How to Hide a Hollywood Star

by Avoca Gardener

  They’re actors, they’ll disguise. They can probably all do a passable Australian accent Toby had suggested. And when I’d sounded doubtful, his instruction was, “Improvise darling!”

  8: Someday My Prince Will Call

  I spent December twenty-seventh strapped to my phone waiting for the hotel to call and confirm that instead of Prince Abdul bin Talal, Enid Blyton would have the pleasure of spending enough money to wipe out the debt of a third world country with them. Twice I checked I still had had mobile reception. On the home phone line, I spent a couple of hours confirming hire cars, restaurant bookings, optional activities and a sea plane tour of the city and coast.

  All morning I tried to ignore a nagging internal voice that kept going, OMG, OMG, OMG. With a high-profile project like this you’d usually have a team of people involved to work quickly, cover all the bases and provide back-up.

  This wasn’t the sort of thing you did on your own. In theory, of course, with enough experience and actual sweat, you could pull it off, but theory was never my favourite subject and with no wingman there was no margin for error.

  By lunchtime I was Mother Hubbard hungry. The cupboards were bare and the hamper was down to some very sugary red and white striped candy canes that I didn’t fancy. Phone in pocket, I hobbled next door to see if Bert might let me scratch together a sandwich in his kitchen.

  Over a cup of tea at his yellow Formica and chrome table, a sister to the red one I had next door, I spilled my news.

  “I’ve got a tour program to manage in a couple of days.”

  “Shame you’re not getting a proper holiday.”

  “It’s pretty important. It will be good income for the company. In fact, we could do with the money.”

  “That’s good then. Do you want a top up?” Bert jiggled the teapot at me.

  “Yes please. It is good, but I’m worried, we’d usually have a whole team working on this but with the holidays it’s just me.”

  Bert blinked at me and re-settled his battered cap on his head. I’m pretty sure he had no idea what my company did even though we’d discussed it before.

  “The people coming are really famous.” Talking about it was making me feel better.

  “Would I know them then?”

  Now that was a good question. Bert was eighty-two years old. I don’t imagine he’d been to a movie in a very long time, had ever read People or Now magazine or put any store in best dressed lists.

  “Shane Horan, Arch Drummond and Rush Dawson.”

  “Never heard of ‘em. They any good? They been on TV?”

  “They are pretty good. They’ve won awards and two of them sing as well.”

  “They don’t play them on my station.”

  Bert’s station did a lot of weather, news and talk-back. “No.”

  “So watcha worried about? They’re not that famous.”

  You had to laugh. Maybe Bert was right. Not that famous after all.

  By 4.30pm there was still no word from the hotel. I called them. By 4.33pm the sun had disintegrated, the air was foul, the goblins at the bottom of the garden were plotting a takeover, animals were speaking in tongues and fruit had learned to fly backwards. The Prince was coming.

  Enid Blyton was officially a hobo.

  9: Renovation Rescue

  Didn’t a wise man say for every problem there’s a solution? Well be damned if I could find one for this particular problem. I was back on the phone to every hotel, motel, rest stop, guest house, real estate agent and miracle worker I could find. My best option was one room at a truck stop outside Ulladulla, a mere two hundred and sixty-six kilometres out of the city. I needed help.

  Resolve in tatters I sent Michael an email. Phrasing it to get his attention, but not alarm him took some thinking about. I tried variations of ‘Help, the world as we know it is about to end’, and finally settled on:

  Hi, hope you’re getting R&R. Had an enquiry about accommodation for a couple of minor celebs in Sydney for NY. Have tried everything I can think of. Got any brilliant suggestions?

  Good thing we didn’t have a lie box. Just the word minor was probably worth half my annual salary.

  I got a message back a couple of hours later that said, Are you kidding?

  Was it okay to have a cry now? Not kidding, I typed back.

  OMG, LOL, he responded.

  Not actually laughing.

  And then my phone rang. “Hey, told you we needed someone in the office.” He sounded smug.

  Way not the time to argue that one out, I was on dangerous, expensive ground. “So, any bright ideas Einstein? I’m busy not being in the office and I’d like to get back to it.”

