by Sophie Lee
'Yes, all set, Pete. Thanks a lot.'
Once Alice had swept the floor, she began to line the display shelves with vanilla slices, cream horns and custard tarts. Once the cake shelves had been filled and the pie-warmer was chocked to capacity with meat pies, sausage rolls, pasties and quiche, she was ready to greet the public.
By 7.15, a few customers began to straggle in, usually for fresh bread, although it was not unusual for manual labourers to request meat pies for breakfast. Alice was surprised by the familiarity of faces, even though it was over ten years since she'd worked at the shop as a school girl.
'Oh, g'day, Alice, love. Just a hightop loaf, sliced thick if you don't mind. Didn't I see you on telly recently?'
'Possibly, Mrs Jensen,' Alice replied, placing a hightop loaf in the slicer. It was easier not to hear her above the noise.
'Anyway, love, great to have you back. Say hello to your mum for me. Does Pete have any of yesterday's bread out the back for me? He knows I feed it to m' birds. Oh, tell him I said thanks. Bye, pet.'
Alice kept her mobile phone under the shop counter. Whenever there was a lull, she would check her message-bank for word from Conrad. He would have to be missing her, wouldn't he? How could you be with a person for six years and then abscond to the other side of the world without a word?
Perhaps there was someone else with him at the end of the day, sitting beside him on the couch in his serviced apartment? Alice tried to remember who they'd met from the Vienna Theatre Company that night. There was a woman, wasn't there? A man and a woman? She had assumed, stupidly, that they were a couple. Alice remembered now. She was a chic European intellectual, the sort who could guide Conrad through his new directing experience, be on hand to translate for him and to cater to his every need. Were they over there enjoying their days off together? In a museum perhaps, or on a hillside like the one in The Sound of Music, sharing a picnic of pork knuckle and sauerkraut, washed down with a fruity riesling? She remembered her black bob, her trendy T-shirt, her slender frame . . .
'Scuse me, I said can I have a dozen dinner rolls, please? And a vanilla slice.'
A voice would cut through Alice's reverie, dissolving her paralysis.
Other times, the bile rose and she served the customers and sliced the bread like an automaton, seething on the inside. What the hell had he been thinking just buggering off like that, leaving Alice to sort out the failure of his show, the financial mess, their rented terrace? Did she really mean so little to him? How had she managed to let him talk her out of doing Starmap 3000 when clearly, it was a big break and could have led somewhere? She saw that now. She could have been earning big fat American dollars instead of fifteen bucks an hour in a regional city, and it just wasn't fair.
Some days she expected the phone to ring, sure that she would hear his voice in her ear, telling Ally-shenally to get her arse over to Vienna, sorry he hadn't called but he was getting everything set up for them and he was ready for her now. There were so many cultural avenues for her to explore, hills to climb. How he wanted her beside him to share in his success, keep him warm at night so please could she come? Alice kept her phone beside her, day and night, waiting and hoping.
After a month working six-day weeks, Peter appointed Alice as shop manager. In addition to serving customers and overseeing junior staff, she swept and mopped the floor, counted the day's takings and locked the shop by pulling down the big metal grate at the front. One of the advantages in being last to leave on Saturday was taking home the unsold baked goods. The Evans family had a constant supply of pink doughnuts and lamingtons for the next year.
Alice had never endured such a dry spell in her entire career. She tried to keep herself buoyant by thinking that Cornucopia would be released any day now, and with that would come a fresh round of job offers. Wasn't there a mini-series that was shooting in July? Wasn't there a feature film that just got funding and needed a female lead?
She was in constant contact with Bunny Gange, who became harder to catch the longer the drought continued. When she did finally pin her agent down, her queries were answered. Yes, those two jobs were on offer, but Celestia Bannow had accepted leads in both and was returning from LA to shoot them simultaneously. She was just that good.
Finally, one day in April, Bunny's receptionist, Fleur called. 'Hi, Alice, how are you?'
'Surviving,' Alice sighed. 'Can you hold on, I just have to serve a customer . . . okay, go on.'
