[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

  It didn’t. I waited, and waited, and waited some more, for so long that I was sure I’d missed my flight home. I went to Reception and interrogated the staff to see if they had a guest called Leon staying in the hotel, but they told me where to go – albeit in the most polite way that you can possibly be told to feck off with yourself. At a loss as to what to do, I returned to the roulette table and stood there like a big eejit again. It got to the point where not only did I have to face the fact that Leon wasn’t going to show, but my hangover was on the cusp of starting. I either had to get more alcohol or go to bed. I knew instantly which one was the more appealing option.

  I texted Roseanne and asked her if she wouldn’t mind awfully having a gatecrasher on her date. The phone rang immediately.

  “Oh, thank God you texted. I have to get away from this lunatic. I was just trying to think of an excuse when I got your message. Where are you?”

  “In the hotel.”

  “I’m in the Irish bar in New York-New York. Get over here, and come in wailing and bawling. I’ll say you’re having an emergency and I have to leave with you. Make sure you make it as dramatic as possible!”

  “Okay.” The way I was feeling, I wouldn’t even have to act.

  I made my way towards the west wing of the hotel and walked towards New York-New York via the overhead pedestrian bridge from the MGM. I looked down onto the Strip as I crossed over, wondering where Leon was out there.

  As I entered New York-New York, the lights of the hotels lining each side of the Strip shone as brightly as ever, completely oblivious to how the light in my world had just dimmed.

  Chapter Three

  I couldn’t believe I was back in work. Two glorious weeks away from it had nearly made it harder to step back into the madhouse instead of helping me to feel refreshed, and although I’d flown back from Vegas two days ago, I still hadn’t recovered from my final night and day there.

  After Roseanne and I made our great escape from New York-New York, we had done a casino-crawl until the wee hours of the morning, putting the world to rights along the way. I had asked at every hotel we had drunk in if they had a guest called Leon but, unsurprisingly, my success rate was no higher than in the MGM. I couldn’t believe that after all the talking we’d done, Leon had never mentioned where he was staying, and I hadn’t asked. But by the time I’d limped my way back to my hotel room in the MGM, shoes (one minus a heel by now) long since abandoned, I had a plan. Trouble was, I had very little time left to do it in, so I got up after only two hours of sleep with a thumping headache to put it into action. That was when I knew I really, really liked this guy. The suffering would have been worth it if I had actually found him, but I hadn’t.

  “Jesus, you look like shit.” Not content with harassing me outside the office, Jason was determined to continue it inside as well.

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Jason,” I said. “Put away your mirror and you’ll feel better.”

  He ignored my attempts to throw his insult back at him, and stuck his head in my face. “Christ, what were you up to in Vegas? You look about a decade older.”

  “Back away, smelly boy, and take your blackheads with you!” I shuddered.

  Jason was truly loathsome. He never washed, and he knew it drove us all mental (because we told him straight out), but the more we complained, the smellier he would let himself get. He was just one of those people who didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought of him.

  “You had a shit time, then.” He nodded knowledgeably.

  I was sure I heard him mutter “Good” under his breath, but I didn’t dare challenge him on it in case he came near me again. I felt nauseous enough as it was.

  Luckily, Trevor walked in just then and plonked himself at his desk beside me amid hellos and enquiries about my holiday. If you saw Trevor walking towards you, you wouldn’t feel quite so pleased to see him as I was. Trevor just had one of those heads you’d be scared of. He looked like he’d rob the dentures out of an old lady’s mouth to sell on the Internet, eat babies’ thighs with barbeque sauce, you name it. But the minute he opened his mouth, you’d instantly change your opinion of him. Not only was he the nicest, most decent guy you could ever meet, but he had a squeaky voice that meant you couldn’t possibly find him threatening.

  “Isolde missed you,” he screeched when we’d finished the obligatory holiday recap palaver and a slagging about the newspaper pictures. “She never stopped talking about you.” His rough head broke into a huge grin.