  “No, not one, sorry. Except, we could charge them a fortune to rent my place.”

  “Your place is a poorly ventilated studio apartment that backs on to a bus depot.”

  “It is not poorly ventilated,” he said. I think that sound in the background was his hackles rising. “Or you could have them at your place. It’s an oversize falling down Federation with rising damp and frequent electrical shorts that backs on to a roundabout isn’t it? Should be perfect.”

  “You used to be a nicer person.”

  “That was before you made me take a holiday. Speaking of which, can you hear that?” he paused. Decidedly not hackles. I heard a female voice, along with what might have been glass tinkling. “That’s the sound of my holiday calling.”

  “Well off you go, I’ll deal with this, and hey, thanks for calling.”

  Oh swear word I was in trouble.

  How does that saying go, ‘Life sucks and then you die’. Michael was on holiday and was clearly enjoying himself and I was last one on deck, with a huge, huge Hollywood sized problem, rising damp, only one functioning Achilles tendon and a dog wearing a bucket.

  But he’d given me an idea, a desperate, last ditch stand of an idea, maybe just crazy enough to work.

  Enid could stay at my house.

  On the plus side ,it was big enough. It was close to the city and up the hill from the beach. It was private, Bert wasn’t about to alert the media or sell photos he took through the fence palings, and it was available. On the negative side, wel, we didn’t have all day to think about that and the rising damp was the least of it.

  Over the next three days every plumber, tiler, electrician, carpenter, painter, interior designer, cleaner, gardener and gourmet food purveyor I could haul out of their respite was on the clock to transform Nanna’s old house into the celebrity bed and breakfast du jour.

  That meant, Max the plumber, Dave the sparky, George the handyman, Maria the cleaner and Simon the chef.

  Simon was a find. He was Australian-born Vietnamese in his mid-twenties and with his black hair gelling into spikes and his pierced eyebrow, he was ready to rock a fry pan and roll a blender in the kitchen.

  I took on the interior design and after loading up on new linen, bathroom accessories, and flowers, I remembered why I largely lived in only three rooms of the house in the first place. Domestically challenged meets no clue. It was like one of those reality TV makeover shows without the actual makeover.

  What was I thinking? Swear fucking word.

  But when we’d finished the house was in better shape. The plumbing no longer groaned, the walls were freshly painted and every room had working lighting. The wooden floors shone, you could see out the windows, the cobwebs had been chased away, the scent of furniture polish had replaced the usual musty overtones and there was edible food of sufficient quantity and quality to make me momentarily confident I could pull this off.

  If all life as we know it on earth ceased.

  Bert who’d volunteered his services in the garden was stunned by the whirlwind of activity. He judged the effort ‘bloody miraculous’, and would have said more but for me encouraging him to finish off pruning around the front entrance. Even Chook was uncharacteristically awed. After an initial bout of ‘Who’s a pretty cocky?’ he retreated to a power pole to supervise from afar.


  By New Year’s Eve, we’d bashed, tweaked, rubbed, scrapped, scrubbed, painted, replaced, polished, smoothed, swept or vacuumed every appropriate surface and we’d reached the point of as good as it would ever get.

  But it was a dramatic improvement. House & Garden would’ve been proud to feature it and Nana would’ve thought it too posh to live in. Still it was a one hundred and ten year old house in the suburbs. I told Toby I’d found them a private house to rent. I didn’t tell him and he was too smart to ask that it was not the kind of place Hollywood came to hang out, even in Hollywood’s worst nightmare.

  Which was about to become real. It was show time.

  Since the accommodation drama presented itself, I’d not had time to worry too much about the first meeting at the airport. Now waiting for the hired limo to collect me from home, I was anxious. Enid was flying in on Dawson’s jet which meant they’d land at a private airstrip and we’d avoid the usual airport mayhem. So far so secret.

