by Cate Andrews
‘Enjoy you’re cocktail ma’am. Round here we call it the Ghostbuster.’
Polly looked at the monstrosity and started laughing. ‘I can see why. If the spirits don’t keep me up all night, then the sugar will!’
He grinned and handed her the bill.
Polly took a sip and choked. It tasted more shocking than it looked. Handing over a twenty, she saw the barman glance up as another customer entered the bar.
‘What can I get you, buddy?’ she heard him ask.
The guy must have indicated to her glass because straightaway the barman pulled out a second fish bowl and his tub of ice cream.
‘Does it come with a joke?’ asked a voice, suddenly, and Polly choked again as Joe slid onto the bar stool next to her.
At first, she was sure he was a mirage. Any second now he’d evaporate and she would be left chatting up ET all night. But he continued to sit there with a rueful half-smile on his face, waiting for her to say something. He had grown his hair since the Globes, and his dark stubble was more hairy than sexy, but his eyes were like Star Wars tractor beams drawing her in all over again.
‘What are you doing here?’ she muttered, eventually.
He ignored the question and indicated to the tub of ice cream behind the bar. ‘Like I said, does it come with a joke?’
‘I think the drink is the joke.’
‘Do you wanna hear one anyway?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
He shrugged sheepishly. ‘Not on this occasion. A stupid, thoughtless man walks into a bar with a bulletproof vest tucked under one arm.’
Polly scowled. ‘That’s not funny. And I’m not apologizing for what I said.’ She took a vicious slurp of her drink.
‘Good. I deserved every word. Look, Polly, about what happened at your flat in December…’ He dropped his eyes then. ‘I wish I hadn’t, Christ. I didn’t mean it, you know. I really didn’t.’
‘Which part?’ she retorted, sulkily.
The barman placed Joe’s drink down and he waved away the sparkler immediately. There were more than enough fireworks flying between him and Polly at the moment.
‘All of it,’ he said quietly. ‘More than you know.’ There was a pause. ‘I only found out you were in LA thirty minutes ago.’
‘So you decided to drive round every late-night bar until you found me?’
He studied her face for a moment. ‘Would it make a difference if I had?’
‘No.’
‘Shan’t lie then’ he said with a grin. ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a drive and ended up here. The sign out front was subconsciously reeling me in. That, and the promise of all the wonderful music I might hear.’
‘Has Michael forgiven you for running off?’
‘I think so. I hope so.’ Joe shrugged. ‘He says he understands after all the Sy Jacob stuff.’ He took a sip of his drink and made a face. ‘Christ, that’s filthy. So what brought you to this enchanting establishment?’
Polly unfurled the pineapple from the glass and took a bite. ‘I’m here for the canapés.’
‘Of course. How silly of me.’
‘I bet Sam Harper’s not quite so magnanimous.’
Joe looked puzzled.
‘For running out on her as well. Girlfriends tend not to like that thing very much.’
‘Well since she’s not my girlfriend, I can’t be in her boyfriend bad books,’ said Joe slowly. ‘Unlike you and your encyclopaedic library of Joe De Vries fuck-ups.’
‘But you’re not my boyfriend either,’ she pointed out, blowing moody green bubbles in her drink.
‘No…’ said Joe thoughtfully. ‘But I wouldn’t mind giving it a shot.’
Polly ceased blowing bubbles immediately.
‘Look, I know I screwed up, god knows how many countless times,’ he began, in a rush.
All of a sudden she felt sick.
‘…and I know I have more baggage than a Heathrow Terminal carousal in August…’
Her chest was like a vice, crushing, squeezing. She couldn’t breathe.
‘…and…’
‘Air. Must have air,’ she gasped, racing for the door.
Once outside, she cupped her mouth with her hands and focused on her breathing. She was acting like a crazy woman. Why was she so terrified of the words she craved to hear? Without thinking, she stepped out into the road, but was furiously beeped into a retreat by a passing taxicab. Changing direction, she belted back up Hollywood Boulevard, swerving around dawdling tourists like a vehicle in a high-speed car chase. Meanwhile, Joe had exited the bar and was sprinting up the sidewalk after her. She made it all the way to the corner of Highland Avenue before he caught up.
