How to Hide a Hollywood Star

by Avoca Gardener

  How to Hide a Hollywood Star

  Avoca Gardener

  A romantic comedy about betrayal, gossip & being star struck

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organisations or people, living or dead is purely co-incidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher. Copyright © 2011

  Chapter Index

  1: Business Unusual

  2: Get a Room

  3: Hypothetically

  4: News Travels

  5: The Creature that Stirred

  6: No Room at the Inn

  7: Enid Blyton

  8: Someday My Prince Will Call

  9: Renovation Rescue

  10: Stranger than Fiction

  11: Fireworks

  12: Dial Tone

  13: A New Day-Oh

  14: Sudden Squalls

  15: Thunder and Lightning

  16: Playing Possum

  17: Aftermath

  18: Taken In

  19: Ambiguities

  20: Hammock

  21: Revelations

  22: Change of Heart

  23: Runaway Emotions

  24: Mercy

  25: Morning After

  26: Unfinished Business

  27: Eve

  28: Break of Day

  29: Break a Heart

  30: Misunderstood

  31: Fly Away Home

  32: Old Friends

  33: Post Event Blues

  34: The Hollywood Problem

  35: On Broadway

  36: Brutal

  37: Deserted Island

  38: Encore

  Acknowledgements

  A Sample Read from How to Save a Small Town

  About Avoca Gardener

  1: Business Unusual

  Oh, swear word I’ve promised not to say anymore.

  Oh, double swear word, with a side order of swear word I’ve promised not to say anymore.

  Oh Shit!

  It’s off again.

  He’s not coming. He’s really, really not coming. After all the fudging around. All the on again, off again. It’s off. Again. Bugger.

  I looked across the conference table at Michael. He gave me the eyebrows. One look. Whole dictionaries of meaning. All of them hitting me rapid fire: disappointment, anxiety, distress, a touch of frustration, a tinge of despair and yes, yes, there is it, across the forehead, over the nose—exhaustion.

  On the speakerphone from his office in LA, Tobias drones on about why the movie release date has been set back and why the tour won’t go ahead. We should be listening but we’re all sunk down in our chairs with weights on our shoulders, parts of our spinal columns fused to bits of rib and stomach, making it impossible to straighten up. Either that, or an invisible ceiling has descended on Michael, Lainey, Allan and I and it’s compacting us to Tyrion Lannister proportions.

  We needed this project. Not only for the significant income it would generate, income we need to survive, but because it’s so freaking high profile it would’ve cemented us as the brightest new publicity agency in town.

  When I say we, I mean, our company—Arrive. Twelve months ago, Michael and I started a business together. Arrive specialises in launch events and publicity tours. We help companies attract attention to their products. We also help people build their personal fame, mostly so that they can sell something.

  So far we’ve managed the media interview programs for a famous sports stars turned TV presenter, a hot shot chef turned author, a few heavyweight political figures, an eminent physician, a couple of iconic chief executives, three aspiring rock stars, and a child genius.

  We’ve launched everything from cookbooks and gadgets to computer games and bionic hearing aids. We’ve filled seats at events, encouraged orderly queues to form, put new products in shopping trolleys and helped people fall in love with things they never knew they needed.

  We work behind the scenes to help noteworthy people reach large audiences. We manage the details: the hotels, cars and planes, and security. The meals, wake up calls and personal styling. The photo shoots, face to face interviews and personal appearances.

  Sometimes we help people do the opposite—stay out of the public eye. Like the famous footballer caught wearing a mini-skirt and heels, the school teacher who moonlighted as a stripper and the high profile managing director accused of shoplifting.

  Some of our clients are scared rabbits, caught in the headlights of a Mack truck, so flipped out by all the noise, light and attention they can barely function normally without us holding their hands.

  Others are so swollen headed we have trouble greasing them through doorways. Sometimes, only a couple of weeks separates the rabbits from the bobble heads. Some of our clients are easy-going, genuine people and some of them are carefully manufactured brands or self-important prima donnas.

  Did that make me cynical about the work we did? Sure. I’ve seen behind the wizard’s curtain. I helped hang it. I know how the magic is made, what’s real and what’s illusion.

  But every so often our work lead to something amazing happening.

  We helped a man who was trapped on a mountain top for four days with only a chocolate bar for sustenance to tell his incredible story of survival. We helped a mother battle the Department of Education over the rights of her gay son. We helped raise money for a new drug and alcohol program for street kids, and saw the number of people involved in a national fitness program double.

  For every jumped-up C-grade attention seeker we have as a client, there is the chance to do good work that genuinely made a difference, and that was enough to keep me inspired. Aside from that, you got to meet the most interesting people and it could be more fun than you could have with your clothes off.

  But it was only last night Michael and I were discussing what we were going to do to weather the loss of income on a large project that’d just fallen over. We were all set to launch a new social network service called Shared, until it was declared illegal. It was unclear whether the work we’d done to date would even be paid for. And that was a problem. We had rent and salaries and running costs and our accountant kept talking about our cash burn rate. We were spending through more money than we were making. Don’t burn, baby, don’t burn, doesn’t quite have the same ring to it does it?

