Dirty Movies (45 page)

‘I’m guessing your son
, if the name of his company is anything to go by.’

There was an awful pause then he leapt to his feet.

‘Why are you really here?’ he roared, striding around the enormous meeting table to where she was sitting. ‘You got your evidence! You don’t need me to validate it!’ He came to a stop behind her and clenched the back of her chair, his fingers grazing the nape of her neck. ‘
Unless
…. Oh, I get it now,’ he said, leaning in and whispering into her ear, as if some big secret had just revealed itself to him. ‘This is a
money
thing.’

Lucy g
asped as her chair groaned uncomfortably under his weight. He sounded angry too, as if she had somehow disappointed him.

‘I’m not after your money, Mr W
ilson. Neither am I interested in getting banged up for extortion,’ she added, turning to face him. ‘I came here because I was curious.’

‘Curious?’ His lower
lip curled as he spoke. Her eyes flickered towards it fleetingly.

‘
Yes, curious. I wanted to see if you were going to dismiss this particular GBA abuse of power like every other.
And
, that contrary to reports, you weren’t going to be the First Class amoral bastard that everyone makes you out to be.’

He smirked
then. ‘And what are your conclusions, Ms Richards?’ he asked, rendering her immovable with an extreme close-up of his thick black eyelashes and knockout Italian cheekbones.

Lucy gulped. ‘What I think, Mr Wilson, is that deep within that flinty business heart of yours
, you bitterly regret that you never listened to Michael. He tried to warn you there was something fishy about GBA, but you chose to favour the success of your studios, even to the detriment and disgrace of your only son.’ She took a deep breath then. ‘I also think, Mr Wilson, that despite your questionable judgment, you are without doubt the sexiest man I have ever met.’

His eyes narrowed for a millisecond and then he kissed her, a great, brutal smacker that lifted her out of her seat, sent her legs shooting in opposite directions and propelled her backwards onto the meeting table.

‘How do you know so much about my son?’ he demanded roughly, breaking away.

Lucy’s head was spinning. The white-hot heat radiating from his groin was burning her like a furnace.

‘Quite a lot as it turns out,’ she panted, as his right hand slid up her thigh and kept on going. ‘My best friend happens to be an employee of Harper Films, or rather ex-employee. And a very good friend of Michael’s.’

‘How good?’ he murmured
, as he yanked her towards the edge of the desk and removed her underwear effortlessly.

‘Not that good
,’ she gasped, as his fingers resumed their exploration. ‘She’s hopelessly in love with his director.’

‘I see
.’

He kissed her again and she ground into his hand
, desperately.

‘Now
, Ms Richards, tell me that part about getting
rough
again?’ he said, brown eyes glinting as he reached for his belt.

Lucy’s elfin features contorted into a grin. ‘Are you sure about that? There’s quite an age gap,
I wouldn’t want you to do your back in…’

‘You goddamn bitch!’ he hissed
, driving into her then with all the pounding precision of a pneumatic drill. Soon her whole body was in free-fall.

Afterwards,
once he had lifted her up as easily as one of the mannequins from his costume department and laid her back down on one of his leather sofas, he asked her why she hadn’t released the story yet.

‘I will when I finish my piece on stalkers, o
h and something else on Stephen.’

‘Sourced from the same footage?’
Walt strode over to his drinks cabinet.

‘I could land every front page from here to next year with
the bloopers in those tapes.’

Walt poured himself another whiskey. ‘Next
, you’ll be telling me
Love Letters
was stolen from some gypsy beggar.’

‘Not unless he wears expensive wrist watches and owns a studio empire
,’ she said slyly. ‘Shame on you for gifting Michael’s baby straight into the greasy, out-stretched palms of the enemy.’

Walt frowned at her. ‘You know if anyone else spoke to me like that they’d be exiting that balcony t
he same way Vincent Edwards did.’

‘Time to put the loose jowls and horses’ heads away, Mr Wilson, you’re not fooling anyone. Underneath all that Marlon Brando swagger
, you’re just as charming as your son.’

That’s what you think, thought Walt.

‘Who by the way is indirectly involved in my new story.’

‘Oh?’ Walt looked up sharply.

‘Oh indeed.’ Lucy rolled on her back and started wriggling her skirt down over her hips. ‘Seems that Stephen and Maisie have been screwing each other brains out for ages.’

Walt paused, glass to mouth
. ‘How long?’

‘
Six years.’

His eyes narrowed considerably. ‘You
sure about that?’’

