How to Hide a Hollywood Star

by Avoca Gardener

  “You still have feelings for him, don’t you?”

  I nodded again. “But it’s obviously complicated.”

  “How?”

  “Distance for one, not to mention my general distain for actors.” I smiled sweetly, trying not to have this conversation.

  “We will talk about this later,” he said, hovering over me with a pretend fierceness.

  From our box, we could see people taking their seats in the dress circle. It was a who’s who of the acting fraternity. I was happily playing spot the famous face when Arch interrupted.

  “Yep, that’s her,” he said, when he saw me lean forward. “Any other mother would be with her daughter tonight, but not Cecily.” Disgust dropped his voice low. “No career advantage in being by a hospital sick bed.”

  “She is beautiful.”

  Arch grunted. “That’s Josh she’s with.”

  I was mesmerised by Cecily who’d glanced up and waved to Arch with an air of languid grace, but then the houselights dimmed and we started on another journey altogether.

  When Shane walked on stage he was barely recognisable as the rake who’d partied hard in Sydney and rocked out in Bangalow. From his first line, he had me riveted. When we got to the scene we’d played in the lounge room at Allambee I could barely contain my excitement and Arch reached over and held my hand. I was sure Catrina was cutting off the circulation in his other one.

  When Patrice flirted with Damon, Shane had me convinced he was a stranger. A closed, tense, haunted man, with his heart on his sleeve.

  When the curtain came down on the last scene Arch and I were on our feet shouting, “Bravo! Encore.”

  Arch jumped the row to hug Rebecca and Samantha who was crying, but he seemed to think Neela might break if he touched her, so he let her be. Catrina pouted and as the cast came back on stage to take a third bow, I caught Shane’s eye and he blew me a kiss.

  When the curtain was finally down and the cheering died away, Arch shepherded us back stage where the cast and crew were in full celebration mode. We found Shane in his dressing room still in his Damon costume. He leapt to his feet when he saw Arch in the doorway and then grabbed Rebecca and Samantha, an arm around each of them and with their blonde heads together they laughed and murmured together for a few minutes.

  “Wish Mom could have seen this,” said Rebecca.

  “Yeah,” said Shane softly.

  Neela made her entrance then, presenting herself in front of Shane as though she was the one deserving applause. “You were wonderful, baby,” she simpered.

  He kissed her with a big smacking sound and said, “I was fucking marvellous!” to loud cheers from us all except Neela, who didn’t look like the cheering type.

  I was next for his attention. “Andi, if it hadn’t been for you and Rush I’d never have had the guts to try this.”

  “You freaked me out you were so good,” I said, taking his hands in mine.

  “I wish he’d been here. Though he’d have known I flubbed a line, don’t tell him eh.”

  “Speaking of,” said Arch, “I’ve got him on the phone.”

  Shane took the handset and huddled over it to hear above the increasing number of people in his dressing room. More of the cast were here now, bottles of champagne appeared and a photographer was snapping pictures.

  I saw Cecily and Josh make an entrance and I saw Arch stiffen when she approached him. She was even more radiant up close, in a skin tone, strappy dress with a tight bodice and a flowing beaded skirt. She easily eclipsed the other professional beauties, Neela and Catrina and the actress who played Patrice.

  “Andi, come speak to Rush,” called Shane, breaking through the rhubarb of two dozen or more voices and waving the phone.

  Rush’s voice was small, watered down in the distance and competing to be heard. “Andi, I’m sorry. Arch told you about Anissa,”

  “Yes,” I articulated loudly, “How. Is. She?”

  I thought he said she was sleeping and something about ice cream and then the phone was snatched out of my hand.

  “I’ll take that,” said Cecily, her sweet smile at opposition to the aggression in her voice and manner.

  It occurred to me she might recognise me as the original ‘other woman’, the home wrecker, but watching her up close, I could see Cecily only recognised what was important for Cecily and no matter how memorable I might have been, I simply wasn’t on that short list.

