Star Struck

by Jane Lovering

  ‘All I’m saying is, he’s got his reasons. We’re not all as strong as you.’ He heard the soft step as she came across the carpet, and smelled that scent she used, so floral that it was surprising she wasn’t mugged by bees every time she went outdoors. Her fingers closed on his elbow. ‘I’m not as strong as you.’

  Another laugh broke from his throat, this one hollow and heavy. ‘Yeah, but it was all my fault in the first place, wasn’t it? And now Gethryn’s making me pay for it; just seeing his face every day is like having my nose rubbed in what I’ve done. Every day, Liss. Well, every day he can be bothered to get his starry arse out of bed and come to work, that is.’

  Lissa said nothing, just stood, keeping one hand on his arm. Jack looked around the room but it wasn’t the tacky wallpaper, the grim works of so-called art that hung askew, that he was seeing. His body might be nailed to Nevada but his mind was running free on the moors, and he suddenly felt the lack of huge grey skies and the solid ranks of hills like a pain. He pulled a face. Okay, you miss the place. Now lock it away.

  Lissa did that short sighing thing that drove him round the bend. ‘You can’t blame me for thinking something’s up though, Ice. I mean, here you are, up to your ass in talent and deadlines, and I find you shut up in here with some Limey chick throwing up like there’s no tomorrow.’

  ‘Working well, Liss, I actually understood the majority of the words in that sentence. The actual order they appear in is a bit more problematic.’ He twisted away from her hand back to his screen and tapped a few keys in a lackadaisical way. ‘Look, you’re right, I feel … I dunno. I need some time. Why don’t you head back downstairs, or, better still, go to your own room? Let me do what I have to here.’

  ‘And is part of what you have to do that spaced-out honey?’ Lissa tucked some hair behind her ear, leaving the side of her face bare. It made her look vulnerable and Jack felt a pang in his chest. Sometimes the shadow cast by what had gone before hung long and low over his life, like a sundial at evening.

  ‘No.’ He typed randomly, hoping she’d take the hint and leave. ‘You know me, Liss. Strictly hands-off policy. She’s a Brit, I heard the accent, fancied talking to someone who doesn’t think Stonehenge is a theme park.’ There was no point in being more specific; Liss thought Dick-Van-Dyke-cockney was an accurate representation. ‘I get homesick, Liss, you know that.’ Type, type. The quick brown fox jumped feverishly over the lazy dog, and then back again. Eventually Lissa’s reflection dropped the scowl and gave a quick smile he wasn’t sure he was supposed to have seen.

  ‘Homesick, huh. Nice that you admit to feeling anything, Iceman. I’ll head back down then. See how the signings are going. Gauge interest for Sunday night, that kinda thing.’

  ‘You do that.’ Type, type and it was only when the door swung closed behind her that Jack allowed himself to relax and look at what he’d written.

  ‘Why isn’t anything ever simple?’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Skye, you have to come!’ Felix was almost on his knees. ‘What was the point in coming all the way out here if you’re going to spend the whole convention hiding in your fucking room?’

  I pulled another pillow in front of me. ‘All those people, Fe. They’ve all seen me dribbling and vomiting and all gakky and disgusting and most of them have seen us being chucked out of the diner. Why, in God’s name, would you think I’d want to be seen again by any of them, in any state? I can only imagine what might happen next; my knickers fall to my knees, perhaps? My boobs roll out of my top and settle on the table just as the waiters bring in a bowl of melons?’

  ‘You are over-reacting, darling.’

  ‘Believe me, refusing to go to this dinner is under-reacting on a scale you can’t imagine.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you like Gethryn to see you all done up properly? Give him a chance to check you out when you’ve got your make-up on and you’re dressed up? After all,’ Felix lowered his voice, ‘he did wink at you earlier on. And that was when you were totally scuzzy. See what he thinks of the delicious Skye Threppel when she’s got up like a Scissor Sisters concert.’

  ‘Not helping.’ But I had to admit my morning run-in with Gethryn had given a new edge to the possibility of going out in public. ‘Besides, look at my hair. I can’t appear in public with hair like this, they’ll think Sasquatch is making a guest appearance.’ To illustrate my point I raked my hands over my scalp and they jammed half-way through, making my hair jut at odd angles.