Lucy nodded. ‘I’ll be only too happy to show you
that footage. Such a shame Joe only chucked his wine over him at the Globes,’ she added, looking around for her underwear. ‘If it was up to me, I’d have cracked a magnum over that disgusting little fucker’s head.’

When Lucy didn’t return
that afternoon, Polly flew into a panic, and by 8pm had worn sizeable holes in the hotel’s pea green polyester carpet. Walt Wilson was a sadist. Everyone knew it. This was the man who had blackballed his only son on hearsay alone. God knows what he’d do to a feisty young journalist when backed into a corner.

In
the end, she called Michael, more for reassurance that his father wasn’t a complete psycho than anything else. After getting no joy from his cell, she tried his home number. It was picked up immediately.

‘Michael, its Polly!
I know he’s Italian but your pa doesn’t go in for all that
sleeping with the fishes
stuff, does he?’

‘Polly?’ The voice on the other end was tentative
and much too British sounding to be Michael.

There was a pause.

‘I see you turned up then,’

‘What can I say? Bad pennies and all that.’

Typical, thought Polly, irritably. She could almost picture Joe’s hapless shrug.

‘Is Michael there?’ she snapped.

‘Why?’

‘Oh for crying out loud, we’re not going through all that again are we?’

‘That’s not what I meant! It’s just that you sound…Is everything ok?’

She
felt the tears start to well then. His concern, coupled with her fraught afternoon, made her want to bawl. Then she remembered all the shitty things he had said to her and felt the urge to kick him in the metaphorical balls instead.

‘You bastard! How could you go off like
that again?’ she screamed, letting rip. ‘If I were Michael, I’d disown you completely. Or, better still, invoice you time and a half for all the additional Q & A sessions he’s had to endure promoting your movie. You don’t deserve a single nomination this season, unless it’s for
Gutless Wimp of the Year
or
Most Predictable Duck-out When the Going Gets Tough
.’

‘Are you done?’
asked Joe quietly.

‘Not by
a longshot…’

Just then
, there was a scuffling in the corridor outside. A handbag was dropped followed by a dull clonk as the owner bent down to retrieve it and collided with the doorframe. Two seconds later, a familiar giggle rang out. 

Hanging up, Polly reached the door
just as Lucy collapsed into the room. She was reeking of a booze
far
more exclusive than Frascati and beaming from pixie ear to pixie ear.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ she demanded.

‘I had a meeting with Walt. Then another, then another.’ giggled Lucy.

Polly looked puzzled. ‘Why are you flinging innuendos at me? Oh my god, you didn’t…?’

Lucy started giggling again.

‘Are you completely
insane
? He’s a tyrant and you’re eight years younger than his son! When I suggested using
journalistic cunning
, I didn’t mean that!’

‘Oh I’m not sleeping my way to a story
, if that’s what you’re inferring,’ said Lucy. ‘Turns out it’s got nothing to with him anyway.’

‘What happened to your over-60s rule?’

‘Walt doesn’t count. He’s only 57.’

‘Mere spring-chicken
,’ scoffed Polly. ‘But you’re not even a cocktail waitress!’

‘True
,’ conceded Lucy, collapsing onto the bed. ‘But, what I am, Pollyanna,’ she said, grinning impishly at her friend, ‘is exceedingly shaken and enormously stirred.’

After a very thorough farewell with Lucy on the backseat of his limo, Walt waved her off, zipped his flies and instructed the driver to take him back to his office.

Pouring another whisky, he sat down at his desk and brooded over the day’s events.
His eyes kept flickering to his meeting table. He wouldn’t be forgetting that encounter in a hurry. Lucy Richards was a pocket-sized revelation. What she lacked in height was undeniably compensated for in other areas. Her nerve and feistiness had ruined him for wishy-washy cocktail waitresses forevermore.

Opening his laptop, he fired off an email to Serena requesting the purchase of the most expensive Prada bag she could lay her hands on
, and a lunch booking at
Spagos
. One thing was certain. He had absolutely no intention of letting Lucy jet back to England anytime soon.

As for the footage…?

For a long time
he sat staring at the disc and thinking hard. Before Garrett had even leaked those snaps of his son, a seed of uneasiness about GBA had begun to sprout like a dirty great weed inside his head.

Lucy was wrong.
He wasn’t like Michael. His son was loyal and decent. Everything Walt had hoped he would be. Michael would never dream of humiliating him or belittling his achievements. And to what end had he, the great Walt Wilson, done all these terrible things? To coerce Michael into a lifetime’s servitude at Global, when his hopes and dreams clearly lay elsewhere.

At least he was
remorseful. If truth be told, Walt was feeling pretty damn horrified with himself. Fortunately, there was still time to do something about it. 