'I'm pretty sure this won't be of interest, but Bunny said to check with you. There's a short-run television commercial for pineapple chunks in their own juices going this month. But I have to warn you, the whole job is only worth three thousand, and your image would appear in Bi-Lo supermarkets at point of sale as well. We don't think it's enough money to have your face splashed all over the TV and the canned fruit section of the budget supermarkets. What do you think?'
Alice hesitated for a nanosecond before replying. 'Where and when?'
Alice caught the train up to Sydney, swapping a shift at the cake shop. She wore camera-friendly soft pink and applied more makeup than usual.
At Lou Martin and Associates Casting office, Alice was greeted warmly by Lou, who guided her into the casting suite. She asked Alice to look straight down the barrel of the camera and say: 'In cheesecakes, on the kids' cereal or straight out of the can, nothing tastes sweeter than Queensland Sunripe Pineapple.'
'Perfect!' Lou enthused. Now could she gobble a pineapple chunk? And giggle? Prettily, and in a manner only ever seen in television commercials, Alice obligingly gobbled and giggled, and wiped away some extraneous juice from her chin as if it were the funniest thing in the whole world. After fifteen minutes of miming canned fruit-inspired ecstasy, Alice thanked Lou for seeing her, stopped for a proper coffee in Surry Hills and boarded a bus bound for her connecting train at Central Station.
Bunny Gange was both pleased and sympathetic delivering the good news. The pineapple chunks were hers and she had managed to negotiate them up to $3500.
'Mum, I've decided to go to LA,' Alice announced over her Cornflakes before running for the 6.20 bus. It was December again and the cicadas were already deafening in the gully below the verandah.
'Oh, Alice . . . What about Peter Burgess? I hope you've done the right thing and told him . . .'
'Yes, Mum, he knows and he's happy for me. I'm not the only person in Wollongong capable of slicing bread and selling fruit buns.'
'Well, all right, dear.'
'Look on the bright side. You can turn my room back into an office!'
'But do you have enough . . .'
'I have my plane ticket and spending money for a few months. But if I get work there, you know, all our money troubles are over. They pay heaps over there, Mum!'
'I believe that's true. Apparently Celestia Bannow has made a small fortune. Will lamb chops do you for dinner, Alice?'
Alice arrived in Santa Monica, parked on Ocean Avenue and walked down to the beach. She threw herself onto the cold sand, hoping to be restored by positive ions. Lumps of grey cloud hung low in the sky. A wicker fence, windblown and broken, sagged halfway to the shore. A lone rollerblader skated into the wind on the boardwalk. The beach seemed dirty. It wasn't a patch on her beloved coastline near Wollongong, or even madly busy Bondi for that matter. Alice pulled her satchel to her and hugged it close.
The wind gusted through palm trees. She ventured down to the shore and stuck her hand cautiously into the water. It was freezing cold and made her hand numb. She retreated and blew her nose.
Alice reached for her phone. She couldn't remember Nick's number by heart so called 411 and got the number for the Secret Palms. Unsurprisingly, there was no answer. Alice couldn't imagine him sitting in it for fun. She left a message with a raspy-voiced woman on the front desk. Perhaps he'd decided to go back to Dublin after all? She picked up her satchel and began to walk.
She walked quite briskly at first, but eventually her pace slowed and she felt herself plodding.
It was hard work walking on the sand, especially in the brown boots she'd elected to wear to her meeting at the Château Marmont. Angry gulls whooped overhead. Her head was full of static, but it made a change from the images of Conrad in his shiny incarnation as auteur du jour. Up ahead at the end of the pier, the Ferris wheel stood motionless in the empty fairground. As she reached it, she heard her phone ring from deep within her satchel.
'Alice? It's Nick.'
'Nick,' Alice sighed. She was desperately relieved to hear his voice.
'What's up? Are you okay?' he asked.
'I'm . . . yes, I'm okay. Can we get together?'
'Where are you? With the cats?'
'No, I'm . . . I'm walking aimlessly on Santa Monica Beach. Can you come down here? Or do you want me to come to you?'
'No, no, I haven't been there before, so it might be a nice thing to do before I fly out. What do I do?'