  “How is she?” Cecily snapped loudly into the phone. “What was the point of us both being there?” she barked. “I’ll be back at the end of the week. I’m sure you’ll manage,” she hung up and handed me the dead phone without a word or a glance. It rang almost immediately, but it was someone else wanting Shane.

  I could’ve tried to ring Rush myself but it was impossible to hear properly. Shane was up on a chair shouting instructions for the after party, a restaurant for a private supper, a night club, and the need for everyone to leave so he could get changed which was met with shouts of, “Take it off,” and ever the showman, he obliged, to hoots and cheers, stripping off his suit coat and shirt, whipping the belt from his trousers and going for the zipper.

  Behind me Rebecca shouted, “Hey brother!”

  “What?”

  “Nice boys don’t strip in public,” she called.

  “I’m not a nice boy,” he yelled, to raucous laughter. But he leapt off the chair and snatched a passing bottle of champagne, swilled from it and disappeared into the crowed room to greet newcomers.

  “He’s going to be wild tonight,” said Samantha, coming up alongside me with Rebecca. “Like he used to be all the time.”

  “Our Mom used to worry about him turning up dead from drugs or drink or something stupid,” said Rebecca. “If it wasn’t for Rush, he probably wouldn’t have made it to twenty-five. Thank God Arch is here. He won’t let him do anything too dumb.”

  “Was he a handful in Sydney? It looked like it from the press coverage,” asked Samantha.

  “Answer that careful now Andi,” drawled Shane, suddenly in front of us.

  I never even got a chance to attempt an answer.

  “Now here’s the plan,” he said. “I’m going to be bad tonight, real bad and because I care about you three I don’t want you there. Nothin’ you need to see.” Rebecca and Samantha exchanged a look that seemed to suggest they expected this.

  Then he turned to me and stepped up way too close, making me step backwards, as he bore down on me, people clearing out of our way left and right, until the back of my knees came up against his dressing table chair. He put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me into it, pinning me there. We were nose to nose and I could smell the slightly sweet scent of his sweat and see the darker blue that rimmed his eyes.

  “I particularly don’t want you there,” he said.

  “What have I done?” I said, as sharply as I could muster, given my complete lack of physical control over things.

  “It’s not what you’ve done. It’s what you haven’t done, what you owe me and I’ve a notion to collect tonight.”

  I gasped. “You are kidding?” Next to his sisters, I was the candidate least likely.

  “I’m not kidding. One bit,” he said.

  “Neela?”

  “Who?” The playfulness dropped right away from him. “You’re the only real woman in this room tonight. Rush has it right, but if he’s too fucked to do anything about it, I will. If you don’t want me all over you, I don’t want you around tonight—you get me.”

  I met his stare trying to read him, he was more Damon than Shane.

  “I’m not playing.” He put one hand behind my head and pulled me in to a crushing open mouthed kiss. One second I was locked against him and the next he was gone, leaving me pressed back in the chair, just a tiny bit unanchored from the world. I looked for Arch and when I found him I could tell he’d seen what happened.

  “You okay?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yeah, what was that?”

/>   “That was a warning.”

  “No, I don’t believe it. I mean look around, there a dozen or more stunning women who’d kill for the chance to be with him.”

  “And where’s the fun in that, Andi?” he said, leaning down close.

  “Oh.”

  “So you come to supper with Reb, Sam and me and then you have a choice, you can go back to the hotel, or you can take your chances.”

  “What will he do tonight?”

  “Too much of everything and he’ll love every minute of it. Sydney was a tea party. You don’t want to see him like he’ll be tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t you rescue me if I needed it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I said indignantly.

  He snorted. “The only thing you need rescuing from is yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I think you know and if I’m being cryptic sue me.”

  36: Brutal

  I lurched for the alarm clock and stabbed the snooze button but the ringing kept on, my mobile somewhere in the room, who knew where? If I ignored it, it would go away and it did. I closed my eyes and was almost back in a semi-jetlag, opening-night-lag coma again when the bedside phone rang, a loud jangling unforgiving sound that galvanised me to move.

