The Out of Office Girl

by Nicola Doherty

  Luther looks at me for a second, and then he looks out to sea. ‘I don’t know. I feel like I need to talk about it now, or not at all.’

  OK, fair enough. He’s about to talk about his ex-wife, after all. I should probably be sensitive about this subject.

  ‘Of course.’

  He starts by telling me how much Dominique has changed since she got married, had her two kids and went all holistic, and how hard it is to break up with someone well-known.

  ‘The thing is, when regular people break up, they don’t have to see their exes ten feet high on a billboard, you know? I mean, it’s hard enough breaking up with someone, without having to see them on screen, and in magazines, and read interviews about how your break-up was mutual when you know it was anything but. Don’t quote me on that, by the way.’

  ‘I won’t quote you about reading her interviews and disagreeing about the break-up being mutual,’ I say. ‘But I like the bit about the billboards.’

  ‘I read an interview after she had her baby,’ Luther continues. ‘I couldn’t believe it was her. All that stuff about the divine mother and life force and seeing rainbows everywhere. I remember her saying that she definitely didn’t want kids because they sucked the life force out of you, and that was why she hated her parents and vice versa. Kids were not on our agenda. But I guess he talked her into it. And now she’s happy. And that’s great.’

  ‘He’ is Dominique’s current husband, and I’ve already gathered that Luther can’t stand him. ‘Douchebag’ is one of the more polite words he’s used.

  ‘I mean, you know what – he acts all arthouse and sensitive and he does his painting and carpentry and all that stuff. And that’s cool. But what nobody seems to remember is that he started out on a soap opera and he’s basically had about as much formal training as I have, i.e., none. And even though he’s meant to be so bankable, half of his movies don’t open. The fact is, he has this undeserved reputation which doesn’t translate, either to his bottom line or to the quality of the movies he picks.’

  ‘Um . . .’ I’m beginning to realise that, like most authors, Luther sometimes has a tendency to go off on tangents. He clearly has a bee in his bonnet about Dominique’s husband: I’ll have to remember this and steer clear of the subject. ‘You were telling me about Dominique,’ I say, gently.

  ‘Right. Dominique and the mother life force?’ He laughs. Then his smile fades. ‘I guess the thing about those conversations we had,’ he continues, ‘was that they always happened when we were out of it. But then, we were almost always out of it. That’s kind of how it worked with us.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, trying to look knowledgeable.

  ‘I don’t know if you do drugs, Alice.’

  ‘Well, I’ve—’

  ‘The thing about them is . . . when you do a lot of drugs, and you get together with someone else who does a lot of drugs, it’s a kind of like having a third person in your relationship. Do you know what I mean? I mean . . . after a while it’s hard to tell if you’re doing drugs because you’re together, or you’re together because you do drugs, or both.’

  I make a note of this, thinking again how perceptive he can be.

  ‘The first time I met her was during a read-through. I’d seen pictures of her, but I just thought she was even more beautiful in the flesh, and she had this edge about her. The tattoos – I had never seen an actress with inks before. Now they all have them, but even six years ago it was pretty unusual. But most of all, it was the way she just looked right through me, like she didn’t give a damn who I was.’

  ‘And you liked that,’ I say. Clever Dominique, I think. The oldest trick in the book.

  ‘Yeah! I’d had two years of women throwing themselves at me. I could have anyone I wanted, and I did. I can remember – I’m not kidding – being at a party where girls were literally lined up in front of me. The line to talk to me was like a line to get into a nightclub. So Dom’s attitude was pretty attractive.

  ‘The movie wasn’t huge, as you know. But we had fun shooting it. Lots of action scenes. We used to get off on those.’ He looks at me lazily, and I sit up straighter, hoping I don’t look embarrassed. ‘And Dom got me into her hobbies. I already did coke and E and sometimes meth, but she was in a whole other league.’

