by Cate Andrews
‘Get out of here, Polly,’ hissed Stephen, unhooking one of Maisie’s Louboutins and hurling it straight at her head. Fortunately, his aim was off and it smashed into the expensive laptop behind her. Damn, thought Polly. She’d have to track down another one now. This realisation seemed to jolt her into action and she bolted from the trailer. Missing the top step, she would have fallen flat on her face if a hand hadn’t shot out at the last minute and grabbed her.
‘Steady now,’ murmured Joe.
Polly took one look at his strong, handsome, frowning face and felt her lower lip start to wobble. It was a sentiment apparently shared by Maisie who wasn’t quite so stoical about it. As the sound of the actress’ howling filled the air, Joe let go of her and banged on the door.
‘Stephen, it’s me.’
‘Is that stupid bitch still out there?’
Joe glanced at a white-faced Polly.
‘No,’ he lied.
‘Then get in here. We have a situation.’
‘Polly, love, go straight to the trailer next to the catering tent and wait from me there,’ whispered Joe. ‘I’ll be right along in a bit.’
She nodded at him, eyes glassy with shock.
‘Oh and Polly? Don’t tell anyone what you just saw, ok?’
Steeling himself, Joe opened the trailer door and unleashed a Pandora’s Box of guilt and reprisal. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, a wall of utter despair hit him squarely in the chest.
‘Oh Jo-ey, you have to get rid of her,’ cried Maisie, her finger nails raking at his neck, her beautiful face smeared with mascara. Her Make-Up Designer was going to have to conjure up all sorts of hocus-pocus to have her fit for filming in thirty minutes.
‘No need to panic, sweetheart,’ he said soothingly, stroking her bony shoulder. ‘Polly won’t breathe a word.’
‘But Jo-ey you don’t understand,’ she whined, ‘this sort of scandal could ruin my rep in Hollywood. Walt’ll have me back on infomercials by nightfall.’
Maybe you should have thought of that before, thought Joe.
‘Maisie’s got a point,’ growled Stephen, emerging from the depths of the trailer in his blue and white striped underpants. ‘I, for one, don’t want to be recasting our female lead this late in the day.’
‘You and your stupid movie,’ screeched Maisie, turning on him. ‘Is that all you care about?’
Stephen ignored her and reached for his Chinos. ‘Maisie’s right. Get rid of her. I don’t care how. I want her gone by the time catering brings round the afternoon snacks.’
Joe looked at him, meditatively. ‘Hang on a minute, what’s to stop her returning home and catching a taxi straight to The Sun? Maisie’s the biggest star in the world right now.’
‘Oh gawd noooo,’ moaned Maisie, picturing her scandalous demise on the front page of the tabloid. ‘Stevie, he’s right.’
‘Well, stitch her up then, blackmail her into silence,’ said the director, losing his temper. ‘Do I have to think of everything around here? Fix it, Joe. Plant a bag of coke in her suitcase or something then call the fuzz. Better still, throw a couple of grand at them and tell ‘em to arrange a set-up.’
‘You must be joking!’ exploded Joe. ‘You can’t rehash one of your movie plotlines here, Stephen. This is real life. This is someone’s real life you’re talking about smashing up. You can’t just dismiss Polly like some irritating doorstep Jehovah’s Witness. Furthermore, I refuse to run the risk of insulting the entire Moroccan Police force in a bid to cover up another of your bloody indiscretions!’
This was met by stunned silence on all sides. Joe had never raised his voice, let alone expressed an opinion to Stephen before. In response, the director lunged across the room and grabbed him by the throat.
‘You’ll do what I tell you, Joe,’ he snarled as Maisie squealed in shock. ‘’cos if you don’t, I’ll rip up your contract and make sure you’re about as popular in this industry as George W at an Iraqi peace convention. All it takes is one phone call…’
‘And all it takes is another to put Maisie back in her infomercials,’ replied Joe, pushing him off, more stunned than anyone by his act of bravado. ‘You never know, I might feel frivolous and put in another to Michael for good measure. I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear all about this little get-up.’
