by Matt Cain
And what about the other night at your place?’ he thundered. ‘Were you acting then too?’
‘No. How can you say that?’
‘Because I’ve just walked in on you naked with another man, that’s how! What kind of fool do you take me for, Mia?’
‘I don’t take you for a fool, Leo. I really, really like you. And I don’t want to lose you.’
‘Well I really like you too, Mia. Or at least I thought I did – until I walked in on this little love-in. And now I’ve no idea what I feel. I just keep thinking about the other night and how wonderful it was. And today in your dressing room too. But you just told me yourself – you act all the time. I’m only sorry I fell for it.’
‘But I wasn’t acting with you, Leo! I promise I wasn’t!’
‘All right then, prove it. Prove to me that we’re special, Mia. Prove to me that you’ve not been acting with me in the same way that you’re acting with Billy.’
A tense silence descended on the room. She looked at Billy but he was gazing at the floor again. She knew that, even though it was unfair on Billy, she couldn’t keep his secret any longer. She took a deep breath.
‘Leo . . . Billy’s gay. How’s that for proof?’
*
Billy couldn’t believe what Mia had just done.
He wondered for a second if he’d actually misheard her.
But the bewildered look on Leo’s face told him he hadn’t.
‘Oh come off it,’ Leo scoffed. ‘As if I’m going to fall for that one.’
‘Well it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not,’ Mia said. ‘It’s true.’
‘But . . .’
‘But what, Leo? He doesn’t seem gay? Is that what you were going to say?’
‘No . . . It’s just that . . . I had no idea . . .’
‘Most people don’t,’ Billy managed, stepping in. ‘But it’s true Leo – I am gay.’
As he heard himself say the words Billy felt his bones go soft with fear. He couldn’t quite get his head around what had just happened. Mia had only gone and revealed his biggest secret – and to a paparazzo!
‘Billy, I’m really sorry,’ she rasped, ‘I know I shouldn’t have done that.’
He shook his head as if trying to snap himself out of a daze.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ butted in Leo. ‘I had no idea. My God, I’m such a dick. Now I feel really stupid.’
The three of them sank into silence. Billy watched the dust particles circulate in the air between them. He felt like he was plunging through the air in a broken elevator.
‘It’s, erm, it’s – it’s OK,’ he mumbled.
‘No, it’s not OK, Billy,’ Leo went on. ‘I was out of order. And Mia, I owe you an apology too. Something like this just never occurred to me. And I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.’
‘Oh forget about it, Leo. It’s not as if I trusted you till you’d proved yourself. And anyway, I’m more worried about Billy right now.’
Billy stood there shaking his head. He didn’t know how to begin explaining to them how miserable living with such a huge secret made him. Or how each time somebody else found out, it only increased his anxiety that the whole world would soon discover his secret and then he’d be rejected by everyone – just like he was rejected by his parents.
You’re disgusting, Billy!
You’re no son of ours!
No human being should have to hear words like that from the mouths of their own parents. And Billy knew that he wasn’t strong enough to risk hearing them again.
‘Billy,’ Mia breathed, ‘Leo won’t say a thing. Will you, Leo?’
‘No, I swear I won’t.’
‘Look, I don’t want to discuss this right now,’ Billy managed to stammer. ‘All I will say is I’m not ashamed of who I am. I just don’t want it to compromise my career, that’s all. And no offence or anything but I don’t have to explain myself to anybody.’
Leo pursed his lips. ‘OK, mate, I promise it won’t be mentioned again.’
Mia held out her arms and gave him a huge hug.
‘Everything will be OK,’ she cooed. ‘You’ll see – everything will be OK.’
But as Billy held onto her tightly he wasn’t so sure. And now that he and Mia had agreed to this show-mance, the stakes were suddenly higher. He had a sudden image of himself suffocating under a heavy pile of lies, pressing down on him and burying him alive.
He had a bad feeling about this. A seriously bad feeling.
10
‘Now are you sure you want to do this?’ asked the doctor. ‘You know it’s only been two months since your last session – and we usually recommend waiting three or four.’
Violet Vaughn iced him with a glare.
