He seems to sense it. ‘We won’t stay. I’ve brought you some pyjamas.’ He points to a Marks and Spencer’s bag at the end of the bed as he stands. ‘When you come out you’ll come back to Karen’s for a few days, until you’ve got your strength back.’
‘No.’ It comes out more strongly than any other word today. ‘You haven’t got the room – you both work from that second bedroom. No … I’ll be fine. I’ll take the pills, watch crap telly, eat some soup and I’ll be fine. No, Ben. That’s final.’ I struggle to get the words out but they see I won’t be moved on it.
‘We’ll see,’ he says. ‘Maybe I’ll—’
‘You’re not coming back either. Karen, take him home, please.’
Karen nods to me. There was a time when a kiss would not have been awkward and would have been a given. ‘Take care,’ she says and, to be fair, it sounds like she means it.
Chapter Thirty-One
After exchanging details and a kiss on the cheek with Pink, I collect my bag from the carousel. There is an enormous – I mean huge – grin on my face … I can’t actually believe I’m here. I take my bag to a nearby chair, open it up and put my coat and scarf in, removing a lighter denim jacket. My body clock is already skew-ways, having managed only five hours’ sleep on the plane. A glance at my wrist tells me it’s 10 p.m. locally, which means that as soon as I get to the hotel, I should really go to bed, try and get some more sleep. I hang my jacket over my arm, try to look ‘casual’ like I’m used to being in LA, and walk through customs.
There’s a driver outside in the arrivals hall with a sign that has BETH HALL on it and underneath it says the word PARAMOUNT. I remind myself to ask him for it – a keepsake, to tell myself in two weeks’ time that I didn’t dream this. The car he directs me to is in fact a white limousine. In America, I’m quite sure it’s a smallish one. In the UK, it would be known as stretched. In the back of the limo, big enough to carry eight people comfortably, there is more champagne. I debate, just for one moment, having a glass. I’m out of harm’s way. Pink has gone in another direction and I’m just here with Boyd, who is apparently ‘my driver’ while I’m in LA. I resist temptation, as I pass the huge LAX letters on the opposite side of the road, and instead jot some notes in my iPhone as I chat with Boyd about the real places to see in Hollywood. I immediately text it to Meg, attached to the simple words: ‘Arrived safely. Love you x’.
The time passes so quickly that it seems only minutes before we are on Rodeo Drive. I’ve only ever seen Rodeo Drive in the movies and am trying not to gasp. Despite the contract terms Josh has negotiated for me on this deal, I’m not so sure I’ll be spending too much time in these shops. Real money, potentially life-changing money, will only be made when the film is released and it’s been a success. Boyd turns a few corners and, within seconds, we’re parking outside the most gorgeous hotel I’ve ever seen. Its sandy stucco frontage is lit up by tiny nocturnal spotlights and, unlike some of the larger high-rise hotels, it looks just like someone’s house. I look back over my shoulder in the direction we came from and realize it’s so close to Rodeo that a talented spit would reach it. Maybe I’ll have to have a splurge or two after all …
Boyd takes my bag from the ‘trunk’ and walks up the six steps of the hotel, where a young man takes the bag and greets me by name.
‘I’ll pick you up at ten thirty tomorrow, ma’am,’ Boyd says.
‘You will?’
‘To take you to the studios for your appointment, ma’am.’
‘Lovely,’ I tell Boyd, in a new-found tone that indicates I’m used to addressing chauffeurs. ‘You have yourself a good night, Boyd.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
No sooner has Boyd left than Carl takes over. Carl takes my bag through to reception where they confirm my ‘Brighton Street-facing room’. Apparently, it catches the sun for most of the day.
I’m asked if I’d like a complimentary drink at the bar before going to my room and I think: why the hell not?
It’s a Sunday night in LA and, though the bar is busy, it’s not heaving, which suits me fine. I’m steered towards a barstool where a man by the name of Toots asks me what my poison is.
‘A gin and tonic, please.’ I hoist myself up onto the barstool, hopeful that the G&T might make me sleepy.
‘Hendrick’s, Tanqueray?’
‘You choose. Make me one that I’ll want every evening.’
