With a heart-stopping jolt, I suddenly wake up in my apartment in New York City. It’s past four am but I don’t care. I just have an overriding need to talk to Dan. With absolutely no idea what I’d say to him even if I actually got him on the phone, which doubtless, I wouldn’t.
I just want to talk to him, that’s all.
Just to hear his voice.
I even get as far as dialling the first three digits of his mobile number.
Then I remember and hang up the phone.
SUMMER
Chapter Ten
June already. New York is getting hotter and more humid by the day. The streets are packed with tourists now and at this stage I can nearly spot them a mile away, with their I Heart NY novelty T-shirts and baseball caps, queuing up day and night at the half-price ticket booth at Times Square, all looking for discounted tickets to get into The Lion King.
The native New Yorkers are easy enough to spot too: they’re the slightly terrifying army of professionals that you see striding in and out of buildings like the MetLife, who wear black all winter long, then abruptly switch to white around now and keep on wearing it till Labor Day. Like it’s some kind of uniform. I see them everywhere I go, strutting down Madison and Fifth, rushing, rushing, always rushing, talking into cellphones, gulping back their travelling soya lattes from Starbucks; some of the women cleverly producing fans from their Hermès Kelly bags, then wafting them in front of their slightly too-immobile faces, trying to stave off at least some of the hot, dead air that’s smothering the city like a blanket.
Never in my life did I think I’d be so grateful for air-con at the theatre and in the apartment: I’ve known humidity in my time, but nothing compares to the clammy dryness of a New York summer. Small wonder rich people vacate the city in droves around now, to party at elegant summer-shares in the Hamptons, then return when the city cools down a bit, come the fall. (American for autumn.)
The good news is that the show is continuing to pack them in night after night and although I should be on cloud nine about this, I’ve got one constant nagging worry that just won’t go away: namely, Liz. Because if her behaviour was a mild worry a few weeks ago, now it’s escalated into a full-blown, major cause for concern. Which for the moment at least, I’m desperately trying to keep to myself, lest it leak out among the cast that her general carry-on is growing more and more unstable with every passing day. Containment, I figure at least gives Liz a chance to get her act together in private, without the white-hot glare of scrutiny from all sides, which would only escalate things out of all control. The principal worry being that if Chris hears about it, it’ll be all over the theatre in the blink of an eye and then of course the minute it filters back to Jack, the game’s up. Liz could very well find herself out of a job and frankly, I think work is the only thing that’s even remotely keeping her on the straight and narrow right now.
Ever since that awful night at Easter in Don’t Tell Mama, I’ve noticed that there are good days and bad days with her, except that now, the bad days are well and truly starting to outnumber the good ones. Example? A few weeks back, one morning at about eleven-ish, I got a call from her on my mobile, sounding completely out of her head. She was so panicky and paranoid it took me an age to get the full story out of her, but apparently, she’d gone home with some guy the previous night and had now woken up in his apartment, totally alone, not knowing where she was or who she’d been with and without any money, not even for the taxi fare home.
Root around the place, I told her firmly, look for mail or even a household bill with the owner’s address on it. If he has a desk, try there. If necessary, go through drawers. After much coaxing and encouraging, I eventually got her to do it and as luck would have it, she discovered a phone bill stuck to his fridge.
With a Brooklyn address.
‘Stay where you are, honey, I’m on the way. And try to stay calm!’
Took me a good half hour just to find a cab that would drive me all the way out to Brooklyn, but eventually I did and when I went to buzz the intercom for Liz to let me in, I saw she was already downstairs waiting for me, trembling and terrified, a million miles from her usual swaggering, overt, sexy confident self. I got the shock of my life seeing her: she was a complete mess, her clothes were torn and manky and her eyes bloated and raw red from crying. Most frightening of all though, her nose was battered and bloody, like she’d been punched square in the face.
‘Jesus, Liz, what happened?’
‘He didn’t mean to do it,’ she sobbed, ‘we were just fooling around, we’d each done a few lines and…it was an accident. Honestly.’
