by Julia Dumont
He reached over and placed his palm upon one of Paloma’s perfect cheeks, cupping it in silent reverence and admiration…remembering the night before. How deeply moved he’d been. And she had been too, he thought. This bottom was far greater than any work of art he’d ever seen, read, or listened to. He moved his hand slowly to the small of her back, studying that perfect slope, housed in perfect skin, altered only by a tiny tattoo of a bluebird in flight. He hadn’t seen it the night before as they’d rocked in the 2:00 AM silence and now it was like a visual representation of the luck that had been bestowed upon him since the moment he’d touched down in this supposedly hard and uncaring town.
Good luck in Hollywood is the luckiest luck there is. The softly singing birds outside helped complete the sensation. He had no idea what kind of birds they were, but he decided they were blue.
He moved closer and kissed her shoulder softly, causing two fingers on her right hand to react slightly, as if a tiny electrical pulse had animated them.
“Hey, lover man,” she mumbled, her face still smooshed deep into the mattress.
Seamus reached for his phone.
“Hey,” he said. “Want to get some room service?”
“No, no. You don’t want to spend any more money…you’re a starving artist just like me.”
“Yes, well,” he said, kissing her neck, just behind her ear, “don’t worry about it. I’ve got it covered.”
“My Irish sugar daddy, huh?” Then she jerked her head upward. “Hey, what time is it?!”
“Oh,” he whispered, “I imagine it’s ten or ten-thirty.”
“On Friday?!” she squealed, rolling off the bed and running to the bathroom, “Jesus, I’m late for work! I’ve gotta go!”
“Can’t you just call in sick?”
“No! Cynthia is depending on me.” She jumped into the shower, instantly covering herself with soapsuds and rinsing them even faster. By the time Seamus got there, she was out and drying off.
He insisted he’d help out, grabbing a second towel and wrapping her like the warm delicacy she was. He managed to stop her for one long second to kiss her passionately on the lips, and despite her panic, she paused to enjoy it.
She looked down and smiled.
“Mr. McFun doesn’t know I’m late for work.
“He’s got a one-track mind, I’m afraid,” Seamus replied, letting the towel drop to the floor.
“I tell you what,” she said, kissing his chest, sliding her hand down his firm abdomen to his even firmer Mr. McFun, “how about a quickie?”
“’Quickie’” is not in Mr. McFun’s lexicon,” he smiled, leaning down, kissing her breast and caressing her waist so sweetly, so perfectly, that Paloma breathed in deeply through her nose and then sighed out, trembling… instantly persuaded to surrender a good deal more lateness to him. Although they’d just met, she was deeply struck by his devotion to satiate her carnal hunger. No one had touched her this way. Ever.
They moved back toward the bed, but never made it that far, winding up on the carpet…she, facedown, his warm breath on her legs, his lips finding the bluebird. He concentrated on that spot for some time, regretting that he’d missed it the night before. Theirs was the kind of brand-new desire that requires almost no foreplay. The bluebird’s happiness seemed to spread…every inch of them instantly alert, completely in play, hard, soft, warm, wet, anticipating, reacting, alive. As he gently turned her over, moving up and making initial contact, he hesitated, holding back, massaging the beginning of her with the end of him, all parts yearning for total engagement, but waiting for an eternal five seconds before mutually driving everything all the way home.
She cried out. Seamus slowed down again, lifting his head from where it had burrowed deep into her neck to look at Paloma. He loved the face of a beautiful woman at the moment of climax, but he had never seen anything quite like the vision before him now. Her features distorted almost beyond recognition with pleasure…but still breathtakingly beautiful: eyes squeezed tightly, nose crinkled, cheeks flushed, teeth pinning lower lip in place. He pushed up higher inside her, then higher still, wanting to watch her respond, her face morphing into still more exquisite variations on itself. He felt happier at that moment than maybe he’d ever felt…dizzy, euphoric, and privileged to be bearing witness.
“Seamus!” she cried. “Would you mind wrapping this up?! I’m late!”
