He hands me a glass of champagne, then guides me to the table. A hefty tip is discreetly slipped to the waiters and we’re left alone.
This is it then, I think, no turning back now. From where my chair is positioned, I can see right through to the bedroom: a sleigh bed big enough to sleep an entire family, scented candles dotted around the room, and a bouquet of red roses relieving the dull monotony of the grey.
What in the name of arse am I doing? Why am I here? Out of revenge? To get my own back at Dan? To try and feel something other than the awful emptiness that’s inside me?
It’s like watching a master class in foreplay, is all I can think, like I’m completely distanced from the whole thing.
We eat, or rather, he eats and I pick at my food; no appetite.
And then, crunch time. He leads me to the sofa, puts on classical music in the background and slowly moves in towards me, arm around my shoulder, lips at my ear. We both know what’s coming next and I’ve run out of excuses to put him off.
His kisses my hand delicately, then stops to fiddle with my wedding ring.
‘Why do you insist on still wearing this, my dear? Don’t you think it’s a travesty? Or do you wear it as a lucky charm to stave off wolves like me?’
‘Don’t touch it,’ I say and it’s only when I see his reaction that I realise I almost snapped the words at him.
Then, wordlessly, he starts to nibble my earlobe and I let him, staring straight ahead, completely tuned out. I can’t imagine, I am trying really hard not to imagine what’s going on at The Moorings right about now. Is someone else kissing Dan too? Is someone else lying beside him, wanting him, making love to him?
Breathing more heavily, Jack moves down to my neck, kissing every square inch of it, his hand moving up the crushed velvet of my dress and cupping my boobs, gently pressing down. Now he’s moving up a gear, his whole body is stiffening and his hands feel that bit rougher, as he lays me backwards onto the sofa, stretching me out and caressing up and down every inch of me. He’s on top of me now, pressing down hard on me, biting into my neck and expertly undoing the zip at the back of my dress.
And all the time, I’m miles away.
Three thousand miles away. In county Waterford, to be exact. At home.
His icy hands are under my dress now, working their way downwards and lightly grazing my thighs as he starts to moan more urgently. It’s only when he kisses me full on, slipping a darty tongue in my mouth…. and I pull away from him, that he eventually realises something’s up. That somehow I can’t access that animal attraction to him that was there before. That I’m just lying here, utterly un responsive. Like a corpse, present in body but not in spirit.
‘Annie? Annie, what’s up?’
Gone is his sexy toffee-voice, now he’s beginning to sound gruff, impatient.
‘Answer me. Is something wrong?’
I haul myself up onto my elbows, brushing hair out of my eyes and fumbling to pull the zip of my dress back up.
‘Jesus Christ, what are you doing? Where are you going?’
‘Jack, I’m sorry, I can’t do this…’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous, you’re not going anywhere.’
He’s on his feet now, cold and angry. I look at him and see all the desire that was there a few seconds ago quickly drain from his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ is all I can repeat over again. ‘I just can’t. Not now and maybe not ever. If Dan did this to me, I don’t know what I’d do, so it doesn’t seem right that I leap into bed with you just to get even.’
‘Dan is doing this to you, my deluded little idiot, at this very minute possibly.’
‘WHAT did you just say?’
‘Oh please, it’s all over the theatre. Your ex has moved on and you’re still in this ridiculously protracted mourning period for him? Have you taken complete leave of your senses?’
‘I can’t explain,’ I say, groping to get my arms into the sleeves of my coat. Only the truth too, I couldn’t explain if I tried. It’s like I’m stuck in this no man’s land. I wasn’t able to make it work with Dan and now I can’t seem to move on either.
Jack is lighting up a cigarette and holding it exactly level with his lips, realising that sex is firmly off tonight’s agenda.
‘You do know that you’re making a huge mistake, my dear?’ he says, exhaling deep blue cloud puffs. ‘Because walk out that door and I’m telling you right now that you and I are over.’
