by Jon Teckman
Olivia pointedly ignored me as she slipped on her designer raincoat and peered out into the rain. She stepped towards the door, then sprang back as if she’d received an electric shock. ‘Oh crap!’ she said, ‘there’s a whole load of paps out there. I hate being snapped when it’s late and raining and I look such a goddamn mess – they’ll have me on my way to rehab by breakfast time. Don’t these guys have homes to go to?’ There was no malice in her voice, only the sad resignation that the huddled masses outside had their job to do photographing her, just as it was part of her job description to be photographed by them. ‘Hey you,’ she called to the doorman, who was standing smartly to attention by the exit. ‘Can you see if my car’s out there?’
The doorman scuttled out only to reappear thirty seconds later, rain dripping off his hat and down his shoulders from even that brief encounter with the elements. ‘Your car is right at the end of the path, Ms Finch, and your driver is waiting to open the door for you as soon as you reach him.’
‘How many of them out there, do you reckon?’
‘I’d say around twenty-five to thirty,’ he replied. ‘A few more down the right-hand side than the left. I couldn’t see any long lenses across the street or in any of the apartments.’ He was starting to sound like he might be in Special Forces or the CIA.
‘I really do not want to get papped tonight,’ Olivia mumbled under her breath. ‘Listen,’ she said to the doorman, ‘can you walk with me to the car and cover me from the guys on the right and’ – to me now as if I was also part of the team dedicated to preserving Olivia Finch’s pride and dignity – ‘English, can you take the guys on the left?’
Before I could even think about an answer, she grabbed my arm and pressed herself into my chest. She was slightly taller than me in her heels and had to stoop to bury her head into the crook of my neck. While the doorman strode out ahead, expertly blocking every flash-fuelled photograph as if it were a sniper’s well-aimed bullet, I struggled along, trying not to trip over her feet, blinded by the bright lights and deafened by the shouts of ‘Over here, Olivia!’ ‘Hey, Miss Finch, look this way!’ and, hurtfully, ‘Oi – Blubber Boy, get out the goddamn way!’
The driver opened the door of the black Lexus, then moved alongside me and the doorman to create a human barrier between Olivia and the photographers who had crowded around the car, snapping away feverishly like piranha attacking a fresh carcass. Just as I was wondering how I was going to work my way back out of this scrum, I felt a hand pull me down into the car. I stumbled and half-fell onto the long back seat. Without a word, Olivia buried herself under my tuxedo, sticking her head up into my left armpit. I turned my face away from the window and ducked down out of view, muttering a silent prayer that the deodorant I’d applied all those hours earlier was still working.
I heard the driver’s door open and close, the click of the key in the ignition and the purr of the engine as we pulled away from the kerb. With the smooth motion of the car, it was a few seconds before I realised that part of the gentle vibration I could feel was Olivia giggling under my jacket. When she was sure we were safely away from the mob, she looked up, her hair splattered across her face like a pair of blonde curtains, make-up smeared around her eyes. ‘That was fun,’ she laughed, the Southern girl cutting through her mask of Hollywood sophistication, ‘and you sure do smell nice under there. So, can I drop you back at your hotel?’
‘Really, you don’t have to. Actually, I wouldn’t mind a walk – clear the head a bit, you know.’
‘Nonsense, it’s – what do you Limeys say? – raining cats and dogs. Please, I owe you for helping me out back there.’
‘Well, OK, if you insist. I’m staying at the Hotel du Paris on Fifth.’
‘Travis,’ Olivia called out to the driver, ‘can we drop my friend here at the Hotel du Paris on Fifth? Thank you. His name’s not really Travis,’ she added, turning to me with a huge smile illuminating her face, ‘I just call him that after that psycho in Taxi Driver. Drives him nuts!’
We drove on in silence while Olivia repaired the damage to her face and hair, squinting into a small compact mirror. When she was restored more or less to her former glory, she folded the mirror away and replaced it in a pocket at the back of the seat in front of her. Then she turned and stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. ‘Who exactly are you, English?’ she said. ‘What the hell am I doing letting some guy I hardly know into my car? Please promise me you’re not some kind of a stalker. I’ve already got quite enough of those.’