  Waiting for the limo, wait! I shouldn’t be waiting. It should have been here fifteen minutes ago. I got a recorded message on the call to the company. I got voicemail on the driver’s own number. I waited another five minutes and tried both numbers again. Nothing. I got acid reflux and sweaty palms. Since I couldn’t drive, taking my own car wasn’t an option. I had three choices and being late wasn’t one of them. I could hope the limo driver arrived in a screaming hurry, call a couple of taxis, or do something left field. I went left.

  I was so swear word ending in ing screwed.

  Five minutes later Bert was backing his old mini bus out of the driveway with me riding shotgun. We weren’t elegant and it would take some explaining but we wouldn’t be leaving Hollywood’s finest waiting on a steaming tarmac at the back of nowhere.

  10: Stranger than Fiction

  I figured this was one of those occasions where Truth had snuck out the back to have a smoke with all the other addicts, while Fiction was at her desk being a goody two shoes answering email. I was arriving at an exclusive private airport terminal to meet three of the world’s most recognisable faces in an old mini bus emblazoned with the words Seniors Day Tripper.

  If I stopped to think about this I was going to need to lie down and let Fiction put a cold cloth on my head.

  When Bert drew up at the security gate, the bloke on duty wanted to know if he was being ‘punk’d’ to which Bert, unfamiliar with the lingo, indignantly replied, “If I was punching you, you’d know about it, young man.”

  I think we were waved through because I had the right flight number details and the guard didn’t want a hyperventilating senior making a day trip to the hospital on his hands. We parked beside two stretch limos and a Bentley that was so highly polished it hurt to look at it, and Bert grumbled that he’d have washed the bus if I’d have given him any warning.

  In what would likely be my last few minutes of sanity for the foreseeable future, I realised I’d moved beyond severe nervousness to a state of professional catatonia characterised by an out of body feeling, a void of mental faculty and alternating excitement and terror. Nothing a cold cloth was going to help.

  It’d also just hit me that unless I found somewhere else to stay, I’d be sharing a bathroom with three men for whom millions of women around the world would commit a serious felony to be within spitting distance of. My last coherent thought, before I watched the door of the freshly landed jet open, was about famous whiskers in the sink.

  Then, like a mirage in the heat haze they were here. Three well built, casually rumpled, designer stubbled, undeniably drop dead gorgeous guys tumbled out of the plane and loitered about on the tarmac in the sun. Who was Enid Blyton again?

  I summoned my inner warrior, and with my outer limp, stumped across to them, feeling awkward and so, so ordinary in the face of their combined glamour and fame. This was already excruciatingly embarrassing and we hadn’t even gotten to the truly mortifying bits yet.

  Three pairs of wary eyes watched me hobble over. I used my best tour hostess voice and extended my hand to a life size action figure. “Hello. Welcome to Australia. I’m Andi Carrington from Arrive. I’ll be managing your stay in Sydney.”

  Arch Drummond disappeared my tiny paw in his huge mitt and gave it a vigorous shake, “Glad to meet you Andi,” he gestured to my leg, “What’ve you done?”

  “Fight. Should’ve seen the other guy,” I responded, earning a warm laugh which took some of the rock out of my rolling stomach.

  “The dude in the hat who looks like a walking hangover is your average Hollywood asshole,” said Arch, inclining his head towards Shane, just in case I’d been born and raised in an outer suburb of Mars and didn’t know who the golden god was. “The old guy is Rush, but you can call him Pops if you like.” I couldn’t look at the old guy, because the god guy was holding out his hand.

  Shane flashed those much remarked on blue eyes at me. “Good to meet you, Andi. How about we do something about getting me an actual live hangover to go with the look?”

  “The next person who calls me ‘old’ buys Andi an expensive pair of matching boots.”

  Now I looked at Rush. And my gorgeous guy sensor overloaded. I’m sure I saw stars explode and rainbows glow over his head. He took my hand in both of his, looked me straight in the eyes and flicked the switch on my internal heat source. I blushed hot. I didn’t know I was still capable of it. It was as though he knew about my deserted island partner shortlist of one and the thing about the mangoes and endless blue skies.

  “Welcome to Australia, Mr Dawson.”

  He grinned. I breathed to stop from falling over.

