‘Cor, wiggle those Bobbie Davroes!’
(Simon had called breasts Bobby Davroes since he was about sixteen.)
I wiggled and rocked my boobs about, then I moved towards him/Rachel and started maniacally pretending to slap him round the head with them.
‘Steady on there, Sare, you’ll have an eye out,’ he laughed.
Leaving his head alone, I did an over-acted Sunflower Oil hip-stomping wiggle around my stage/small area between bar tables. Then I pretended to take off a stocking while making a come face. I stomped back to Simon with the stocking and placed it round his neck.
‘Babe, you wanna do something about that athlete’s foot.’
I took the other stocking off and teased it over his penis, which was now six feet long. Then I got on the floor for my downward dog move where I pumped my bottom up and down in his direction. It was my least favourite move as I looked like a pillock and it was agony. But on that evening it was the most fun I’d had in ages.
‘Hit me with those ping-pong balls!’ Simon cried. I started to make ping-pong-ball-out-of-fanny noises even though I had no idea what these are.
Simon was saying something but I couldn’t hear him.
‘What?’ I said, stopping still with my bottom in the air. Then I realized that I couldn’t hear Simon because his voice was in my head. So the male voice I heard couldn’t belong to Simon. It must belong to someone real. It was bound to be a waiter or the manager.
‘Sarah! Meet Erin’s dad! Pastor Schneider,’ cried Rachel with glee.
‘Wha . . .?’ I gasped, spinning round and getting up and then stumbling over again elegantly.
‘Sarah!’ smiled Erin.
‘Erin!’ I rushed forward and gave her a hug. Mr Schneider didn’t look impressed.
‘Mr Schneider, I’m Sarah.’ I held out my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. Excuse me there, I was practising a, er, routine for the film.’
He looked nothing like I imagined. He didn’t look like a vicar. Well, not like the English vicars I’ve seen who tend to be described with terms like ‘morbidly obese’ and ‘pasty’. Erin’s dad looked coiffed. He had clearly just dyed his hair because there was a brown smear around his hairline. He’d got a better tan than Jay-Z and he was wearing a polo shirt. If I hadn’t known who he was I would have said he was a sexually deviant golf pro. He ignored my hand, looked at Rachel as though he couldn’t quite place her and then turned to Erin.
‘We’ll be late.’
Erin looked mortified by his rudeness.
‘We’ve got a prayer meeting. See you later,’ she whispered, and skipped off to catch him up.
‘Well, Sarah!’ Rachel gushed. ‘You have very nearly got it!’
‘What?’
‘This stripping lark!’
‘But I was taking the piss!’
‘Right, now that’s sorted, let’s work out what you’re going to wear for shag practice!’
sixty
I like summer. But I hate the wardrobe. I, Sarah Sargeant, am a winter wardrobe woman. I love a winter wardrobe. It gives you the confidence of three mulled wines on a Boots Shapers sandwich. I love my hold-you-in tights that I estimate take off two arse inches. I feel contentment when the cellulite on my arms is safely ensconced under a jumper and coat. I can relax when I wrap a scarf around my neck and hide my double chins. I step confidently in boots knowing they hide my Wayne Rooney calves. In winter, I can wear high heels to make me look thinner. But summer. Summer! Where do I put my cellulity arms? Do I let the dough folds flap freely in a vest top or do I cover them up with a sweat-ringed shirt? And what do I do with my arse? Do I let it lollop around under a flimsy bit of floral material? Because if I do, summer dictates I should team said unflattering floral skirt with flat sandals. I repeat: flat sandals! Do I wear flat sandals and shuffle dumpily around as the imitation leather blisters and scabs my feet? The only good thing about summer is that you get to wear sunglasses. A pair of sunglasses never makes you look fat. You see, in England, I can get away with winter clothes in the summer. I can go out in July in a polo neck and tights, sweat a bit, but say, ‘Oh, it was freezing when I left the house.’ And people will nod and understand. But there, in LA where it was constantly hotter than a Pop Tart, I could not.