I cradled her into the cab, made her lie back to try and arrest the bleeding and asked the driver to stop off at the nearest A&E. But Liz, so weak and helpless a minute ago, suddenly kicked up. No, she insisted, I’m fine. I can’t face hospital, she said, that would mean blood and urine tests and all sorts of questions being asked.
But she and I both knew what was really worrying her. Given what was probably floating around in her bloodstream right now, who knew what hospital tests might lead to? Drug offences? Maybe even charges? In a blink, she could find herself on a flight back home, out of a job.
Next thing, she was pleading with me.
‘Please, Annie, I need you to be a pal and say nothing about this. Not to anyone. I’ll be fine for tonight, I swear. Just help me clean up my nose and no one will suspect a thing. And I’ll stop doing the stuff, I swear I will. No more lines, ever. This’ll be the last time. I promise.’
Well what could I say? I had that awful feeling you get when your back’s completely to the wall and you’re faced with no other choice.
‘Right then, this time, I promise,’ I eventually sighed. ‘On condition that it never happens again. You have got to stop doing coke, Liz, or it’s going to kill you.’
‘It’ll never happen again. Never. I give you my word.’
And I desperately wanted to believe her, so of course, I did.
But now, every time my phone rings, my heart stops in my mouth just in case it’s her, lost somewhere, beaten up maybe, needing help. Worse still; she’s not hanging around with the rest of us nearly as much as she used to. Instead she seems to have fallen in with a shadowy new group of friends, who we’re never introduced to or even invited to meet. She just disappears off after each show saying she’s ‘got people to see’ and that’s as much as you’ll get out of her. Like this is a whole side of her life she wants to keep separate from us.
And every night when I walk to the theatre, I don’t really relax until she saunters into the dressing room. Even if she’s not in great shape, I feel nothing but deep relief. Because at least if she’s showed up for work, then that’s something, isn’t it?
In fact, the only bright light on the horizon for me on these long, hot, sultry days are the little touristy excursions I’ve been having with Jack. Nothing extravagant, nothing flashy, but by now, we’ve covered a fair amount of the city and I’m amazed at how familiar it’s all becoming to me. Funny, but under his guiding hand, I’m slowly turning into a real-live native New Yorker.
Ever since Easter we’ve been meeting up in the afternoons, maybe a couple of times a week, to see the sights. He’s become like a kind of indispensable Sherpa to me, filling my head full of facts and tales about the city I never knew. We take turns, so one day he’ll pick a particular excursion for us to do and the next time I’ll decide where to go. Whenever it’s Jack’s call though, he’ll invariably go for an art gallery and I swear to God, at this stage, I don’t think there’s a single square foot of the Guggenheim or The Met that we haven’t nearly worn the floor down on.
His knowledge of art is exhaustive and his frame of reference is unlimited; he knows everything there is to know whereas I know feck all, so effectively he’s been coaching me. I’ve come to enjoy these lazy, cool afternoons strolling through room after room in MOMA and The Met as he explains to me the intricacies of neo-classicism and how after the First
World War, there was a move away from Cubism and Expressionism and more towards the work of modern classical artists like Jean Cocteau and de Chirico.
Strange to think that I was terrified of Jack when I first met him: now that I’ve really got to know him, I look back on that petrified girl who first stumbled out onto the National theatre stage to audition for him, ooohh, what feels like about a hundred years ago…and I smile. Because now, not only am I’m starting to look forward to our little touristy jaunts together, I’m actually having a laugh with him. Yes, he can be tough and work-obsessed and a total perfectionist, but at least now I understand why. There’s a deep passion behind his drive, an overwhelming need for excellence and flawlessness in everything he does. But behind that, he’s smart, sharp, terrific company, always attentive and witty and best of all…he’s the only person in my life who never asks me questions about my private life.
Nothing. Nada. And nor do I quiz him about his personal stuff either. Like a kind of unspoken pact between us.
Which right now, is something I’m deeply appreciative of.