‘I’m not, I promise,’ I said, watching the raindrops racing across the window as the car sped through the Manhattan streets. ‘And I’m sorry that I stuck my nose in like that back at the party. That really wasn’t like me at all.’
‘You don’t have to apologise, English,’ she said, posting her right arm through the crook of my left, until her hand rested awkwardly on my thigh just below my lap. ‘That jerk was really busting my ass. Buddy likes us to be pally off set – you know, to get the media sniffing around for a story, “are they, aren’t they?” and all that crap. But he wanted to carry on the act right through to home plate, if you know what I mean. The guy is old enough to be my father – did you know that? They keep these poor bastards hanging on, still believing they’re God’s gift to women when some of them can hardly stand up in the morning, let alone get it up. With us women – bang! As soon as your tits start heading south, it’s all over. Then twenty years in the wilderness off Broadway before you can come back playing the Next Big Thing’s mom and try to grab yourself a Best Supporting Actress nod.’
The driver interrupted her to tell us we’d arrived at my hotel. ‘That’s a shame,’ said Olivia, ‘I was enjoying our little chat. I know, why don’t I let you buy me a drink to say thank you for rescuing me earlier? I’d love to buy you one but, you know, they don’t let me carry any money.’
Before I could say ‘no’, Olivia had unclipped her seatbelt and the driver had opened her door and was helping her from the car. I would have one drink with her, I told myself, and then go straight to bed. Alone. I was even looking forward to telling Natasha all about it – ‘Hey, you’ll never guess who I ended up with in the back of a limo after the party.’ I couldn’t wait to see the look on my wife’s face.
The hotel bar was still open and I guided Olivia to a table in the corner. It was almost dark, as if Prohibition had never been repealed in this part of the state and drinking alcohol was still illegal. A few hardy, late-night souls chatted quietly in twos and threes or sat silently alone in the dimness. One over-dressed and under-sober woman looked twice at Olivia to make sure it wasn’t her before concluding, loudly, to her companion that the broad in the corner looked a little like ‘that actress, Whatsername?’ But apart from that, and the surly attention of a waiter who was clearly more interested in ending his shift than serving his customers, we were left alone – the middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income Englishman and the brightest star in the Hollywood firmament. What on earth would we talk about?
We talked about her, mostly. With little prompting, Olivia was happy to tell me all about her life so far. How she had grown up in a small southern town straight out of a Dolly Parton song without two nickels to rub together and a father who was a perfect gentleman when he was sober but was never sober. She had discovered at an early age that she had a talent for acting and, as she became a teenager, for turning boys’ heads. At sixteen she had hitchhiked to Los Angeles and waited on tables while waiting for an acting job. She’d been engaged twice – first to her high school sweetheart and then to the guy who directed her first film (the one she didn’t like to talk about) – but right now she was between engagements.
Olivia enjoyed telling her stories as much as I enjoyed listening to them. She played all the roles in each anecdote, switching between accents and characters with the consummate ease you would expect of such an accomplished actress, turning each one into a mini-screenplay any of which would have made a better film than the o
ne we had sat through earlier in the evening. Before I knew it, I had finished my drink and, despite my earlier resolution, found myself calling the waiter over and asking him to refill our glasses.
‘So, Mr Money Man,’ Olivia said as the waiter returned with our fresh drinks and set them down clumsily on the table in front of us, ‘that is quite enough about me for one night. Now I want to hear all about you. I bet you have some fascinating stories to tell. Tell me, did you always want to be an accountant?’
I looked at her closely, trying to find any signs of mockery in her eyes, but there were none. ‘Good God, no!’ I replied. ‘Who would? A career in accountancy isn’t something boys dream of alongside space travel or driving trains. It’s something you fall into – like a hole.’
