by C. J. Duggan
‘Oh, that’s Jay, Abby’s special friend,’ Billie added.
My head spun around so fast.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was one thing to get carried away with a little white lie, but let’s not get fucking crazy.
‘Don’t you have work to do?’ I muttered under my breath.
Billie giggled. ‘Yeah, gotta keep the boss happy, hey?’ she grinned. ‘I’ll be back with your meals soon.’
I drew in a huge sigh of relief watching her walk away, but it was short-lived. I turned back to catch Sienna’s manic blue eyes. In four quick shunts, she moved her seat closer to me, leaning in as if to tell me a secret.
‘Oh my God, Abby, you’re doing alright for yourself,’ she said, her eyes shifting to where Jay stood at the cash register, engaged in conversation with the bar manager.
‘A secret deal and a hot man – looks like you’re living the dream.’ She said it in a way that tried to make out that she was happy, but there was a dead look in her eyes. ‘You’re such a surprise package.’ She sat back in her chair, assessing me with amused interest.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well, unlike Billie, you’re kind of a closed book; you’re not online very much, you have, what, eighty-one Instagram posts? Your profile page on Facey hardly gets any traction, and have you ever tweeted in your life?’
I felt my spine involuntarily straighten. ‘Well, maybe I’m just a private person.’
Sienna scoffed. ‘Oh, please, Abby, you know that privacy is just for people with low self-esteem – what you’re doing is social suicide.’
I felt my insides twist at her words. What she was saying was every actor’s worst nightmare, the thought of fading into oblivion, of not being relevant anymore. Back home, I was relevant. I was on the cover of magazines, in the gossip columns. In many ways it was a curse, but the one thing it did do, the one thing I really hadn’t appreciated or felt until now, was that it put my name out there. But in LA, I was just one very small fish in a big ocean. Looking at Sienna’s ice-blue eyes, I could see she was the shark.
‘Listen, I’m just giving you some advice,’ she said, as if I should be grateful. ‘I just think if you have something, show, or tell.’ Her eyes once again strayed towards Jay. ‘If I had that I’d be screaming it from the rafters.’
I knew Sienna well enough to know what she was alluding to. All those pap snaps with her and Leon out and about were no accident. And he sure did feature on a few of her three thousand-odd ‘candid’ Insta pics, but that just wasn’t me. Not after what happened. Sure, I could lift my profile if I were to post a few happy snaps with a sexy mystery man abroad, but that wasn’t my style. Even if my eyes were lingering on Jay for a tad longer than I wanted.
Don’t even think about it, Abby – you’re already the scarlet woman.
‘Well, whatever your grand reveal is, make sure the hottie is in on it. He is going to look mighty fine on a red carpet.’
I tried to control the snort that wanted to escape. Jay on a red carpet? He would sooner die, of that I was sure.
Sienna had her head tilted slightly, her eyes still towards the bar. ‘It’s so strange … it’s almost like I know his face.’
I wanted to roll my eyes so bad; of course she would try that. Nothing was sacred. ‘Well, you’re a socialite, you probably crossed paths at some stage.’ Although I seriously doubted it; Jay didn’t exactly mingle with actors.
Sienna seemed troubled, struggling to place him.
‘Maybe he just has one of those faces,’ I said, trying to move the conversation along, wishing that we could just stop talking about him altogether.
‘I don’t think I would forget running into a man like that. It is annoying, he seems familiar but I just can’t put my finger on it.’
Mercifully her trance was broken the minute Billie appeared. ‘Grub’s up! One kale, and one chicken taco,’ she announced, plonking them in front of us. Billie took in our little huddle, Sienna now sitting so close that our elbows were almost touching.
‘Listen, um, Jay says he doesn’t mean to cut your lunch date short, but he has to leave by one,’ Billie said to me. ‘So if you want to get a ride to that thing of yours you’ll have to hurry …’
Billie looked at me intently, trying to communicate with her eyes.
‘That thing?’ I repeated.
She nodded her head slowly and I mirrored the movement, until finally the penny dropped.
