Desire

by Louise Bagshawe

He took his eyes off the road, and did look at her. That heart-shaped face and slim body, the dark hair, the sparkling eyes. She was so vital, pretty, but more than that; clever and brave. He wanted to kiss her, badly.

  ‘You’re stunning,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you don’t know that.’

  She snorted. ‘Don’t give me that. Your magazine ran those photo spreads like everyone else. Hollywood’s looking for sensational and there are thousands of sensational chicks out there; models with perfect faces, huge boobs and tiny waists, long blond hair, the whole thing. Those that haven’t got it can buy it, if they’ve got the cash. I couldn’t compete. Didn’t want to try.’

  ‘You didn’t have the look they wanted; doesn’t mean you weren’t beautiful, Lisa.’

  ‘Sam. I’ve had half the tabloids in America pointing out my flaws for about three years now. So don’t try to spin me a line.’

  He said nothing further. What would be the point? He waited for her to go on.

  Maybe she’d be a writer. Not screenplays; she wasn’t interested enough in films. Novels. Lisa smiled bitterly. She’d enjoyed detective stories best, gritty thrillers about American cops. Now she was living one. There were other things she could do. Flowers.

  ‘Flowers?’ Sam asked. He was gripped by her story. The woman never stopped surprising him.

  ‘I love flowers. They’re a splash of beauty in a bad world, especially if you live in a city. I worked in our local flower shop when I was sixteen and I’ve never forgotten it. The florist business is badly run, you know that?’

  ‘I know nothing about being a florist.’

  ‘You can do two things with flowers. Wide delivery, like Interflora, or designer ribbons and twigs and stuff. There’s a gap in the market for imaginative flowers done cheap. I thought maybe I could fill it. In LA they send a lot of flowers. All those prima donnas, and only half of them are women.’

  ‘I like it,’ Sam said. She was impressive, this girl. Not dreaming of becoming an identikit starlet like the rest of them. Concentrate on the road, he told himself.

  ‘Anyway, that’s what I was moving towards. I started taking on night work at Madame Rose; do you know it?’

  ‘The florist on Third Street?’

  ‘Yeah, that one. Bunching and tying. I wanted them to give me a real job. Flowers are another area with lots of illegals. Anyway, I wasn’t too worried. I was twenty-three and I figured I’d fall in love with somebody and get married, and that would take care of the immigration problem. He’d come with a green card; I’d be safe.’

  ‘OK.’ This didn’t sound too bad, Sam reflected. Her life so far was different from most of the girls. No drugs, no flirting with hooking, no ‘parties’ where the chicks removed their tops on a mogul’s yacht and got slipped a few hundred. She was normal; only in LA, that wasn’t normal. Ambitious, grounded, secure in herself.

  Maybe Josh Steen wasn’t the best thing to happen to her. Maybe he was the worst.

  ‘Go on.’

  The owner began to give her work in the front of the store, but Lisa kept up the waitressing. More tips, paid better. And one day Josh Steen came in with his girlfriend. Her name was Elizabeth Cartucci, but Lisa didn’t know either one of them. Another waitress had to explain.

  Cartucci was an actress with big tits and a bigger ego. Steen was one of Hollywood’s top producers, almost as famous as a movie star, like Spielberg, or Jerry Bruckheimer. The cooks and the wait staff murmured when they walked in. There was a jostle, but the manager sent Lisa to the table, like usual.

  She hadn’t wanted to go. The girl was snapping her fingers for service, and the man was staring at his woman’s tits.

  ‘You,’ Elizabeth said, without looking at Lisa. ‘I want an egg-white omelette. Two eggs, make sure they’re free-range, and capers. I want Pellegrino water and some cinnamon coffee. Absolutely no hash browns, I don’t want carbs on the table. Take away the sugar.’

  Steen asked for a cheese omelette and some crispy bacon. He also winked at Lisa, which made her smile back. This infuriated the woman.

  ‘And don’t stare at my man, OK, honey? You’re out of your league,’ she added.

  Lisa stared back. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Don’t argue with me, missy.’

  She swallowed. ‘Ma’am, we only have regular coffee here - or decaf. I’ll have the cook make up your omelette, but our eggs aren’t free-range. We have mineral water, but we use Voss.’

  ‘I prefer Pellegrino,’ she snapped. ‘Why don’t you have that?’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. Voss is cheaper. Like the eggs.’