A split-second later, Stephen took a swing at him. Ducking easily, Joe was struck by something far, far worse: the true extent of his brother’s contempt for him. Storming out of the trailer, he found himself in the middle of the unit base. He was so disorientated with rage that he had absolutely no idea which direction his own trailer was in. How many crew had he defended his brother to over the years? How many alibis had he provided? And now this…this awful realisation? How could his own brother hate him so much? He was so distraught by it all that he didn’t see Danny approaching until he was two foot in front of him.
‘They’ve found the stunt horse,’ proclaimed Danny, waving a half-eaten mars bar in his face. ‘The silly bugger was over by the craft services tables hoovering up Vincent’s biscuits. He’d have been shipped off to the nearest glue factory in two shakes of Rachel’s Pritt Stick if he wasn’t due on set today.’
Joe gazed at him blankly. ‘Really? That’s great.’
‘Not for the poor horse. Jesus, what the hell’s wrong with everyone today? Polly’s just turned up in our trailer acting like her whole family’s been wiped out in some freak meteor shower.’
‘Sorry Danny, gotta lot on my mind,’ muttered Joe. ‘Listen, nip over to craft services and grab us a couple of teas, would you? Milk, four sugars in each.’
Danny shrugged. ‘Sure. I’ll bring them over right away.’
Joe found Polly perched on a chair with her knees tucked under her chin. She was staring blankly at a group of pasty-white grips sunbathing opposite. He called out to her and she looked up, eyes brimming with tears.
‘Oh Joe,’ she gasped, ‘what’s Michael going to say? He loves Maisie so much!’
Not nearly as much as she loves herself, he thought grimly, pulling up a chair next to her. Polly was too sweet to work for GBA. It was like tossing a sherbet lemon at a pot full of fish heads.
‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to walk in on them,’ she whispered. ‘I should have listened to Rashid.’
‘This isn’t your fault Polly.’
‘But…’
‘No buts,’ he said harshly, ‘not this time. Not for them. People like Stephen and Maisie do exactly what they want, when they want, irrespective of the hurt they cause. They certainly don’t deserve you apologising on their behalf.’
Polly was suddenly aware of how close they were sitting. With a hammering heart, she watched him fiddle with a red biro, twirling it through his fingers like a marching band’s baton.
‘Do you think it’s the first time?’ she asked him.
‘Nope.’ The fiddling intensified. ‘Listen Polly, you can’t tell anyone about this. Michael has to figure it out for himself. Stephen likes his grudges and there’s a slew of unemployed crew out there who can testify to it.’
Polly stared at him in dismay.
‘Michael’s a smart guy, sweetheart,’ he went on gently, ‘they can’t keep carrying on like this under his nose. Either that, or it’ll fizzle out on its own and then we’re all off the hook.’ He dropped his eyes as he said it. Knowing those two there wasn’t a hope in hell of that happening anytime soon. ‘Besides, Stephen’s wife is due here in a few weeks which will slam the brakes on their behaviour, temporarily at least…’
Polly let out a cry. ‘Oh my god, I completely forgot, Christine tried to top herself this morning. She’s been rushed to Westminster General. I need to tell Stephen right away!’ She jumped to her feet.
‘No, I need to tell Stephen,’ he said quickly, grabbing her arm. ‘It might be best if you give him a width berth for a while. In the meantime, can you organise something with Interflora?’
‘Won’t Stephen be flying home to see her?’
Joe shook his head.
‘You don’t seem very shocked by the news?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Or worried.’
‘I’m not.’
There was a pause.
‘Gillian did sort of intimate to me earlier that she might have done this thing before.’
‘Once or twice,’ he admitted. ‘Christine likes to prance around and pretend she’s Virginia Woolf but she’s far too in love with the idea of herself to do any lasting damage. This is nothing more than another cheap shot at Stephen and a waste of our beleaguered emergency services resources.’
‘But she sounded so serious about it,’ said Polly, sitting back down again with a bump.
‘Trust me, it’s nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before.’
‘I wish I’d known,’ muttered Polly, staring at the floor. ‘I wouldn’t have felt so compelled to storm down here like Mother Theresa on a mercy mission. So how long have I got? A day? A week? Like you said, Stephen likes his grudges. I know he’s going to fire me over this regardless.’
