Shane interrupted, “And we weren’t going to let him go through it alone.”
“So it was deliberate?” I said.
“Yep,” said Shane.
“We have to tell her the rest,” said Arch. He sat. He gestured for us all to. Rush frowned but he sat and Shane followed him. I stood right where I was.
Rush took a deep, noisy breath. “I’m divorcing my wife. It’s not pretty but I’m interested in hurting her, and the best way to do that is publicly.”
I was trying not to gasp openly. What sort of person would want to hurt and humiliate his own wife and have the world know about it? I noticed both Shane and Arch looked uncomfortable as well.
“Timing the divorce announcement with coverage of some good ole partying is a good way to do that. The more coverage the better. We engineered this trip. We’ve always wanted to come to Australia.”
How cold Rush was, how bitter, hard and calculating. He’d touched me and I’d been more than okay with that. Now I wanted to scrub my body till it was raw.
“Rush, you should tell her—” said Shane.
“What Shane?” Rush spat the words out. “What should I tell her, that I used her? She’ll know soon enough.”
“Everything,” said Arch. He said it quietly but with authority and both men turned to him.
“Someone better tell me,” I said, but they ignored me. Hold on Hollywood, my house. You don’t ignore me in my own house.
“She doesn’t need to know everything,” said Rush.
“She needs to know more,” said Shane.
“Of course, how right you are,” said Rush, dripping sarcasm. He looked up at me. “Andi, there’s more. Tomorrow morning’s media will have the story of my new love interest.”
“Who is she?” I wondered how he’d had the time to generate that story. I wondered why I even cared. I only needed a way to get through whatever this was until Toby arrived to make it all go away—Hollywood, my reputation and the security of our business.
“She’s a mystery woman,” said Rush.
“Tell her,” said Shane with considerable menace.
Rush stood. He ran his hand through his thick hair. “It’s you, Andi. You’re my mystery love interest, the other woman, the home wrecker, the reason for my marriage break up and my international broadcast ‘up yours’ to Cecily.”
It occurred to me to laugh and I must’ve looked bemused. Were they having me on? Was this a cruel joke, an odd way for Hollywood to get its kicks? Me? I was hardly the scarlet woman type. I wasn’t your average bombshell waitress-singer-actress-model. I wasn’t famously beautiful and I certainly wasn’t the type of woman you’d dally with in place of Cecily Vale.
“It’s true, Andi,” said Shane. “I arranged a wire service photographer to take shots of you and Rush on the cab queue. That’s all it’ll take. Not much that gets written about us is actually true.”
Now I laughed. But it was a bitter, cut up sound. “Me! You could’ve picked any one of a hundred or more willing women on the street and you pick me. Why?”
“Because you fit, Andi. You were convenient and I could control you,” said Rush. He sounded bored with the whole thing, as though it was too much bother to explain why he’d implicated me in his seriously nasty personal business.
“What do you mean control me?”
“You’re a smart girl. I’m sure you’ll work it out,” he snapped.
And that’s the thing. I had worked it out. I was convenient. He could control me. If Rush had picked up a waitress-singer-actress-model or any beautiful woman off the street, she’d have been chased by every media outlet in the world and offered thousands of dollars for her story and fifteen minutes of fame. Few would resist. The story might have run for weeks. The truth might’ve come out. That’s not what he wanted. He wanted the lie and he knew I’d have to keep it for him.
This was a lightning strike mission. Get in, do the damage and get out. With me there was no risk of more information fuelling the fire. With me, it was a one hit wonder. I was the hired help. I wouldn’t be doing any follow up interview, and there’d be no tale of my night of passion with Rush Dawson. I was the mystery woman from central casting, a bit part player with a limp on role and no call back. Looking at him in all his shower fresh, casual elegance I couldn’t remember ever seeing someone so ugly, or finding anyone so repugnant.