'Take the Santa Monica freeway all the way to the end then stop. Or you know, you'd end up in the water, obviously. Park on Ocean Avenue. I'm near the pier. You've got a rental, right?'
'Yeah, the car company had nothing left except a minivan. So, I'll drive the van to Santa Monica Beach. Probably look like a serial killer or something.'
'I'll be waiting at the pier. You can't miss it.'
'Give me forty-five minutes,' he said and hung up.
Alice knew it was unfair to unload on Nick, especially when her problems involved her ex. But he was only in town for a short time and her options were limited.
Nick arrived exactly forty minutes later in rumpled jeans, a blue-and-white striped un-ironed shirt and trainers. He stood on the path and waved his arms over his head. Alice ran towards him as fast as she could in her leather boots. 'Thank you for coming,' she said, reaching him and hugging him tight. Her face slotted into a cosy area around his collarbone and she thought how nice it would be to take up permanent residence there.
'Whoa!' he said, momentarily thrown by her affectionate embrace, then cautiously put his arms around her and gave her a pat. Alice could feel his heart vibrating under his shirt. She remembered how she'd blown him off the night before and stepped back. No wonder he seemed restrained.
'Are you crying, Alice?' he peered at her. 'What the hell is going on?' He pulled her close this time and ruffled her hair. Alice felt herself melting into his embrace, and tried to hold back. She felt a painful lump in her chest as she swallowed.
'What've they done to you, this time? Got you to do location recce for nothing? Or were you forced to eat another banana anchovy supreme pizza?'
Alice began to smooth down her hair, pulling at the tendrils on the back of her neck. She wiped away a few tears as though they were annoying insects. Then she began dusting the sand off her boots. She hoped these actions would restore some order to her emotions.
'I'm sorry, Nick,' she said, her voice sounding strangled, 'you must see me as such a hard-luck case,' she continued, her hand now dusting sand from her right shoulder. 'I'm . . . everything is so . . . it's just . . . all gone to hell in a hand-basket, really, and I don't know . . .' Alice could feel the tears rising again and swallowed hard to stop them.
'Alice, let's sit down,' he said gently, drawing her onto the sand. From his pocket, he withdrew a large blue handkerchief and offered it to her. She lowered her face into it, inhaling its smell. It smelled of Nick; of Irish tea and Comme de Garcon perfume.
'I can't bear to blow my nose on it,' she protested, her voice muffled from within its folds.
'What're you on about?' he laughed. 'It's a handkerchief, you eejut.'
Alice took a deep breath, still face down in the handkerchief. Finally, as if fortified by his scent, she looked up and began to speak. She faced directly out to sea and was aware of a small boat way out, bobbing on the swell.
'Nick, I'm so sorry. This is our last day together and here I am miserable over something that I just can't hide from you. I should, but I can't. But when I tell you about it, you might be angry too. I don't know.'
'Try me,' he reassured her, shifting in the sand to face her. 'I'm not that fragile, Alice.'
Alice rubbed her forehead and could feel grains of sand in her eyebrows. She tried to dust them away and they scattered on her cheeks.
'First of all, I'm sorry I split like that last night,' she apologised, shaking her head. 'Did you see the film?'
'I did, actually. It was great, so just don't worry about it, okay? I'm a big boy. I can take it.'
Alice felt inordinately disappointed to have missed the experience. 'Well, great, I'm glad you . . .' She took a deep breath. 'Nick, remember I told you about the play?' she began, 'the theatre company with my ex and the debt that my . . .'
'Sure the candy pigs, the horrendous sum that your parents invested . . .'
'Right, so my ex, his name is Conrad, by the way, left town to work in Europe and that was that.' Alice stole a sideways glance at Nick. His expression was impossible to read.
'Anyway,' she blurted, 'one year later, no word up until now of his whereabouts, and here he is! Suddenly! In LA! But worse, he's directing this amazing film, with huge actors and a big budget. So anyway, yesterday, out of the blue, I get a summons to meet with him for the lead role.'
'Oh,' said Nick. He sounded disappointed and nodded slightly. 'So that's why you had to . . .'
'Yes, but no, Nick, it's not like that,' she interrupted, shaking her head vigorously and continuing to stare out at the shore break.