  ‘Meaning?’ I take an involuntary glance at the Dictaphone to make sure it’s still working. I don’t want to miss a second of this. I suddenly have one of those flashes of surreality that have hit me since Luther started telling his story: I’m sitting here with Luther Carson, hearing things that he’s potentially never told anybody else, ever.

  ‘Heroin. She did heroin. The first time I saw her, I could not believe it. I wanted to call the cops, or something. She was “chasing the dragon” – you know, where you cook it up and sort of smoke it. Like a fucking Chinese gangster. But she said it was cool, and I trusted her, so we did it. It was – if you’ve never done it, I can’t describe it to you. But trust me, it was unbelievable.

  ‘The only trouble is, it can kill you. A girl she knew died from an overdose, and Dom stopped, and I stopped too. But we were always doing something. We couldn’t even watch a movie together at home without doing a line of coke first. And we always had it before sex as well.’ He pauses. ‘I guess we overdid it. One time, my mom rented a vacation house in Florida and invited us to visit her. I told Dominique we couldn’t bring anything with us, because I knew my mom would have hated it, so Dom said she wouldn’t go.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I cancelled. I said she was sick. I just couldn’t stand to be away from her. But then I realised things were just getting more and more out of hand. One night, I stayed awake all night, sweating and having DTs. My heart was beating so fast I honestly thought I was going to die. I got up and started looking around for a pen and paper to make my will, I was so out of it. You’d think I would have had the sense to call 911 instead, but no, I had to dispose of all my assets first. And then, as you know, one night, someone else did call 911 for me, and I got rushed to hospital. I’d been drinking pretty heavily and then I took some, I don’t know, rat poison or something. I don’t know what the hell I took. But that’s not what got me into rehab.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘I did something pretty shitty. I had earned a lot of money from my first two films, but somehow I never seemed to have any. By the time I paid my agent, paid my tax, bought a new car, well, a couple cars, took care of my buddies, rented a place, went out every night . . . it just disappeared. Dominique was even worse. One night, I just happened to be between pay cheques and I had lost one of my ATM cards as well. But we needed cash right away. So I stole a hundred dollars from Bruce Willis.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Yeah. We were at a benefit dinner for AIDS. I was sitting at his table, and I saw him put some money in a donation envelope on the table. When he got up, I just took it and left. Nobody noticed a thing. It was pretty lame, I know, but at the time I thought it was hilarious. And so did she. To be honest, it’s not like we were short of cash. I just needed to pay my dealer that night and thought it was easier to take it from the table than go driving around looking for an ATM machine. But later I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I thought, you’ve almost killed yourself twice, and now you’ve stolen money from AIDS victims. And I just called up a rehab centre and in I went. Dominique was not happy.’

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘She felt like I was abandoning her, I guess. Like I said, she needed me to be using so that she felt OK about her own drug use. And I think she thought that she was more likely to OD or get in trouble without me around to keep an eye on her. But in the end, she got out of it fine. She’s done very well for herself.’ He sounds slightly resentful.

  ‘So, is that why you two broke up?’ I say. ‘Because you stopped doing drugs to the same extent?’

  ‘I guess it was, you know? We were both addicts and we made each other keep using. You know, they talk about co-dependency and
all the rest of it. But the truth was that the drugs were what kept us together. Without them, I don’t think we would have had a whole lot to talk about. Funny. I knew that I knew that, but it’s only really occurring to me now you’ve asked me that. Don’t put all that in.’

  I find it hard to believe that talking was really ever what Luther wanted from her, but who am I to judge? But it’s interesting to know that he can see deficiencies in their relationship. He’s obviously realised that he needs someone with a more stable lifestyle.

  ‘What about that tattoo on her foot?’ I ask. ‘Is it true that she, um, got it . . .’

  ‘So she could walk on me every day? That’s bullshit. She got it long before we separated. She said it was because I was the ground beneath her feet. It’s probably faded by now. I told her at the time that’s a terrible place for a tattoo because it wears away so fast, but she insisted.’