And Seamus did wrap it up, letting everything go, he reached out to grab onto the back of the couch and thrusting harder than ever, their cries were as intertwined as their body parts.
Before they knew it they were on their backs, staring at the ceiling. He spoke first, but she finished his sentence.
“That was…”
“…good.”
Then a pause.
Then: “Okay,” she said, leaping up, “now I really do have to go.”
She quickly crossed to where her clothes were piled on a chair and dressed in an instant.
“Wanna have dinner after work?” he asked, stark naked, stubbly, sleepy-eyed, and drained in every sense of the word.
She, on the other hand, except for a remarkable rosy glow emanating from her cheeks that almost seemed to be warming the entire state of California, and a patch of damp bangs plastered to her forehead, looked remarkably ready for the world.
“I can’t, sweetie,” she said, opening the door and turning toward him as she backed through it, reaching to touch his face, then kissing it. “Bye.”
“Bye,” he said, watching her body move gracefully down the hallway and disappear around the corner. But then she peeked back around.
“Hey, I almost forgot,” she said. “Cynthia sent you an email inviting you to a pretty wild party tomorrow. It’s a Second Acts affair, but despite what transpired here, and this was very lovely, I think you should say yes. I’ll be there working, and I think the whole thing might be a boon to our careers. A lot of industry people. Not to mention that it’s on Ava Dodd Radcliffe’s yacht, which obviously must positively leak money. Okay, gotta go.”
Seamus stared for a few moments at the spot from which Paloma had vanished, before closing the door and flopping onto his back on the bed. He lifted his phone to his face and scrolled through his emails. He opened the one from Cynthia and RSVP’d. He picked up the hotel phone and ordered a huge breakfast. Then he showered and put on a plush white robe. He luxuriated while he ate, read the complimentary New York Times from front to back, and then headed to the lobby to check out at exactly 12:41 PM.
“Hello,” he said to the young man behind the counter, handing over the key. “I need to pay up.”
“Very good, sir,” the hotel guy replied, “I trust you enjoyed your stay.”
“The understatement of the bloody millennium,” said Seamus. “Thanks.”
“Good, good,” said the kid, looking at the screen. “But I’m afraid I have to charge you for two days, since you’re forty minutes past check-out.”
“Oh, no problem at all,” said Seamus, in a tone that seemed like he hadn’t a money care in the world. He had the air of a Hollywood player, rather than an unemployed recent arrival, crashing on his brother’s couch. “It’s well worth it.”
“Very well. Do you want to just charge the American Express card we have on file from last night, Mr. Ramsey?”
“Abso-bloomin’-lutely,” replied Seamus with a cat-eating-canary grin.
The hotel kid printed out the itemized bill: $1,259.42. “Please give me your John Hancock,” said the kid.
“We don’t use that expression in my country,” said Seamus, pretending to look over the math, as if he cared in the slightest, “so, I’ll give you my John Patrick Clancy O’Shaughnessy O‘Brother-this-is-a-long-stinking-name O’Hancock instead. Oh, by the way, I didn’t have any small bills for the maid…I guess I’ll just add a tip here. Can you see that she gets it?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Seamus leaned down, added $400, and signed Max’s name with a flourish.
&
nbsp; “There you go,” he said.
“Oh, my…very generous,” said the kid. “She will be very pleased. I hope to see you again too.”
“Without a doubt,” said Seamus walking on air into the perpetual Los Angeles sunshine.
He didn’t have a car. He had seven dollars and thirty-two cents in his pocket. There was a little more cash back at his brother’s, but that wasn’t going to help him get there from West Hollywood. He wasn’t sure if Hollywood cab drivers took credit cards and he didn’t want to have the guy wait downstairs while he fetched the money because he didn’t want to spend it anyway. He was also sick of cabs, having spent the last ten miserable years in one.
So he checked the map on his phone and set off on foot, up the hill on Alta Loma Road to Sunset Boulevard. He scrolled through a Los Angeles tourism site and decided this was much better anyway. He would pass through Sunset Strip, see the huge statue of Bullwinkle the Moose, still there from back when that show was in production fifty years ago. The Chateau Marmont, tons of billboards selling the latest movies and TV shows…the whole trek was a great introduction to his new town, the town he’d make his own.