‘Ordinarily you’d be toast,’ admitted Joe, thinking how spot on Rachel had been. Polly wasn’t naïve in the slightest. ‘But it just so happens I had a few bargaining chips up my sleeve.’
‘And you cashed them in for me?’ Polly jumped out of her chair again and kissed him on the cheek. ‘So all I need do is keep out of his way until he calms down?’
‘Yup,’ said Joe gruffly, pulling away from her. ‘I’ll ask one of the drivers to take you back at the Studios.’
‘Shall I wait for Gillian?’
‘I wouldn’t bother,’ he said, nodding at the trailer opposite where she and Vincent were currently embroiled in a fearsome slanging match in front of the entire unit base. As they watched the skinny production manager slapped the producer hard across the face. He responded two seconds later with a torpedo of an upper cut to her left cheekbone.
Oh well, thought Polly, as Gillian picked up the metal wastepaper basket propping open the door and started belting him over the head with it. They were evenly matched if nothing else.
Chapter Fourteen
Determined to clear the air before the next scene, Joe hurried back down to set. He was certain Stephen would have stormed down there after their argument to take his fury out on some unsuspecting minion. Sure enough, he quickly spotted a young Crowd Assistant crouched down by the monitor sobbing her heart out in the burly but kindly arms of Khalil. The Location Manager looked up, caught his eye and scowled. He seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time these days consoling Stephen’s victims instead of attending to important location-type duties like keeping the movie’s star-struck security out of Maisie’s Winnebago and reminding the new animal trainer not to park his horses so close to the craft service table.
Joe hastily located the joy executioner himself deep in conversation with his Director of Photography underneath an enormous palm tree. As he watched, Stephen began to gesticulate wildly and smack his script against the trunk causing tiny slivers of bark to fly off and pelt passing extras in the face. His brother’s bad mood appeared to be gathering momentum. Still, Joe was relieved to see him back in his Chinos. Those blue and white striped underpants would’ve spooked the hardiest of camels.
Stifling a yawn, Joe’s eyes flickered upwards to the spiky green palm leaves shading his brother’s glossy dark head. What a wonderful stroke of luck if a howling sand storm was to suddenly sweep across the set and dislodge a hairy coconut. Alas, the only wind about that day seemed to be coming from those inflicted with the curse of the couscous. Most of the camera and grip department had been seen clutching their tummies and clogging up the honey wagons all morning.
Spying a tube of high factor sunscreen lying discarded on the refreshment table, Joe wondered over and set about smothering his arms and neck in the stuff. Unfortunately, the cream had the consistency of brilliant white Dulux paint and quickly transformed his skin from its usual light honey-colour to that of a cave-dwelling albino’s. No amount of frantic rubbing seemed to be shifting it and he was seriously considering scalding it off with the contents of the tea urn when a rough hand appeared of nowhere and yanked him sideways.
‘I want a rehearsal in five,’ snapped Stephen.
Joe glared at his brother and considered squirting the rest of the sunscreen all over his expensive hiking boots. As he eyes flickered briefly to the tube, Stephen followed his gaze. A split-second later he shot out his hand. Joe stared at it stupidly. His brother was as famously averse to doling out apologies as he was to dating ugly women, but who was he to look a gift stunt horse in the mouth?
‘I’m sorry too,’ he said, grasping it in relief. ‘Things got a little heated. We both said a few things we didn’t mean.’
Stephen looked confused for a moment then smirked unpleasantly.
‘I’ve done nothing to apologise for, you stupid twerp,’ he said whipping his hand away. ‘I was simply requesting the sunscreen, not a snivelling excuse for that unfortunate little outburst.’
Oh the hornet’s sting of humiliation! Joe watched, incensed, as his brother massaged a pea-sized amount of cream into his long nose then rifled through his pockets for a compact. Angling the mirror for a thorough inspection, Stephen leisurely fashioned himself a cricketer’s conk out of the thick, white gloop.
The more he primped and preened, the tighter Joe’s fists clenched. He wanted nothing more than to ram his brother’s narcissistic, impeccably highlighted head into the industrial-sized tea urn.
‘I hope you’ve spoken to Polly,’ said Stephen sharply, pocketing the compact.