But I don’t answer, mainly because there’s nothing left to be said. We look at each other for a long time, like two actors in a play who’ve forgotten their lines and it’s a case of who’ll blink first. In the end, I give up. So I just grab my shoes, slip them over my bare feet and wordlessly leave.
I wait by the elevator bank, half wondering whether he’ll come after me, but he doesn’t. He lets me go and what’s more I’m glad of it.
No cabs outside the hotel and by now the rain is buffeting down so heavily it’s like a slap in my face, but I don’t care.
And when I do eventually get home, drenched right through to my knickers, the temptation to call Dan is so overwhelmingly huge that it hurts.
Chapter Nineteen
The minute I cross the threshold of the theatre for work the following evening, I swear I can practically smell trouble brewing in the air. It’s everywhere; it’s in the nervous glances the wardrobe mistress throws me when I meet her coming out of my dressing room, it’s in the discreet eye-roll the stage director throws me; even the perpetual good cheer of Hayley, Queen of the Box Office, seems to have dimmed a bit this evening. As much as to say, fasten your seatbelts, folks. Tonight’s going to be a bumpy ride.
It’s only when I throw open the dressing room door and head inside that I realise exactly what’s going on. Liz is already here ahead of me and one single look from her tells me just about everything I need to know. The wildly dilated pupils, the restlessness, the agitation, the aggressive energy.
Sweet Jesus, I do not be-fecking-lieve this. She’s only twenty-four hours out of hospital and already out of her head. No question. My heart sinks like a stone as the penny doesn’t so much drop as fall thudding to the floor. Here’s the reason why she was in such a mad rush to check herself out of the Eleanor Young clinic. Here’s the reason she wanted her freedom back so desperately, so urgently. So she could get out and start scoring all over again.
Suddenly I feel weak as a kitten. Perspiration breaks out and starts to roll from my armpits down towards my ribcage and all I can think is, what in the name of God do we do now? And how do we get through the show tonight with her like this?
Right then. Plan A: act normal. I start off by playing it as routinely as possible around her, dumping my bags down, flinging my coat off as usual, saying hi, asking how her day was. Faux-casual, even if I’m far from feeling it. Meanwhile she’s pacing up and down the tiny room like a maniac, flicking through the script and simultaneously lighting up a fag.
‘Ehh…sorry, Liz, but you know you’re not supposed to smoke inside the building.’
‘Feck off,’ she snaps, glaring haughtily at me. ‘Who asked you anyway?’
‘Oookaay,’ I say, stepping back at bit, realising just exactly how disastrous this evening could well be. ‘Ehhh, just so you know, I didn’t actually make up that law. America did.’
A sullen glare from her, like I only said that to get in a personal dig at her and then she flicks the fag carelessly into a used coffee cup. Meanwhile, I have to bite my tongue, as I’ve had to do so bloody often in the past, and remind myself that this isn’t the Liz I know and love in front of me; it’s the very worst version of her.
‘Emmm, Liz,’ I say, picking my words very, very carefully. ‘Are you feeling OK tonight?’
‘Fantastic. Never better. Why do you ask?’
‘Because you don’t seem like yourself.’
‘Well, as it happens, just in case you’re about to go gabbing off to the others about what condition I’m in, I’ve never
been better. Oh and by the way, you know the opening scene in Act Two? I’ve decided to play it a bit differently. It’s boring as arse the way it is, it needs to be jazzed up a bit. Just warning you in advance to be on your toes.’
‘But you can’t do that! You can’t just change the way we’ve been working a scene for almost a year now, without rehearsing it, or at least going through Jack first!’
‘Oh no? And tell me this: how many Tony awards do you have on your sideboard? Just watch me.’
The tom-toms have already gone through the building because the others have copped on that there’s something majorly up with her too; you can tell by the panicky looks that are passing between myself, Blythe, Chris and Alex backstage before curtain up.