So what was I supposed to wear to meet Leo for our rehearsal on the beach? I couldn’t cope with the question. All I could do was put my head back under the covers and scream, ‘Leo! Beach! Gah!’ repeatedly. Deciding what to wear when you are meeting The Most Handsome Man In The Universe™ was Pythagorean in its difficulty already, without adding the fact I was meeting him on a blinking beach! I picked up my phone. The only answer was perjury. I had to text him and tell him I was ill. The clock on my phone said I was meeting him in twelve minutes!
‘BUGGER!’
That scuppered that plan. I didn’t mind telling a whopper. But I went to a convent. I didn’t want him to think I was rude. I had to meet him. I got out of bed. I looked at my reflection.
‘NO!’
I pulled off the floral skirt and vest top. But then I caught sight of me in a bikini in the mirror.
‘WHY DIDN’T YOU DIET???’ I shouted at my reflection. ‘You were always planning to diet, weren’t you? And then you just got a bit distracted by food. Now look at you. With your beach meetings and stripping scenes! THAT’LL TEACH YOU!’
I pulled on a maxi-dress.
‘No, you’ll trip over the bloody thing and then your boobs’ll fall out, and YOU LOOK LIKE LORRAINE KELLY!!’ I took the maxi-dress off again. It was like Britney backstage. I was starting to sweat. I suddenly understood why people in LA got into prescription drugs.
‘Seven minutes!’ I panted.
I was flushed. It looked like I’d been masturbating. The clock moved in front of me. Six minutes!
‘Gah! Sort it out, Sarah. You dick,’ I hollered.
‘Right, breathe.’ I breathed. ‘It doesn’t matter. He’s ugly. And you have got a seamless plan to stop you enjoying the kissing. You worked it all out when you woke up dehydrated this morning, remember? Now breathe and put some bloody clothes on because you only have five minutes. I SAID, BREATHE!’
I picked up my old tatty, were-briefly-in-fashion-when-I-was-seventeen-and-never-came-round-again, cut-off above the knee jeans. I put on a white shirt that I had slept in once. I sat on the bed to put on my flesh-cutter sandals. I heard a crunch under my bottom. I pulled out my broken sunglasses and said the word, ‘Bollocks!’ with feeling.
sixty-one
Leo Clement didn’t worry about what to wear that day. Leo Clement didn’t contemplate sending a text with the words
sore throat and swollen glands
in it. He just threw on a pair of surfing shorts. That is because Leo was a professional. Although it had to be said he didn’t do up the surfing shorts quite tight enough. They were sitting very low.
We practised our lines repeatedly. To the point where even I, who am a major shareholder in Self-Deprecation, was able to say that the scene was sounding ‘not bad’. There had been no talk of practising the physical stuff. No lip-to-lip contact. His muscular, slightly surfing-calloused, tanned hand hadn’t gently brushed my breast. I hadn’t felt those thigh muscles, smooth and hard like stale ciabattas, tense against me. Although my mouth had spent a lot of time open in the hot dog position.
‘We don’t have to if you don’t feel comfortable.’
He had been speaking. That was the thing with Leo; he was perfect to look at and seemed like a very nice young man, as my mum would say. But he talked like he was tired and had just done a skunk bong and I normally switched off after the first ‘Hey,’ and just watched his lips move.
‘Sorry. I was miles away.’
‘Oh, well, I was wondering . . .’
Such beautiful lips, the colour of nearly ripe cherries. Pay attention, Sarah, I thought. I was acting like an Italian man. Giovanni, pack it in.
‘If you wanted to do the, er, you know, if you feel comfortable.�
��
I suspected he was talking about the naughty bits. He was gesturing to me and then to him uncomfortably in a way that implied he wanted to practise the rude stuff.
‘Oh!’ I started to gesticulate to him and also to me and then I did an abstract swirly command, which I hoped indicated getting jiggy with it. Then I added the words, ‘The, er, bits with the, er?’ to make it clearer.
‘Yeah.’
Blimey.
‘Oh. OK,’ I squeaked.
‘Cool,’ he nodded seriously. ‘If you do. For practice. I mean, I’m cool if you’re cool.’ In hindsight, a ludicrous thing to say because in no sense of the word could I be described as cool. I was breezeblock-size bricking it about kissing that man.
Leo leant towards me.
‘Are you ready?’