Olivia laughed out loud, breaking the silence of the room and causing the other bar-dwellers to turn and look at us. ‘You are so funny, Joe. That’s one of the things I really like about you. You know, I’ve always preferred a funny man to a good-looking one …’
‘Gee, thanks,’ I replied, only slightly pretending to be hurt.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that … you know. In fact, I think you are a very attractive man, Joe. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for older men. Apart from my dad. I hated that sonofabitch. You have gorgeous eyes, you know – deep and soulful. Has anyone ever told you that?’
I smiled and blushed. No, no one ever had, least of all one of the most beautiful women in the world.
‘So what did you want to do?’ Olivia continued.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘When you were a kid. We’ve established that you didn’t lie awake at night fantasising about a life as a bean counter – so what was your dream?’
‘Do you promise not to laugh if I tell you?’
‘Try me,’ Olivia replied edging a little closer along the bench seat, intrigued to learn my deepest, darkest secret.
‘OK. I wanted to write. To be a novelist – or perhaps a screenwriter. I remember when I was about nine we drove past a bookmaker’s – you know, a betting shop – and I asked my mum if they would make my book when I was older. I thought it was the same thing as a publisher!’
‘Aw, that’s so sweet,’ said Olivia, edging closer still. ‘So what happened?’
‘To what?’
‘To your dream, Joe. Why did you end up counting things instead of writing about them. I’m glad you did in one way, because otherwise we might never have met. But it seems like a real waste. You have a creative soul – I can see it in your eyes. Why don’t you write? All you need is some paper and a pencil.’
I took a sip of my drink. The intensity of the memory surprised and upset me. ‘When I was fifteen,’ I began, ‘and had to choose which subjects I was going to study at school, I told my parents that I wanted to be an author and so I needed to study English. My dad said “No, son, you mean an auditor,” and told me to do maths. And so, like the good Jewish boy I am, that’s what I did – what my parents told me to do.’
‘But it’s never too late, Joe. You’re nobody’s prisoner now. You can do whatever you want.’
‘Olivia,’ I said, with a mirthless laugh, ‘I have a wife and two kids and a bloody great mortgage, so I’m afraid the writing’s going to have to wait. God, look at the time. I really should be getting to bed.’
Olivia shuffled closer to me still, placed a hand on one of my thighs and kissed me, lightly, on the cheek.
‘I think you’re right, English,’ she said.
She took my hand and led me out of the gloomy bar and to the lift lobby, pressed the call button and asked me my room number. Somewhere, arrested by the alcohol, the tiredness and those extraordinary eyes that fixed mine and pulled me into the depths of her beauty, was a part of me that wanted to tell her to leave me alone, to let me sleep – but it was as if monochrome pictures of my wife and children were being ripped from the walls of my brain and fed into a neurological shredder, while images of Olivia, in glorious, vibrant Technicolor, were put up in their place. And all I actually said as we stepped into the lift and started the slow ascent to paradise and madness were the three little words: ‘Six Twenty-Five’.
The film begins on the screen inside my head. I see a man in early middle age and a much younger woman, walking down a long hotel corridor. They are making a lot of noise in their attempts to stay as quiet as possible. She is incredibly beautiful. He is extraordinarily ordinary. Her skin is smooth and pale; her shoulder-length hair deep blonde; her blue eyes alive with a heady mixture of alcohol, lust and devilment. His face is lined and creased beneath his thinning hair, his grey eyes reflecting only the alcohol and the lust.
He pushes a white plastic card into a slot on the door and presses down on the handle, takes the card out and turns it over and tries the handle again, then takes it out, swears, turns it around and tries a third time. A green light comes on, reflected in his glasses and they tumble into the room through the half-opened door. He presses a switch on the wall and lights on each side of the large double bed – wider than it is long – snap into life. There is a short canopy at one end of the bed beneath which a single wrapped chocolate rests on an ivory pillow. She pushes him up against the wall and presses her lips to his, giving him no option but to kiss her back. Her dress is bright blue with silver flecks and she sparkles like a diving kingfisher as she glides across the room, kicks off her shoes and pours herself onto the bed. His dinner suit is off-the-peg and baggy, the trousers an inch too long. He fumbles with his unfamiliar bow tie, then hops inelegantly on one leg then the other as he tries to disengage his feet from stiff black brogues.