  Josh Steen chuckled. ‘She’s got you, Elizabeth. Just eat the damn omelette.’

  The woman’s eyes glittered, and Lisa knew it was trouble. That aggression, that came from coke. She was mad, and it wasn’t about eggs or water. She had some problem with her man, and Lisa was just a convenient hook.

  She tried to escape. ‘I’ll get your order right away, ma’am, sir.’ She moved away from the table, but the actress wouldn’t quit. She snapped her fingers again, this time at the manager.

  ‘I’m Elizabeth Cartucci,’ she said, ‘and I want this woman fired.’

  Lisa gasped in shock. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Shut up,’ her manager snapped. His name was Tico, and he liked Lisa’s work, but wait staff were two for ten cents in this town and he was not going to piss off an Oscar winner. His diner was packed because Joe Public thought they might get to see a star. So you never got a star mad.

  ‘Elizabeth. Stow it,’ Steen said quietly. ‘It’s OK, she’s fine, she’s getting the order.’

  There was something in his voice. Even back then, Lisa had thought briefly that she wouldn’t like to be Elizabeth when he got her home.

  ‘It’s not fine. This woman flirted with my boyfriend and she talks back and she stares. I’m so tired of star-fuckers. I want her out of here.’

  Tico rounded on Lisa. ‘You can’t do that. You heard the lady. Get out.’

  Lisa’s eyes flooded with tears.

  ‘I said it’s OK,’ Josh Steen repeated. ‘Perhaps you didn’t hear me. Both of you.’

  ‘Relax, Josh. You’re way too soft,’ Elizabeth said, smiling grimly.

  There was a pause. Josh Steen glanced from Elizabeth to Lisa, and for a second she held her breath. Then slowly, coldly, he returned his gaze to his date.

  ‘You’re right. I should fire people more often. Like you.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Elizabeth stared at him.

  ‘I don’t go for breakfast to get into a scene. You can drop your key at the gatehouse. Roberto will pack your bags by lunchtime.’ He got to his feet and held out his hand, and Lisa just stared at it, with no idea what to do next.

  ‘Well?’ he said to her, and at that moment he looked better than any man she’d dated before or since, in his sharp tailored suit, his head shaved, his eyes dark, while Lisa stood there in nothing but her brown waitress dress and a bit of eyeshadow, a tear trickling down her cheek, red-faced with embarrassment and fear. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘Yes please,’ she said, and she put her hand in his. She was trembling. He gave her hand a little squeeze.

  ‘It’s OK. You have a purse or something?’

  Lisa gestured. It was hanging up on a peg behind the till. Josh waited while she fetched it, and they walked out the door together, leaving Elizabeth Cartucci sitting in the booth shouting hysterically after them.

  He put her into his car and they drove off. He didn’t speak, and Lisa had no idea what to do.

  ‘Thank you . . . sir,’ she said eventually.

  ‘It’s Josh. I should thank you. I was looking for an excuse to dump her. Way too much drama.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I got in the way.’

  ‘You didn’t; you were just there. I guess you’re fired?’

  ‘Guess so.’

  ‘Waitressing to pay the bills, waiting for your big break?’

  The questions were rote; she got the impression he’d aske
d them many times before.

  ‘I just want to be a florist,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested in movies. Sorry about that.’

  He’d laughed then, and looked her over properly for the first time.

  ‘You’re English. Illegal?’

  ‘Please don’t report me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, baby, I won’t.’

  They were headed the wrong way, out of the city towards Malibu. He probably had some kind of complex there.

  ‘Mr . . . Stein . . . could you please pull over? I live on Sunset. I need to get back and start looking for another place.’

  ‘It’s Steen, not Stein. You really don’t know who I am, do you?’

  ‘I don’t mean to be insulting,’ Lisa said hastily. ‘Sorry, Mr Steen.’

  ‘Josh. I told you. Is every woman going to start arguing with me today?’

  ‘Josh,’ she’d said, and smiled. He smiled back, and she decided she liked him.

  ‘You’re not going to look for another waitress job. I just took you out of that restaurant; it’ll be on Defamer by lunchtime.’

  ‘What’s Defamer?’

  He laughed. ‘Gossip website. You see . . . what’s your name, pretty English girl?’

  ‘Lisa Costello.’