Shit. Fuck. No. My plan. What was my plan? I remembered. Only my plan didn’t sound like much fun all of a sudden. In fact my brilliant plan suddenly held as much appeal as a vegan diet. Next time I woke at 4 a.m. to drink two pints of water from the bathroom tap in quick succession and decided while I was at it to come up with a plan I should remember to come up with a Plan B.
‘Yeah,’ I nod to Leo.
I got my mouth ready in the snake kisser position. I’m not proud. But this was my plan. If I had to kiss Leo, then I was going to make sure it was terrible. I had decided that I would only be being unfaithful to Simon if I kissed him like Sarah Sargeant. So I wouldn’t kiss him like I would normally. Not that I would ever have got the chance to kiss Leo Clement in real life, I mean possibly, maybe, if I had been single and I somehow managed to snog him, say, in a nightclub in the very early hours, when he was on a stag weekend and there were no other women in a five-mile radius and he’d been living in an Indian ashram for the preceding nineteen years. Anyway, I vowed to snog him in the manner of my character, Taylor, who wasn’t very good at kissing. Bless her. She kissed like a snake. Lips shut for the most part, like kissing a bum hole. Although lots of people liked that, so I didn’t want to make it too pleasant. I would very occasionally dart my tense tongue out but only if absolutely necessary. Because I mustn’t enjoy it. I mustn’t get carried away.
‘So, I join you here, and then I thought I might touch your face like this.’
I watched his hand move towards my cheek. Then I felt his coarse fingers on my skin. He moved his head so that it was level with mine. And he kept it there. And he just looked at me. He was simply holding my face and looking at me. He didn’t move in for one of my amazing snake kisses. We simply stared at each other. I got the far better deal in this looking-at-each-other business. His lips were slightly parted. And I decided that his eyes were very kind. Blue, piercing and all the other wanky words you use to describe gorgeous men’s eyes. But, more than any of them, kind. Mind you, I am a terrible judge of character; I used to think Tony Blair was quite a nice man.
My lips were slightly parted as well, which was bad because they should have been tightly closed for a snake kiss. We were still staring at each other. It had been ages already. I wanted to shut my eyes. But then I wanted to savour it too. Because it was sexy. All right. Very sexy. Don’t tell Simon, but this man had taken sexy to a rooftop bar at sunset and bought her a drink. Actually, no, she bought him a drink and said, ‘I take my hat off to you.’ Our breathing had reached the same rhythm. Every time we breathed out together it felt as though we were melting into each other. Eventually, he leant in further and my parted lips moved to welcome his. We did some small kisses as we got to know each other’s fleshy bottom lips. When we kissed it even sounded right. Perfect little ‘mchau’ sounds.
Shitit!!!!! I suddenly remembered the snake kiss. I pursed my lips shut quickly. Leo was surprised. He stopped and looked at me again. Then he used his finger and thumb to trace my lips, which was very sneaky because it meant I had to relax them. I couldn’t very well let him do that if my mouth was pursed shut like a sphincter. Once my mouth was relaxed again he started to kiss me as before. And I put my hand in his hair. It felt a bit odd at first, like fondling a girl’s head. I thought of Katy Perry because I liked it. We kissed and then we stopped kissing and just pressed our cheeks together and breathed in each other’s ear. Then we carried on kissing. Suddenly Leo’s hand went down to my boob and it all changed. He’d gone for a boob grope. The cheeky fecker. What was his name, Russell Brand? I pulled away suddenly. I was panting a bit, which was embarrassing.
‘No,’ I said breathlessly.
‘Oh, but it says in the script . . .’ he started.
And it was then that I remembered the film we were rehearsing for.
sixty-two
She’s definitely a maniac!
You’ll be brilliant today! Just remember to keep thinking about Simon!
You go girl!
Rachel! (Had to put an exclamation mark after my name because for some reason I’ve started putting bloody exclamation marks after everything else!!!!)
PS. I’d have asked you to be godmother.
I held Rachel’s note in my shaking hand.
‘Are you decent?’ shouted Eamonn, knocking on my dressing room door.
‘That’s debatable.’
‘How you feeling about this? Do you want a drink?’ he said, opening the door a fraction and peeking in.
‘What you got?