‘Oh, right, that thing! Yes, of course, sure,’ I said, wincing and turning my attention to Sienna. ‘Sorry, I really have to eat and run.’
‘Oh, no worries, secret deals and things have to be seen to.’ Her words were laced with sarcasm; my rather intriguing life was simply eating at her insides, and I loved it. Billie was so right bringing me here; instead of going home depressed, I was going to leave so completely smug I could barely stand myself. I glanced at my watch and pretended to be disappointed that one o’clock would allow barely enough time to scoff down my lunch and hear Sienna’s enthralling story about her summer on a yacht off the coast of Croatia.
When Jay appeared at our side, jingling his keys, the relief that washed over me almost numbed the intense case of indigestion that I was battling. ‘You ready to go?’
Hell, yes, I was ready. So ready I was prepared to do a deal with the devil, and be whisked away in the devil’s black Mustang.
Chapter Fourteen
The thing with lies is that you can never quite tell where they will take you. But to wind up this little tête-à-tête with Sienna, I was willing to go to hell and back.
‘Ah, yeah, sure, we don’t want to be late,’ I replied to Jay, praying that Billie had given him the heads-up on the role he was playing in my elaborate exit.
‘Sienna, I am sorry to have to end our catch-up,’ I said, just as Jay coughed into his fist, no doubt trying to hide his smile. I wanted to kick him, hard, but I ignored him and stood, accepting Sienna’s weirdly long hug.
‘We should make a regular thing of this,’ Sienna said, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
‘Sure, sounds like a plan.’
Jay had now turned to the side, averting his face from us; he was clearly finding it difficult to maintain his composure with so much bullshit flying around his courtyard.
‘Well, we have each other’s numbers, so …’ I stepped nearer to Jay.
Rather than waving goodbye, Sienna followed me and walked up to Jay, her eyes shifting between the two of us. ‘I was just saying to Abby that I feel like I know you from somewhere – have we met before?’
Jay’s eyes flicked momentarily across Sienna’s face, then glazed over. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, shutting her down quickly, before grabbing my hand. It was such a shock I almost flinched. ‘It was nice to meet you, though. We better run.’
Sienna laughed, a little embarrassed she had mentioned it, then brushed her hair aside. ‘That’s okay, thanks for lunch. It’s a really cool place you have here. I might swing by with Leon one night and we can hang out.’
Jay’s hand squeezed mine so hard I was tempted to dig my nails into his skin. ‘Sure, any time,’ he said in that charming way of his. Now who was full of it?
After a final, awkward goodbye with Sienna, Jay mercifully pulled me away, weaving through the tables and heading for the exit. I smiled to myself, enjoying the fact that Sienna was watching me leave hand-in-hand with hot Jay. I had no doubt that she had met me for lunch to gloat over her success and revel in my misery, assuming that I’d be down on my luck, friendless and unemployed. While much of that was true, Sienna didn’t have to know it; ‘fake it till you make it’, right?
The moment Jay and I veered out the exit and into the alley that led to the parking lot, Jay let go of my hand; the ruse was over, one I’d had no idea he was a part of.
‘Thanks, special friend,’ I said, looking for a crack in his demeanour, which had returned to its usual stern state. And then I saw it; a dimple softened his cheek as he smile
d. He took off his sunglasses and looked my way.
‘Hey, blame Billie,’ I went on. ‘I think she enjoyed all that far too much.’
‘I hope you tipped her big?’ Jay laughed, and it was the first time I had heard it. So genuine, and undeniably lovely, was the sound that I couldn’t help but look back at him as he went round to his car door, looking at me expectantly.
‘Oh, you’re really giving me a ride?’ I was beginning to find it hard to decipher what was real and what was not. As far as I knew, the only ‘thing’ I had to attend to was defrosting chicken for tonight’s dinner, a stark contrast to the mysterious plans I had alluded to earlier. I had gone from feeling quite smug to feeling like a bit of an impostor.
Jay’s elbows rested on the roof of his Mustang. ‘I said I would.’
‘Oh, okay, well, thanks,’ I said, shifting to the passenger door. ‘But just so you know, I’m not tipping you.’
