The Edge

by Jamie Collinson

  Back at the table, Craig was grinning up at him.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Very good, thanks. Lucky someone left their phone in there for us to do lines off.’

  Craig’s smile vanished. ‘That’s my phone!’

  Adam laughed, and handed it to him.

  ‘Wanker,’ Craig said. At the pool table beside their booth, two tall young men and a chubby blonde girl in denim shorts were playing a game. The girl was leaning over, lining up a shot, her bottom advancing towards Craig, who watched it calmly until it touched the edge of their table.

  The girl looked around and giggled. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Anytime,’ Craig said, winking at her.

  The girl shook her bum at him, appealingly, and took her shot.

  ‘Shit,’ Craig said, sipping his pint. ‘I love Hollywood.’

  ‘So the party,’ Adam said. ‘Is it gonna be the usual thing where no one lets loose?’

  ‘Not for us it won’t,’ Craig said. ‘Lots of industry cunts though, I’m sure.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Mad as a badger.’

  ‘Anything I should know?’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Craig said, looking at Adam now, ‘keep the fucking chang away from him. He’s only just out of rehab.’

  * * *

  Their Uber wound upwards through the steep, narrow streets above Sunset, twisting and turning towards the highest echelons of the Hollywood Hills. The houses here were big, and very expensive-looking. In their front gardens were signs warning of private, armed-response security firms. Among the Priuses on the long, often gated driveways were the odd Ferrari, Porsche or Aston Martin. It was as though a white village in southern Spain had been razed to the ground and a cluster of paranoid millionaires’ fantasy homes built in its stead.

  Looming above, through the moon-roof of their car, was the Hollywood sign.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ Adam thought to ask.

  ‘To the hills?’

  ‘To this house.’

  ‘No.’ Craig’s eyes glinted. ‘This is a new high in my social achievement.’

  The driver dropped them at the bottom of a long, narrow driveway, with tall hedges either side of it. The gates were open, and they set off up the steep slope. It took a full minute’s walking for the house to come into view, and when it did they both stopped – for breath as much as to take a moment to admire it.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Craig said.

  The house was built on a broad, high ridge – the last line of buildings before a steep, scrubby slope that led up to the sign itself. The entrance was on its upper level, but they could see that another, lower floor had been built into the dip beyond the ridge. It was massive: a modernist construction of glass, steel and concrete, gleaming in the late sunlight.

  ‘How much, you reckon?’ Adam said.

  ‘Ten, twelve,’ Craig replied.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Adam said.

  They walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

  It was another full minute before it opened. When it did, a short man in a white dressing gown, swimming trunks and big black sunglasses stood before them. His hair was very short and neat, as though cut that day. He smiled, showing brilliant white teeth, and threw his arms wide.

  ‘Craig,’ he said, as they embraced. Appealing voice, Adam noted. Warm and resonant, like a radio DJ’s.

  ‘Joel!’ Craig said. ‘This is my friend Adam. The label guy I told you about.’

  ‘Sure, sure, great to meet you, man,’ Joel said, embracing Adam too. ‘Sorry about the attire, guys,’ he said, glancing down at himself. ‘We’re in the pool. Come out back.’

  They followed him through the house, where he’d left wet footprints on the way to let them in. The floors were tiled in deep red marble, veined with gleaming white. Positively villainous, Adam thought.

  In the cavernous lounge, a huge painting – evidently a Picasso – was hanging on the far wall.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Adam said. ‘Is that—’

  ‘Real? Sure,’ Joel said. ‘Not mine, though. I look after it for the original owner. He’s in Hawaii these days, surfing. Great dude, man.’

  ‘Wow,’ Adam said.

  ‘I know. If only, right? A little way out of my reach, that’s for sure. Come on through, guys. There’s a bar by the pool. It’s a help yourself thing, if that’s cool?’

  ‘Sure is,’ Craig said, turning to Adam with his trademark rodenty grin.

  Beyond the French windows were a mid-sized, kidney-shaped pool and a large Jacuzzi. A separate pool house sat at one end of it, bigger than most of the flats Adam had lived in in London. On the far side of the water was a portable chrome bar, with two ice buckets and dozens of bottles. Fifteen or twenty people were milling around the edges of the water, in which two very thin, tanned girls were splashing and laughing.