“I understand why you want to be out of the city so quickly,” was all I could think to say. I didn’t want to be in the same room with them, particularly Rush, another second more. “Assuming you fix this with this Toby, we leave at 7.00am.”
They had the good sense to leave me alone that night. I heard Shane speak with Toby who agreed to stay in LA and leave me to continue to manage things here. An email from him confirmed that arrangement and added an apology which I wasn’t much in the mood to accept.
I slept badly, but woke determined to avoid Rush as much as I could, and make the best of things. The morning’s papers put a big dent in that resolve.
The story of Shane, Arch and Rush’s New Year in Sydney made the front page of two of the national dailies and an inside spread gave more details including speculation about Rush’s mystery woman, the probable cause for his sudden divorce from a heartbroken Cecily.
The main photo showed the moment Rush embraced me to avoid the queue-jumping accusation. And there was a sequence of shots of him opening the taxi door, holding both my crutches, helping me into the backseat and climbing in beside me. The headline said, Rushing Cinderella.
In the picture, which was a good half page in size and in colour, I was snug in Rush’s arms and smiling up at him. It even looked like romance to me and I knew it was manipulation with a capital M. We looked like a couple in love, at least a flat-pack cut-out couple. Where then were the shots of him brooding with his text messages as we drove away? They were the real deal, not this series of poses he’d deliberately staged. Where was my academy award for best performance in the act of supporting deception?
There was also a picture of Cecily, a red carpet shot. In it she was wearing a figure hugging, short, glittery gown and towering heels, her honey coloured hair casually piled on her head and diamonds at her slender throat. She was tiny, lithe and mischievous looking. Positioned next to her I was large, stiff, deeply unfashionable and clumsy looking.
Try as I might I couldn’t look at those photos objectively, though for the sake of trying to settle my churning stomach I knew I needed to. It could’ve been worse, much worse. Critically they didn’t know who I was. They didn’t have a name to put to the images. Yet!
Then there was the fact that despite looking like Cecily’s chunky polar opposite, for me at least I looked okay. More comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, these pictures had caught me so unaware I wasn’t trying to look like anything. There was no strained smile with too much gum, no awkward gut pulling in stance, no uncertainty about what to do with my hands.
Apart from not looking like the typical love interest of a Hollywood hunk, if anything I looked—happy. And Rush, there was this grace to him, this natural elegance. He had his cap on and his glance averted. This was a man so used to having his every move documented he wasn’t even bothering to look for the camera he knew was there. That was certainly playing it cool, a most subtle performance indeed.
The local and international media appetite for more of this would be insatiable. Right now, I was the rabbit everyone was hunting for and the first to find me would make stew of me for the public to eat.
16: Playing Possum
All morning I was anxious about us being recognised. Even my boot was a liability, a beacon just daring someone to notice me, but I wasn’t yet strong enough to go without it all day. Hats and glasses on, and American accents banished, we made it to the hire car in Coolangatta without incident.
There was a particularly uncomfortable moment for me in the airport terminal where TV sets were showing the shots of Rush and I in the taxi queue. The voiceover
asked if anyone could identify this modern-day Cinderella.
My stomach was spinning, positively break-dancing. It felt like at any minute someone would recognise one of us and post a photo to Facebook or start a hashtag on Twitter and put us in the eye of a media storm. Only Simon could be secure in his anonymity. The faster we got to our hillside hideaway, the safer from discovery we’d be.
The house was called Allambee, an Aboriginal word which means ‘to remain a while’. Set well back off the road and down a worn dirt track, it was surrounded by banana and macadamia trees and huge eucalypts. A big flowering Maraya bush and a row of gardenias were in bloom making the air fragrant. Best of all, there was no mobile phone or wireless internet reception, so I was free from the need to handle any mystery woman identification, further abuse from Tobias or contact with Michael. It was a sanctuary and the jitterbugging in my gut settled down to a slow waltz the minute I set foot on the verandah.
