Dirty Movies (42 page)

Losing out on a Golden Globe was a bit like being handed a ‘99’
ice cream without the flake, thought Joe, as they congregated for a mass commiseration and crisis talk with Bill’s team in Starbucks the next morning, following his release from police custody. The sweetness of the nomination didn’t taste right without the rich stick of triumph. Mind you, after his appalling behaviour last night it was nothing short of rancid now. Still, he wasn’t sorry for clouting Stephen with his claret. Something inside him had snapped after seeing the sheer delight on his face as their evening, and quite possibly their careers, disappeared in a cloud of flying crockery and swarthy Italian. But with pictures of Benito thumping Michael and Stephen dripping with booze, not to mention headlines such as
‘Sore Losers!’
and
‘Hooligan Productions’
in circulation, their press was at rock bottom.

Joe was feeling so dejected
, he couldn’t even joke about all the amazing celebrities that had sidled up to him and shaken his hand for doing what they had clearly been dying to for years. Thankfully, Walt had kept to his side of the bargain and all charges had been duly dropped.

‘Our night was over as soon as Maisie won
,’ muttered Michael, flicking the marshmallows off the top of his hot chocolate with deft precision. ‘That award had your name written all over it, Christine.’

I shouldn’t have expected anything less
,’ she said breezily. ‘Stephen’s grip on this town is as tight as Joan Rivers’ face. If I see one more advert for Romanian Orphan Aid on Sunset, I’m going to march myself to the nearest hardware store, buy a can of black paint and do something decidedly mean-spirited.’

Joe said nothing
but stared moodily into his latte. Beside him, Bill and his team were consuming great bowls of coffee whilst sifting through piles of newspapers. There seemed to be a lot more grimacing than sipping going on.

‘Goddamn press!’ he heard one young publicist exclaim. ‘Aside from all this punch-up crap, they seem determined to hail
Lover Letters
as some twenty-first century answer to Doctor Zhivago.’

‘Well they did both pull in five Globe gongs apiece
,’ reasoned his colleague.

‘We need a miracle now, people
.’ whispered another.

‘Anyone know where the nearest Prozac dispensary is
?’ muttered Michael.

‘When are the BAFTAs announced?’ asked Christine, hastily changing the subject.

‘Next week,’ said Joe. ‘Let’s hope Benito decides to ship back to Maine indefinitely. Although, after last night, I think it’s safe to assume that he likes to turn up to these things unannounced. Where did he end up last night anyway?’

‘
The zoo, most likely’ said Michael sulkily. ‘The guy’s got more muscle than a gorilla.’

‘What does that make Serena then?’ said Joe, forcing a smile. ‘King Kong?’

‘Actually he’s in my hotel suite,’ announced Christine, blushing slightly.

Both men gazed at her horror.

‘Oh don’t look at me like that. He’s very sorry for what he did to you, Michael, and he’s prepared to go on record about it. He knows he’s made a terrible mistake.’

‘Are you for real?’ piped up one of Bill’s junio
r publicists excitedly. ‘Darling, that’s great! I’ll set up something right away.’ He dived for his phone under all the papers.

‘What’s he doing in your hotel suite, Christine?’ asked Joe slyly.

‘The poor devil didn’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘You mean he couldn’t have taken those great thumping fists of his to one of the thousan
ds of other hotels in this city?’

‘You gotta be kidding me!’ exclaimed Mic
hael, reading between the lines. ‘You and rib-shattering Benito? What happened to Flavio?’

‘Oh, he was nothing but
a momentary phase. A temporary veneer for my true feelings, if you like,’ she replied briskly, but she was beaming from ear to ear. ‘Benito turning up last night made things very clear.’

‘Yeah
, me too,’ sniffed Michael. ‘I need to wear a crash-helmet to these things in future.’

‘Well
, it took you long enough,’ said Joe, forcing another smile. ‘Congratulations Christine, i’m very happy for you.’