  ‘Well, Lisa, I produce movies, and there’s a whole bunch that goes into that. Image is a big part of it. I dumped an Oscar-winning cokehead for a Limey waitress, meaning you’ll be a story for the next fifteen minutes, and now I got to do something for you.’

  ‘You don’t owe me anything - Josh. You didn’t let that horrible woman get away with it. I can get another job.’ She tossed her hair. ‘I don’t have an Oscar, but I don’t do coke either.’

  ‘It’s for me, honey, not for you. The town sees me as a mover and shaker. So like it or not, I got to keep up that image and protect you for a while. You want to be a florist, so now you’re a florist.’

  She gazed at him. ‘I don’t understand . . .’

  He punched a button on his cell phone.

  ‘Mr Steen’s office,’ came a disembodied voice.

  ‘Penny, it’s me. Call Richard Thompson, the guy that owns Lucy’s Lilies. Tell him he’s gonna be hiring a friend of mine, Lisa Costello, this afternoon. Tell him she starts on forty thou a year and I’m sorting the paperwork.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Right away.’

  ‘He’ll get the contract on Carlotta’s Secret and Death-trap , tell him.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Then call Wasserstein and Mensch. Tell them they’re representing a new client, my protégée, and I want an Alien of Extraordinary Talent visa for her, an O-1, and I want it yesterday. Tell them they’ll have testimonies from five studio heads by sundown. Her name’s Lisa Costello and she’s an illegal Brit.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Book a short-term rental, furnished, in Park La Brea, six months, two bed, all the extra bells and whistles, pay in advance, Lisa’s the tenant.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it immediately.’

  Lisa gazed at him, her mouth open. ‘Josh - I can’t let you do any of that. I don’t even know you. Please, this is just nuts.’

  He grinned. ‘You’re asking me not to do it? This is usually the point where they start squealing and clapping their hands.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, but—’

  ‘No it isn’t. My image requires this chivalrous bullshit. Trust me on this. Take the job and the flat; you can always leave later if you want to.’

  She shifted in the soft leather seat. They were far from the diner now, heading out towards the freeway and Malibu. She looked him over, and he was handsome and urbane and supremely confident. OK, so he loved himself a little, but wasn’t that what made American men so hot?

  He didn’t like to be crossed. Even on calling him Josh. The woman, Elizabeth whatever her name, she had ignored him back in the diner. Multiple times. And he hated it. He was a man who confused disobedience with disloyalty; maybe that was why he was so good at his job.

  Lisa would not want him as an enemy.

  But he was here, in the car next to her, larger than life and offering to take her away from everything bad: a free flat of her own, a great job at an executive salary, even a lawyer so she could stay in America. All that was left was for him to wave a magic wand and turn a pumpkin and mice into a coach and four.

  ‘Josh, I just - I need to say something. Please don’t be mad.’

  ‘Say whatever you want. No guarantees on whether I’ll get mad.’

  Lisa swallowed. ‘I truly appreciate the offer, but I’ve made my own money, I pay my own rent and I’m not for sale.’

  ‘For sale?’

  She flushed scarlet. ‘You’re a Hollywood director; I know you know what I mean. I’m not one of those girls who takes presents and . . . and . . . you know.’

  ‘Who takes gifts and screws guys?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, reddening further. She could feel the blush spreading over her neck and her upper chest. ‘Whatever you do, I wouldn’t sleep with you, not under any circumstances, and I’m not looking for a boyfriend. Sorry.’

  Steen spun the wheel of his car and watched the road, but the set of his body shifted, and she could see she had got to him.

  ‘You don’t want my money, you don’t want my help, you don’t want to date. What do you want, Lisa Costello? Other than to sell flowers?’

  ‘I’m only twenty-two. I’m working on that,’ she said, and laughed. Josh Steen smiled with her.

  ‘You’re a remarkable girl, Lisa. Only now we have a problem.’

  ‘I hope not,’ she said, all optimism and naïvety. ‘You’re a good guy. I like you.’

  ‘Here’s my problem. You don’t want to date me. But now I actually do want to date you.’

  Lisa blushed again. ‘You could get a million sexy girls.’

  ‘Could get, have got. You know what the problem is with the Elizabeths of this world? They’re all the same. Sometimes I’ll call a girl Helen when her name’s Marianne. They look alike. They blur into one. Now, no man is going to confuse you with any other chick.’ He pressed his foot on the accelerator, and his Maserati picked up speed. ‘Lisa Costello, let me do this for you. No obligation. I’ll take it as a favour.’