  “Oh, great.” I knew exactly what that meant. My boss, not to put too fine a point on it, hated my guts. Absence had clearly made the hatred grow stronger.

  “Relax. She sent a mail saying she wouldn’t be in until the afternoon, so you have the morning to catch up without her gawking at you.”

  Thea trudged in next, looking as wretched as ever. She didn’t bother with the niceties of welcoming me back. “Andie, come over to my desk sometime in the next hour – Isolde wants us to work on an article together. I’ve to fill you in on what I’ve done so far – you’re taking it over in one hour’s time. Oh, but don’t call over until you’re caffeined up. You’re too miserable without it.” She scowled, then flumped into her seat.

  I know, I know. Pot, kettle, black etc etc. But it’s like when your mother gives out to you for eating fatty food while she’s tucking into a scone dripping with jam and butter. You want to say something, but you know it’s utterly pointless – she’ll never see the similarity, only the difference. Thea, God love her, was someone who would remain oblivious to her miserable demeanour until her dying day. In her head, she was Barney-style happy, and everyone else had the blues.

  You don’t need me to tell you that we were a right motley crew. The only person I really got on with was Laura, who was thankfully making her way to her desk just as Thea finished her oration. Laura was the yang to Thea’s yin – bright, affable and enthusiastic.

  “Andie!” Big hug. “We missed you! How was the holiday?”

  “Great, great.”

  “And did you meet anyone nice over there?”

  “Well . . .”

  “You did! I can tell by the head on you! Who was he?”

  I decided to tell her about meeting Leon – God knows, I was only dying to talk about him, and we’d only end up talking about the pictures in the paper otherwise. As soon as I mentioned that there was a man involved, I could tell that the others were eaves-dropping shamelessly. It wasn’t long before they all started chiming in with questions about Leon – even Thea, although she was probably trying to ascertain that the whole outcome didn’t have a happy ending and that I was miserable about it all.

  “You mustn’t have tried very hard to find him,” Trevor shrilled.

  “You reckon?”

  Before I knew it, I was filling them in on my efforts to track Leon down. Might as well replace the talk of my public humiliation with – well, humiliation abroad. I had them all in stitches within a few minutes, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

  I was just getting into the flow of my story about waddling up and down the Strip with a ‘Do You Know Leon?’ sandwich-board when I heard the sound of an office door being ripped open. An innocuous sound to most, but not when you knew who was doing the ripping. Although I jerked my head around immediately, I felt like I was moving in slow motion as I turned to face bushy eyebrows, slitty eyes and a sour puss of an expression.

  “Isolde! I thought you were away this morning . . .” Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn’t have said anything that would make me sound guiltier.

  “Evidently.”

  “So. Ahem. How are you?”

  “All the better for having you back to do some work. Oh, wait. You’re not. You’re yapping.”

  “Just filling the gang in on my holiday,” I said, sweeping my hand towards the aforementioned gang. I turned to find I was gesturing towards thin air. The yellow-bellies had all spirited themselves back into their cubicles, and were t
rying to look invisible in their seats. As you might have guessed, we were all terrified of Isolde. Nobody admitted it, but we didn’t have to. We wore our fear all over our yellow faces.

  “It was great. We get it. And now, it’s over. We need a catch-up meeting, Andie. Now.” She swivelled back into her office.

  I swallowed hard as I walked – or, truth be told, semi-ran in the fashion of that Olympic event – to Isolde’s office. I was only in the door ten minutes, and I was already being hauled off to the dungeon. At this rate, I’d be fired before the end of the day. I whacked my knees against Isolde’s desk as I tried to position my legs in a ladylike, nonchalant, I’ve-done-nothing-wrong fashion.

  “Any idea what you’ve done wrong this time?” Isolde said in a tired, almost bored voice.

  “Okay, so maybe I distracted the guys with talk about my holiday – but they asked! I didn’t come in here wanting to talk about it . . .”