  ‘Oh, that is easily sorted.’ He dragged his phone from his pocket and tapped in a quick text. The answer beeped back almost immediately. ‘Wait there.’ And he leapt up and ran out of the door.

  I stared at myself in the mirror across the room. A lengthy shower and sleep had removed the evidence of my morning’s activities, leaving me looking at the real me. All frizzy hair and skinny shoulders, in a vest top that made my chest look like two poached eggs on a plank. And scars. I lifted my fringe and traced the scar downwards, through my eyebrow, round my eye socket where it had thankfully not affected my sight, and down to the top of my cheekbone, where it split into two before fading out in a little radius of tiny lines, like a sunburst. I’d seen out 2008 as a whole, unblemished actress and only hours later my entire life had revolved around an unknown degree of brain damage and scars. Passing time had seen this one blur and whiten, from an evil incision-red, marked with the dashes of staples, to a pale pink, stammering over half-healed sections which continually peeled away in patches of renewed redness. It was healing. Cleanly and without infection. And this made me lucky.

  Part of me could appreciate the irony. I was lucky not to be dead. Of course I was. But not being dead meant living with scars which marked me so resolutely, so absolutely, that it had stopped my career as dead as I wasn’t. Casting directors didn’t want a girl with a huge brand down one side of her face. I was too noticeable. Maybe, in a few years …

  Yeah. Maybe.

  ‘Fingers!’ Felix barked as he walked back in, and I untwisted my hands, stopped picking. ‘I got you some hair gunk. What’cha think?’ With a flourish, he pulled out a bottle I didn’t recognise and passed it to me. ‘Some kind of Yank stuff. Reckon it makes your hair smooth. Want to try?’

  Despite myself I found I was tipping hair-smoother into my palm. Curious. ‘Where did you get this from?’ Stroked a tiny amount through a few strands and was amazed. ‘It actually works.’

  ‘Lissa.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. Are you sure she gave it to you? Only I know that you sometimes have a very loose interpretation of “borrowing” things.’

  He shrugged. ‘I asked if I could have it and she said yes. She didn’t mention returning it, all right? Anyway, come on, I want to get you out of here and downstairs asap, sweetie.’

  ‘And she’s all right about my having it?’ Felix said nothing. ‘So that would be, why?’

  He avoided meeting my eye. ‘Lissa and I, we got talking, she’s very … amusing.’

  I pulled back to look at him, all buffed up and wearing black. ‘Right. I know. That kind of amusing.’

  ‘Come on, Skye, you’ve seen her, would you turn it down? I mean, really?’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s up to you. But do you really want Jack looking over your shoulder all the time?’ I finished rubbing serum-covered fingers through my hair and let it lie, unaccustomedly slick, on my shoulders; dabbed mascara at my eyes and applied my usual cover-up make-up, adding an extra layer for luck and Gethryn-potential.

  ‘Nah, they’re long over. And even then it was just a thing, she says. Between you and me, I think there was some serious shit going on with this show. You know the online chat, come on, give.’

  I shrugged, stared at my reflection and wondered what people would see if I ventured downstairs. A scarred girl trying too hard? ‘First series ran into trouble and nearly got cancelled, but there was
an online campaign to keep it going and it got picked up again. They do that sometimes over here, if there’s enough advertising revenue coming in.’ I shook my head and my hair amazed me by following the movement. Usually it flared out and surrounded my face, leaving me peeping out like the aftermath of a cartoon explosion.

  ‘And talking of picking things up …’ Felix handed me my smart white top. ‘You and Jack, eh? Mind you, I wouldn’t throw him out of bed for eating oysters.’

  ‘We’ve yet to find anyone you’d throw out of bed; you’re not exactly discriminating, are you? And it’s not like that. He’s nice. He’s kind. But that’s all.’

  ‘Holding out for the big guy are you?’ Felix was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

  ‘Hardly! And anyway …’ I dropped my hand away from my face, ‘I can’t do it. I mean, who am I trying to kid, dressing up like this and doing my hair and everything? I’m a failed actress with a stonking great scar, not the kind of person you want me to be. This whole thing … it’s not that I’m not grateful, Fe, and it’s fantastic that I’m here and I’ve met new people … well, one new person, and all that, but … a dinner? With people standing around talking?’ All my insides took a little step sideways. ‘I’ll stay up here.’ Useless, useless Skye.

