Taking Hollywood

by Shari King

  ‘Clean-living. Married. Kids. No drama. Instead, I got you.

  Come on, Zander, don’t screw this up. I need the pay cheque and it’ll be a bitch to find another job if you turn up dead. No wonder I comfort-eat.’

  Another private joke. Hollie was one of the few women in Hollywood who was not under a size four. In any other town, she’d be considered a healthy shape, but here, if her natural chocolate-brown hair and lack of cosmetic intervention didn’t set her apart, the fact that she wore size-ten jeans made her as rare on the West Coast as a genuine blonde.

  Over in the hung-over corner, her attempt at truthful cajoling only served to up the remorse.

  What the fuck was wrong with him?

  It was only day five on set and he’d been wasted for every one of them. Thankfully, he knew the role inside out and had managed to pull off the read-throughs, but he was on the edge of blowing it again and he knew it.

  It was only because Hollie possessed the driving skills of a stunt racer that he made it to the Lomax lot in Century City for the 6 a.m. call time, showered, shaved and smelling like he’d just walked out of Tom Ford’s boudoir. Two litres of black coffee and a Xanax had taken the edge off the pain; now the fresh orange juice was slowly transforming his complexion from grey to pink.

  Hollie had already checked the schedule for the day. Morning in wardrobe. His character Seb Dunhill’s suits had been custom-made by Burberry, but there was still work to be done on the rest of his outfits. Afternoon in rehearsals for the first scene, shooting the following day. Courtesy of the LA city chiefs, they’d closed down a section of Wilshire Boulevard for a car chase that was filming the next morning at five. Hooking up with Dixie at Sparkles just became a rain check.

  The prep was his least favourite part of the process. A necessary evil. He just wanted to be out there, being someone else, not in here having his crotch position measured by Nessa, a very pleasant but noisy Texan grandmother who had mastered the art of speaking loudly while holding a spray of pins between her teeth and called him ‘sweet cheeks’. They were on their fourth costume adjustment and she had already served up more industry news than Deadline.com, when she paused for breath, before switching to the next subject.

  ‘And ain’t that great news that Mirren McLean is back in town? I was getting worried about that girl. Never liked Jack Gore. Eyes too close together.’

  ‘Why? Where was she?’ No amount of suave pretence could mask the sharpness of his tone.

  ‘Why, sweet cheeks, her car went off a canyon. Rumour has it Gore is gonna be a daddy with that Mercedes Dance – my sister worked on her wardrobe last year, and thank the good Lord she’s pretty cos she ain’t gonna win any medals for bein’ smart. Married man. What was she thinking?’

  Hollie came in clutching a clipboard, square black glasses falling to the tip of her nose.

  ‘OK, you’ve had a couple of calls. D’you want to go over them now while you’re in Nessa’s capable hands?’

  ‘Hollie, what happened to Mirren McLean?’

  Hollie thought for a moment, assimilating the facts and then relaying them in the correct order.

  ‘Hit the press last week that Jack Gore and Mercedes Dance were doing the naked samba; she’s first trimester with his kid; Mirren went off grid for a few days after trashing his Maserati over a cliff—’

  ‘Amen!’ Nessa interjected.

  ‘And then she turned up in Mexico City. Now she’s back and, according to Entertainment Tonight, started shooting on the set of Clansman 5 today. You’re welcome.’

  She punctuated the sentence with an extended bow.

  Zander’s heart rate gradually returned to somewhere near normal. OK, it had nothing to do with what happened back then. Nothing to do with them.

  ‘Hey, I meant to say, a journo called Sarah something from the UK has left you a couple of messages. Want me to reply?’

  ‘Let me think about it.’ Like it wasn’t all he’d been doing for the last few days.

  Nessa stood back and finally removed the pins from her mouth. ‘OK, sweet cheeks, you’re good to go and I’m a happy woman,’ she said with a cackle of endearment.