‘Well I’m not
,’ snapped Michael, leaping up and grabbing his jacket. ‘No amount of demonstrative, dark-eyed Italian contrition is gonna defend what he did. I’m the laughing stock of Hollywood!’

‘Please, Michael
,’ pleaded Christine, reaching out to stop him. ‘Let him make it up to you.’

‘No thanks
,’ he drawled, draining his drink as he picked up his car keys. ‘Right now, i’d rather have a round of golf with your ex-husband.’ 

Edgy and restless, Michael drove without direction until he hit the freeway. With the lure of the ocean pulling him south, he pushed the pedal to the floor and within the hour was parked up near Venice Beach, crunching his toes in the sand and lamenting his outburst and the whole, sorry last twenty-four hours.

He didn’t really hate Benito, he’d have done the same under the circumstances, and he
was
genuinely glad for Christine. Like Joe said, it was great to see at least one of them with a Band-Aid wrapped around their bleeding heart. He couldn’t help dwelling on his own happy ending though as he mooched along the shoreline with the frothy white breakers nuzzling his toes. One thing for sure, it wouldn’t be with Maisie. She disgusted him now. He wanted a woman as soft and gentle as her curves, not a skinny, spiteful little broom handle. Someone who would stick by and stick up for him, no matter what the cost.

Someone like Lily.

The thought struck him as a child’s shriek swept his way on the salty sea air. In the distance
, he saw the outline of a slim woman in rolled up jeans with billowing, ash blonde air, hair much like Lily’s in fact. She locked hands with a little boy and spun him round and round in a circle until they buckled into a giggling heap. Then they were up and racing each other to the shoreline, the woman intentionally holding back to let the boy win. Unable to tear himself away, Michael watched until his eyes were streaming and the pair were nothing more than dancing, twirling specks. Then, with one last lingering look, he turned on his bare heel and left. 

‘Mummy, mummy, do it again’ squealed Lucas, holding out his hands.

Lily giggled and spun Lucas round and round once more until they both collapsed, bre
athless and dizzy on the sand. She hadn’t smiled this much in years. She could feel the gentle breeze on her face and the stray wisps of hair in her eyes. Disneyland was paradise but playing with Lucas on Venice Beach was nothing short of heaven.

‘Can I have an ice cream
, mummy?’ asked Lucas suddenly, his cheeks bright pink with exertion.

Lily smiled. ‘Only if you promise to share
.’

Lucas wrinkled his little sunburnt nose as if he were calculating a particularly problematic equation. 

‘Mummy, mummy, why don’t we get two scoops, then we can have one each?’

‘Why Lucas, that’s a wonderful idea
,’ she cried, as he beamed with pleasure for solving their ice cream dilemma so proficiently. ‘What flavour would you like?’

‘Umm chocolate…no vanilla!’

‘How about a scoop of each?’

‘Okay, mummy
.’

She felt a rush of love for him then, the no-holds barred, barely containable, bursting over-the-top kind that only parents feel. Smacking her l
ips down on top of his baking hot head, she clasped his hand as they strolled along Venice Boardwalk, keeping her head slightly turned so he wouldn’t see the tears glistening. This was not the time to dwell on her single status, she told herself sternly, nor the cold steel tip of sadness that knifed her over and over when it dawned, yet again, that there was no one to share Lucas’s clever clogs antics with. No, today was a day for happiness and fun. She could miss Michael tomorrow. Miss him like she had done every minute since Morocco, tossing and turning in the dead of night until the sheets resembled an old shirt left behind in the washing machine.

She had grown to despise her phone
. It lay there, mocking her, daring her to call him, but the small talk would have been terribly stilted. How on earth was she supposed to hold a conversation with him when all she wanted to do was scream, ‘I love you!’ over and over again until she too had bright pink cheeks from the effort of it all?

Sy Jacob
snatched at the pretty studio runner’s out-stretched coffee as his vanity team faffed about making eleventh hour tweaks, from the swift plucking of his bushy hairs, sprouting forth like wiry roots from his nostrils, to the taming of his dappled grey tresses, not an easy task when it was thicker than a thatched roof and twice as unyielding.