Jay’s smile broadened as we opened the doors in unison and slid into the car.
Jay steered down the narrow lane of the alley over potholes and around graffiti-coloured skip bins, passing a couple of kitchen hands lingering near the back door, smoking. Jay lifted his finger from the steering wheel in acknowledgement, and rather than scurrying out of the path of the Big Boss like you might expect, they replied with jovial salutes and head nods. I took a moment to glance at Jay, wondering exactly what kind of boss he was. Billie liked him enough to defend, even praise, him, so he must be alright. The Saloon seemed to run smoothly and efficiently. The atmosphere was nice, the surfaces were clean, the staff were happy and friendly – all proof of a well-oiled machine. Maybe I had been too quick to judge. Maybe he really was a good guy; after all, he had conspired with Billie to help me with my nightmarish lunch with Sienna. I guess I owed him one. Just as I was about to say as much, even thank him, his words cut me short.
‘You know, I think I’ve underestimated you,’ he said.
Wait, what?
My mouth gaped a little, stunned by the unexpected words. ‘Oh?’ I pressed, the suspense killing me.
‘You are a far better actress than I thought you’d be.’ My brows knitted together as I stared at his profile.
‘Really?’
‘Really; I mean, the way you delivered your lines to Sienna was particularly impressive: “thank you so much, let’s catch up again”. I mean, that shit was Academy Award–worthy.’
He mimicked me – fucking mimicked me! I could feel my blood boiling.
‘Yeah, well, your performance was rather impressive, too. Tell me, do you often interfere with people’s affairs on the job? Is that how your business has become such a success? Maybe I should try it sometime,’ I spat, turning my attention out the window.
I didn’t know if Jay was smirking or glaring my way, but I didn’t really care; accusing me of being fake really hit a nerve, mainly because I knew it was true.
‘If Billie asked me to walk over fire, I would,’ he said solemnly. My attention snapped from the blur that was the Strip at high speed to Jay, wondering what on earth made them so fiercely loyal to each other. I just didn’t get it.
‘Yeah, well, you don’t have to have any false sense of duty to me,’ I said.
‘I don’t.’
‘Good.’
‘Fine.’
We drove on in silence; the tension between us was painful but neither of us was willing to give in. Luckily the condo wasn’t far from the Saloon; in fact, I could easily have walked home, or maybe hung around with Billie and walked back with her. Somehow suffering through lunch with Sienna now seemed far more appealing than being in the presence of this man.
Had he not been driving so fast I would have taken my chances and leapt from his Mustang, army-rolling onto the pavement and flipping him the bird, before limping the rest of the way home.
Instead, I chose to be the bigger person. I could pretend to be nice; I’d just spent the last hour doing so with Sienna. And if I managed to break through Jay’s stone wall and build some kind of rapport, Billie would be really proud of me.
Where to start? His ego. I had tried complimenting his car last time and got nowhere, and the only other thing I knew about Jay was his business.
‘I love the Saloon Bar,’ I said, and it wasn’t a lie. The vibe was great, the food delicious. It had been a pleasant surprise.
We were stilled at a set of traffic lights, and I could sense something in Jay shift. Could it be possible that his icy façade was thawing? It seemed like he didn’t know how to respond to me; I guess saying ‘thank you’ would be kind of weird.
‘Look, we’re not exactly hiring at the moment, but if you have a résumé I can let you know when something comes up.’
Wait, what?
I laughed, astounded by his arrogance.
‘I don’t want a job, I was just saying …’
‘Really?’ he said incredulously.
‘I don’t need a job.’ And if I did, working for him would be the last thing on earth I’d consider.
‘You say that now, while you’re living off your little nest egg, but believe me, if you want to be an actor in this town, you’re going to need a day job.’
I crossed my arms; seriously, who did he think he was? He didn’t know me or my situation. ‘You seem to know an awful lot about actors.’