As for me, my entire digestive system is in one big knot of tension, not helped by the fact that I had to swipe a baby bottle of vodka off Liz in the little bathroom we share not five minutes ago. I caught her slugging straight out of it like a wino, claiming it was for her nerves and somehow managed to wrest it out of her iron grip, to a further string of abuse from her…but now I’m thinking, booze? On top of whatever she was shoving up her nose all day?
Christ Alive, it’s like trying to babysit Sid Vicious.
The show starts and the first scene goes OK. Liz is late in on a few cues, but nothing that could be noticed by anyone other than the rest of us onstage with her. Scene two again, holds up. Liz seems OK, just stumbles over one of her speeches, but recovers enough for the rest of us to semaphore relieved glances across the stage at each other.
The trouble doesn’t start till well into the third scene, when we’re all onstage at the same time and Blythe throws her a line. Liz ignores her and there’s a horrible, horrible pause, while we all realise that she’s dried onstage. Completely dried up and forgotten her lines.
I’m too far away from her to be of any use, but Alex, thinking on her feet, moves close to her, fully in character and hisses the right line at her. Still no response. Then realising that her cue isn’t coming, Chris covers up and skips on a half page of dialogue, which the rest of us pick up on, leaving Liz looking bewildered on stage. It’s a fast-paced scene, one that Jack has consistently hammered into us must be played at rapid-fire speed and now it’s just limping along lamely, pathetically.
And then, real disaster. Just as the scene is supposed to build to a dramatic crescendo, and Liz is meant to deliver her most difficult and wordy speech, she rises to her feet, takes a terrifyingly long pause and slowly eyeballs each of us sharing the stage with her in turn. Chris, Alex, Blythe and I are frozen like terrified statues, each one of us dreading what’s coming next and yet powerless to prevent it. I feel like someone who knows they’re about to die, but who can’t guess the method – poison or sword.
OK, now sweat is actually streaming down me and I honestly think I’ll have an anxiety stroke if Liz doesn’t start her shagging speech and break this awful, charged silence.
She does. Eventually. And somehow she manages to stumble through the first paragraph, except that now she’s just line reading, like a first-year drama student reciting a boring poem that they don’t particularly like by rote. Like she’s just sending this performance in by fax, a million miles from her usual, effervescent, brilliant self.
A part of me is wondering whether the audience can somehow pick up on the nervousness that’s practically hopping off the rest of us as we all watch her, waiting, dreading what’s going to come out of her mouth next. They must do. I can see faces in the first few rows exchange glances with each other as much as to say this actress is a Tony winner? Ehh…why?
Seconds start to feel like hours and sure enough, two minutes later, Liz loses it. Completely. Falters on a line of dialogue, then starts to giggle. And doesn’t even bother trying to recover from it.
No, what she does is worse, far, far worse. Instead, she continues on, except now her laughs have turned into something more manic sounding and uncontrollable. The rest of us are really panicking now, frantically firing ‘do something!’ looks across the stage at each other, but it’s too late.
And that’s when it happens.
Liz turns directly to the audience, deliberately breaking the fourth wall and then addresses them directly.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she begins and I swear you could hear a pin drop. I can see as far as about row seven and it’s as though they’re thinking, could this be some bizarre part of the show? Is this meant to happen? From the wings, the stage director is frantically yelling into his headset that something’s gone badly wrong…and that’s when I see Jack backstage, looking coldly out at Liz, his face blank and expressionless, waiting, just waiting like the rest of us to see what in the name of God is about to unfold.
‘Sorry to have to do this to you all,’ Liz is saying to the crowd, sounding skittish and high as the ceiling, ‘but as you’ve probably gathered, I haven’t got a clue of what I say next. So if you’ll all excuse me, I’m buggering off now. I’ve had enough of this and I’d safely say that all have as well!’
And with that, she strides off the stage, leaving the rest of us standing there like mutes, utterly dumbstruck.
