted it and flung open the door. Standing there was a towering figure of manhood, a muscular young stud in a tight-fitting tank top and sweatpants, arms ripped, and longish wavy auburn hair that flowed down just above his shoulders. I was so struck by his impressive stature and handsome face, without even knowing who he was I was ready to invite him inside.
Claire, in what I considered a bold move even for her, reached up with her hands, clapped them against his cheeks, and pulled his face down low enough for her to kiss him. Claire slobbered all over him until he finally stood erect, leaving her pursed lips behind.
“Darling, this is Jarrod, the boy I was telling you about.”
Boy? God, I loved her.
The man looked me over, unimpressed. His eyes flickered to the four empty champagne bottles that littered the room, and he grimaced before grunting a reply.
Claire swung back around in my direction and as she fluttered toward the bed she slurred, “This is Liam, my boyfriend.”
He was at least twenty years younger than she was. You go, girl.
Liam offered his hand. “Liam Killoran.”
I shook it, my hand disappearing in his giant paw.
“Liam was one of my acting students when I taught a class at the Royal Academy last year. Who knew a one-day stint as a guest lecturer would result in me meeting my soul mate?”
She batted her eyes seductively at Liam, who replied with a tight smile.
“God, the minute I saw him in the window, I just knew I had to have him,” she said. I could see why.
“It’s late, Claire. You have to be at the script reading in a few hours,” Liam said. He wanted to break up the party. Now.
I looked at the clock. It was t
hree in the morning. This was not good. I had been so swept away by my indoctrination into the wonderful world of Claire Richards I had completely forgotten why I was even here in the first place. I had a job to do, and it started at eight in the morning. Not only would I be fighting jet lag, I would be operating on four hours of sleep.
Claire sighed as she took one final swig from the champagne bottle and set it down on the dresser. She shuffled over to me, wrapped her arms around my waist, and kissed me full on the mouth. I was facing Liam, whose face flushed with anger. As Claire pressed her lips against mine, the seconds ticked by, and I kept one eye on Liam. He looked as if his head was ready to explode.
Claire finally pulled away, patted my cheek with one hand while squeezing my butt with the other, and then slithered back to Liam. He grasped her elbow and steered her toward the door. She wrenched her head around as Liam forced her out the door.
“Good night, sweet prince,” she said as Liam slammed the door behind them. And thus ended my first night in London.
When I awoke a scant three hours later to the sounds of a Rolling Stones classic on the clock radio, my head felt like it had been pressed through a meat grinder. The lingering aftereffects of a veritable fountain of champagne was a steady throbbing that not even a couple of Tylenol tablets and a blistering-hot shower could dull. I threw on some jeans and a polo shirt and slipped on a pair of docksiders and hurried out the door clutching my Murder Can Be Civilized script.
I quickly consulted my London Visitor’s Guide for the best walking route. After that, it was a short twenty-minute stroll along the busy Strand, filled with shops and department stores, through the beautiful converted flower market of Covent Garden, into the bustling arts scene in the heart of the West End. Finally, I turned onto Shaftsbury just a few blocks away from the old Apollo Theatre. As I hustled through the rush-hour crowd, I hit the home-access button on my cell phone and clamped it to my ear as a lone signal shot out across the world to connect me to my life thousands of miles away.