A low hiss escaped from Joe’s lips, rather like the aforementioned urn. ‘She won’t breathe a word. I told you that in the trailer.’
‘Well see to it that she doesn’t. Why the hell is she out here anyway? Vincent told her to stay put.’
‘Christine’s in hospital…again. Polly doesn’t know the history. She thought it best to tell you in person.’ Joe checked his watch. ‘There’s still time to put in a call to Christine’s doctor if you want?’
‘And why would I want to do a silly thing like that? Here’s hoping the stupid bitch swallowed her entire medicine cabinet this time round. It’ll save hiring an extra skip when I renovate her penthouse.’
‘Polly’s sending flowers,’ said Joe ignoring the jibe.
‘Fine, whatever. But if she spends over twenty quid then I’m docking it from her pay. And tell her to include yellow roses.’
‘Why? Are those Christine’s favourite?’
Stephen grinned evilly. ‘What do you think?’
Joe gave up then. Turning on his heel he marched over to the monitor’s tent, which had been overrun by a gaggle of green-looking grips. Still, the stench of stale farts was infinitely more preferable than a second longer in Stephen’s company. Flinging himself into one of the spare Director chairs, he recalled Janie’s quip last month about likening GBA to an anti-UN.
‘Too bloody right, Janie,’ he whispered, ‘too bloody right.’
‘Is everything ok, Joe?’ asked Lily, leaning over to put a comforting hand on his arm. Her touch was as light as a feather’s but he still winced.
‘Fine, thanks,’ he muttered, yanking it away.
Lily tried not to look hurt as she dragged her chair closer to the monitor. Last night, Lucas had decided that her reading glasses were Superman’s X-Ray specs and he had squirreled them away from Lex Luther behind the bedside cabinet where all the spiders lurked. Petrified of creepy crawlies, Lily was going to have to call hotel maintenance later to lend a hand.
Behind her, Joe was now slumped in his chair and gazing at the sand dunes. He knew he should be off supervising the rehearsals right now but it meant working within a ten-foot radius of his brother. Truth was, he’d rather stick walkie-talkie aerials in his eyeballs.
‘Hey,’ greeted Michael, wondering into the tent to join them. ‘You get those costumes ok last night, buddy?’
&
nbsp; Joe nodded. The American was looking nauseatingly handsome today. Joe wasn’t a vain man but Michael’s presence was enough to put any man on edge. The tan was faultless, the long blond hair had just the right amount of careless tousle. Even his black wraparound shades hugged his arched cheekbones to perfection.
‘Glad Pop could be of service.’ Michael swigged his water and watched as the set was invaded by a horde of pink-faced make-up ladies. It may be hotter than Vegas out here but Sin City definitely beat-out on the sexy chick quota.
‘Hi there, I believe we met at that delightfully tedious meeting last Monday,’ he said, turning to Lily and swamping her hand in his. ‘You’re Lily, right? Or should I be calling ya Little Miss Muffet?’
Lily smiled shyly and he quickly revised his earlier missive. If Lily lost weight and ditched that lumpy brown t-shirt then she’d be ok. Nowhere near Maisie’s league, of course, but still a great improvement from the Plain Jane look she was rocking right now.
‘Is it ok if I park my butt here,’ he asked her, indicating to one of the spare chairs. ‘Or are Vince and Stephen gonna throw a fit about it?’
Lily opened her mouth to reply but Joe got there first.
‘Who cares if they do!’ he snapped. ‘You’re their Exec and it’s your father who’s bankrolling their little ego-project. You’ve as much right to be here as them.’
‘Mind if I sit next to you, Lily?’ asked Michael, eyeing Joe thoughtfully.
‘Yes, gosh sorry,’ she said, diving forward to scoop up handfuls of loose continuity pages from the nearest chair. ‘I’m afraid my work space is a little like my kitchen – unbelievably messy and…’
‘….hotter than the fires of hell?’ he winced, picking up her lever arch file. ‘Gee, those metal rings are roasting. So, is it your boy I’ve seen splashing around in the hotel pool all week?’ he asked her, folding his long frame into the black canvas chair.
Lily nodded as she bunny-hopped her own chair sideways to spare him the embarrassment of colliding kneecaps.