The fallout is horrendous. The curtain swishes down and from where we’re all rooted to the spot, we can clearly see Jack urgently grabbing Liz by the arm, almost pouncing on her like a tiger and telling her in no uncertain terms that she’s fired. That this was her probationary last chance after the Tony awards fiasco, and that now she’s royally blown it sky high. What’s more, that she’s to collect her things from the dressing room, turn in her ID card, leave the building and never, ever come back.
‘You can’t fire me,’ she almost spits back into his face, ‘have you seen my reviews? I’m a Tony winner, for fuck’s sake. Do you know how lucky you are to even have me in this?’
‘Get her out of here,’ Jack commands the stage director and I swear his voice is like vinegar. ‘And if she as much as attempts to show her face at the stage door again, call the police.’
There’s a shocked second where I can see the penny dropping with Liz, that he really means it this time. That it’s all over for her. She looks like someone who’s just been physically slapped across the face, so that’s when I step in, officially unable to take any more.
Shaking, I walk over to her and tell her that I’m taking her home to sleep off the effects of whatever crap she’s spent the day putting into her system, then first thing in the morning, I’m taking her straight back to the Eleanor Young clinic. And that it’s not negotiable.
‘Like fuck you are!’ she almost barks at me, shoving me away from her, before turning on her heel, charging out the stage door and off into the night, still wearing her costume.
I think it’s the longest night of my life. A few hours later, we’re all back home, Chris, Alex and I, sitting up in Blythe’s apartment, trying our best to stay calm and all the while just staring at the phone, waiting on it to ring. Hoping that maybe she’s OK, that maybe she’s just out with her shadowy new gang of pals and that maybe she’ll crawl home by herself at some point. Like she would have done on so many nights before. Fervently hoping, although not one of us is really hopeful. We all know that what happened tonight is endgame for Liz.
Because now she’s completely vanished. It’s almost two in the morning, she still hasn’t come back home and she’s not answering her phone either. To complicate matters, none of us have contact numbers or even names of the mysterious friends she’s been spending more and more time with, although I’m pretty certain she must be with one of them now.
Course she was. Who else would have supplied her?
Chris being Chris as usual takes charge and for once, in my shell-shocked, inert state, I’m glad of her decisive bossiness; glad to have the decisions made for the rest of us. She even tried calling the police, but they said unless Liz was missing for forty-eight hours, they couldn’t officially classify her as a missing person.
Needless to say, the show was abandoned after
what happened. A brief announcement was made to the audience explaining that one of the cast was ‘too unwell to continue performing’. A euphemism right up there with ‘tired and emotional’ if ever there was one. And of course, we could hardly continue the show with Liz’s understudy playing out the rest of it; it would have been beyond weird to have two actresses playing the same part, in the same show. So instead, they’ve all been refunded their money and offered complimentary tickets for another performance.
But of course that won’t stop the story leaking, and already Chris has come in with tomorrow morning’s paper, full of it.
Before he left the theatre, Jack coolly announced to all of us that from now on, Rachel, Liz’s understudy would continue in the role, till the end of the year. So in one fell swoop, Liz has brought her glittering Broadway career to a crashing end.
It’s the weirdest thing – every horrible detail of tonight is still vividly etched sharp in my memory, as though I might need to take a test on it later.
Worst thing of all was Jack’s reaction; now that he’s written Liz off, it’s as though he’s barely concerned about her welfare, where she is, who she’s with or most frightening of all, what she’s doing. It’s as though all that matters to him is the sacred cow that is the show, and now that he’s eliminated the one person who dared put it in jeopardy, it’s all behind him.
I always knew he was cold, just not callous along with it, that’s all.
‘I’ve seen it all happen before, you know,’ Blythe says sadly, passing round mugs of tea to Alex, Chris and me as we all sit in her living room, unable to sleep, just waiting, hoping for news.
‘Seen what?’ says Chris, sounding beyond exhausted.
‘Great talents like Liz just throwing it all away.’
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow Page 32