  But it would ring like the clamour of a Zombie apocalypse to our competitors. We were an upstart agency. We were young and brash and just a tad full of ourselves and there were plenty of folk in the industry who’d like to see us fail. Michael’s old boss, Tom Flourish, for one.

  But last night we still had the big tour. We still had income and kudos and stick it up those who want to see us fail at our fingertips.

  Last night we still had Shane.

  Shane Horan. Hollywood It-boy. Voted Celebrity Magazine’s ‘most bed-able’ and fresh from yet another box office blockbuster. He is hot, hot, hot. Volcanic lava hot. A constant fixture in traditional news media and the online world. And oh yes, he’d just released his second rock album. The man was a genuine talent with the aura of a Brad Pitt, the cheekiness of a Jack Black and sex appeal that made otherwise sane women throw Victoria’s whole secret closet at him.

  This morning we had burn baby burn. And collapsed spines.

  When we ended the call with Tobias, Michael waited till Lainey and Allan left the conference room to lose his cool. He spread his arms across the table and head-butted it.

  “I can’t believe it either,” I sighed. Less than twelve hours ago we had some issues to solve. Now we were in actual red coloured financial trouble.

  He sat upri
ght. “Fuck.”

  I should’ve said something vaguely productive and take charge like, ‘It’ll be all right’, or ‘We’ll think of something’. I said, “Um-ah swear box.”

  Michael did the spine slumping thing in his chair. “Oh right. I will if you will.”

  “What? I never said anything.”

  “No, but you thought it. I could see you thinking it.”

  This was just like Michael to make up a new rule. And to know what I was thinking. “You don’t have to put money in the box unless you actually say the swear words.”

  “Thinking it is almost the same thing.”

  Any minute now I was going to get it together and focus on the black hole that was our financing. “It’s so not.”

  “Whose idea was the stupid swear box anyway?”

  “Yours. All part of our professional image.”

  “Half my weekly coffee allowance is going in that fu...furry box.”

  Any minute now. “Furry?”

  “Shut up. You’re in no position to have a go at me.”

  “Because?”

  “You look ridiculous.”

  I dropped my eyes to my feet. I did look daft.

  “Don’t think because you’re currently disabled, you’re getting any sympathy from me.”

  I tried not to laugh. I wore one battered red flatty that had seen better days and a knee length grey plastic space boot. Not in the least bit fetching. “Trust you to kick a woman when she’s down to one heel.”

  Michael scrubbed a hand through his hair and smiled. This was a tactic called ‘be adorable’ designed to get me to forget about the swear box, the black hole and almost anything else I was supposed to be focussed on. But what hit me most was how tired he looked. He needed a haircut, his fringe of dark hair flopped over his forehead. He had spilt coffee stains under his eyes and a grey cast to his skin as though he hadn’t seen sunlight for weeks. Thing is, he hadn’t.

  He’d been working to bring this deal in for months. Almost since we started the business.

  This was the A-list, a Hollywood studio project. It doesn’t get much bigger in terms of noise, attention and potential income than that. Or say, ‘up yours, eat our dust’ to competitors quite so dramatically.

  When we first pitched for this business we didn’t think we had a snowflake’s chance on Bondi Beach of it coming off. What we did have was the guts to be persistent and thorough and a kind of lucky that you’d pray for if it had its own designated God. Seems we should’ve paid more attention to the praying part.

  Over the year, the conversations kept happening and Michael flew to LA and licked the appropriate boots, charmed the appropriate pants off and kept the discussion alive. Until finally we won the work. Which was walk on the ceiling amazing. We were still up there, dodging the light fittings a few weeks later when the whole tour got put on indefinite hold. And then cancelled. And then revised. And then scheduled.

  And then holy, holy swear word, swear word—cancelled again.

  “Creative accounting,” I said. I’m almost certain that was illegal but it was all I had.

  Michael shrugged. “Creative something.”

  “Toby didn’t say the tour was off permanently.”

  Michael slumped further. “No, but seriously, we can’t rely on it ever happening. I don’t even want to think about how much time went into winning that business and now...”

  Right now, two days before we shut the office for Christmas break there was very little we could do about it, but we needed a staff meeting. Everyone in the office knew how important the tour was to us, and there was work to do just to cancel what we already had in place, so everyone would soon know it was off and the speculation would be worse than the truth.

  I watched Michael eat another Tim Tam. A piece of sweetness to chase the sour. “This will play like a Christmas present to Tom,” he said.

  I knew that’s what he was thinking. More than anything he was fired up about showing his old boss he had the stuff to succeed. This was more than ordinary sour. This was sour with an aftertaste of acid that could melt your teeth.

  He stood. “I’ll gather the gang and we can settle this now.” Half out the door, he added, “Don’t you get up, Princess. You just sit there and leave this to me.”

  So I did. Moving around had been difficult since my accident, but I should be able to ditch the crutches in another week and the boot itself in a fortnight if everything went well. Meanwhile I was a limping disaster, a one shoe wonder and sitting was my preferred posture.