‘I have brought along my special lady-about-to-take-her-clothes-off hip flask.’ Eamonn walked in and took a silver hip flask from his back pocket.
‘What’s in it?’
‘Whisky.’
I scrunched my face up.
‘Pah. I hate whisky.’
Eamonn put the flask back in his pocket.
‘Wait! That doesn’t mean I won’t drink it!’
He handed it back to me and I took a swig.
‘Ew!’
It sounded like an army was marching past my dressing room. Eamonn huffed, then walked to the door and opened it.
‘The ego has landed. Look at this wanker,’ he sighed.
‘Who?’ I giggled, because Eamonn just shouldn’t say words like ‘wanker’ or ‘dickhead’ or ‘knob’. He was too old.
‘Dolph “I have a responsibility to my fans, Eamonn, I can’t say that line – where’s my lawyer?” Wax.’
‘Oh my God, is he there!’ I screamed, jumping up. ‘Where is he?’
‘Somewhere in the middle of that coterie,’ Eamonn said, pointing to a cluster of briskly marching people in smart clothes.
‘Who the fuck are they?’
‘Oh, the hairdresser, the chef, the lawyer, the bloke who beats the bongo drums so Dolph can find his inner child every time I want to shoot a scene!’
‘Oh, that sounds like fun.’
‘Yes, Sarah, it’s a hoot,’ Eamonn said fiercely, taking out his hip flask again and having a swig. ‘Maybe we should all join him. I could do with finding my inner child.’
‘The thing is, Eamonn, I’m not very good with children.’
‘You surprise me, Sarah, I thought you’d be very good with children,’ he said, and I think he meant it.
‘Ah, Eamonn, thanks.’
‘You being such a big kid yourself.’
‘Should have known that was coming.’
‘Come and meet the extras.’ He took my hand and led me out of my dressing area and into the studio.
‘This is Sarah Sargeant. The actress who’ll be playing Taylor and dancing for you.’
I smiled weakly at what looked like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. They all clapped politely. I did a mock curtsey.
‘Now, that’s Darren, in the wheelchair there.’
‘Hi, Darren,’ I said, taking in the twenty-seven-stone man in a specially made wheelchair. He had a head like a joint of lamb. I had to put my stocking around Darren’s head later. I reminded myself that the action should be titillation rather than strangulation.
‘Hello. I have a bad leg. Just thought I’d warn you in case you wanted to climb on me.’
‘Oh,�
� I scoffed. ‘I won’t be climbing on you. Or I hadn’t planned to. But I’ll try not to get too carried away!’
‘OK, we’ll mark it through with the music. We may have to do this quite a few times. Bear with us. There’ll be a lot of action. People moving to and from the bar and a fight we’ve plotted. You’ll have a few cameras, so just do your thing in that area and we’ll move round you.’
‘OK.’
What did you do at work today, Sarah? Oh, I took all my clothes off in front of about a hundred men. Lovely, darling.
I took some very deep breaths. A costume lady came and looked up my dress to check that my flesh-coloured body-suit was in place to protect people from pubes.
‘How are your nipples?’ she whispered.
I groped myself to check that the Nicorette-like patches were still over them.
‘I think they’re still there, thank you.’
‘Atta girl.’
‘Sadly, Sarah . . .’ shouted Eamonn. I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see much because there was a massive light in my eyes and lots of dry ice stuff.
‘You will need to take your clothes off for these practices.’
‘OK!’
‘Oh, Sarah, darling. I understand you have some rhythm problems. Don’t worry about keeping in time with the music. We sort that out in the edit. OK?’
I did get carried away!
‘Do you think I should press his head into my breasts?’ I said these words. I was vampily straddling the wheelchair with my dress riding up.
‘Try it.’
I grabbed Darren by the head and then I shook my boobs in front of his face. It was my inner Madonna coming out. Terrifying!
‘Great, keep it!’ shouted Eamonn.
‘Ahhhh,’ cried Darren.
‘Oh shit, did I get your bad leg?’
‘My neck.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘I’ve got torticollis.’
It sounded like something you have with a dip. I stared blankly down at Darren’s head.
‘Ahhhh.’
He didn’t look happy. His head was at a 45-degree angle. I clambered gently off him.
The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend Page 21