I fast-forward to the next significant action. The couple are now in the no-holds barred wrestling match of fornication. They are naked, apart from the man’s socks: black with a picture of Mr Silly above the words ‘Have a Silly Saturday’ picked out in red letters, a birthday present from his children which, in his indecent haste, he has failed to remove. I am surprised to see how much of a lead the man is taking – orchestrating their movements, calling the shots.
This is hard to watch. I fast-forward again and come back in when it is all over. She is lying to one side of him, an arm wrapped around his chest, a leg interlocked with his. She sleeps blissfully, while he lies awake staring at the ceiling. He looks as if he has just received the worst possible news.
I open my eyes and the film ends. No stirring John Williams score. No endless credits. No pathetic little mentions of pathetic little accountants just above the line that says that no animals were harmed in the making of this movie. No escape. It wasn’t a bizarre erotic dream. It happened. I was there and she was there. The Hollywood superstar and her man: the frightened, treacherous, adulterous, stupid little bastard.
Me.
I must have drifted off because I became suddenly aware of strange noises in the bedroom and sensed the absence of Olivia from the bed. I peered through the darkness at the source of the noise and saw her carefully picking something up and placing it on a chair. A few seconds later, there was a flash of light as the bedroom door opened, followed by the solid thud of it closing again. Then I heard the diminishing click-clack of her heels on the parquet corridor floor as she stilettoed away from my room and, I devoutly but erroneously hoped, out of my life forever.
When I was sure she had gone, I dragged myself out of bed and took a long, hot shower, leaving the plug in the bath so that the water accumulated at my feet. When it was ankle deep, I lay down in the second-hand suds and closed my eyes, letting the stream of water from the still-running shower drip irritatingly on my head and splash down into the bath. It was a form of torture designed to make me pay for my sins but all it did was drive out all other thoughts and bring to my mind, with a remarkable clarity, the events of the past twelve hours: the chatting, the drinking, the laughing and joking, the creeping along the hotel corridor, the falling into bed – the making love. No, not making love – that was too nice, too husband and wifey. Not making love like you
make a promise or make a vow or make a baby. This was committing adultery, like committing a crime or committing perjury – or committing matrimonial suicide. I banged my head with increasing ferocity against the tiled wall of the bathroom, trying to dislodge these thoughts, but they were stuck fast in my mind just as I was now stuck with the reality of what I had done: something awful and despicable and completely un-undoable.
I lay there for what seemed like hours until the water had gone completely cold and my body was as ridged and wrinkled as an elderly bull elephant’s scrotum. I dressed and packed and then went down to the restaurant to meet Bennett for breakfast. We sat mostly in silence, our conversation limited to requests for condiments and butter to be passed and, in my case, occasional offers to fetch more coffee. Bennett seemed keen to sample as many as possible of the myriad items displayed in the gargantuan buffet selection, which included everything from traditional cereals through to corned beef hash and doughnuts. This suited me fine – as long as he was eating, he wasn’t talking.
‘Good do last night, I thought, West,’ he said eventually, as he used his final fragment of French toast to mop up the remaining puddle of maple syrup and drained his glass of cranberry juice. ‘Some very interesting birdlife there, if you know what I mean! Where did you get to at the end? I looked all over for you but you were nowhere to be seen. You didn’t cop off, did you?’
He concluded this remark with a noise situated approximately halfway between a laugh and a snort, leaving me in little doubt that he considered this to the most ridiculous proposition he had ever constructed. Either this or tell-tale signs of my infidelity were etched so clearly across my face that even Bennett could spot them. Or perhaps Olivia had left a physical souvenir for me. Perhaps my neck was covered in love bites or she’d carved her initials into my forehead with a sharpened emery board. Keep calm, you idiot, I told myself, that snort was clearly derisory. Just stay composed and say as little as possible.