‘Polly, stop! Would you just stop a minute!’ he yelled, grabbing her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I never should have said anything. I know I don’t deserve to be with you, let alone five minutes alone with you drinking a disgusting cocktail, but I’ve started now so you’re just going to have to hear me out.’
He tried to take her hand but she flinched away.
‘All that stuff with Cassie was like LA June Gloom around my heart,’ he said despairingly. ‘I couldn’t see how badly I was treating you, keeping you hanging on for months without so much as a text, turning up in Bucharest only to break your heart, right before Stephen tried to break your nose, which again, was entirely my fault. And as for the last year… Can’t you see? None of it was clear to me until recently.’
As he stood there, sandwiched between the stars of Arnie and Marilyn and pouring his heart out to her, Polly’s eyes were fixed on the twinkling lights of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre up ahead. She couldn’t look at Joe. She couldn’t let him in again. She couldn’t risk it. If she did, then in a few months’ time when something else cataclysmic happened, as it always did with Joe, she would be heart-broken all over again. And then what? Another two-year sentence? Pining away for him like a puppy at the kitchen door?
She turned to face him, shaking her head, slowly, reluctantly, fighting back the tears.
‘Joe…I’m sorry, I can’t.’
It was like Bucharest all over again, only this time the Converse was on the other foot.
‘It’s too complicated…’
She watched him brush his hand across his mouth in despair as she tried to justify herself. Spelling out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. He was too much of a flight-risk, their calamitous history, all the stuff with Sam.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ he said, sharply. ‘I told you before, she’s not my girlfriend.’
‘There’s still something between you.’
‘You’re wrong. There never was anything, except…’ he hesitated for a moment. ‘Ok, there were a couple of drunken fumbles in Mozambique but nothing since, I swear.’
Polly’s face tightened. ‘I see. So all that time I was worrying myself stupid, you were shagging your way out of your misery.’ Her jaw began to tic. ‘Wow, Joe, you really must be a stud. You managed to bag yourself a free script and a ticket to the big-time. And here I was accusing Lucy of sleeping her way to the top!’
‘Don’t do this,’ he pleaded, but she was already storming up the Boulevard once more, past the tube station and the entrance to the Hollywood and Highland Center, with its soaring palm trees and sweeping stairway. He didn’t catch up with her again until she was right outside the gaping golden aperture of The Dolby Theatre, next door. The home of the Academy Awards.
‘Polly! Stop! For god’s sake!’
He spun her round to face him and her cheeks were marbled with tears.
‘You loved me,’ he said, frantically. Tears of his own were starting to form, like some melancholic dance troupe waiting in the wings for their big appearance. ‘I know you did. Back in Morocco. Jesus, Polly, if we could just go back to then…’ He trailed off, remembering the night, two years ago, when he had allowed himself to drown in her, albeit for a few revelatory, hours.
Polly was crying harder now. She was thinking about that night too.
‘But how do I know you won’t run away again?’ she sobbed.
‘You can’t,’ he said simply, ‘you just have to trust that I won’t.’
‘But it’s not enough!’
‘Ok, then maybe this’ll help.’ As he said, it he dragged her into his arms and kissed her with more passion and romance than any of the Best Picture weepies that had claimed victory in the auditorium behind.
After a while, he pulled away and started undoing his trainers.
‘What are you doing now?’ asked Polly, faintly.
Straightening up, he started knotting the loose laces together, before arranging his trainers around her neck like a muddy, faintly whiffy décolletage.
‘If you take me back, I won’t need footwear anymore,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll be dancing on air for the rest of my life.’
He took a step back to admire his handwork as passing tourists shot them odd glances.
‘So?’ he prompted, anxiously. ‘What do you say?’
Polly glanced down at his Converse then smiled. One of her heart-breaking, spine-tingling, all-over slam-dunkers that had hooked him right from the start.
‘I think I better buy you some new socks,’ she said.