We’d effectively managed to disappear. The story had romped ahead of us of course. Helen was truly disappointed I wasn’t Rush’s scarlet woman. She’d left us provisions and Simon started on lunch while the men chose bedrooms and settled in. No one was doing much talking and there was a strain between Shane and Rush. I had no idea what it was, and no interest in finding out.
By afternoon, Allambee was working its magic on me. No photographer was going to jump out of a bush and catch me unaware. No reporter was going to surprise me with a microphone. I’d started to feel less tense, less exposed and less likely to bite someone’s head off. With Rush, my strategy was simply to play possum, other than professional responsibilities, I was dead to him.
When the worst heat of the sun had gone and the others were dozing or reading, I took a towel down to the pool. I could use this time to get some therapy done. Recovery was going to depend on getting flexibility back into my ankle, and walking in the pool was one thing that would help. I slipped into the cool clear water and walked back and forth. The buoyancy made it easy and I was enjoying the freedom of movement when Arch arrived with a big pitcher of lemon ice water.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“If you like.” Argh, that came out sharp and cold and while Arch was clearly in on the plot, he wasn’t the master criminal.
“Andi, you know there’s—”
I cut him off. “I don’t want to talk about it. You had your reasons and it’s not for me to understand. Rush has it right, I’m the hired help.” I sounded hurt and bitter and Arch didn’t deserve that.
“Okay, but if you ask me it would be worth knowing the whole story.”
“I’m not asking you.” What was that about being less likely to bite someone’s head off? Arch left the pitcher and went back into the house. I did heel stretches at the side of the pool until I could barely feel my toes anymore and tried not to care how miserable, exposed and alone I felt.
It was coming on sunset when I tied Lainey’s sarong and went back to the house. I tried to slip into my room without being seen but Shane planted himself in front of me.
“Are you mad at me?”
Was this a trick question? I smiled and tried to side step him, but I was flat footed and he was big and fast, and cut in front of me. He was also shirtless. And he had a torso that was ripped.
“Are you mad at me?”
I figured I had two choices. I could continue to sulk, or I could have it out with him. Sulking wasn’t in my nature and I could tell pestering was in his.
I looked at my bare feet. “Yes, I’m mad with you. I don’t know why you couldn’t have told me what you intended to do and asked me to play a role?”
“What would you have done?”
“I... I don’t know, I guess I’d have tried to stop you.” I realised it wasn’t quite as simple as I’d thought. I was being paid by the studio to stop the visit getting any media attention. I looked up at him.
“Exactly. We figured it would be better for you if we just went rogue.” He waggled his hands. “You know Hollywood stars go wild. That way you couldn’t be held accountable. We were trying to protect you, Andi.”
Protect me? That was a stretch. “Rush wasn’t.”
Shane pinched his brow. “There’s stuff you don’t know.”
“What I know is that Rush is playing an ugly game with his wife and he used me as...” I shook my head. I didn’t understand what Rush was playing at. “Bait.”
“Yeah but, that’s not—”
“Leave it, Shane,” interrupted Rush, stepping in from the verandah. He’d been outside. He’d probably heard every word said.
“Buut—”
Rush gave Shane a look that might shut down a street riot, all brooding and ‘just try me’. “Leave it.” Then he put his sin-identifying laser focus on me. “Andi, would you believe me if I said I was sorry?”
He was the sinner here not me. I glared back at him. “No.”
“Andi,” Shane pleaded.
Rush was already in the doorway. He stepped around me. “That’s what I thought.” He gave Shane a shove. “For the record, I’m sorry.”
“Rush.” Shane hadn’t moved to let Rush pass. And Rush had issued his fat, fake apology to the antique hall-stand, not to me. They were facing off. I backed out of the way. All the bedrooms including mine opened out onto the verandah. I should’ve remembered I didn’t have to come through the house. I left them breathing heavily at each other like two extras in a spaghetti western.