  ‘Welcome, guys,’ Joel said, turning and spreading his arms. ‘Get yourselves a drink! Let’s hang!’

  ‘Sick,’ Craig said. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ Joel said, smile widening beneath the impenetrable shades. ‘I’m off the sauce. Started enjoying myself a little too much for a moment there.’

  ‘Well, you look great,’ Craig said, edging towards the bar.

  ‘Thanks, man!’ Joel said. ‘I feel so good.’ He let the robe drop to the floor, revealing the sort of stocky physique that Adam thought of as very American, and jumped into the pool, dive-bombing the shrieking girls.

  Adam and Craig made their way around the tiled edge of the water, nodding at the other guests. Everyone else seemed more subdued than Joel, the atmosphere among them one of mild tension. No one appeared to be drinking very much.

  In LA, Adam knew, social life was working life. Barbecues, drinks, dinners and lunches: all were opportunities that must not be squandered – especially when they were hosted by someone very important. The fear of faux pas at the heart of the power-hang had induced a sort of meta-socializing, where people mainly talked about how much they were enjoying hanging while the hanging was actually happening.

  For Adam, barbecues and parties were things you did with friends, occasions at which you could drink rather heavily without fearing the consequences. The very notion of friendship was different, in LA, among the people he met at events like these. The concept was closer to what he thought of as acquaintance.

  ‘Whisky?’ Craig asked him, making himself busy with the drinks. One of Craig’s many charms, as far as Adam was concerned, was that he seemed comfortable in any circumstances.

  ‘Please,’ Adam said.

  One of the girls had climbed out of the pool, and she approached the bar, throwing a towel over her shoulders. She was pretty in a big-eyed, girlish way. Her pupils were widened, Adam noticed, and she seemed to have trouble focusing, a loopy expression on her face.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I’m so thirsty. What’re you drinking?’ Her accent was what Adam thought of as valley-girl – all elongated vowels, and a sing-song intonation that made any statement sound like a question.

  ‘Whisky,’ Adam said, smiling at her.

  The girl was dripping on his shoes, but he resisted the temptation to step away from her.

  ‘Ew,’ she said. ‘Is there, like, vodka?’

  ‘Yep,’ Craig said. ‘How’d you take it?’

  ‘Tonic!’ the girl said, like a child ordering a long-promised ice cream. ‘And lots of ice!’

  ‘Coming right up,’ Craig said.

  ‘What’re you doing later?’ the girl asked Adam. Her jaw was working, he noticed, realizing that she was on some form of ecstasy.

  ‘You mean after the party?’ Adam said.

  ‘Yah,’ the girl said, eyes rolling in her head.

  ‘Probably going back to Silver Lake,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘It’s about ten minutes east of here, on the freeway.’<
br />
  ‘That sounds far.’

  ‘It’s where I live,’ Adam replied.

  ‘Well,’ the girl said, smiling vacantly as Craig handed her the drink, ‘get back to Hollywood safely after.’

  Joel appeared, dripping wet in his snug swimming trunks and the sunglasses. Droplets of pool water were now running down the lenses.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, his smile still in place. ‘Let’s get a photo!’

  ‘Cool!’ the girl said.

  ‘Wait wait wait! Let me get in there too,’ the other girl in the pool said. She began moving through the water, her efforts to do so rapidly appearing like a strange, strenuous dance.

  ‘Want me to take it, Joel?’ a serious-looking man asked, standing close to them in a leather jacket, white t-shirt and black jeans.

  ‘Please man, yeah,’ Joel said.

  ‘Use my phone,’ Craig said, handing it to him.

  Joel put one arm each around Adam and Craig. The loopy girl went to Craig, the other to Adam. She slipped a cold, wet arm beneath his shoulders, dripping all over his left side. Her nipples, he couldn’t help noticing, were protruding quite sharply through her bikini top. He wondered if other men were able to train themselves not to notice things like that – whether they even needed to.

  A droplet of pool water ran down the back of his shirt, and he grimaced as the flash went off.

  The girl turned to him as the group broke apart. ‘Beware,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Pardon?’ Adam said.