  I make a note, ‘Dominique foot – check’, and sigh inwardly. This sounds like the sort of thing that will become an unending bone of contention during the libel read, with lawyers asking for proof, Luther swearing blind that that’s what happened, Dominique’s attorney, if we send him the manuscript, objecting . . . It suddenly strikes me how surreal this situation is. I’m probably going to spend a lot of time in the next week or so, along with several other people, trying to establish the facts around Dominique’s foot tattoo. How has this become a normal part of anyone’s working day? If I ever thought, for a second, that some stranger was writing memos about my feet, I would think that there was something seriously wrong with the world.

  I decide to take Luther back over a few important parts of their relationship: I want to know what his first words to Dominique were, for example. He can’t remember, which is unfortunate though not unusual.

  ‘I think I might have asked to borrow her highlighter pen.’

  Together we come up with a better opening line. I also want to know when their first date was, but I’m soon corrected: it sounds like there was no first date, just a more-or-less instant falling into bed.

  ‘That will work too,’ I say. ‘I mean, that’s fine, if that’s how it happened.’

  Luther doesn’t say anything. I glance over at him, to see that he’s frowning in concentration.

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘You know, that story about me stealing money from Bruce. Or when I invited both those girls to the same premiere. Or learning to hotwire cars. And all the boozing and the drugs and everything . . . sending my assistant to meet my dealer . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ I say nervously. You mean, the best parts of the book? Please don’t start saying you want to take them out. Please, please don’t do this to me. Not now . . . not after everything we’ve been through . . .

  ‘Do you really want to put those in the book? I mean – don’t they make me sound like an asshole? Not that I care what people think,’ he adds, somewhat unconvincingly. ‘It’s just, I don’t like to talk to interviewers about that stuff, because they twist it. I don’t know why people would want to read about it.’

  He sounds genuinely puzzled. Does he not understand?

  ‘But, Luther,’ I say. ‘Those are exactly the kinds of things that make a person interesting, and lovable. If you’d never put a foot wrong your entire life, and been a complete straight arrow, your story would be pretty dull. Despite all the great things you’ve done,’ I add quickly.

  He looks sceptical.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course! It’s like in any story. Nobody identifies with a character who’s perfect – it’s boring. Whereas, someone who messes up – that’s much more engaging. It’s more interesting, and it’s more real, because nobody is perfect.’

  He’s looking as if this is all completely new information.

  ‘I know that’s the case with characters,’ he says. ‘But I never thought it would be like that for autobiographies. I guess it makes sense.’

  ‘I promise,’ I say. ‘And, look, Brian is brilliant at making his subjects come across as sympathetic. If there’s anything he’s good at, it’s getting the reader on your side. And that’s what we want. It’s in our interests to make you look good.’

  Luther is obviously mulling this over. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Well, it’s probably going to be good for Dominique also. This is definitely a side to her that isn’t so perfect. And, according to you, that’ll make her more sympathetic, right?’

  Oh, dear.

  ‘Well . . . no,’ I say. ‘That’s different. It would be one thing if she were telling the story herself, but this is your side of the story only. If you sound as if you’re being critical or unfair about her, it won’t make you look good. So we’ll have to bend over backwards to be gentlemanly.’

  ‘That sounds like quite a contortionist act,’ says Sam, appearing in the doorway.

  ‘Hey, man,’ says Luther.

  I’m pretty pleased to see him. For the past hour, I’ve been dying to go to the bathroom, but I haven’t dared leave Luther while he’s sharing such intense stuff.

  I stand up, saying, ‘I’ll let you guys chat – I’ll be back in a second!’ And I scoot away before either of them can say anything.

  Once I’m in the bathroom, I take a minute just to slump there and zone out. I can’t believe how intense today has been, on top of very little sleep last night and a twelve-hour working day yesterday. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, as long as we get the book. And Luther is still being brilliant. Wonderful. I’m just beginning to feel dizzy and I think I need fifteen minutes’ alone time.

  After a minute, I realise I’d better go back out. Sam is still on the terrace. He’s dressed a bit more formally than usual, wearing a jacket over his T-shirt and carrying what looks like an overnight bag.