Anyroadup, one baking hot, clammy afternoon, he asks me to meet him at Barneys on Madison and Sixtieth Street, an uber-posh designer store, where unless you sweep into it looking rich, rich, rich, then the doorman looks at you a bit like a head butler showing in a chimney sweep. Which is why I’ve avoided it till now. But Jack insists we go there and as ever, point blank refuses to take no for an answer.
‘I’ve got a bachelor party to go to tonight and I need to get a tuxedo for it,’ he explains, flashing his toothy smile at me as we head through the revolving doors and into the ultra-chic surroundings. ‘Mind helping me pick one out?’
‘Of course not,’ I smile, actually delighted to be in out of the heat and wafting around a crisp, cool air-conditioned store. ‘Just don’t expect me to buy anything, that’s all.’
Jack looks so at home here, I think, strolling beside him towards the elevators, so elegant and cool in his chinos and a loose white linen shirt. In fact you’d nearly swear he’d just been styled by GQ magazine for a photoshoot.
‘Oh now come on, who knows?’ he teases, glancing at me suggestively as we wait for the elevator, ‘you might just see something for yourself here that you have to have. You know, I think you’d look absolutely fantastic in a Diane von Furstenberg wraparound dress…’
‘At the prices they charge in here, are you kidding me?’
‘Just try one on. It’ll be fun. Trust me.’
And so I do and I have to admit, this is the best fun I’ve had in I don’t know how long. I don’t have any shopping buddies here in New York: barring Blythe, none of the others have the slightest interest in clothes and Blythe herself limits her shopping to all the midtown bargain basement discount stores. And of course back home Dan’s such a man’s man, he’d have to either be chloroformed or else be physically dragged, kicking and screaming, to even get him within a ten foot radius of the nearest department store. But here in Barneys, it’s like I’m really seeing Jack in his natural element – when he’s surrounded by exclusive, expensive goodies, all with designer labels hanging off them.
Most fellas would be bored stupid and stand yawning or else looking at their watches in a women’s fashion department, but not Jack. He spends ages wandering around the Diane von Furstenberg section, holding dress after dress up against me, eventually settling on a scarlet wraparound one. He insists I try it on and patiently waits for me outside the changing room, stretching his long legs out on a pale mink sofa, the picture of laid-back cool. When I do emerge, he gives me one of his keen, appraising up-and-down-looks, then wolf-whistles.
‘Stunning! You’re an absolute knockout in that dress. Why don’t you wear red more often? It really is your colour, you know. And you should put your hair up too. Suits you off your face.’
‘Spoken like Gok Wan himself.’
‘Guilty as charged,’ he laughs playfully, ‘I’ll freely admit it – there’s nothing I enjoy more than being surrounded by beauty. And you, my dear, happen to be a very beautiful woman. Trouble is that no one’s ever really told you. You’re completely starved of personal compliments. You’re a bit like parched earth in need of watering.’
‘Come off it, will you?’
I’m blushing like a forest fire now and it’s embarrassing me.
‘Only the truth.’
‘I am a married woman, I’ll have you know.’
But he says nothing more, just raises one of his eyebrows and gives me a half-smile.
I head back to the sanctuary of the fitting room, brushing all this mildly flirtatious carry-on aside, but the truth is that every now and then I remember what Liz flung at me that night back in Don’t Tell Mama. About Jack wanting some woman he couldn’t get because she was married. And just as quickly, I dismiss it out of hand. Besides, I remind myself, unwrapping the dress off me and nearly passing out when I see the price tag (seven hundred dollars? Are they kidding me?), Jack tells me all the time, day and night, that he doesn’t do relationships – ever.
Which is absolutely fine by me. In fact, thank Christ for that, because frankly if any guy hit on me right now, chances are I’d just look at them blankly, not having the first clue what to do.
Like that part of my life has just irretrievably shut down.
