[2014] Looking for Leon

by Shirley Benton

  When I’d told Lindy the first day that my cameraman would be arriving soon to film the first episode of Looking for Leon while she was interviewing me, she hadn’t been one bit impressed at the prospect.

  “That’s quite a cheeky ask,” she’d said in a sulky tone. “I’ll have to speak to Dave about that.”

  “Can you speak to him now, so?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Good Lord. “I got that, but why?”

  “Because he’s not free right now.”

  “When will he be free?”

  “Tomorrow. I know he has an important meeting downtown scheduled for right about now.”

  “So what does that mean when it comes to getting permission to do this today?”

  “It means you have a problem on your hands.”

  I was about to ask her for Dave’s number to ring him myself when Colm arrived. Lindy’s face instantly took on a whole new expression. Quite simply, she suddenly looked as downright predatory as I’ve ever seen a woman look.

  “Colm, Lindy, Lindy, Colm,” I muttered.

  “Well, hello.” Lindy moved into vamp mode. She extended a perfectly manicured hand to Colm, and thrust her breasts out even further than her hand.

  Colm did a one-second handshake and flicked her hand away as if he was tossing a stone into a well. Lindy didn’t seem to mind. She responded by producing an even wider smile.

  “I take it you’ve sorted out the permissions for me filming here?” Colm asked me.

  “Well, actually, no. We need to get permission from Dave, but he’s not free right now.”

  Colm’s face clouded over. “So you mean I’ve had a wasted journey here today, then?”

  “Oh, don’t be getting silly and stressing about the little things, Andie,” Lindy laughed. “Of course Colm can film here today!”

  “But what about what you said about Dave?”

  “You just let me handle Dave,” Lindy purred. “Colm, you go right ahead and get yourself set up.”

  I shrugged. If Lindy flirting shamelessly with Colm was going to make my life easier, then I had no problem with it. It was about time he came in useful for something.

  A really nice cherry on the cake that was my mission in Vegas was that the MGM had offered discounted accommodation to Colm and me, once they realised that theirs had been the turf upon which I had met Leon, and we’d moved there the day before. They got publicity out of it, we got a nicer and more central hotel (with me getting a suite again), so you’d think everyone would be happy – but, of course, Colm was loath to leave the 70s hotel. He did eventually, but it was a struggle to get him out of there. I thought he was going to stage a sit-in at one point, despite the fact that Buck had turned everyone that worked in the hotel against Colm, and he was practically being spat at in the corridors for his misogynistic ways. I had to promise that I’d go to a 70s club with him in a hotel near the MGM sometime in the future to even get him to begin the negotiation process, and I eventually got him out with promises of hiring out the most outlandish 70s costumes I could find for our night out – I hadn’t a notion of going anywhere near that club, of course, but needs must. I was a bit sad to leave the hotel myself, truth be told – I’d grown fond of it since I’d struck up a friendship with Buck – but I was sure the MGM would plant some fake mould in the shower to make me feel at home if I missed it too much. Of course, I wouldn’t have been that bothered if Colm had chosen to stay in the hotel on his own, but logistically it would have been a pain for us to get together in the evenings to work on our next episodes if we were in different hotels. It was also pretty handy to have Wi-Fi Internet access in our hotel rooms. So far, I’d been so busy during the day on all the activities Lindy had organised for me that I’d been doing all of my regular work for the paper at night. The 70s hotel had no Internet access, so that meant I’d been going into LVTV half an hour earlier than I could otherwise have been to email articles to Isolde.

  It was all going according to plan (if I’d had a plan in the first place other than the great concept of finding Leon, and I can’t say I had), but I couldn’t help wondering though if all of this was going to send Leon running for the nearest plane out of the States. It was a reasonable assumption that some people might find all of this a little bit on the ‘waaaaaayyy too much’ side . . . but then, I thought about Leon’s enjoyment of me wrecking the windscreen of a car worth God only knew how much money, and I relaxed a little. He was zany, he’d get it. It was just a matter of finding him. And if I didn’t do this, I’d never find him anyway, so why not give it a shot? I talked myself down. It would be fine.