  “What?” I growled.

  “Ah, I woke you.”

  I struggled upright. Only four little words and one of them more a breath, but clear as a bell and a fireball sent to melt me.

  “Hello,” I croaked.

  “Hello.” I heard pleasure mixed with concern. “I should let you sleep, silly to call you so early. I’ll call you later?”

  “No don’t go, it’s nice to hear your voice.” Nice, it was delicious.

  “It’d be nicer if we were in the same room.”

  In the perfectly temperate suite I was hot. Cool down, cool the hell down. “How is Anissa?”

  “She’s fine, she just wants her mother. Andi, I want to come to you but I can’t leave her till Cecily gets back, that’s not till Friday and I know you’re flying out that morning. Stay a few more days. Wait for me?”

  “Ah—”

  “Come to LA then?”

  “I’m not sure if I can change my flights.”

  “Your flights won’t be a problem. You don’t want to wait? You don’t want to come to me, is that it?”

  What to tell him? That part of me would probably be waiting for him forever. That I’d fly to him right this minute if it wasn’t madness. That there was nothing I wanted more than to have him talk to me for the rest of my life.

  He jumped into my silence. “Is it the other man, your partner?”

  “Michael?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I saw you with him the night of the ball. He was angry, you were upset. Whatever that was, it was important and I could see there was something intense between you.”

  Was it better to let him think it was Michael? I’d just had an up close taste of Rush’s world. The opening nights, the after parties, the girlfriends and hangers on, the ex-wife, the child, the money, the beauty, the risky, the ugly. The whole scene, so foreign to me it was the reminder I needed. I didn’t fit. Brutal.

  “Rush, I have to get back. We have this new investor and we’re working hard to make the most of an injection of capital. I can’t stay away any longer.”

  “I see. I’m sorry about that.” I could hear disappointment in his voice.

  “So am I.” Sorrow was already calcifying in my joints.

  “I should really let you sleep. I hope Arch rescued you from the worst of it last night. I saw this morning’s papers. Lucky Shane didn’t get arrested.”

  “Arch said I didn’t need rescuing.”

  Rush exhaled, I imagined him nodding. “He’s right. Enjoy New York, I’ll call again during the week if you like?”

  “Sure.” Keep it light. “I’d like that.”

  “Sleep well, Andi.”

  I told myself it was the jetlag, and last night’s cocktails at the restaurant. I was so very tired. I had tears on my cheeks before I even got the phone back in its cradle.

  The rest of the week passed in a kaleidoscope of colour and sound and all the sights New York has to offer. Simon cooked breakfast for us in Arch’s stunning Bleecker Street apartment and with Shane we dined at their restaurant in the meat packing district.

  I shopped on Fifth, Madison and Broadway and swapped money for shopping bags at Macy’s, Bloomingdales and Bendel’s. Arch took me to a Yankee’s game and I ate a hot dog with too much mustard, while he signed a dozen or more autographs.

  I spent an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stared at famous paintings I’d only ever seen in high school art books, and another at the Guggenheim overwhelmed by the Monets and Picassos.

  Arch, Simon and I saw Mogul again and for fun Pricilla Queen of the Desert. Simon knew all the words to every song and amused Arch no end by singing along, occasionally in tune. When I wasn’t out, I was cloistered in my glamorous suite at the W in Times Square. It was almost as large as Arrive’s offices and had its own terrace.

  And though he was across the continent I could feel Rush’s presence everywhere. His latest movie was on the in-house video channel. His face was on a magazine cover at a news stand. I watched him from my big bed one night on the Craig Ferguson Show and I blushed when I overheard two women discussing his merits and what they’d like to do with him, in Starbucks.