Chapter Fifty-Four
After a tumultuous January for both brothers, Stephen and Joe were once again, scheduled to share the spotlight at the annual Oscar nominees’ luncheon in early February. As the date grew ever nearer, the world’s media began rubbing their hands together in glee that the usual spectacle of back-slapping and faux comradeship at the event would be, quite literally, shoved aside for another spectacular De Vries scuffle.
Stephen, now existing on more lives than the proverbial after the Sy Jacob savaging and a stinging defeat at the Producer’s Guild Awards, was once again flying high with a remarkable triumph at the Director’s Guild Awards several nights previously, which his brother had been far too busy chasing his ex-runner up and down Hollywood Boulevard to attend.
Arriving early, to maximise his exposure with lots of well-choreographed autograph signing shots with affectionate fans smuggled to the front by Garrett’s gofers, he had eventually drifted into the Beverley Hilton Hotel just as Joe and Michael rolled up with Christine and Benito, who were also nominated in their respective categories.
An enthralled silence descended on the waiting press as the quartet stopped to pose. In the past, Michael Wilson’s movie-star looks had tended to influence the direction of the lens. But now it was Joe whom everyone was straining to snap.
Badgered into a designer suit by Michael, and teased into a decent haircut by Polly, with whom he’d just spent the last few days hopping in and out of bed with, Joe looked every inch the successful movie director. Yet all agreed it was his near-constant smile that contributed most to his transformation. As he postured left and then right, happiness seemed to beam forth from him like the flare from a lighthouse.
‘Newman and Redford eat your heart out,’ muttered one photographer, as Joe and Michael strode into the International Ballroom to circulate with cocktails in hand.
Once inside, Joe soon found himself sandwiched between Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep. At the same time, he was acutely aware of his brother standing just a few metres away and flirting shamelessly with a very tall, lithe and statuesque Charlize Theron. Glaring at Stephen’s ridiculously smooth, richly-moisturised skin, perfectly arched-but-still-manly-eyebrows and re-highlighted hair, he tried to remember the last time his brother had viewed him as anything other than a door mat - to be trodden on and discarded when the bristles went a bit manky in the rain. Certainly not when they worked together, perhaps not even as children.
‘Something unfortunate happening to him might be better than winning an Oscar,’ muttered Michael, squeezing into the gap left by Meryl only moments before.
‘I’ll take the Oscar,’ said Joe. ‘He’ll get his comeuppance in the end. People like him always do, well they do in the movies anyhow.’
‘But not in movie towns,’ warned Michael. ‘It’s EscapesVille for all the nasties in those burnished Hollywood hills. People wield celebrity up there like it’s a get out of jail free card.’ Just then, he caught sight of Maisie pretending to hug Tom Hanks and licking her lips suggestively his way.
‘No fucking way,’ he mouthed back defiantly.
‘Is something wrong?’ asked Joe, following his gaze, but Michael’s response was drowned out by a deafening applause as the jolly-looking Academy President took to the stage.
Sometime after lunch, all the nominees were duly summoned to take up their positions for the much celebrated group photo. Called in sets, which to Joe’s horror and Michael’s sincerest sympathies, were lumped in A – Z categories, he inevitably ended up next to his brother.
Standing side by side on the bleachers and deliberately ignoring one another, every journalist and publicist in the room could have sworn there was a shower of sparks as their jacket cuffs touched for the briefest of seconds.
‘Brother Dearest, what a delight to have you back in the race,’ murmured Stephen, briefly turning away from George.
Joe scowled and kept his eyes fixed straight ahead. ‘It would be nice if you actually meant it.’
‘Oh, but I do! It’s always far more satisfying to humble one’s competitors in person, rather than a gloating email afterwards. It’s much more public. And you know how much I like doing it in public. I seem to remember your ex-wife did too,’ he taunted him, giving Tarantino a quick wave. ‘But I doubt you knew anything about that. She always said you were somewhat unimaginative.’
For the first time in three days, Joe’s smile began to slip.
‘Why, you piece of s….’