Toots smiles. ‘I’ll make you one that you’ll want at least two of every evening.’
I watch him use Tanqueray gin, Fever-Tree tonic and garnish the tall glass with lemon and lime wheels and a few juniper berries. As I take a sip, I try not to wonder why I asked for a G&T. It’s Adam’s favourite tipple, not mine. I immediately banish him from my brain, telling myself he doesn’t deserve head-space. Apart from the fact he’s a two-timing sleaze with another family, his name I decide is far too ordinary. In the last twelve hours, I have met men called Pink, Boyd, Carl and Toots. I raise my glass to Toots the bartender and, after the first taste, nod at him. I suspect he’s right. I’ll be ordering at least two of these when I’m back.
I people-watch for about half an hour. The buzz of the bar and the lure of another Tanqueray make me want to stay, but my eyes are beginning to close. From the reception area, I’m shown up the wide staircase to my first-floor room. It’s small but perfectly formed with a huge bed. As soon as Carl has shown me the ropes and left, I jump on the bed, face down. Turning over on my back, I give a little squeal. I’m in LA. I’m really here, and tomorrow morning, after my meeting with the producers, hopefully I’ll have some time to kill before I see some musicians the producers want me to meet. Then, Rodeo Drive, here I come.
It’s six a.m. and I’ve been awake since four when Meg texted. She is, it seems, a suitable donor for stem cells to her half-brother. They want to do the procedure as soon as possible and it’s scheduled for next week, just after I get back. Part of me feels sick, anxious for my only child being embroiled in her father’s mess. But, strangely, a bigger part of me is relieved for another, innocent, sick child. I text her back: ‘You’re a star. I’ll be there with you. Thank you for being a young woman I’m so proud of … xx’.
By seven, I’m showered and dressed in what Karen refers to as my nun’s clothes – white shirt, black Capri pants and my Converse trainers. Mya, the hotel receptionist this morning, has given me a map, marked out a diner for breakfast and a nail salon that opens at eight. I put my denim jacket on. It’s warm, certainly warmer than a UK December, but I still need a jacket in the shade. I check the map, cross over to the sunnier side of the street and walk for about five minutes.
The diner is quiet, but open. I sit myself down in a red pleather booth and, as soon as I scan the menu, it’s clear I’m in LA.
‘I’ll have a skinny latte and an egg-white omelette with mushrooms.’
No wonder everyone I’ve met looks like they need a good cheese sandwich.
I take a deep breath and blow it out slowly. I’m really here. I take a photo of the diner, and text it to Meg and Karen, knowing by the time I get a reply, I’ll be sitting in an office somewhere on the Paramount lot.
Having had my fat-free breakfast, I head around the corner to the nail salon. True to Mya’s word, they open early and it looks busy. Their receptionist fits me in and I feel relief that I’ll see the back of the disastrous treble clef on my thumb.
‘Oh my,’ the technician allocated to me says.
‘My mother,’ I tell her. ‘Not me … Even I couldn’t make that bad a job of it.’
‘You’re English,’ she practically sings. ‘I just love the English accent, it’s so cute.’
For the next hour, I listen to Ava tell me about her life. Anything I ask her about LA, she either ignores or doesn’t really give me an answer. I get details about her boyfriend, about the fact that his mother is living with them, about the fact that she works twelve-hour days to support all three of them. I guess she’s not really the person to as
k about the best points of interest for an English songwriter with a few days to fill. To Ava, LA is the place she happens to live: nothing more, nothing less.
She does, however, after giving me the best French manicure I’ve ever had, refer me to her colleague Maria, who is apparently the greatest ‘waxer’ around. It was when I was talking to Ava, I thought, why the hell not? I have the time. It would be silly not to. When in Hollywood, have a Hollywood …
Boyd is at the hotel just before ten thirty. He hands me a lanyard, which somehow already has my photo on a VIP pass. I am now a very important person, I tell myself. Lucy, who has been very quiet since I got to LA, giggles out loud. I silence her immediately with an imaginary scarf covered in skulls, the sort they only sell in Rodeo Drive.