Jay smiled. ‘Nikki, the floor manager, was a child star in the eighties; I think she’s waiting on a call-back for a reality TV gig. Jimmy, my busboy, is currently reciting lines for a Levi’s advertisement; my head chef is a classically-trained stage actor who works the matinee shift at a local theatre-restaurant on a weekend, which is a real pain in the ass to schedule around, but he cooks a mean chilli so I can forgive him. Charlotte, Marissa and Toni are casuals and models in the latest Walmart catalogue, and one of the bartenders, Josie, plays Super Girl on Hollywood Boulevard. And that’s just to name a few. So, yeah, I know about actors.’
I snapped my mouth shut, hoping he hadn’t noticed it drop.
‘There’s something you need to know in this town,’ he continued. ‘Everything you think you know about this place is wrong. Everyone is blonder, skinnier and richer than you, and at some stage in your “journey” you will be sitting in your car crying in a parking lot after yet another soul-destroying audition for a beer commercial where you won’t even have any lines to remember because a panel of soulless men will just want you to turn in a bikini for them, with the promise of putting you on a Super Bowl billboard.’
‘Wow. Someone is incredibly jaded.’
‘I’m a realist.’
It all made sense now; Jay hated everything about my profession – that was clear. No doubt it would make rostering tough with staff cancelling or swapping shifts for yet another dead-end audition. He’d seen the ups and downs of promise and rejection, mopped up tears and suffered burst eardrums after an employee screamed with the joy of a call-back. Yeah, no wonder he had taken an instant dislike to yet another actress with stars in her eyes coming to town.
‘Tell me, then, why do you live in Hollywood? Because it pretty much sounds like the very last place on earth you should be.’
Jay laughed, the irony not lost on him. ‘You mean, a realist living in the land of dreams?’
‘Exactly.’
As we paused at yet another red light, he rubbed at his jaw, pondering the absurdity of it before shrugging and looking at me with a smile. His eyes were dark but I saw a boyish sparkle there, and though I fought it, it made me smile. I cocked a brow, still waiting for his answer.
‘Someone has to pick up the pieces.’
And in that moment, for just a second, I caught a glimpse of the real Jay Davis.
Chapter Fifteen
Jay dropped me off at the condo, having ‘errands to run’, and we parted on a relatively civil note. I couldn’t help but think about all the motley crew that were on his payroll. It had planted a seed in my mind, one that I really didn’t want to water and blossom.
Nope; wit
h each determined step I took up to the condo a new resilience built within me. I would take acting lessons, I would work on my accent, I would go on a health kick and run up all the hills and drink all the water. I would start my integration into the #LAfamily scene and I would completely fake it till I made it, showing them all back home what I was made of. And if that meant taking snapshots, chucking on a heavy filter and making out I was living the dream until I really was, then so be it.
My dreams weren’t going to end up on the scrapheap for the likes of Jay Davis to sweep up. If anything, his tales had only made me more determined to prove him wrong, to be different, to make it. I wasn’t just some naive wannabe – I came from good Aussie stock and I knew a thing or two. And I knew exactly what I needed to do now.
First things first; I got out my cell and, fighting against every fibre in my body, I texted.
Hey Sienna, so great catching up today, sorry I had to go. Wanna catch up for a happy hour sometime? We can paint the town red, or whatever colour you want xoxo
Ugh, hitting send felt like selling my soul, but I also knew Ziggy was right. Making connections was vital in LA. I’d known that before I’d even stepped off the plane. I barely had enough time to unlock the door when my phone beeped in reply.
Hey Gurl, it was SO amazing seeing you today too, could have hung all day. We totally have to do happy hour together! What are you doing this Thursday night???
Nooooo, my brain screamed in protest, but I had to follow through. I had to get out of my comfort zone – that was all there was to it. I put my bag down on the kitchen counter, then collapsed onto the leather lounge. I waited a few minutes, wanting to appear casually cool, not desperate, then, with a nod of encouragement and a deep breath, I eventually replied:
Thursday – can do! Send me the deets … can’t wait xx
Send and grimace.
Sienna responded straightaway; no waiting for her. Her enthusiasm was off the charts.
Yay! I’ll text you the deets for your official #LAfamily outing. Woohoo!
This was it – this was the beginning of my life here, the path I was destined to tread, and there was no going back.