Giving a final dusting to his long, distinguished nose, Tammy
, his Make-Up Designer, stepped back to inspect her handiwork before giving him the thumbs up and handing over his dense, horn-rimmed glasses - the Sy Jacob trademark. He reinstated them immediately and turned back to his notes. With only sixty minutes remaining until his multi Emmy-award winning chat show went live across America, Sy wanted to be well and truly prepared for this evening’s ‘big exclusive’, just in case the auto-cue jammed.

There wasn’t an American alive who hadn’t
fantasised about appearing on
Live with Sy
Hailed ‘Sly Sy’ by the press because of his capacity to invade a guest’s psyche like a highly-skilled bee-keeper, then extract the sweetest, most clandestine of secrets. Tears flowed freely on his show, which kept the drama quota as high as the viewing figures.

To his audience he was a god,
to his guests he was a challenge; the Mount Kilimanjaro of chatshow kings. In Hollywood, ‘if you could charm Sy, you could charm the world’, and any celebrity who held their own against the inquisition of those frosty blue eyes could expect a $10 million dollar pay hike overnight.

In the guest dressing room across the hall, Stephen was relaxing for his pre-interview news in his own incompa
rable style, with Sy’s rebuked runner on her hands and knees and a whole lot of rapturous groaning from him. Just then, there was a tap at the door. As quick as a flash, the runner jumped up and scooted out of a second door, no doubt constructed for such occasions.

‘Who it is?’
barked Stephen, zipping up his trousers as a crewmember poked his ruddy face around the door.

‘Mr De Vries?
Sy Jacob is ready to meet you now.’

‘That’s the wrong way round, sunshine,’ he snapped. ‘I am
, in fact, ready to meet Mr Jacob…’

The crewmember looked momentarily dumbfounded by
his egotism.

‘So?’ asked
Stephen, turning to inspect his reflection in the mirror again. ‘Are you going to show him in or not?’

The crewmember cringed against the doorframe. ‘I’m sorry Mr De Vries
, but I’m under strict instructions to escort you to his dressing room right away.’

Stephen spun round and glared at him. The bloody cheek of
the man! Especially after he had granted him the biggest exclusive in Hollywood: A tell-all with the red-hot Oscar favourite and a chance to delve into the truth behind that very public bust-up with his brother, well his version of it anyway.

He was risking Garrett’s ire doing
Live with Sy
too. The publicist had repeatedly pleaded with him not to appear. It was too dicey a move this late in the campaign. For every celebrity who survived his interrogations, there were countless others who had cracked and fled with their careers in tatters. But not me, thought Stephen arrogantly. He was certain he could charm ‘Sly Sy’, like he had every other interviewer over the years.

‘Fine’ he huffed, picking up his latte
and glaring at the crewmember, ‘but he better bloody appreciate it’

‘Oh he will, he will
,’ lied the crewmember in relief. ‘Now, if you’d just like to step this way.’

An hour later, Stephen wasn’t feeling nearly so complacent about the whole thing. Perched on his make-up stool like King Canute, with his vanity team lapping at his feet, Sy Jacob hadn’t treated him with deference at all, rather the opposite in fact. This, coupled with the fact that Sy had just lent over the large rectangular desk separating them like a boxing umpire, and murmured, ‘I’m gonna really enjoy this, you asshole,’ brought Stephen to the rather unsettling conclusion that he really should try listening to his publicist in future.

Across town, Michael sat slumped on his sofa, flicking channels like an ADHD sufferer and trying not to think about Lily, when he came across a very red-faced Stephen stuttering furious denials at a decidedly hostile-looking Sy Jacob. Michael immediately sat bolt upright and hit the volume button.

‘So you refute these claims?’
asked Sy, looking so skeptical that his well-trimmed eyebrows were in danger of disappearing out of shot. 

‘Completely and utterly, they’re a hundred per cent tosh
!’ yelled the director, rising a couple of inches from his chair, his bottom suspended in outrage. ‘I’ve never even met the stupid woman!’