Next thing, the room had exploded in a deluge of flashbulbs and his expression of insolent outrage was captured forevermore.
Later on, after they had been called forward one by one to collect an official certificate and Oscar Nominee’s sweatshirt, as bestowed to all the lucky hopefuls, Joe took Michael to one side.
‘No more Mr Nice Guy,’ he growled, eyes glinting, face set with determination. ‘And balls to this bloody sweatshirt! I want another meeting with Bill. We need to ramp this thing up. I’m going to mail my heart on a plate to those voters. Hell, i’ll even sob my heart out to Sy Jacob if needs be but we’re going to win that Best Picture Oscar! Even if we have to pose naked for PETA to do it.’
All in all, it was a much cheerier bunch that boarded the plane back to London for the BAFTAS, compared to those who had jetted out in such a fug weeks before. With ten days to go until the final Oscar ballots closed, Michael and Joe had spent every night since the Oscar Luncheon attending different red carpet events in a bid to keep their movie in the forefront of each Academy Member’s minds. As a result, they were more than happy to forgo the complimentary glass of champagne before takeoff. Polly, meanwhile, was having no such reservation, particularly as she had never flown First Class before. She was busy getting stuck in as Joe sat in the smart leather seat next door, flicking through their publicity schedule for next week.
Across the aisle, Michael was untangling his iPod headphones with a slight frown on his face. Maybe it was her female intuition, or maybe it was her current state of bliss that came with a yearning for everyone to feel the same, but Polly could sense his unhappiness.
He looked up then, caught her staring and smiled.
Silly, octogenarian-shagging Lucy, thought Polly, smiling back. Her friend had gone and fallen for the wrong Wilson. Lucy was insisting on staying in LA, at least until her piece was finished. But with a new Prada bag waiting for her in reception every morning, and a different Michelin culinary experience at lunchtime, all courtesy of a certain Studio mogul, she wasn’t exactly lacking incentives to stay.
Joe’s head appeared over the seat divide and planted a smacker on her cheek.
‘What was that for?’ she giggled, licking spilt champagne off her knuckles.
‘Because I can,’ he grinned, leaning i
n for another.
‘Careful,’ she warned, as he lent so far over the divide that he nearly toppled into her lap. ‘You might get us thrown off for lewd behaviour.’
‘That’s not lewd,’ he scoffed, gesturing at the little grey lavatory cubical up ahead. ‘Meet me in there after takeoff and I’ll show you lewd.’
Michael pretended not to watch them as he tussled with another knot in his headphones. He would rather die than admit it but Polly and Joe’s rekindled delirium was making him more than a little envious. There was also an Italian-Brit love-fest happening on the other side of the aisle. Every so often, Benito’s great frame would pivot sideways so that he could murmur something filthy to Christine. Dirty devils, mused Michael. He hoped he would get the chance to behave as badly as them one day.
‘Have a good flight, Mr Wilson,’ called out a passing stewardess.
‘I’d much rather you had a creative one,’ teased Joe, chucking his in-flight magazine at him. ‘Don’t go plugging yourself in, we need to get cracking on that acceptance speech.’
Michael nodded and made to pull out his notebook, but as the Stewards whisked away Polly’s empty champagne glass and scolded a po-faced Benito for not fastening his seatbelt, he couldn’t think of a single word to write.
Once again, he was finding himself quite unable to think about anything other than Lily.
Chapter Fifty-Five
There was something comfortingly familiar about the BAFTA red carpet reflected Joe, as he and Polly emerged from their limo. As opposed to all the countless others that he had worked like a Brazilian catwalk model this Awards Season. It wasn’t the harmonising smell of fresh rain in the air, once again the great British Weather was refusing to play ball and young actresses in barely-there slivers of satin and lace were paying the price for their fashion vanities, not to mention their ridiculous fat-stripping diets. Nor was it the scene-stealing backdrop of Covent Garden’s glorious Royal Opera House, a welcome change to the ice-white, 1950s expanse of The Beverly Hilton. In the end, it took Polly reeling off the names of all the British elite industry talent drifting past them that made the penny to drop.