‘Well you obviously didn’t put enough in last time,’ she spat. ‘Look at this!’
She arched an eyebrow to show just a tiny bit of movement.
‘It’s horrendous,’ she brayed. ‘I need you to get rid of it – and fast.’
The doctor gave her a frown but shrugged in resignation. He handed her a form, which she signed without even reading. All she needed to see was the one magic word: Botox.
The doctor moved over to his work table and snapped on a pair of plastic gloves. As he began filling his syringes Violet reclined on the bed next to him. She’d been here countless times before and knew exactly how it worked.
‘Now close your eyes and squeeze them tight,’ said the doctor.
Violet did as she was told – although her face barely moved.
‘Can you manage a little more?’
She squeezed a bit harder until she felt a tiny flicker of movement.
‘That’s it. Now relax.’
In went the needle, just above her left cheekbone next to her eye.
The sharp pain always surprised her but it was a good pain – the kind of pain that made her feel happier after a week of being horrified at the sight of her own face. Straight away she could feel the anxiety beginning to fade.
‘Aaaaaah.’
The truth was that Violet Vaughn couldn’t tolerate any kind of physical imperfection. It reminded her of her teenage years – and that was a period of her life that she didn’t want to revisit.
Brought up in Portland, Oregon, she’d been a quiet, mousy girl who’d hit puberty and been dealt a lousy hand – a flat chest, terrible acne and an enormous hooked nose. On top of it all her eyesight was so bad that she’d had to wear thick glasses just to see where she was going. It wasn’t the kind of look that made her feel good about herself – or endeared her to her peers. The popular girls in school had called her Vile Violet and made her life hell with their relentless sniggering and sneering. Well they weren’t sneering now.
‘And close your other eye for me,’ breathed the doctor. ‘Squeeze it as tight as you can. That’s it. And relax.’
She tried not to wince as the needle pierced her skin and she felt the liquid seeping in. As the Botox entered her body she could feel the tension gradually trickling away. Her teenage years in Portland seemed like a lifetime ago.
After leaving high school Violet had found a job in a company that manufactured sockets and switches as the personal assistant to a fat, sweaty executive with a ruddy complexion and sagging flaps of flesh under his eyes that looked like ball bags. She’d put up with him groping her and had even given him the odd blow-job under his desk in return for financial bonuses. She wasn’t particularly proud of it but she didn’t see why she shouldn’t – nobody else wanted to go near her, never mind enter into any kind of sexual relations. And she was desperate to save up enough money to escape the misery of her life in Oregon and reinvent herself in sunny California.
Once she could afford it she’d jumped on a plane to LA and checked straight into a clinic to have her boobs done, her nose fixed and her acne scars lasered away. She’d ditched her glasses for contact lenses and the transformation was complete. She felt like a new woman and managed to muster up enough confidence to launch herself into th
e film business, soon landing herself a job as a junior publicist working in a large firm. And as far as she was concerned, that’s when her life truly began.
The doctor moved onto her forehead. Violet knew from experience that this area hurt even more than around the eyes; there was less flesh and the needle felt as if it were going straight into the bone.
‘Oooh,’ she found herself whimpering.
‘Is everything all right?’ The doctor stepped back.
‘Yes, fine,’ she barked. ‘You just carry on, don’t mind me.’
As she watched him pumping poison into her forehead she realized he was actually quite attractive. He had dark, greying hair with five o’clock shadow and muscular, hairy forearms. He’d been doing her Botox for years now but for some reason she hadn’t really noticed what he looked like before. Not that it mattered as she was sure he wouldn’t look at her in that way – before or after Botox. In fact, she was convinced she was so unattractive she wouldn’t be able to incite interest from a rabid dog if she got down on all fours. And it was so long since she’d had sex she’d need three days’ notice and a blowtorch to get herself ready for any action. And anyway, she was past all that now. It would only get in the way, she told herself. Though of what she wasn’t sure.
Apart from the odd one-night stand, usually when she was on international publicity tours with foreigners she knew she wouldn’t see again, Violet hadn’t had sex for longer than she could remember. And it had been much longer than that since she’d fallen in love. Although that she could still remember – vividly.