'So I thought . . . do I not go? What about this money that he owes my parents? It was our theatre company, after all. I paid back ten of the twenty thousand, and I think it's only bloody fair enough that he comes up with the rest.'
'Uh-huh.' Nick was listening intently, methodically rubbing his fingertips with his thumb, one by one, and then starting over again.
'And then I thought . . . perhaps he's going to give me a break and, in getting me work, he's finding a way for me to recover the funds without getting into some ugly handout situation. I didn't know what to think, but I needed to go and find out. Do you understand?'
'I think so, Alice.' Nick sounded genuinely magnanimous. 'So, are you going to tell me what happened?' He sighed and let his hands fall to his knees. 'You got the part, right? And you're off to Jamaica to film and there's only one cabin on the beach for the director and lead actress, so they have to share.'
'Oh, sure,' she said, laughing hollowly. 'No, let's look at the real picture.' She turned her body to face him. 'I got to the Château Marmont, was made to wait, mind you. Then I'm welcomed by his PA into his fucking suite, and was told that it wasn't a job offer for the lead role, no! Don't be a der brain Alice! It's an audition for the second sidekick part. She's a lesbian who works in a balloon shop and has a total of about twenty lines.'
'Ouch,' he said sympathetically.
'And not only has he been directing hit theatre productions in Vienna, he has also been directing international television commercials for multinational corporations, shopping for gadgets and designer clothes, and has now morphed into some Antipodean Sam Mendes.' Alice threw a small rock towards the water and said quietly, 'The whole thing made me feel like a . . . a loser.'
'You're not,' Nick said vehemently. 'I look at you and I see someone with a lot to offer. But this is a warped environment to be in. It plays tricks with your self-esteem. And the whole ex-factor thing makes it even weirder.'
'Picture my self-esteem as a bewildered circus dog, jumping through hoops, chasing its tail and gnawing its own foot – with a rope round its neck.' Alice jabbed her finger in the sand. 'This industry, Nick, you look around, and . . . the meek,' she said decisively, 'do not inherit the earth.'
'Well, Hollywood, anyway.'
'In fact, it seems the opposite. If you're prepared to crush others, then you'll get ahead.'
'Hmm . . . anyway, it might be time to stop feeding other people's meters. I think we've established that.'
Alice snorted. She sounded like a goat sneezing.
'I'm so sick of sounding like a victim, Nick. I don't want to be that. It's just . . . my dad's sick, my ex owes my parents ten thousand dollars, I've pranged my bloody rental car and you're about to fly out to Dublin forever. Could it get any worse?'
Nick was silent.
'Nick?' Alice asked, looking round at him. 'What is it?'
'That pathetic little prat,' he said firmly. 'I've half a mind to go over to the Château Margot and punch his silly face in.'
They laughed. She looked at him and took a deep breath to summon her courage. 'Nick, I need to get that money for my dad. I can't ignore that. Now I know you have to leave town . . .'
'It's okay. I think I've bought myself some more time, working on the schedule from here.'
'Oh, thank heaven for that. Look, I need to go in there and win this part. But I also want to spend time with you. Could you run lines with me for the next two hours, and then we can go and get some dinner somewhere?'
Nick smiled at her. 'Okay,' he said, simply. He was looking at her intently again, with his head on one side. She stood up and dusted the sand off her dress.
'Alice, you can stop with the frantic sand-removal now. It's okay, I'm sure it's not toxic in Santa Monica.' He got up and cleared his throat. Sand poured out of his own back pocket.
Alice felt a hundred times lighter, having shared her problems with him. She felt a glimmer of optimism, as though the noose around the circus dog's neck had loosened momentarily. 'I need to get out of this bloody outfit and into some jeans. Can you follow me back in the minivan? There are a couple of cats that are dying to meet you.'
Nick smiled at her. 'Sure. You've painted such a wholesome picture, I'm frantic with anticipation.'
Alice climbed into her Daewoo and more sand fell onto the floor mats. She started the engine and hit redial on her phone. 'Rebekah?'
'Alice. I was just about to call. Hey, what's wrong with your voice?'