Not long after, one hot, sunny morning – the kind that hits eighty degrees even though it’s barely eleven am – out of the blue, Jack calls me at the flat. We’ve arranged to go sightseeing today, except last time, at my behest, we did the Empire State, so this time it’s his turn to choose. There’s an art gallery he really wants to check out called the Ronald Feldman on Mercer Street in SoHo, he tells me, so he suggests meeting there in about half an hour. Great, I tell him, see you there. Then I fling on the coolest, most summery dress I own – a long, floaty white number I bought in Anthropologie in the Rockefeller Center and I’m just on my way out the door when my phone rings.
Liz, in a blind temper.
‘What’s wrong, hon?’ I ask, my heart already beginning to palpitate.
‘I need to talk to you,’ she practically spits down the phone. ‘Now. And no, before you ask, it won’t wait.’
‘Liz, deep breaths, calm down. Where are you now?’
‘Upstairs, in my apartment.’
‘Stay right there, I’m on my way.’
Two minutes later, I’m at her door and she’s already standing there waiting for me, looking like death on a plate. I never see her without make-up and now that I do, it’s actually a massive shock. Her face is drawn, ghostly white, with black bags you could put luggage in and cheekbones you could grate cheese on. But not in good RPattz way, more in a concentration camp victim way.
‘What’s the matter, hon?’ I ask, my stomach cramping with anxiety.
‘That insidious, nosy, bossy bitch Chris is inside my apartment right now, making all kinds of ludicrous allegations against me and I swear to God, if she doesn’t apologise to me, I’m not working with her tonight. Do I need to spell it out any further? I refuse to walk out on stage tonight unless I get a full apology. OK? You with me? No apology, no show tonight!’
She’s talking nineteen to the dozen, really spitting fire, repeating herself over and over and it’s only now that I notice the wildly dilated pupils, the trembling hands, the extreme agitation. All the signs, present and correct.
She’s off her head on coke again, I know it. Just know it.
I grip her firmly by her rail-thin little arm and steer her back into the tiny hallway of her apartment, where Chris is still in her dressing gown, standing tall and firm, swishing back her long, Indian straight black hair, maybe not gunning for a fight, but still, fully prepared for one. The place is a complete mess too, I can’t help noticing: empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays are lying all over the place and it stinks like Satan’s gym bag in here.
‘Morning, Annie,’ Chris says evenly, on seeing me come in. ‘I’m so sorry that you’ve been dragged into all th
is unpleasantness, but Liz insisted.’
‘Fucking right I insisted!’ Liz practically screeches into her face. ‘I want a witness for this!’
‘Can someone please tell me what’s going on?’ I ask, completely at a loss.
Chris, in fairness to her, remains utterly resolute and fully in control.
‘To bring you up to speed, Annie, money has mysteriously been disappearing from our dressing rooms during the show. Between myself, Blythe and Alex, there’s over fifteen hundred dollars gone to date.’
Suddenly, I feel a sharp shock to my gut like I’ve just been electrocuted. No. Not possible. Is it? Would Liz really have…? My head spins and my mind starts to race.
She’s borrowed money from me before, worryingly large amounts of money, well over five hundred bucks, but when I asked her why, seeing as how we’re all so well paid in the show, she just floundered around and never gave me a straight answer. Needed to pay off some dealer, I figured, so then I just cut her off and stopped lending it to her. And lately, whenever she touches me for cash, I don’t even bother making stupid, transparent excuses about not having any on me, I just tell her straight out. If this is for coke, then no, you’re not getting a red cent from me. Caused untold tension between us, but I’ve managed to stay firm.
And now this?
‘The problem,’ Chris continues crisply, ‘is that, as we all know, the cast are the only ones who have access to the dressing rooms during the show, and out of the cast…’
‘You devious bloody cow!’ Liz practically spits into her face and for a split second I really do think I’ll have to physically restrain her from punching Chris smack in the face. ‘So you’ve got it all worked out, do you?’ she fumes, pacing up and down now. ‘I’m the only one offstage for long enough to sneak around the place stealing cash from other people’s handbags, is what you’re trying to say, isn’t it? So why don’t you just have the guts to come right out and say it?’
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow Page 21