  She put her hand up to silence me. “Oh, forget it. We’ll be here all day if we’re waiting for you to work it out. Here.” She threw a printed article across the desk at me. It was a piece I had written for my gossip column just before I went on holidays about how I had spotted two married government ministers canoodling in the VIP area of a top Dublin club. (I should point out that they were not married to each other – but even if they had been, it would still have been considered gossip – ministers and public displays of affection were not comfortable bedfellows.) It had been a midweek night, with not many people about, and they had obviously let their guard down.

  She plonked another piece of paper in front of me. “And this is the letter we got from Mr Government Minister’s solicitor, threatening to take a libel action against us. What do you make of that?”

  “Well, of course they’re going to try to deny it! They’ve been caught red-handed, but they’re hardly going to pose for kinky pictures, are they? You knew something like this might happen before you agreed to run the story.” I might have been afraid, terrified, petrified of Isolde and her temper, but when I’d brought the story to her, it had been her decision to run it. She had practically wet her knickers in her haste to get it printed up.

  “Nothing like this has ever happened before, has it? And when it does, it has to involve you.” She shook her head. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t fire you right now.”

  I was too tired for all of this. “Because nobody else who would be willing to work for the pittance I earn here has the kind of contacts I have, that’s why.”

  That shut her up. The last thing she expected was a back-answer. To be honest, it was the last thing I expected either. Nobody back-answered Isolde Huntingdon. And for some demented inner-rage-related reason, I just had. But I wasn’t finished my attempt to annihilate my career. No, I had to make it worse.

  “I will not be called a liar, Isolde. I know what I saw. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” I stood up, wearing what I hoped was a regal expression, and attempted to plod with dignity out the door – until her screech of “Where do you think you are going?” gave me such a fright that I stumbled and my entire body sprawled against the door that stood between me and escape.

  I steadied myself, and somehow managed to stagger out and back to my desk for my handbag and coat. Strains of “Hoy! Get back here!” followed me. The yellow-bellies’ faces were alive with the drama of it all. Drama at any time was good, but on a Monday morning . . . well, you couldn’t pay for it. Isolde toddled after me on her stumpy little legs, but she hadn’t a hope of catching up with me. As the glass lift in our building began to transport me downstairs to the freedom of the outside world, I saw her shaking her fist at me. Now, I told myself, that’ll show her. Nobody – nobody – had ever stood up to her before.

  I had a few glorious moments of self-congratulation before the reality sank in. When it did, I had to steady myself against a wall outside because my legs were shaking so much.

  Oh God. What had I done?

  Chapter Four

  I suppose I should explain to you what I meant about my contacts, when I was giving guff back to Isolde. It’s kind of embarrassing, actually, and it makes me sound like a right knob (or knobess, I suppose the technical term is). Actually, I’m quite grounded. How much more grounded can you get than being willing to wear a sandwich-board? I could barely move with the weight of that thing.

  According to the tabloids, I am of that species that’s known as an Irish celebrity. For anyone who doesn’t know what that entails, it essentially means that pictures of my mush show up a lot in monthly style magazines and newspapers. I get invited to a lot of high-profile birthday bashes, charity lunches and balls, book launches, that kind of thing. And I suppose you’re wondering what I’ve done to merit being a so-called celeb. To tell you the truth, I wonder the same thing myself. I never set out to be one, you know.

  It started, as a lot of things do, with a man.