She’d only been working in LA for a few months when she’d been assigned the publicity of legendary actor and sex symbol Cooper Kelly. The second she’d met him she’d fallen instantly, hopelessly in love. She’d had to stop herself from gasping out loud; it was as if she could actually feel Cupid’s arrow piercing her heart. She’d only been twenty and Cooper was thirty years older than her. But she’d been overwhelmed by the intensity of her emotions and they’d soon begun a passionate, steamy affair, having endless sex in every corner of his palatial home. For the first time in her life she’d felt special and alive as a sexual, desirable woman. Of course, she knew that Cooper was a major star who could have any woman he wanted. But she’d dared to believe that she just might be good enough for him – and as he was in between wives had even dreamed that he might one day marry her. Oh it all felt so pathetic and stupid now.
The truth was that Cooper had toyed with her for months without making the slightest commitment. Then, on his fiftieth birthday, she’d bribed his staff and sneaked into his home to surprise him with some diamond studded cufflinks which had cost her half a year’s salary – and some racy black lingerie that she knew would drive him wild. Only she’d walked into the bedroom to find he was already being driven wild by a top-heavy blonde in blood-red stilettos. When he saw Violet he froze and started to mouth his apologies but she stormed out and rushed down to the garden, where she sat on a bench for half an hour trying to compose herself as she looked out at the moonlit ocean. She felt worse than she could ever have imagined, like a spider was crawling over her soul.
Eventually she’d pulled herself together and had gone upstairs to face Cooper and try to talk things through. Maybe this was just a one-off and the skanky blonde had thrown herself at him; she knew the way things worked in Hollywood. Maybe if she forgave him the two of them could work things out and still make a go of it. But she’d gone back up to the room and been stunned to find that Cooper was still banging the blonde, his tight ass bobbing up and down in time with her over-the-top squeals of ecstasy. Violet was struck dumb and had slipped away quietly, feeling desolate, desperate and hating herself for not being worthy of his love.
She felt a stab of sadness as she thought back to that time now. Cooper Kelly had treated her like a nobody, as if she didn’t matter at all. She’d tried so hard to escape her teenage self but he’d made her feel like she was right back where she’d started, being brutally savaged by the girls in high school. As she’d burst out of his home, her face streaming with tears, she’d vowed that no man would ever make her feel like that again. And thirty years later, they still hadn’t.
‘Now raise your eyebrows for me,’ said the doctor. ‘As high as you can.’
Violet held her breath as he injected her above the eyelids – her least favourite spot and the one she knew always caused the most pain. Today was no exception. But as her whole body tensed and the needle sunk in, she found herself weirdly enjoying it. Sure, it was painful but it made her feel like she was winning.
And right now Violet was winning. Her PR business was booming and she was having to take on new staff to cope with the extra workload. Of all her projects, she was particularly enjoying witnessing the blossoming show-mance between Mia Sinclair and Billy Spencer. One week in and it had already generated far more coverage than she’d dared to hope for. The whole world wanted to know about Hollywood’s latest love story – and the producers of War of Words were thrilled with the increased interest in the film. The previous day Violet had held the movie’s first press junket and had been overwhelmed by the number of journalists fighting to ask Mia and Billy about their relationship. Of course she’d always known that the show-mance had been a great idea; she didn’t understand why Mia and Billy had ever resisted it. Well that would teach them to doubt her. She hated it when people doubted her.
Violet Vaughn always knew what she was doing. She was one of the most important and influential women in Hollywood. And she wanted everyone to know it – especially those girls she’d left behind in Portland. Vile Violet? They don’t know the half of it . . .
‘There we go,’ said the doctor, stepping back to admire his work. ‘All done.’
Violet sat up and went to look at her face in the mirror. There were little prick marks all over her forehead and around her eyes and the beginnings of some light bruising on her left cheekbone. But it was nothing she couldn’t cover with a little make-up.
As she gazed at her reflection she couldn’t help smiling. Of course, she knew the Botox would take around ten days to come into full effect. But she felt better already.