  We spoke, while I was racing out the door and headed into the theatre. I whispered in a gallery and shouted above the noise of traffic. He was hushed in a hospital corridor and echoed in a car park. We snatched pieces of conversation that went nowhere and marked nothing, leaving him frustrated and me relieved.

  It was for the best. And the busier I was, the less time I had to focus on how miserable I felt. Once I got home and there were more the 7,000 miles, 12,000 kilometres and an international date line between us, I knew I’d start to feel better again.

  37: Deserted Island

  No welcoming bark, though I belatedly realised Harvey might still be with Bert. It was good to be home. I needed coffee and something to do to stay awake and fight the worst of the jetlag.

  I dumped my bag in the bedroom and made for the kitchen, but through the doorway to the verandah I could see Harvey’s spotted rump sprawled on the wooden floor.

  “Harvey,” I called and got no movement. Was the lousy mutt asleep? Some guard dog?

  “Harv!” This time I got a thump of his tail, not his usual boisterous greeting. Something was wrong, was he sick?

  “Harvey,” I said again, and then I saw he wasn’t sick—he was in love.

  Stretched out in a cane chair, in the winter sun, ankles crossed, head back, eyes closed, was the object of Harvey’s affection. Curled up on the object’s lap was the Achilles tendon killer, and perched on the back of the chair was a sleeping cockatoo.

  Now I’d seen it all. Rush Dawson as St Francis of Assisi.

  “How did you get in here?” Surprise and anger scratched at my throat. How could I run away from him if he followed me and I’d tried so hard to run?

  “Bert.” Rush’s eyes flicked open. “He told me I could wait for you.”

  “What’s with the cat?” The insults kept multiplying.

  “She’s just scared, but if you’re gentle with her, she’s a lovely girl.” He straightened up and tipped the orange demon from his lap. Harvey let her pass unmolested and Chook opened one beady eye and surveyed my dishevelled state.

  “When did you get here?”

  “Couple of hours ago, I wasn’t sure I’d beat you back,” he said, watching me warily.

  It was hard to look at him without launching myself across the room into his arms, better to be annoyed with him, it would keep me sane. “What are you doing here?”

  “I told you I wanted to spend time with you and you wouldn’t come to me and you wouldn’t wait for me. All yo
u gave me was polite frost on the phone.” He unfolded from the chair and stood facing me across the room. “I want you to tell me face to face you don’t want to see me again. So here I am.” He opened his arms wide, presenting himself for my consideration.

  “How is Anissa?” Run, run, run away from this.

  He dropped his arms with a slap on his thighs. “Fine, thank you. Don’t change the subject.” He spoke sharply, narrowing his eyes.

  “What is the subject?” If I couldn’t run I could plead ignorance.

  “Us. You and me. We have unfinished business.”

  “Do we?” I made it sound like that was preposterous.

  “You damn well know we do. I thought I was going mad, polite conversations, cute emails, message tag, but I’m not interested in being polite anymore.” Now I heard the traces of his anger.

  “What do you want?” I wanted him to go before I completely dissolved in front of him.

  “I want you. I don’t care where. I don’t care how. I gave you space, I thought this thing with Michael might make itself more obvious, but now I want to know. Are you in love with him?” he demanded.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “I think it is,” he insisted.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Hah! So, you’re not in love with him.” He offered his first smile, which started out endearingly lopsided, but ended up cold and determined. “You’d have thrown it in my face if you were.”

  “It seems like you don’t need me in this conversation, so if you’ll excuse me.” I needed to get away before I did something stupid like begged him to stay. Only his anger was keeping me upright and on the other side of the room. I turned to leave but he lunged forward and grabbed my arm.

  “No. No more excusing you. I offered you a job.” His hand was warm on my arm.

  “And you told me you’d wait for my response whenever I was ready.” I tried to shake him off.

  “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Then the answer is no.”

  He released me and threw his hands up in exasperation. “Why?”

  “You know why.” I stepped back, my body vibrating with conflicting emotions that were increasingly difficult to control.