  Anyway, I had too much work to do to allow myself to get worried. Dave had also capitalised on me being a journalist, and had arranged for me to write articles for a women’s magazine, a daily paper and a weekend supplement for one of the biggest-selling Sunday papers in Vegas. And, of course, I had my column to write and email to Isolde.

  I took a quick walk around the hotel to clear my head before I tore into my work. As I passed Reception on my way back to my room, I saw my new best friend – my Buck replacement, if you will – one of the hotel porters, Philippe. When I’d arrived and checked in at the MGM, he’d escorted me and my luggage to the elevator where he’d proceeded to tell me his life story. He’d moved to Vegas from Paris thirty years ago to be with a local woman who he’d met while she was on holidays in France. They had married within a month of his arrival – the only surprise there being that they hadn’t done it sooner, given the location – and they’d had a wonderful life.

  Philippe and I were in my room by this time and he seemed to have no intention of leaving. On he went with his tale. When his wife died five years before, when he was fifty-three, he forced himself to go back into the workplace (after taking an early retirement from an administrative position at the age of fifty) so that he’d get out of the house and meet people instead of moping around. He was a people person, he said. He liked to talk, to get to know people, to help them if he could. I’d nodded and pressed a tip into his hand to try to close the conversation and get him out the door – he was a bit full-on for my liking. But anytime I’d seen him after that, I found that I liked having a friendly face greeting me. He also occasionally worked in Reception, covering shifts if anyone from the main reception team called in sick or had to absent themselves for a while, but whether he actually did any real work or not between all the idle chit-chat was questionable.

  Today, he was only on porter duty and was currently hanging about Reception, looking like he hadn’t a care in the world, while everyone else worked themselves into the ground.

  “Andeee! Come over ’ere and ’ave a chat!” Even after thirty years, he still sounded very French when he spoke in English.

  “I can’t, Philippe. I have to work.”

  “But you’ve been working all day!”

  “Yes, but I’ve more to do now. Anyway, aren’t you supposed to be working yourself?”

  “Pah!” He curled his lip dismissively. “A lot of the people who come ’ere are fat. They should carry their own luggage for exercise.”

  “Philippe!” I gave him a disapproving look.

  “I am only saying out loud what everyone says behind the fat backs of fat people. Don’t tell me you ’aven’t noticed the overweight people who take those electronic buggies from the elevators to the breakfast buffets because they are too lazee to walk?”

  He had me there. I had noticed it. I’d also noticed that Philippe was with Isolde in the non-PC club. He nodded, knowing my silence meant he’d made his point successfully.

  “I have to go, Philippe.”

  “Okay. I will find something to get out of doing, then.”

  I smiled. “You do that.”

  I had so many emails that I didn’t know where to start, but the one from Isolde with a big exclamation mark beside it to show that it was high priority would have the feedback on how the broadcast of the first show ha
d gone, and was definitely being kept until last. If it hadn’t gone well, my spirits would be too low to work through all the rest of the rubbish I had to attend to. I read all of the other nonsense, including one from Jason about the results of his monthly audit on the incorrect and inappropriate use of semicolons in all copy submitted for publication. I opened the spreadsheet of offenders, and found myself top of the list with five felonies. I pressed reply, typed the words ‘Fuck; you; and; your; semicolons;’, and just before I pressed the X on the top right of the email to get rid of it, I seriously thought about sending it this time. Every single month, I wrote a mail full of abuse to Jason when his monthly audit came out. It varied from telling him to go off and train to be an accountant if he wanted to do audits to outright plain abuse where I told him he stank and he needed an operation to get his ears pulled back (he did, honest). But I never sent them, because – well, I’m crippled by the rules of the workplace, just like everyone else is. But this time, I came very, very close. I felt like I was coaxing myself back from the edge of a cliff as I forced my shaking hand to move right and click on the X, as was customary. When the email was gone, I felt disappointed, and was tempted to go through the whole process one more time, but I really had too much to do that day to be dawdling around on work emails.