  “Yeah, you said that, Ms Carrington.” He listened too. And he still had my hand. And then he didn’t. He’d released me and bent to pick up a bag. “Call me, Rush. You can call those two jerk offs anything you fancy.”

  “Do you fancy?” said Shane.

  “Ignore the ass wipe,” said Arch.

  That’s how this was going to be. Informal and off-the-wall. This I could do. This I’d enjoy. But first I had to gather my feeble wits which were staggering around in the heat, because I needed to stall while I managed to get us new transport. Not that either of our regular hire car companies had responded to the calls I made on the way here.

  “You came in the bus?” said Arch.

  “Yes. But I’ll have suitable transport here in a few minutes.” Maybe if I said that aloud it would make it happen. Or not. My sunburned wits were beginning to wilt.

  “What’s wrong with the bus. We can go in the bus,” he said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Shane incredulous. As though he was in league with the guy on gate security, he looked around as if he expected a hidden camera to be recording the moment.

  Arch lowered his head and laughed. He gave Shane a push towards the bus.

  Rush hefted his bag and said, “Andi, it’s perfect.”

  “You’re right, old man,” said Shane, tracing a finger in the grit under the word Seniors. “It’s got your name on it”.

  Over my shoulder I saw the jet taxi towards a hanger. Perhaps they could jump a return flight and in about a hundred years I’d be over the embarrassment. If I could also relocate to an outer suburb of Mars.

  I turned back to the bus and noticed Bert was wearing tartan bedroom slippers. Even though Pluto was no longer a planet, perhaps I could move there. “I’d like you to meet my neighbour, Bert Johnson. I’m incredibly sorry about—”

  “Andi, it’s perfect,” broke in Shane, “no one is looking for us in a seniors’ bus.”

  “That’s right, it’s inspired,” said Arch.

  “Bert and I can have a grown-up talk on the way,” said Rush, stepping forward to shake Bert’s hand.

  What! That was too easy, deceptively so. They were Hollywood. I was a dirty old bus and tartan slippers. By rights raised, sculptured eyebrows, significant million dollar looks, a full blown refusal to leave the airport without a brass band and a police escort. But somehow the transport pr
oblem had mysteriously dematerialised, like space dust. It felt like I was ahead on points for a moment there, but now comes the intergalactic explosion. Why did I ever think this was going to be all right.

  “There is one other thing.” Big deep breath, come on, no choice out with it. “Accommodation is very difficult to get on short notice this time of year so I wasn’t able to get you into a hotel.”

  “Yeah, Toby told me. A private home is cool,” said Shane.

  “I like a house better,” said Arch, “more relaxed.”

  How to tell them this wasn’t going to be the sort of house they were used to, with pool, hot tub, theatre and games rooms. That guaranteed running water and reliable electricity were recent improvement and the furniture wasn’t fashionably retro, just unfashionably original from fifty years ago.

  I tried to summon a calm image of a cool green rainforest. Cool like I needed to be. I saw lava oozing volcanoes. “It was also impossible to get a suitable house.” Any remaining confidence I had was draining out through my toes, in a second there’d be a wet stain on the tarmac. “But my own house is available for your stay,” I finished, knowing we still weren’t at the place of jaw dropping understanding and a quick decision to summon the jet again.

  There was an exchange of unreadable looks. I waited for one of them to whistle up the jet, then Rush said, “Andi, that’s very generous of you,” and he bundled the other two and their baggage into the back of the bus.

  And that was that. Bert’s bus was noisy and as Arch had helped me into the front seat, it was impossible to carry on the suicidal act of explaining our no star rated accommodation. I guess seeing would be believing.

  But first we had to get past Harvey.

  Harvey had escaped from Bert’s place, which meant a new hole in the fence somewhere and he was guarding the front door. It’s hard to imagine how a dog with a plastic bucket around his neck could look fierce, but Harvey managed it, baring his teeth and growling, the hair on his back standing straight up. The effect of rabid dog did momentarily cause a distraction from the effect of ordinary suburban Federation house, which was useful for all of five minutes.