  ‘But you can’t. You can’t spend the whole convention up here!’ As though he’d scared himself, Fe stopped, ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. ‘Just … look. You came to get a chance to meet Gethryn Tudor-Morgan, right?’

  I scrunched up my face, but didn’t reply.

  ‘All right. And down there, it’s not like it’s a top-hat-and-tails do. It’s a buffet, meet-the-stars kind of thing. You’re looking gorgeous – believe it, sweetie – and you’ve already broken the ice, so to speak, downstairs earlier. Come on, you want Gethryn to see you in a good light, don’t you?’

  My fingers went again to my scar. ‘I’d actually prefer him to see me in total darkness.’

  ‘Mmmmm …’ Felix ran his hands up and down his body, suggestively. ‘Gethryn, by Braille. Bet he’s a fluent body-reader.’

  ‘He’d hear nothing from mine.’

  ‘Do you want some of the Valium? It would help … take the edge off.’

  I thought about it. ‘No. I don’t really need it, I just panicked. After all, even with the make-up people are going to see the scar, they’re going to think whatever they think whether I’ve taken Valium or not. I’m tired of being dependent, on you, on drugs, on the doctors.’

  He stared at me. ‘Grief, one drunken episode with a gorgeous man and you’re swearing off pharmaceuticals? They should put him on the NHS.’

  ‘I’m tired of feeling out of control. I want a life, Fe. I know it won’t be the old one back again, and I know I’m going to have to work at it, but, now I’m here I think I should try.’ I sat down on the bed. ‘Except … I’m not sure trying involves being in a crowded place.’

  Felix gave me one of his Looks, and handed me my black trousers. ‘Even if a very large part of that crowd is Gethryn? You want him, you know it. And don’t try to tell me otherwise, when your nipples are sticking up like a couple of brass door handles at the thought of meeting him. Look, if you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.’ Another unreadable look. ‘For Faith. You know if she was here she’d be so excited; she’d have you in one of your old tarty frocks, flaunting it from here to Arkansas. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she, Skye?’

  I felt the shiver I always felt when he talked about Faith. As though my skin was trying to get my attention. ‘Yes, she would.’

  ‘So?’ Felix did a little dance on the spot. ‘Can you at least try? For my sister?’

  For Faith. For my beautiful best friend. Could I? ‘Don’t leave me, will you, Fe?’

  Felix stood up and held out his arm. ‘I will be stapled to your side all evening. As long as you don’t end up heaving in the Ladies’, of course.’ Cautiously I hooked my arm through his. ‘Right. Let’s get laid!’ Then, seeing my look, ‘Figure of speech, sweetheart, figure of speech.’

  * * * * *

  The party was restricted to those convention-goers who were actually staying in the motel, the day-visitors being bussed in from the town an hour’s drive away every morning, so the numbers were far lower than had flooded around in reception earlier. A brave few had come in costume and there was something oddly unsettling about watching a Shadow pilot juggle a plate of nibbles and a glass of red wine alongside his blaster rifle. The two lads dressed as Skeel were labouring around the room under the weight of their cylinders, unable to eat because of the full-face helmets their outfits dictated, playing their parts to the max, while the rest of us who wore street clothes hung around the walls like kids at a school disco, waiting for the Big Boys to arrive. The diner was stripped out, tables stacked to the sides and the buffet laid down the centre on trestles. A projector showed a constant stream of images from the show on a huge screen made by closing off the door at the end furthest from reception and putting a board across it but despite the organisers’ best efforts it still felt like a canteen in fancy dress.

  But Felix was right. Having already been faced with most of these people, and particularly when I’d been at my physical lowest, had broken the ice for me a little. Although I felt as though I was travelling inside an egg-shell which might shatter into a million shards at any moment, no-one looked, no-one stared or nudged their neighbour, no-one whispered.

  As Felix and I made as unobtrusive an entrance as possible, we were overtaken by two of Gethryn’s co-stars, who immediately started milling around and chatting to people.

  ‘Who’re they?’ Felix nudged me.