  ‘Beware. Of Joel,’ she said, and jumped back into the pool.

  ‘Alright!’ Joel shouted happily. ‘This is Lynx, by the way.’ He gestured at the man who’d taken the picture.

  ‘Nice to meet you guys,’ Lynx said, his serious expression remaining in place.

  ‘Hey – guess what Lynx’s brother is called,’ Joel said, grinning fiercely.

  ‘Go on,’ Adam replied.

  ‘Eagle!’ Joel said.

  Adam wasn’t sure whether to laugh, so he smiled politely.

  ‘Guess what Lynx’s mom is called…’ Joel said.

  ‘I can’t possibly,’ Adam replied.

  ‘Moon!’ Joel said, delighted.

  ‘Now,’ he continued, for some reason directing all of this to Adam. ‘Guess what Lynx’s dad is called.’

  ‘Tiger?’ Adam said.

  ‘Terry!’ Joel said, and laughed uproariously. ‘Fuck, man. I love you fucking Brits!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lynx said, in a tone Adam couldn’t quite identify, and lit a cigarette.

  Craig was playing with his phone, and when Adam glanced at the screen he saw that he was uploading the photo to Instagram. Sure enough, Adam’s phone buzzed in his pocket, presumably telling him he’d been tagged in the picture.

  ‘It’s great hanging, guys!’ Joel said. ‘Hey, you want the guided tour?’

  ‘Sure,’ Adam said, ‘love to.’

  ‘C’mon, guys, bring your drinks. Let’s do this,’ Joel said. Slipping on a pair of flip-flops and his robe, he set off back into the house. Adam wished he’d take the sunglasses off, so he could see the eyes behind them.

  ‘This is Italian marble,’ Joel said, scuffing a tile with a flip-flop as they re-entered the lounge. ‘The guy I bought the place from built the bathroom suite with it too. Imported a shit ton of the stuff all the way from Europe. But it was too heavy for the floor, so the whole thing collapsed onto the hillside,’ he said, laughing. ‘BOOM. Discount, motherfucker.’

  He turned and tossed them a grin. ‘I mean, I love the guy to death, but he’s a little screwy, know what I mean? I’m like, stick to the surfing, bro.’

  ‘What did he do, before the surfing I mean?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Movie guy,’ Joel replied. ‘Big deal back in the day.’ He pushed open a door, which revealed a large bathroom. The suite was made of normal, if expensive-looking, porcelain, as far as Adam could tell. Above the toilet was a vivid painting of a naked tattooed woman. Its colours were so lurid that Adam felt an odd reluctance to look at it properly. After a moment, though, he couldn’t help it. The woman was seated on a toilet herself, legs spread with two fingers between them, displaying her vagina while she pouted at the viewer.

  ‘Nice,’ Craig said.

  ‘Through here is my home office,’ Joel said, leading them into what was apparently a separate wing – a sort of long, wide, glass-walled corridor of a room, with views either side of the hill. On a side table was a large watch-winder, with three Rolexes behind the glass.

  ‘Serious stuff,’ Adam said, peering at them.

  ‘Those’re my babies,’ Joel said.

  He turned to face them, leaning back on a wide mid-century desk, his teeth shining in the dimming light as the sun dipped under the hills behind him. Above his head, through the window, Adam saw that there was one more house on the hill: a sort of Disney vision of a Georgian mansion, with window shutters giving it a more homely, American effect. Joel, Adam realized, was only second to the top of the hill.

  ‘God,’ Joel said. ‘It’s interesting not drinking at parties.’

  ‘Must be,’ Craig said. ‘But just think how beautiful tomorrow morning will be.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What happened,’ Adam asked, ‘to make you stop?’

  Craig shot him a look.

  ‘Well,’ Joel said. ‘I was at the EDC festival, in Vegas. I usually rent a house up there, throw an after-party for the artists. It’s become kind of a tradition. Everyone loves it. Shit gets real wild.’

  ‘I’ve heard,’ Craig said.

  ‘This year got a little too wild. One of the DJs wanted me to order up some women… You know,’ he grinned.

  ‘Uh oh,’ Craig said. He was peering at a framed photograph, which appeared to show a very young Joel, playing bass on a stage with blissed-out eyes and a cigarette in his mouth.