He switched over to Hollywood Boulevard to take in the Chinese Theater and the hokey Hollywood hoopla that he’d only seen in books and magazines. He walked slowly, reading the names on the stars in the sidewalk along the way. The Kinks song about Hollywood Boulevard ran through his head and he noticed the occasional name of a fellow Irishman or woman: Barry Fitzgerald, Maureen O’Hara…he wasn’t sure if any of the newer ones had made it yet, like Liam Neeson and Colin Farrell. He knew they’d get one if they hadn’t yet. He looked at the blank squares, imagining his name in them. He nearly crashed into a huge dingy SpongeBob and then had his picture taken with a scrawny Wonder Woman who did not come close to filling out her costume and was smoking a cigarette and talking out of the side of her mouth like Jimmy Cagney. More like “kinda make you wonder, woman,” he thought.
He loved it all: the glitz and the grit. Despite the wildly contradictory nature of the place, he felt its powerful seductiveness. He was fully aware of the long-shot nature of pursuing the Hollywood dream, but he didn’t care about that. At all. It was what he now knew he wanted more than anything he’d ever wanted.
As much as Paloma enchanted him, as he walked the four-anda-half miles, he realized Tinsel Town enchanted him too. This yacht bash was something so out of the realm of his experience. It seemed sort of like signing up to be part of some over-privileged woman’s fantasy. Actually, it seemed exactly like that. But when you added the siren song of Hollywood fame and glory, it was a small price to pay. Being flirted with and fondled by a bunch of beautiful people was a dirty job but somebody had to do it. After all, Paloma would be there and they could surely sneak off and grab some quality time down in the lower deck.
God knows I love her lower deck, he thought, smiling to himself. He stopped in his tracks. I love all her decks. I think I love her.
Chapter 19
FRIDAY 1:30 PM
Max, the man, was rudely awakened when three tongues, ranging from unusually tiny to freakishly large, licked him hard in the face. He was simultaneously being French kissed, having his ear wax cleaned out, and his eyelids pried open to gain slobber access to his eyeballs.
“Wait, what…hold it, hold it!” he said, spitting and clamping his lids tighter than ever. “Hold it!”
Lolita was standing in the middle of her living room, laughing. She had already been awakened by the dogs and then sort of sicced them on Max, urging them to wake him up by any means necessary. Thwarted from licking, Max the Irish wolfhound, started thwacking Max the man across the head with his tail. Max the man was lucky it wasn’t King, the Great Dane, whose tail had basically zero fur padding and was as strong as a python.
“Okay!” said Max, struggling to his feet and starting to laugh too. “I get it. You’re back!”
He and Lolita had been out looking for the dogs all night. They had reported them missing to the Beverly Hills police, the Los Angeles Police, the Santa Monica Police, and every dog pound within a fifty-mile radius. They finally gave it a rest for the night and had fallen asleep only an hour or so earlier.
And after all that, the three very special canines had just walked right in and sat right down, as if they hadn’t nearly driven their ever-loving mama out of her mind.
“Can you believe it?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact, I can,” he said. “Where do you think they’ve been?”
“I don’t know, but Wilfredo (the Chihauhau) brought me this.”
She held out a thick stack of twenty-dollar bills, a bit drooly and dented with teeth marks.
“What the hell,” said Max the man. “I guess that’s one way to make a living. You could be Fagin to Wilfredo’s Artful Dodger.”
She waved bills in the air and put on her best Cockney accent. “You’ve got to pick a pocket or two, I suppose,” she said. “And I wouldn’t begin to know how to find out who it belongs to.”
“Impossible,” he said. “Plus, I could use a little cash. You wanna split it?”
“Tell you what,” said Lolita, counting the bills. “You can have a hundred. After all, Wilfredo is my Artful Dodger.”