  Zander gave her a hug and then followed Hollie down a labyrinth of corridors. Over four decades Lomax Films had grown from one man with a flair for selling ideas to one of the biggest deals in town. Jerry Bruckheimer. Paul Bonetti. Kent Lang. Brian Grazer. Steven Spielberg. Harvey Weinstein. James Cameron. Wes Lomax had topped them all when his production company batted out of its league with The Brutal Circle and gave Lomax the dollars and the balls to set up his own studio. Lomax Films didn’t have the vast reach of Sony or Time Warner, but they’d whipped Lionsgate and Miramax last year and were on course to do the same again.

  The physical demands of the afternoon were a welcome relief after the mental stress of the morning. Nothing took your mind off your problems quite like the physical discomfort of having your scrotum crushed in a harness swinging ten feet in the air. Seb Dunhill had to jump from a helicopter and land on a tanker carrying toxic waste en route to down-town LA. There was a gift for the late-night talk-show hosts. That was a gag that wrote itself.

  As soon as his character had saved LA, he was being shipped to the Middle East – balls intact – to save the world. In reality, most of the movie was being shot in Nevada.

  ‘You go on – I just want to stop by Wes’s office and check in.’

  Hollie eyed him with cynicism. ‘Or are you going to find a store cupboard and down a quart of bourbon?’

  Zander gave her his most winning grin. ‘That was the old me. The new me is teetotal.’

  ‘Since this morning?’

  For the first time in a week he laughed. ‘It’s fucking brilliant what you can achieve in one day.’

  Hollie shook her head. ‘Mood swings. Great. I swear Matt Damon would have been a lot easier than this shit.’

  Zander rode the lift two levels to the executive floor, then ducked into the men’s room and pulled a miniature of Jack Daniel’s out of his jacket pocket. It was gone in seconds, the taste washed away by the miniature of mouthwash in his other pocket. After washing his hands, he took a bottle of Clive Christian 1872 from the vanity and gave a quick spray. Just enough to cover any lingering booze smell, not too much that Wes would be suspicious.

  ‘Hey, Monica, is the boss in?’

  Wes’s secretary had been with him since he started out. She must be in her sixties by now, but the most generous secretarial package in the business kept her looking on the right side of forty-five.

  ‘Sure. I’ll let him know you’re here.’

  She’d barely pressed the button on her phone line when Lomax came striding out of the office and greeted him with a bear hug.

  ‘Good to see you, buddy. You’re looking great.’

  Wes led the way back through to his office and they both sat on the white buffalo-skin seats that bordered a sleek black Italian marble board table. A crack ran across the middle of it. Rumour had it that Wes had smashed it with a machete after a deal had gone wrong. The truth was that a four-way with three sturdy German film students had left its mark. Wes didn’t mind which story people believed.

  ‘Feeling great,’ Zander concurred.

  Wes contemplated him for a moment. They’d been together in this business a lot of years and their relationship had long passed the need for niceties and platitudes.

  ‘You sure, son?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  They may not need niceties and platitudes, but sometimes a little dishonesty was called for. Wes chose to believe him. They batted about some stuff on the movie for a few minutes before Monica knocked on the door. The age-old sign that Wes’s next appointment was waiting.

  They shook hands and almost made it to the door before Wes put out a hand to stop him.

  ‘Zander, the last one was close. It can’t happen again.’

  He didn’t have to ask what that meant. If the public stays onside, an A-list star can survive one public melt
down. He couldn’t survive two.

  ‘I’m on top of it, Wes. Don’t worry.’ Zander wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince.

  ‘You have to be. Because we can’t afford a fuck-up, Zander. There’s too much riding on this.’

  Wes’s words lingered longer than the taste of the bourbon he’d downed in the washroom.

  Driving home, Hollie realized after five minutes that Zander wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so she’d settled for comfortable silence. The smell of the ocean flooded the car as they pulled up next to his block.

  ‘Want to come in and order up some food?’ he asked her. There were two motivations. He felt like company that wouldn’t get him robbed or arrested. And Wes’s words had struck home. He had to pull himself out of this for all their sakes. It was time to sort himself out and get straight.