  I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to do myself so much damage. I’m not normally a klutz. There I was, walking Harvey down our usual route to the park. It was coming on dusk and the sky was a lovely soft pink colour and the scent of jasmine was in the air.

  Next thing there was a flurry of bright orange fur, a tangle of arms, legs and leash, an awful wet tearing sound and a mournful keening. The keening was Harvey lamenting the chance to get that damn cat and the tearing was my Achilles tendon.

  It had seemed like forever, but Michael was there ten minutes after my incoherent phone call. He must have broken every land speed record to get there so quickly and the fact that he even understood where to come look for me from my pain filled babbling was another miracle.

  I don’t remember much about what happened next, but I do know it involved being carried, having my hand held and needing a nurse to find a bucket for the largest bunch of flowers anyone having emergency surgery ever got given.

  I’d never been so grateful for speed dial or for Michael and yet I’d had many occasions to feel grateful for Michael. But now I had occasion to be worried about him.

  After ten years, I knew his every mood as he knew mine. We’d shared a fabulous friendship. We’d been fresh faced students, rivals for class distinctions, drinking mates, personal crisis advisors, hand holders, money lenders, confidence keepers, taxi drivers, wingmen, colleagues and now business partners.

  We could finish each other’s sentences, anticipate each other’s opinion, argue like brother and sister and sulk like scorned lovers.

  We’d never been lovers, but one time, we’d come close, very close...

  2: Get a Room

  It was the end of term and we’d just had our last lecture for the year. I’d picked up a high distinction in journalism class and Michael had a front-page story running in the university newspaper. We were high on life, the anticipation of a few weeks holiday and feeling momentarily invincible, if a little broke.

  Between us, we had enough money to share a cheap meal and a cheaper bottle of wine. We had honey prawns and Sichuan beef with rice and quite a bit too much dry white wine.

  My fortune cookie’s message said, Try anything once, even things you think you won’t like, which caused Michael to spout a whole list of things he thought I should try but wouldn’t like. Nude skydiving, recycled teabags, chocolate chicken’s feet, and being on time. Okay, so I occasionally did have trouble getting to lectures on time.

  When Michael’s cookie was inexplicably without any message at all he called for a rematch, managing to make our waiter laugh with his comments about being abandoned and fortuneless, which as the student most likely to succeed, was such a crock.

  My second cookie’s message was, Stop searching, happiness is right next to you, which made me pretend gag and then roar with laugher when Michael’s cookie said, Love is free but lust will cost you everything you have.

  We left the restaurant with sides aching from laughter rather than too much to eat and I remember I couldn’t quite believe how lucky I was to have Michael as my best friend.

  He was impossibly handsome and improbably nice to go with it. Mrs Carson had done a brilliant job bringing up Michael on her own. He was witty, charming and clever and he knew precisely how to listen so that you felt you could tell him anything and everything and there was nothing you could do to disappoint him.

  All of this, made him Mr Popularity. Talk about always being chos
en first to play on any team. Michael had a big circle of friends and a steady supply of willing girlfriend candidates. But mostly there was Jess. Tiny, ballerina pretty Jess.

  Jess knew the definition of more words than I’d ever seen in print, she wrote the most focused essays, the cleverest plays and the smartest jokes. Michael and Jess were a permanent couple. Sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on how much study, work or family commitments they had.

  They seemed to move in and out of their relationship with ease and simplicity. There was never any drama, no strain or awkwardness, no tears and importantly no promises. That was their rule—no promises and no one would get hurt. And it worked. With other friends, it was sometimes a sudden suicide mission just to ask where their other half was. Couples formed and split with the speed of a blink. Close your eyes overnight and whole new relationships could be solidified with yesterday’s love disappearing from view as quickly as a dropped contact lens.

  For me, Michael was a daring partner in minor crime, a voice of reason, a midnight confidante and the brother I’d never had. Along with Jess, the three of us we were a formidable team, we had a near guaranteed high grade when we collaborated on assignments and we were never short of something to amuse us.

  That night at the restaurant was one of the occasions Jess was missing. She grew up on a banana plantation on the mid north coast and went home to her family in term breaks while Michael and I stayed behind with our part-time jobs.

  That night, through the filter of too much wine, not quite enough food and a fortune cookie sugar hit, I was struck anew at just how stupidly handsome Michael was. Tall, suntanned and athletic, his hair was always impossibly glossy and unruly, his eyes the deepest nutmeg brown. He had a voice made for radio, deep, strong and confident, the widest most engaging smile and one inspiring little dimple in his cheek.

  It was that dimple that undid me that night. I made a joke of poking it, he made a joke of capturing my finger which lead to sitting far too close on the train on the way out of the city, which lead a sudden understanding of just how muscular he was from leaning against his side and pressing against his leg. Which eventually lead to him tucking a swath of my long dark hair behind my ear and a tentative kiss, much less tentative kisses and a bloke sitting behind us saying loudly, “Get a room!”