  ‘Yeah,’ Joel said, grin widening. ‘Bad Joel. Horrible Joel.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Adam asked.

  Craig glanced at him again, tickling Adam’s contrarian instinct. He didn’t like the idea of pussyfooting around the super-agent.

  ‘Instead of hookers I got the goddamn vice squad,’ Joel said. ‘It was a mess.’

  ‘Wow,’ Adam said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Joel replied. ‘They were after the madam, not me. Tapped the fucking call or something. But the house wasn’t exactly clean. Luckily I have a great security team.’

  Craig laughed. ‘Shit. Dramatic stuff.’

  ‘It gave me a little pause, shall we say,’ Joel said. Then, adopting a more contrite tone: ‘So now I’m trying to nurture the better side of myself. I have to celebrate the things that are good about me, rather than everything that’s worst.’

  Aha, Adam thought. Therapy! The dreadful truth of platitudes.

  ‘Who lives up there?’ he asked, gesturing up the hill behind Joel.

  Joel’s face stiffened, becoming squarer.

  ‘This heiress chick. Owns half of West Hollywood. Bars and restaurants, at least one hotel, I think.’

  ‘Right, yes. You don’t like her?’ Adam asked.

  ‘She’s fine. It’s her fucking house husband I can’t stand. He’s like this creepy hipster cowboy. He and I are sort of at war.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘He’s just one of those guys that’s a little too good to be true, do you know what I mean? All the women up here think he’s super hot. He has this long fucking hair he’s always playing with. Teaches the local kids soccer, always playing Mr Perfect. Which is easy when you do jack shit all day because your wife keeps you.’

  ‘Right,’ Craig nodded.

  ‘And when we first moved in, I happened to mention I was learning to surf, and the guy was all over me, talking about his vintage boards, how we should get in the water sometime, tossing his long fucking hair around like he’s talking to a girl. And eventually he insists on lending me this board, some ancient wooden thing he says Brian Wilson used to own. Perfect board to learn on, according t
o him.

  ‘So, I stuck it out by the pool and said thanks, and he’s all horrified like “you’re not gonna keep it out here, are you?” Apparently the sun would destroy the wood or the varnish or something. And there’s usually someone staying in the pool house. So it ends up in here. It was leaning against that wall, in fact.’ He pointed to where Craig was standing.

  ‘And one night, after a really long day, I took a highly annoying call in here from another agent who’d recently fucking stolen one of my artists, and after I put the phone down I just kicked the surfboard in two, like this…’ Joel stood up, kicked a muscular, tanned leg out from under his robe, and made a karate-movie ‘ya!’

  ‘Holy shit,’ Craig said.

  ‘And then my maid, God bless her idiotic little soul, leaves the two pieces of the board out in the street on recycling day. Sure enough, Mr Perfect comes along with a fucking topknot and his track pants, dribbling his fucking soccer ball, and sees the board and flips the fuck out. I had to pay him ten thousand dollars, and he still won’t speak to me. Which in itself is no bad thing…’

  Joel raised his left hand to his chin and gazed down at the wooden floorboards of his study, before turning his eyes to the house above his on the hill. ‘Ten thousand dollars,’ he said quietly. ‘Every time I see the guy, I want to fucking kill him.’

  There was a long, chilly pause. Adam glanced at Craig, who seemed to be avoiding his glance.

  ‘But the worst thing about that house,’ Joel continued, brightening fractionally, ‘is they overlook my Jacuzzi. And I really like to fuck in my Jacuzzi.’

  Craig laughed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Maybe they enjoy the show.’

  ‘Right?’ Joel laughed. ‘So, guys.’ He looked at them, expectant. ‘Enjoying hanging?’

  Adam glanced at Craig again. ‘Definitely. Amazing,’ Craig said.

  ‘Well, cool,’ Joel said. He rubbed his hands together, as if waiting. My God, Adam thought. He wants to throw himself off the wagon!

  ‘So, you guys partying tonight?’ Joel asked.

  ‘Keeping it low-key,’ Craig said casually.

  Joel’s smile dimmed fractionally. ‘Cool, well, the night’s young, man. Get a couple drinks, let’s see what happens.’