  Hollie leaned over and kissed his cheek. ‘Thanks for the offer, but unlike you, I have a life. And a date.’ She caught his expression and hesitated, realization dawning. ‘Look, I can change my plans – it’s not a problem. Tell me you’re not going to go in there and order two strippers and a Robert Downey Junior-sized speedball.’

  He was already out of the car.

  ‘Don’t be crazy – it’s fine. Think I’ll go catch the last of the waves anyway.’

  He was gorgeous Zander Leith again – winning smile, confident, assured and back in charge.

  He could do this. He just had to shut down the anxiety.

  Remove negativity.

  ‘Holls, can you call that journo and tell her I’m not available for interview and my family life is private?’ The end. Done.

  ‘Sure.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘Look, any problems, call me, OK? I’ll have my cell.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Walking to the door, he instinctively scanned for paparazzi. None. They all knew Hollie anyway, knew there was no story there. The two homeless guys perched outside his building’s door raised their liquor bottles to him. He dropped a twenty and tried not to view them as a premonition of his future. ‘G’night, guys.’

  Inside, he pulled off his jacket, turned the water on in the tub and poured in some oils. Jesus, back home this would make him a few scented candles short of being a female. The thought caught him unawares. He’d spent years refusing to let his thoughts cross the Atlantic and now it seemed like he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

  When there was a knock on the door, the diversion was a relief. Typical Hollie. She got to the end of the road, called her date to cancel and came back for Thai. Or maybe sushi. He didn’t even bother to shove on a robe, just a towel round his waist. There was nothing she hadn’t seen before.

  ‘Hey, I . . .’

  The door was wide open before his realization caught up.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I brought a friend.’

  She held up a bottle of Grey Goose, then pushed herself off the door frame and walked past him.

  ‘And no, before you ask, my mother doesn’t know I’m here.’

  As Chloe Gore kicked off her shoes and slumped onto his sofa, he was in no doubt at all that trouble had just wandered right back into his life.

  14.

  ‘Alive and Kicking’ – Simple Minds

  Glasgow, 1985

  Simple Minds blared from the tape recorder on the wooden floor. Jim Kerr was ‘alive and kicking’. Which was more than could be said for the three teenagers who were lying staring at the roof, blowing smoke rings in some kind of synchronized, lung-clogging competition.

  Mirren broke her record of five hoops in a row and then extinguished her cigarette in the glass ashtray she’d smuggled from the house. They’d learned that lesson soon after they’d starting hanging out in the hut at the bottom of Davie’s garden. She’d stubbed a cigarette out on the floor and they’d come back an hour later to find a void the size of a manhole, the edges still smouldering.

  Davie covered it up with his mum’s Flymo. If she ever decided to cut the grass, he was dead.

  ‘A football player,’ Davie announced, continuing the discussion they’d been having before their favourite song had come on. Mirren taped the Top Forty every Sunday night and it became their entertainment for the week.

  Mirren pushed herself up onto one elbow. ‘You want to be a football player?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Well, can I point out the obvious?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You might want to give up the fags.’

  ‘Aye, stunts your growth,’ Zander added. ‘And at your height you might manage a game for Subbuteo.’

  Their laughter could be heard right across all five back gardens in their block. Not that it mattered. Everyone was inside watching that new soap EastEnders or down the pub. Besides, everyone was used to seeing them hanging around.

  Mirren knew that to everyone else it had seemed strange at first. Two boys and one girl, none of them members of any of the groups that hung out at the garages and shops around the scheme. Davie was the hyper, chatty one, always cheeky and looking for a laugh. Zander was quieter, with that laid-back thing that meant you never really knew what he was thinking. He didn’t take any shit, though. Big Jim Anderson from the bottom end of the scheme had jumped Davie one night for his Walkman and Zander had gone straight down there, battered him and got it back.

  Didn’t say a word. Just did it. No one else had come near them since then.

  It was a strange concept for her. Friends. She’d never had them. All through primary school she’d kept to herself, as the other kids had parties and sleepovers and day trips to Calderpark Zoo. She was never invited. Maybe if she’d made the first move, asked someone to come over to her house, they’d have done it back, but her mum wouldn’t allow it. Bad enough that she had one brat, she said.