  I pointed at the pale, blond lad in the tight blue sari-style costume. ‘Jared White, who plays Defries, Lucas James’s second-in-command, and the girl is Martha Cohen. She’s Defries’s wife. B’Ha, but she’s on their side because her family were wiped out in the war.’

  ‘Verrrry nice.’ He hustled me up to the tables, picked up a paper plate and began scouting, knowing Felix, for the most phallic-shaped food on offer.

  I looked at Martha again. ‘She’s almost impossible to recognise, out of make-up. Wouldn’t have known who she was, except …’

  ‘I meant, him.’ Felix picked up a carrot baton and nibbled the end, suggestively. Left it a moment, then smiled across the room. To my amazement, he got a smile in return. ‘Wheyhey, looks like I’ve still got it, babe.’

  ‘Felix.’

  He jabbed the plate at me, until I took it. ‘Just popping over to introduce myself.’

  Don’t leave me, I was too late to say. He was gone, crossing the room, armed with nothing but a smile and a root vegetable. I watched, envying his physical ease and his wit, his absolute certainty that life wouldn’t let him down. I’d been like that once. Hadn’t I? The room rocked with the sudden doubt. What had I been like? I had to search through scrambled memories just to try to pin myself down – a floating collection of thoughts and doubts with islands of complete remembrance jutting from them like little gold nuggets in a coal seam. And that missing year hadn’t even left a smear of memory behind; it had been stolen from me completely. No-one ever really talked about the time before the accident, not Felix, not my briefly visiting parents, nor the occasional passing friend. Maybe they didn’t want to upset me by reminding me of everything I’d lost, maybe they were upset on their own behalves that I couldn’t remember them, or that I’d lost so many memories that they thought I should have treasured. But it meant that my whole identity had to be assumed, I had nothing of my past adult self to build upon. All I had was those typically distant memories of childhood, my fuzzed-over adolescence and then nothing but fragments which could have been dreams. I was like a huge newborn baby, learning everything for the first time.

  I looked down at the plate and concentrated on the creases in its cardboard. I fel
t okay as long as I didn’t think about how full the room was, and I was eating, well, snacking, looking interested – just like a real person. No-one could tell that I couldn’t even remember if I’d grown to like pickles; and if I didn’t think about how many people there were, milling about in that small space, where I couldn’t touch the walls, I’d be fine. Fine, yes, if I didn’t think about the people breathing my air, holding me in place so I couldn’t run, couldn’t get out, get out …

  I found myself standing in the dusty yard, plate still in hand, unable to remember how I’d got through the crowd and slightly surprised, because I hadn’t consciously felt stressed, until I’d run. And yet, here I was, gasping, dragging the hot air down into my lungs, feeling it scritch and swirl down my throat, knowing that I couldn’t be dying because I was breathing. My heart chiselled away at my ribs and I had to drop the plate because my hands were shaking so much.

  It was caught before it hit the ground. ‘Careful, girl. They’re valuable, these plates. Ten dollars per hundred, see?’

  Clenching my toes to prevent the incipient faint, I looked up. Gethryn stood beside me, his own plate in his hand and his face wrapped in a smile that I wasn’t sure was for me. I looked over my shoulder, but there was nothing there apart from the scrubby cactuses which had been planted all along the wall. He couldn’t be smiling at a cactus, could he? Cautiously I smiled back.

  ‘That’s better. Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be frowning. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.’ A hand extended my way. ‘Name’s Gethryn. Unless you knew that, in which case just call me Mr Moron.’

  ‘I … did know.’ Almost afraid to make contact in case he disseminated into a stream of atoms, I touched his hand. Cool and sure it closed around mine. ‘I’m Skye.’ Still trembling.

  He didn’t seem to notice the vibration of my fingers. Gave my hand a firm shake. ‘Jesus, I’m glad to meet someone who’s not completely barking.’ A confidentially lowered voice. ‘Most of the women in there? They’d have the boxers off my arse if I stopped moving long enough. Christ, fans are bad when they’re at a distance, never mind being trapped in a room with a hundred of the buggers.’ He tipped his head towards the people standing at the doors to the diner or sitting on the steps that led down, out into the desert, chatting to one another and pretending not to know who he was.