  ‘For your image, huh?’

  ‘That’s it. No obligation whatsoever to bang me, kiss me, even hang out with me. But at the same time, I don’t promise to stop asking you out.’

  She laughed. ‘And if I keep saying no?’

  He shrugged, hands resting lightly on the wheel. ‘Then I look even better, don’t I? The mogul who hooked up a young woman and didn’t even get to take her to dinner. Every female executive in town will love me.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Lisa said. ‘You’re breaking my heart.’

  ‘So here’s the cure. You say yes to all these things. Make Josh Steen look good round town, good in the gossip columns. I come back in a week and ask you out again. You can say yes or no. If it’s no, I cut you a break, I don’t destroy you, if only on the grounds that it’s hard to destroy a florist.’

  She really did laugh then. He was cool.

  ‘And if it’s yes,’ he added, ‘then we’ll really have some fun. Now is that a deal, Lisa Costello?’

  ‘Yes, Josh Steen,’ she said. ‘That is certainly a deal.’

  Sam looked across at Lisa. For the first time since he’d known her, she was crying, properly crying.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he said.

  ‘Poor Josh.’ She struggled to control her sobs. ‘I did love him, you know. For years. And then they killed him.’

  ‘Go on,’ Sam said. He wanted to stop the car, fold her into his arms, tell her everything was all right. But it wasn’t all right. It was all very wrong, and if she did not get him a handle on it, it would never come right again.

  He had done this before, just not with anybody he gave a damn about. When they started crying, it was good. That meant it hurt, and they were honest. He let Lisa dive into her memories, and swim arou
nd in the blackness.

  Josh had been as good as his word; better. Lisa found herself transported instantly to another world. One where her landlords were handed six months’ rent and were ecstatically grateful; one where she was moved from a cramped walk-up over a store with peeling paint and the constant roar of traffic into a gated community, with her own, hotel-style bland beige furniture. She now had access to a swimming pool and a gym, and there were running trails around the manicured lawns and little McMansion houses. There was no rent; and the florist store, a designer outfit on Rodeo Drive, gave her a nice salary and let her make up bouquets and talk to clients. It wasn’t what she’d dreamed of, she told Sam; it wasn’t her own firm, just a salaried position, someone else’s store, their ideas. Yet it seemed dumb to argue. How else did you get from an illegal immigrant, living on tips, to a middle-class success story in one week?

  Josh hadn’t called immediately, either. He had waited three weeks. By the third week, Lisa was sweating. She wanted him to call, she was longing for it. She expected an immediate request for a date, but he took his time, and gratitude and curiosity mixed within her; when he did call, she dropped into his hands like a ripe plum, grateful, even hot for him. It was easy to refuse luxury when you’d never tried it. Scary how soon it could get you hooked.

  The car ploughed on into the night, past the turning for Florence and straight north to Trieste. Sam wanted to go further before they stopped. The girl was restless, twisting in her seat, but he couldn’t help that. She was in the flow of the story, and he wanted to take advantage of it.

  Lisa moved faster now. Like she was ashamed, he thought. She told how Josh had swept her off her feet, almost conventionally. Tickets to the best shows, seats behind the plate at a Dodgers game, tickets to movie premieres and award shows. He sent her to Rodeo Drive with his assistant to buy clothes, to sort through her wardrobe. She was guided, gently but inexorably, to a beauty salon, a celebrity hair guy, Josh’s private trainer. She tried to resist sometimes, she said. She would try to pay the bills herself from the salary he’d arranged for her. Only he laughed and told her not to be ridiculous.

  The way Lisa described it, her new life had swirled around her like a current, sweeping her away. She didn’t talk to her old friends from the diner, didn’t hang in the old bars, didn’t jog on the beach. Gradually she became the mogul’s girlfriend, with all that went with it. Josh would get pensive at times, and that was when she loved him best; he liked to hear her stories of growing up in England, sneaking cigarettes in the bushes and trying to get served in pubs. He loved that she didn’t give a damn about movies and came to California for the sun. He loved that her ex-boyfriends had been random dudes from the scene, guys her own age, bass players in failed bands, junior doctors, a lawyer, a surf bum. Lisa had not mixed, ever, in Josh’s world. That was obviously a major plus; she was a clean sheet on to which he could project all his fantasies.