  So, naturally shy, Mirren just kept her head down. Went to the library after school. Filled her head with books. Snuck out some from the adult section when the old librarian wasn’t looking.

  Right now, she was reading Jackie Collins. Hollywood Wives. None of the characters in that was covering up a fag accident with a Flymo.

  ‘What about you, then?’ Davie asked.

  ‘Dunno.’ Mirren tried to ignore the fact that he was staring at her now.

  ‘You’re lying. I can just tell. You look guilty.’

  ‘Aye. All right then, Columbo,’ she teased.

  ‘Whatever. C’mon. Tell us. What do you want to do? A lollipop wumman so you don’t need to start work till you’re sixty-five?’

  Mirren threw an empty can of Irn Bru at his head. It missed.

  ‘A writer.’

  ‘A whit?’

  ‘A writer.’

  She should never have said it. They’d only take the piss. It’s not as if she was even a swot at school. She liked English, but that was it. She still passed her exams right enough, even though everything else bored her rigid.

  ‘What? Like write books?’

  ‘No, colour them in. Of course I mean write books. Novels.’

  With a twinkle in his eye that guaranteed he was about to continue the mutual slagging, Davie opened his mouth, but cut short when Zander said seriously, ‘You could do that. Be a writer, I mean.’

  ‘You think?’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not.’

  It was about as talkative as Zander ever got and Mirren had learned not to push. When he had something to say, he spoke. That was it. And besides, he couldn’t get a word in for Davie.

  ‘Right then, come on, big shot. Tell us what you want to do,’ Davie dared him. ‘Only, they’re looking for new priests doon the chapel. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I’ve got off with three lassies in the last fortnight.”’

  ‘Shut it!’ Zander kicked open the hut door with his foot and threw his cigarette butt outside.

  Mirren felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. She hated arguments and confrontations. Bloody Davie should have known better than to mention the chapel. It was bad enough that Zander’s mum spent her whole lif
e there without them talking about it here too.

  She watched as he shook his head, then gave Davie’s legs a nudge with the toe of his trainer. ‘You don’t half talk shite.’

  ‘I know,’ Davie replied, grinning. Mirren felt herself relax. Tension over.

  ‘You didn’t answer the question,’ she said, keen to move back to neutral territory.

  Zander thought about it for a moment.

  ‘Dunno. Rigs, maybe. Army. Anything that would get me the fuck away from here and him.’

  There was no need to ask and it was as well they didn’t because the hut door burst open and Jono Leith’s frame filled the doorway. He was swaying from side to side, carrying a bag from the Co-op that clinked as he swung it in front of them.

  Zander was the first to speak.

  ‘Thought you were going to be locked up until trial.’

  No happy welcome. No shaking of hands or pats on the back.

  ‘Well, I’m out today, Sandy. Case dropped. I’m an innocent man and halle-fucking-lujah!’ Jono roared. ‘So up, the three of youse. Over to our house. The lads are on their way and there’s gonna be a bit of a party. C’mon, you young ’uns. Switch that pish aff and come and hear some real music.’

  With that, he broke into a song Mirren recognized. The Rolling Stones. ‘Satisfaction’.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ he repeated after the first verse. ‘Move they lazy arses of yours and let’s go.’

  Davie was already on his feet, grinning at the prospect of yet another wild party at the Leiths’, when Mirren caught Zander’s eye and they exchanged a silent message of understanding. He didn’t want to go. Neither did she. But that didn’t matter. Because when it came to the real world, they both knew that no one refused Jono Leith.

  15.

  ‘Labour of Love’ – Hue & Cry

  Glasgow, 2013

  ‘Yes, I understand that he’s now on a shoot, but I’d only need twenty minutes of his time. I was under the impression that his Scottish fans were important to him.’

  Even as she went for the shameless emotional blackmail, Sarah knew it was futile. She was talking to some PA who was just carrying out orders, not in a position to be swayed by argument. The point was borne out by the click at the other end of the line as Zander Leith’s PA shut her down.