  ‘Are you going somewhere?’ I ask, knowing I sound inane.

  ‘Yeah. I have to go to London for a couple days and do some fire-fighting. Not literally fire-fighting,’ he adds, seeing my expression. ‘I mean – forget it. I’m flying to Rome now to catch my connecting flight.’ He looks at Luther. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I can, though. And I’ll be contactable. So call me if anything comes up. Anything whatever,’ he adds pointedly to Luther. He looks extremely pissed off.

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ says Luther. ‘We’re busy. We’re working. We’re in the zone. In fact,’ he says to me, ‘maybe that’s the best thing. A closed set. What do you think, Alice? We can have a total lockdown, make sure nobody comes here, so we can work twenty-four seven . . .’

  I’m trying to control my expression, but I’m actually feeling pretty worried. It sounds brilliant in theory, and it’s what I would have dreamed of a week ago, but . . . if Sam leaves us, that means I’m alone – for at least two days – in the house with Luther, with only Maria Santa as chaperone. Obviously it will be great to spend so much time with Luther and do the interviews freely without Sam interfering. But how am I going to get my work done in the evenings? Luther needs company, especially after such intense days, and I can’t keep him company and transcribe our interviews. I won’t have time. I suppose I’ll have to rely on Marisa and Federico.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, trying to sound cheerful. ‘We’ll be fine. Have a lovely trip.’

  Sam just gives me a look. ‘I’ll need those transcripts,’ he says curtly. ‘Don’t forget.’ As I watch him go, his bag slung over his shoulder, I get the strangest sensation: it’s as if I’m marooned on an island, watching a boat sail off into the distance.

  ‘What was I saying?’ says Luther.

  TWENTY

  By the time evening comes, I’m a shadow of my former self.

  It’s not that Luther’s being difficult: quite the reverse. The floodgates have opened. He’s been talking and talking: it’s as if he’s taken some kind of truth drug. After hearing his stories, I no longer believe anything that’s written in the papers; the reality almost always seems to be more bizarre. He’s dropped one outrageous fact after another about different A-listers and smaller fry. After he mention
ed something about a co-star of his who asked his assistant to break up with his girlfriend on his behalf, I had to explain to him that we can’t publish everything he says.

  ‘How come?’ he said. ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Because we could get sued,’ I said. ‘I’m not a libel lawyer but I do know that if we say defamatory things about people, we have to be able to prove them, potentially in a court of law, and even if we can prove them, we don’t want to end up in court. It’s just not worth it.’

  ‘No?’ Luther didn’t look too upset, but I continued.

  ‘We can mention some of these things, provided we disguise people’s identities. But it gets tricky, because we could end up creating a fake identity that might then get mistaken for another, real person.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Luther said. I could see that I’d lost him. I can’t help noticing that his attention does tend to wander when we’re not talking about him.

  In any case, Luther has plenty of anecdotes that are lively without being completely scandalous. There are some great stories about him picking up girls with Leonardo DiCaprio and gatecrashing a party at Tom Cruise’s house. The great thing about him is that unlike lots of more – well, mature stars, who have big, pharmaceutically induced holes in their memories, he can remember everything – or most of it. What with this, and his candour about himself, and the stuff about his childhood and early years, the book is going to be fantastic.

  So it’s been great; but it’s been heavy going. My shoulders are aching; in fact, every muscle in my body is aching. I never knew listening could be so much hard work. And it’s not just listening; it’s concentrating on what he’s saying, trying to ask the right questions, keeping him on the subject, getting the facts and chronology, all at once. And I still don’t know when I’m going to have the time to type it all up. I’ve tried calling Marisa to see if she’s coming over, but there’s no answer.

  At 7 p.m., Maria Santa rings the bell for dinner. It’s early; I think she probably saw how I was wilting during our quick sandwich lunch, which didn’t interrupt the flow of the interviews even remotely. How I wish I could collapse on a sofa and eat my dinner in front of the TV.