“Deal,” he said, grabbing his wallet from his pants pocket. “All I’ve got is a little leftover Irish funny money.” He slid the cash in. “Hold on,” he said, pulling out his credit cards and license and various other plastic, one by one. “I think I’ve lost my AmEx. Jesus.”
“Are you sure?” asked Lolita. “Do you remember where you used it last?”
“Well, it had to be in Dublin. I haven’t used it here yet. I used a different card at the Miramar.”
He immediately called AmEx and found out that the card had seen action four times in the past ten hours in four separate spots in Hollywood——a bar on Pico, a restaurant on La Cienega, of course the Sunset Marquis Hotel, and Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum on Hollywood Boulevard.
“Wait,” said Max. “Sounds like I was pickpocketed by a tourist. Isn’t that the exact opposite of what’s supposed to happen?”
“Yes, that’s right, sir. So, you are sure it wasn’t you who signed at the Sunset Marquis?” asked the woman.
“Yes!” said Max. “How could I not be sure of that?”
“You’d be surprised, sir.”
“Okay, yeah. Well, I am. Sure. I haven’t been to the Sunset Marquis in ten years.”
“All right, then. So, I guess it goes without saying that it wasn’t you who gave the maid a four hundred-dollar tip and included a handwritten note next to it that says…hold on, let me blow it up on the screen. Yes, let’s see, ‘For the maid, of course, but more importantly as a massive ‘f-word’ you to a world-class a-hole named Max.’”
“No,” said Max, shaking his head. “That was not me.”
Chapter 20
FRIDAY 1:42 PM
By the time Seamus made it back to Los Feliz, his feet were sore and he was feeling a bit dizzy. Dizzy from exercise, dehydration, love, and Hollywood dreams.
He stopped off at a local grocery store to pick up a soda, but when he got in there, it occurred to him that he should probably buy some food for his big brother’s refrigerator…be a good house guest and all that. So, he filled a shopping cart to the brim, with meat and vegetables and desserts and wine and beer and anything else that looked good.
He waited in a very long line. So he was of course quite disappointed when he was told that his American Express card had been declined.
It was embarrassing, to be sure, but even more than that it was a crushing end to his Hollywood fantasy of opulence. He felt dejected and very, very poor.
He turned to walk away and then stopped. He looked in his wallet again. “Excuse me, Miss,” he said to the heavily pierced cashier, “Is there a Starbucks anywhere around here”
She looked at him like he was a moron. “There’s a Starbucks everywhere around here. Walking in any direction.”
>
“Thank you kindly,” he said over his shoulder.
He found a Starbucks in twenty-seven seconds.
“Can I help you,” asked the cheerful Starbucks lady.
“Yes, you may,” he said, taking the card out of his wallet, “I seem to have lost track. Could you tell me how much I’ve got left on here?”
She swiped it. “Oh, my. You have six hundred and twenty-one dollars and thirty-seven cents. I didn’t even know they came that high.”
“Right,” said Seamus, beyond amazed. “That’s just about what I thought. It was a gift from Mr. Starbucks himself.”
“Uhh…I’m pretty sure there is no Mr. Starbucks.”
“Oh, I know, I was pulling your leg. Okay, I’ll tell you what, I’ll take all the food in that case. Every bit of it. All the pastries, all the sandwiches, the fruit, the yogurt with the fruit with the little crumbly granola bits on top, all of ‘em.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked, her eyes wide, starting to ring stuff up. Two other people starting bagging.
“Not kidding. I am very hungry. Famished. I haven’t eaten in ages. Also throw in all the cookies and graham crackers with the chocolate and all those little bags of nuts. Okay, let’s see where we’re at.”
The line was growing behind him and people started whispering that he was hogging everything.
“You can’t buy it all, asshole,” said a scowling, slick businessman in the back of the line. His arms were crossed and he was tapping his foot like a lunatic. “Maybe that’s what they do back in England…”
“Hold on, Slick,” said Seamus. “Did you say England?”
“He’s obviously Irish,” said the young woman next to Seamus. “But still, it’s totally rude.”
“We have more in back,” said the cashier.
“What an asshole,” said Slick.