The sun is now scorching and I’m glad of the air conditioning on the way to the meeting. It’s a five-minute car ride and, when Boyd flashes his pass, he glances at me in the rear-view mirror, indicates that I should do the same. I wave my lanyard at the security guards and, before long, having passed by what appears to be the more touristy part of Paramount, we arrive at what looks like a small business park of various offices. Boyd opens the door of the car for me outside an impressive revolving door. ‘I’ll wait here for you, ma’am,’ he says. It sounds like a promise, but I just nod.
Having had to wait in reception for ten minutes, counting to one hundred in Spanish, German and French, I am ushered into an office, where two men sit opposite a coffee table. Part of me zones out and I struggle to bring myself back to the moment, to convince myself that this is really real and that I need to listen, to be present.
Jonas, the main man is, in fact, the movie’s director. His handshake is vigorous and double-handed, one hand shaking mine with the other covering it. I am again fascinated by the names of people in Hollywood when Jackson, the movie’s head honcho producer, introduces himself. I smile what I hope is an engaging smile. His is the only name I’ve heard of via Josh and he is apparently the man I need to impress.
Coffee is brought through and they get right down to business. While Jonas is busy sizing me up, Jackson is busy talking facts. I think they’re both wondering what I’m like. Am I funny, reliable, talented – is their risk a risk worth taking, gambling on a relative unknown for a big-dollar movie?
Jonas is telling me they love the song. It will take pride of place in the story’s timeline. While I’m here, he’d like me to meet with some musicians to discuss a slight change musically. Lyrics are all the same, just this small hike in the crescendo of the middle eight. Would I be happy with that? I don’t say what I’m thinking. I don’t tell them that a small or large hike in the middle eight is fine. I want this song in the movie – whatever … I do tell them that I’ll be happy to meet with the musicians later on and see what they have in mind. This I say with a smile mainly directed at Jackson.
Two hours later, after more posturing by the big boys, I have left Paramount, fairly certain that they’re also looking at another song of mine called ‘Echoes’ for a different project. It’s a song I wrote years ago, but I keep this to myself. Hell, it’s about heartache – a timeless theme. Their parting words to me indicated they would be talking to Josh later today.
My head is reeling with such extreme excitement that I have to use some of the breathing techniques Caroline taught me to calm down. I fill my lungs as quietly as possible and exhale slowly. Right now, I’m sitting in a music studio in downtown LA. It is so ‘state of the art’ that I can’t help touching it, stroking the sound keys, staring at the screens. It makes the double Apple Mac screens in my attic look Jurassic. Peter, who appears in front of me, explains that they’re ready. Within seconds, the session musicians they’ve booked start to play from behind a glass screen. They’re good, very good and I’m captivated, lost in the music – my music. I pinch myself, not once, or twice but three times. I only stop for fear of bruising.
They run through it a few times until we all agree it’s pitch perfect. Having said my goodbyes, I’m on my way out to meet Boyd thinking life can’t get much better when my phone vibrates and I open a text from Pink. ‘Dinner tonight? I know an amazing steakhouse in Santa Monica …’ And in that moment I’m introduced to a whole new world. I can nearly hear Aladdin in the background. Except this has nothing to do with romance. This is lust. Pure and simple. I reply immediately telling him I’d love dinner, hoping that despite my insistence when we met that dinner would mean dinner, that it might in fact mean sex. Not really caring how lovely or not this man might be, I now know it’s possible to just want to shag someone. I smile at Boyd as he opens the car door for me. Who knew?
Boyd drops me outside Manolo Blahnik’s. Although I feel the lure of his shoes like a magnetic pull, I resist and head towards a lingerie store I spotted from the car. The area is busy and I suddenly feel very self-conscious, as though everyone’s staring at me. Surely they know I’m about to buy shagging underwear? Surely they know that under my black Capri pants I’ve been defuzzed. The people, mostly women, chatter as they walk along and I try, head held high, to blend in, ignoring their yappy, rat-like dogs on bling-ridden dog leads.
Stopping to take the street in, I look right and left. I tell myself to take a moment. Breathe – to savour the fact that I’m in Rodeo Drive. It’s much narrower than I’d thought it would be. There are two lanes of traffic on each side of a central reservation, but somehow it still feels smaller than I’d expected. Flowers are planted the full length of the central part of the street. Tall palm trees are spaced about three metres apart. Surroundings duly noted, like any good tourist, I enter the shop hating myself for not really caring. I just want some gorgeous underwear. And I want Pink to take his time removing it from me sometime soon.