  I was working as a part-time model to raise a bit of spare cash while studying journalism in college, but even though I was in the papers a lot advertising different things, nobody took much notice of me as a person. And then, I started seeing Graham. When I first met him through a model friend, I had no idea he was an up-and-coming football player. I was probably the only person in the city who didn’t, judging by the showers of women who were following him around in Pied Piper fashion the night we met. Of course, the fact that his head could have fallen off his shoulders and I wouldn’t have noticed instantly grabbed his attention. We eventually started dating, but we were only on the starters of our first dinner date when we were snapped. Or papped, Graham used to call it. I called it a damn nuisance. And then, out of nowhere, I couldn’t go anywhere without my picture being in the paper the next day. If I was on my own, there would be a report under my picture saying that Graham and I had broken up. If I was sipping a drink, I was evidently drowning my sorrows. If I was scratching my nose, someone would be sent out to my mother’s house to ask her how she felt about me taking cocaine as a result of the break-up – of course, my mum being my mum, she’d always say something bizarre that would convince the reporters that their fabricated story was actually true, that she was on it as well, and would they like to come in and have some?

  It was all completely out of control, but it did open doors for me. When I finished college, having long since broken up with Graham after he started dating a millionaire’s wife behind my back, I spent a few years in Paris teaching English. I thought everyone would have forgotten who I was when I returned, but to my surprise I landed a plum job as a reporter on an entertainment show called Glitter on an independent TV station called Éire TV. The hours were long, but I sometimes couldn’t believe I got paid to do it – who wouldn’t want to spend their days flying to London to interview stars on the red carpet at movie premiéres? And then . . . the station’s broadcasting budget was cut dramatically, and our programme got the chop.

  I’d hated every minute of modelling – well, would you want to do a photo shoot for bananas in a bikini on Grafton Street when it was only two degrees? (I was in the bikini, by the way – not the bananas.) Okay, so the sales of bananas soared in this country for months after the ad came out, but that was no use to my frostbitten feet – my toes looked like decayed mini-bananas themselves after that shoot. So, if I wasn’t pictured looking like a sleepwalker as I left a nightclub, I was looking at my goose-bumped thighs over the breakfast table. No, there was no way I was going into modelling again – and I was several years older by then too. So the logical thing to do was what I was trained for. I would take over the world of journalism with my concise reporting on politics, global warming (I wasn’t too sure that was happening at all after that freezing bikini incident) and world finance. And given my unblemished history of business travel for Glitter, I’d surely get sent to America as the US correspondent for big events, the whole hog!

  I got a part-time job as an entertainment correspondent with a daily newspaper, the Vicious Voice. Well, you try getting taken serious
ly when the whole world has seen your bum cheeks. And the only reason I got it was because I knew half of Dublin from my modelling and reporter days. I had enough sense to know that I’d have to be careful about what I reported, but Isolde’s idea was that I would blag my way into every event in town, fawn over everyone to their faces, and then tear them to shreds in my column. When that didn’t happen, she took an irreversible dislike to me. Luckily for me, the public seemed to like my style, so she didn’t fire me either. I also wrote a few controversial articles about my views on various things to redress the balance, and eventually Isolde allowed me to break into writing for other areas of the paper when my colleagues were out sick (aka nursing their hangovers at home). This eventually mutated into a full-time position with the paper, and a hard-fought-for one at that.

  And now, I’d gone and walked away from it as if it had meant nothing. As jobs went, mine was right up there with pulling out eyelashes with a blunt tweezers on the painful scale, but I needed it. Not for the first time, I cursed the strokes of my pen the day I filled up my CAO form many years ago. I’d been oscillating between choosing teaching or journalism as my college course for months on end. I knew that becoming an English teacher was what I really wanted, but I had no confidence that I’d actually be any good at it. After many hours of pen-hovering, I eventually deemed journalism to be the better option. I was happy with my decision right up until the day I started my journalism course, at which point I commenced the process of spending the rest of my life to date wishing I’d chosen teaching instead. I was taking that process particularly seriously today. But it was too late to think like that now, and all I could do was salvage the wreckage of my career and get my job back. If I didn’t, I was finished as a journalist. Isolde would blacken my name all over town – she was that kind of miserable old bag who was at her happiest when she was spreading poison (she and Thea got on very well, incidentally). There was nothing else for it. I’d have to go back in there tomorrow and grovel.