*
It was 10 a.m. and Hector had only just slunk into the office to start work – nearly an hour late.
He’d slipped in through the back door and thankfully hadn’t been spotted, except by Ramona, who he knew would always cover for him. As soon as he’d made it safely to his desk he’d poured himself a strong coffee, whacked Enrique Iglesias’s Greatest Hits on the sound system and started working his way through Mia’s mail. There was the usual pile of fan letters and he responded to the majority of them like a machine, slipping autographed photos into the fans’ self-addressed envelopes and tossing them into the tray for outgoing mail. That was just about all he could cope with right now.
Because right now Hector was chronically hungover. However much water he drank, he still had a pounding headache, as if his brain was rattling around in a jar. However many times he brushed his teeth or gargled with mouthwash, his tongue still tasted like the filth-ridden contents of Bogie and Bacall’s litter tray. And worst of all, however hard he tried, he couldn’t get rid of his bad case of beer fear – what Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s calls ‘the mean reds’– that horrible, jumpy anxiety that made him stop halfway through everything he was doing and left him incapable of concentrating on anything at all. Hector hated being hungover.
And it wasn’t even as if he’d had a particularly good night. He’d been out with a couple of friends at the launch party of a new gay club called The Cock Pit. It was an amazing club with stunning ocean views, built around a huge under-lit swimming pool that had been the setting for the night’s entertainment: a tightly choreographed display of transvestite synchronized swimming. The problem was that his two friends had picked up men and disappeared really quickly and he’d been left all on his own. And everyone he’d met had spectacularly failed to live up to his romantic ideal. He�
�d recoiled as he’d been chatted up by a lank-haired saxophonist from New Orleans with no sense of personal space and shocking garlic breath. He’d flinched as he’d been accosted by a skinny set designer with some sort of ginger Afro, who claimed to have been struck by lightning and somehow managed to have a serious case of what Hector had always thought to be the exclusively female condition of camel toe. And at the end of the night he’d mumbled excuses when a customs officer who claimed to be a cousin of Shereen Spicer had invited him back to his place for a binge on all the drugs he’d confiscated from passengers at the airport. Eventually, feeling drunk and desolate, he’d ended up going home with a Colombian gardener whose front teeth were missing and who looked so rough that Hector had deftly hidden his wallet under the mattress while he’d been undressing. As he thought back to the experience now he felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. Why did he always end up with such unsuitable men? After working his way through so many of them he sometimes felt like his heart wasn’t so much broken as utterly shot through. Oh why couldn’t he find his prince?
As if to rub his nose in it, lucky Mia seemed to have two princes in her life right now. As well as dating Leo, she’d recently started stepping out with Billy Spencer too. Hector could hardly believe it; she’d been loveless most of the time he’d worked for her and now suddenly she had a gorgeous man on each arm. Hector had spent much of the past week organizing her dates with one or other of them. She and Billy had presented an award at an indie film event and gone out for dinner at a busy restaurant where celebrities always went when they wanted to show off their latest beau to the ever-present paparazzi. At the same time, Hector had arranged secret dinners for her and Leo and had even booked out an entire cinema one night so that they could go to the movies together unnoticed. He wasn’t sure what had got into her and didn’t want her to get hurt but as far as he could tell, she genuinely seemed to love spending time with both men.
And who could blame her for wanting to date two men when they were both so insanely attractive? Leo was sexy and manly but so comfortable in his masculinity that he didn’t mind expressing his affection for Hector; he always kissed him hello and ruffled his hair fondly, something that made Hector shiver with glee. Billy on the other hand was cute and boyish but with muscular arms that strained at his T-shirt sleeves and a body that Hector knew from the movies was like that of a Greek god. Unfortunately, he was much more guarded and less forthcoming than Leo and only ever greeted Hector with a firm, businesslike handshake. He was uneasy around him in the way that some closeted gay men were, except that he didn’t remotely set off Hector’s gaydar – and there could be no question about his sexuality now that he was dating Mia. And the two of them weren’t shy about ramming their happiness down his throat, always laughing and joking together like a pair of teenage sweethearts.