I’m at a steakhouse facing Santa Monica Beach. The setting is too beautiful. The man opposite me is too beautiful. Any moment now, someone will tap my shoulder and tell me to read the small print but, until then … I’m wearing the dress that Karen insisted I pack. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, hotel, for ironing it.
We order steaks and salad and a bottle of red. He doesn’t say a lot, but what he does say is almost all complimentary. How beautiful I am, how sexy I look in my dress … It’s then I realize that he wants to bed me as much as I do him. After teasing my beef with a steak knife for a while and double checking that any wives in his life are definitely exes, I find myself suggesting that we go back to my hotel room. Adam crosses my mind, a tiny flash, too small to notice. I think about Meg and remind myself that Karen is right. There’s nothing I can do until I’m back. I miss her; she’d love it over here and, someday soon, I’ll take her back with me and we’ll take Rodeo Drive by storm. In the meantime, I’m in LA about to do something I’ve never done. Just relax, I tell myself. Try and relax.
Pink calls for the ‘check’, and before I know it we’re in a cab heading back to the hotel. He is holding my hand, rubbing the top of my thumb with his and, fuck me, I can’t bear it. It has been a long time and this man is likely to be the beneficiary of many months of frustration.
Never before. Never before have I felt like this … The man is an orgasm machine. He should be patented. His fingers and tongue linger over every inch of my body. His gasp of pleasure at my nude undercarriage makes me grateful I got up early. He turns me over, every which way but loose, and insists on my leaving my underwear on. I’m strangely grateful for this and find his teasing aside of my $200 knickers with his tongue one of the most erotic things … Having played with me for ages, he finally removes them and fucks me slowly. He is gentle for such a big man and, when he enters me, he seems to hold his breath. I realize I’ve almost closed up and must feel like a frigging virgin. When I come, he comes quickly after. He leaves me spent but wanting more.
While he sleeps, I reach across to my phone in the charger. I’m about to switch it on and check for messages when a hand stretches across and he whispers, ‘Leave it.’ I laugh, my hand dropping over the side of the bed onto Pink’s trousers on
the floor. Condoms spill from his trouser pocket, and though part of me is horrified that he knew I’d be this easy, the bigger part of me turns around wanting more.
This time, I sit astride him and, feeling him fill me the way he can, I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to discover wanton sex. And, as I move above him, building to another climax, I’m aware of exactly what this is. Sex. Brilliant, uncomplicated sex. A real first for me.
When sunlight spills through a crack in the curtains from the Brighton Street, sunlit side of the hotel, I get up and shower. I order some breakfast for both of us through room service – some fruit, muesli, tea and coffee. He must be hungry – neither of us ate much dinner last night.
I’m right. He eats everything on the plate and drinks two cups of black coffee. He takes a long shower and joins me on the edge of the bed, just as I’m about to dry my hair. For a man who says so little, he is very persuasive. All he has to do is stroke my face with the back of his hand. I’m momentarily torn. I have a full itinerary of touristy things to do. Then again, I could delay them and just enjoy the only attraction I’m interested in in Hollywood. If Pink featured in my Hollywood tour guide, he would be a five-star ticket. So I do what any woman would – I get back into bed with him.
With Boyd’s help, who is thankfully on call to me today, I have an itinerary waiting for me at reception. Since the studio people don’t need to see me and I have the day free, they have obviously told him to take me sightseeing in LA. As I take a seat in the back of the car, I glance down at the sheet of paper and switch my phone on. It immediately goes crazy.
There are several missed calls and lots of texts from Josh, the final one reading ‘CALL ME OR I SHALL COME OVER THERE AND HUNT YOU DOWN!’
I listen to several voicemails before I hear a voice I don’t recognize.
‘This is a message from Newham General Hospital in London. We have a Mr Adam Hall here and I understand you’re his emergency contact number. Please could you call us as soon as possible? My name is Lisa and the number here is …’
You, Me and Other People Page 21