‘Not even at your brother’s wedding?’
asked Sy, disbelievingly.

Michael gasped.

‘Well yes, perhaps then,’ relented Stephen.

‘So you never had sex with her?’

‘No!’

‘Not even as a dig at your brother?’

‘NO!’

‘Even though you’ve always resented him, almost pathologically so
, on occasions?’

‘May I suggest you hire a new researcher, Mr Jacob
?’ snarled Stephen. ‘It would appear the current one has missed his vocation as a full-time fantasist.’

‘Are you suggesting I re-hir
e myself?’ snapped the response, ‘I
always
do my own research.’

Michael hooted in amazement. 

‘May I counter-suggest that it is, in fact,
you,
Mr De Vries, who are the full-time fantasist?’ continued Sy coldly. ‘The evidence I have in my possession indicating that you did
indeed
sleep with your sister-in-law is, I’m afraid to say, irrefutable.’

‘W
hat evidence?’ scoffed Stephen. ‘I’d hardly call on-set tittle-tattle cast iron proof.’

‘I’m insulted that you
’d think I’d rely on that alone, Mr De Vries.’

‘And what do you think I am by all this, Mr Jacob, flattered?? I came on your show in good faith, to
honour
the passing of my great friend, the legendary Producer Vincent Edwards, and to bestow upon you my shock and horror at my brother’s completely unprovoked attack on me at last Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony, of which may I add we won a total of five awards…’

‘I may be
an American, Mr De Vries, but do not mistake me for an idiot,’ retorted Sy, cutting him off mid-brag, as he clicked his fingers at his gallery team. In an instant, the two men were replaced by some grainy, hand-held smartphone footage.

Despite the poor quality, Michael recognised the fleshy palm trees and the crazy paving of their pool patio in Morocco. Once the lens stopped behaving like a Mexican jumping bean, Stephen and Joe could be seen very clearly nose-to-nose with one another
, in the midst of a heated altercation.

‘You knew she was mine and I loved her
, but you couldn’t help yourself could you?
’ he heard Joe roar, as fifty million Americans, including himself watched, spellbound.
‘You ruined my marriage you bastard, you fucking destroyed us!’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’
spluttered Stephen, looking as guilty as sin.

‘Cut the crap! That letter is irrefutable proof. Not even your crooked PR team
can wriggle you out of this one.’

As if by magic, the screen suddenly cut back to the studio
, as Sy Jacob produced what appeared to be the very same letter from underneath his cue cards. Across the table, Stephen looked ready to vomit.

‘Where did you get that
?’ he whispered. ‘Did he give it to you?’

Sy smirked. ‘On the contrary, your brother has remained admirably st
oic about the whole
affair
.’

‘Christine then?’

‘Mr De Vries,’ said Sy, managing to sound terribly uninterested and tremendously disapproving at the same time. ‘I am not in the habit to divulging my sources to anyone. Having said that,’ he added, turning to address the camera. ‘I would like it to be noted that not neither Joe De Vries, Christine LaVelle OR Michael Wilson, the three Executives of
Harper Films
, are aware of tonight’s footage, or indeed of how this came to be in my possession.

To Stephen’s horror, he unfolded the letter then and began reading, taking an unbearably long time to pronounce every word
, as if each one was a bombshell in itself.

‘My darling Joe…’

‘Wait!’ In a pathetic attempt to prevent his ex-lover’s words from condemning him to a lifetime of cut-rate movie directorials, Stephen crashed his fists down onto the table.

Sy ignored him and carried on reading.

‘Please forgive me but I cannot go on…’

‘Please, don’t!’ begged Stephen
, frantically.

‘I have betrayed you in the worst possible way…’

This isn’t happening, he thought weakly, looking around for an escape route, but all he could see was an impenetrable wall of cameras taking aim at him like a Panavision death squad.

‘For the past three years,
your brother and I have been having an affair…’
Sy paused then for maximum impact.

It was at this point that Stephen De Vries closed his eyes and prayed for a miracle.