  I suppose the fact that I hated ploughing through my work emails wasn’t a good reflection on how happy I was in my job. In fact, I distinctly remembered telling Leon that I hated it.

  “So how is it you’re working in a job you hate instead of doing whatever it is you really want to do in life?” he’d asked me.

  “How do you know there’s something else I want to do in life?”

  “Because everyone has dreams. What’s yours?”

  I smiled. “Well, I suppose there is something. It’s not much of a dream, more a case of having made the wrong career choice. I think I should have trained to be a teacher instead of doing journalism.”

  “Okay, so how about retraining as a teacher now then?”

  “I’m thirty, Leon. I’m far too old to retrain.”

  “Of course you’re not. Think about it. You’ve got another thirty-five years of work ahead of you, maybe more. Do you want to spend those years doing something you can’t stand?”

  “But what if I retrained to be a teacher and discovered I didn’t like it?”

  “That’s a risk you’d have to take. But wouldn’t it be fun finding out? Life is all about finding what you’re passionate about and then doing it.” He shrugged. “That’s my advice anyway, for all it’s worth.”

  “And I appreciate it. How about I think about it over another round?”

  I shook my head. Remembering the good times with Leon wouldn’t clear my inbox. Time to read Isolde’s missive and be done with it.

  Andey, I said to myself as I opened it, Isolde here. Not only was she openly aggressive, but she did a great line in passive aggression too. Either that, or she really was the worst editor in the entire country.

  From: Isolde.Huntingdon@vicious.ie

  To: Andie.Appleton@vicious.ie

  Andey,

  Isolde here.

  (I mean, who the hell else would it be from that email address? She might as well have said it was Isolde Huntingdon and be done with it, lest there was any confusion at all – who knew how many Isoldes there could be running around the place?)

  Updating you on the reaction to what’s been broadcast so far. Momentum is building. People were glued last night. We’ve been inundated –

  (See? She could spell when she wanted to. And she always boasted that she never used the spellchecker on her computer.)

  – this morning with emails to the info email address wishing you luck. KEEP IT UP. I’m doing a twice-weekly slot on the entertainment section of Éire TV’s breakfast show where I give the nation a taster of what’s to come in your column. Make sure you give me enough to talk about. I don’t want to be sitting there like a turnip with nothing to say. Not that there is such a thing as a turnip that does have something to say. Anyway, I have work to do. Get your next column to me fast.

  Kind regards,

  Isolde

  (The last three words were from her email signature, and were just there because of the necessity to email people outside of the company. The regards to people inside the company were neither kind nor existent.)

  I sat back in my chair and exhaled. As Isolde’s mails went, that was high praise indeed.

  I flew through my first column and the articles I had to write, and then lay back on the hotel bed with the remote in my hand to chill out for the first time in days. Things were good. And I was shocked to realise that I’d almost forgotten about what had happened to Elaine for a while there. Almost.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Ms Appleton?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Nicole in reception. We have a letter here for you. Will I send someone up with it?”

  “No, I’ll come down and collect it, thanks.” Any excuse to get out and have a walk around the hotel. I felt I could live here for years and still marvel at how much it contained. It was like living inside a treasure chest.

  “Okay, Ms Appleton. We’ll have it waiting for you. Thank you!”

  “No, no, no. Thank you!” I was in such a good mood that I could out-enthuse her no problem. I hung up, as there was silence at the other end of the phone. She could even have been wondering if I was taking the mick out of her. Or was that the Paddy?

  “Ah, Andeeee! You ’ave come to collect your letter, yes?” Philippe stuck his hand behind the reception desk and fished it out, oblivious to or unperturbed by the disturbance he was causing to one of the receptionists who was trying to type a credit-card number in as he brushed his hand around her work area.