Even before 7.00am it was clear it was going to be a stinking hot day. The morning passed quietly, I did more pool therapy and Arch kept me company. Shane tinkered away on his guitar and who cared where Rush was. It was almost like being on a real holiday and I could almost believe we were free and clear of any further drama.
But drama is a thespian’s middle name and I had three of them on my hands. While I was doing tentative heel raises, Arch let out a yell which brought the others running.
“Smoke. Fire!”
There it was—an angry column of black cloud from the town. Arch was out of his deck chair in two blinks. “Is there a local fire brigade?”
“Yes, I imagine so. It’ll probably be a volunteer one,” I said, climbing out of the pool.
I’d said the magic word. Arch gave me a hand up. “I want to be there.”
Twenty minutes later we were all on our way into town. Bangalow is a pretty village, saved from the sameness of newer townships by a highway which bypassed it in the 1970s. Its heritage buildings housed a variety of restaurants and cafes, funky shops and art and craft galleries. It was the old community hall that was burning and out of control.
We skirted the main street and parked behind the pub. Most of the town had turned out to either watch or help put out the fire. Arch was out of the car and talking with the fire chief before I’d switched off the ignition. In the rearview mirror I saw him hoisting a hose. He’d managed to talk his way in as a volunteer.
“He misses it,” said Shane, “the whole being a rescue guy thing.”
Shane, Rush and I stood back, well out of the way and watched the hall burn. It only took a few minutes for my eyes to start prickling and it seemed like even less time and all that was left of the hall was a smoky husk. The roof was gone, and several of the walls, the inside was a charred shell and only the street facing wall looked intact.
A very grimy but satisfied Arch made his way back to us.
“You want to say that was awesome, but you know it’s poor form don’t you?” asked Rush. I looked at directly at him for the first time that day. He who was the master of poor form.
“It was awesome,” said Arch, and we all laughed.
“How will they rebuild?” asked Rush.
I had no idea, but Helen later told me the chamber of commerce who ran the hall would have to find a way to fundraise to rebuild and it would probably take some time to happen, possibly years. In the meantime, a long list of community events would be without a venue.
Being in town meant mobile phone recep
tion and when I turned my handset on it told me I had forty-two new voicemails, nineteen text messages, and more emails than I wanted to count. Hollywood did the same, the sound of beeps, meeps and bings filled the air as the world and its cares flooded back at us.
I had several calls from Toby checking on arrangements, one from Mum and Dad asking tentatively whether I was having a good time with my new ‘friend’, two dozen from mates who made Prince Charming jokes, half a dozen from news media organisations fishing for information and two from Michael. It was clear he’d seen the coverage and he was angry.
His first text message said, Need to tlk. Don’t understand wot’s going on, plse call. His second was much more abrupt, Call me.
I could’ve have called him, I had reception in town and we had a land line at the house, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him, not yet anyway. The friends and family could also wait. I needed perspective before I could talk my way out of their new expectations for my whirlwind romance.
First priority was the calls from media. The six journalists who’d left messages were all ones we’d previously arranged and cancelled interviews with for Shane’s movie promotional tour. They were smart enough to figure out there might be a connection between my company and the latest headlines.
Fortunately, I’d not personally met any of them so they were unlikely to identify me as Cinderella. I’d worked out a response for calls like this that was truthful without giving too much away and satisfied Toby and the studio.
“Jo Standish. Hi, this is Andi Carrington from Arrive, returning your call.”
“Right, thanks for calling. I’m looking for any information you have on the visit of Horan, Dawson and Drummond and what they got up to on New Year’s Eve?”
“Jo, there really isn’t anything more to add to the story. They were in town briefly and wanted to blow off steam and experience a Sydney New Year as you’ve obviously seen.”
“So you’re saying they’ve left the country?”
This was the tricky bit. “I’m not making a comment on where they are.”
How to Hide a Hollywood Star Page 8