  I examined the envelope when he handed it to me. It had nothing on it except my typed name – no stamp, no return address and nothing to indicate who it might be from.

  “I didant see who dropped this in – I ’ave just started my sheeft,” Philippe said.

  “Don’t worry, Philippe. I’m sure they left their name in the letter. That’s what most people do when they write letters.”

  “Yes, but I don’t know who they are yet. That is the problem. Open it up, queekly.”

  I shook my head. There was no point in calling him on his nosiness. He would just take it for granted that I should accept it. And, in a funny way, I did. Besides, I was a bit too curious myself about who the sender was to waste any time castigating him. I ripped the envelope open and read the typed letter.

  Andie,

  I’ve seen you on TV. You need to know that Leon already has a girlfriend. You’re wasting your time over here. Do something useful with it and book your trip home instead.

  “What the . . . ? Philippe, is this your idea of a joke?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, come on. Mysterious letter mysteriously arrives for me – you just happen to be around when I open it to see my reaction – you’re obviously even more bored than usual today!”

  “What ehr you talking about? Show me!” He snapped the letter out of my hand. The second I saw his face as he read it, I knew he had nothing to do with it.

  “Andee! This is nastee, no? I would nevare do this!” He looked quite hurt.

  “Sorry, Philippe.”

  “’Ere is your letter. I am going to do some work alongside the people who trust me.” He crumpled the letter into my hand and marched off.

  “Ah, Philippe! Don’t be like that!”

  He treated me to a ‘Talk to the hand’ gesture. I decided to give him some space. I scanned the name badges on the four receptionists currently working in the reception area until I located Nicole. I introduced myself and asked her if she’d seen who left the letter in.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said with a smile. She looked like someone who didn’t know how not to smile, but it was endearing rather than annoying even though what she was saying wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I just fou
nd it in my in-tray right here.” She pointed to her in-tray, which was beside her computer in her position on the left-hand side of Reception.

  “Do you think any of the other receptionists might have accepted it and put it there? I’m not trying to suggest that your colleagues are evil and foisting work onto you, by the way – I’m just wondering if that might have been possible?”

  Nicole smiled politely. “Let me just check to see if they remember anyone delivering it.”

  All three shook their heads when asked if they’d been the recipient of a letter for Andie Appleton. I thanked Nicole for her time, gave her my widest smile (which still wasn’t a patch on hers) and walked to the casino to gather my thoughts.

  I put the letter in my handbag and sat down at a slot machine. I fed it with coins as I mused about the letter’s origins. While the letter wasn’t particularly nasty, it had shaken me up.

  Maybe it was karma. When I was at school, I sent a poison-pen letter to a teacher once. She was a right wagon, but I didn’t really even dislike her all that much – I had just seen the poison-pen letters in comics and on TV, and thought it would be cool to do one up. When Mum saw me cutting letters out of newspapers, I told her it was for my scrapbook of donkeys. I would glue the names of all the donkeys into the scrapbook. Mum thought it was a lovely idea, and I could see she thought I was great for partaking in such a creative activity for a change instead of beating up my brother. In fact, she was so content that she probably would have put the actual poison-pen letter together for me if it meant a night without the usual volley of abuse between my brother and me. She never liked this particular teacher much either. Anyway, I popped into the classroom before class began and left the letter on the teacher’s desk, just so that I could see her reaction when she opened it. She was a right old cow, so I expected her to just grind her teeth and turn purple (our class had a competition going to see who could come up with the most inventive way to get this going on) – but I got the fright of my life when she burst out bawling the minute she read it. Now, I have to be honest, it was vicious – but so was she, so I thought I was matching like with like. It turned out that her sister had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, so the letter caught her at a very bad moment. But I never admitted it had come from me, and to this day I still feel bad about seeing her purple face go all crumply.