For the rest of the evening
, he worked tirelessly, composing his first and only Act of Contrition. After finishing, he proofread and edited it, over and over, until, finally, with tomorrow’s hangover already starting to niggle at his temples, he was satisfied.

Emailing it straight to Serena, he enclosed strict instructions to sit on it until the nod from him. His timing had to be impeccable. His timing had to be inspired. More specifically, his timing had to be right before those Oscar ballots closed.

Grappling with her own sense of guilt, Polly sat perched by the hotel window sill, thirty-four floors up, gazing out at the flickering lights across the valley. In the bed behind her, Lucy was out for the count and snoring softly, no doubt shattered after her kinky afternoon sex sessions with Wicked Walt.

Of all the crazy scenarios that had flittered through Polly’s brain that d
ay, Lucy getting frisky with the Studio Boss on his twenty foot long dark mahogany wood meeting table had certainly never featured. Lucy hadn’t exactly been scant with the details either. Polly could sort of see the attraction, but she personally preferred men with one foot on the dance floor not one foot in the grave. It was just a pity that the one man she really, really liked was most likely reeling from the flame-thrower of abuse she’d torched him with, precisely two hours ago.

Dressing quietly, she slipped out of the room and made her way down to the lobby. There she exited the hotel and found herself on the crowded sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard. She wondered along for a while, gulping in the heat and the
stench of hot dogs, dodging the Batmen and the Wonder Women, and wincing in dismay at the blob of dirty chewing gum tarnishing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood star. Poor Arnie, thought Polly, pityingly. After
Kindergarten Cop
, he really didn’t need any more indignity in his life.

Pausing at the intersection at
Las Palmas, she spied a bright yellow neon sign in the distance for
Rollo’s 80s Bar & Grill
. Bingo, thought Polly, making a beeline straight for it. She could do with a bloody great drink.

Parking her backside at the bar
, next to a life-size
ET
model, and with
Short Circuit
playing on a loop on the TV screen above, she smiled at the barman dressed in the hairy
TeenWolf
wig.

‘What can I get you lady?’

She waved away his drinks menu. ‘Your most calorific cocktail, please.’

He grinned and set to work immediately
. It was almost as if lovesick, mildly depressed twenty-something women wondering into his bar at 11pm on a Wednesday night was something of a regular event. First, he unearthed a glass as squat as a fish bowl from the shelf beneath the bar and packed it with crushed ice. Next, he pulled out a giant cocktail shaker and started pumping it with Vodka and a violent turquoise-coloured substance, and then finishing it all off with no less than six whopping great scoops of ice cream. Giving it a good shake, he tipped the ghastly concoction into the fish bowl and served it with five cocktail umbrellas, half a pineapple and an enormous sparkler which he lit in front of her with a twinkle in his eye.

‘Enjoy you’re cocktail ma’am. Round here we
call it the Ghostbuster.’

Polly looked at the monstrosity and started
laughing. ‘I can see why. If the spirits don’t keep me up all night, then the sugar will!’

He grinned and handed her the bill.

Polly took a sip and choked. It tasted more shocking than it looked. Handing over a twenty, she saw the barman glance up as another customer entered the bar. 

‘What can I get you, buddy?’ she heard him ask.

The guy must have indicated to her glass because straightaway the barman pulled out a second fish bowl and his tub of ice cream.

‘
Does it come with a joke?’ asked a voice, suddenly, and Polly choked again as Joe slid onto the bar stool next to her.

At first, she was
sure he was a mirage. Any second now he’d evaporate and she would be left chatting up ET all night. But he continued to sit there with a rueful half-smile on his face, waiting for her to say something. He had grown his hair since the Globes, and his dark stubble was more hairy than sexy, but his eyes were like Star Wars tractor beams drawing her in all over again.

‘What are you doing here?’ she muttered
, eventually.

He ignored the question and indicated to the tub of ice cream behind the bar.  ‘Like I said, does it come with a joke?’

‘I think the drink
is
the joke.’

‘Do you wanna hear one anyway?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

He shrugged sheepishly. ‘Not on this occasion. A stupid, thoughtless man
walks into a bar with a bulletproof vest tucked under one arm.’

Polly scowled. ‘That’s not funny. And
I’m not apologizing for what I said.’ She took a vicious slurp of her drink.

‘
Good. I deserved every word. Look, Polly, about what happened at your flat in December…’ He dropped his eyes then. ‘I wish I hadn’t, Christ. I didn’t mean it, you know. I really didn’t.’

‘Which part?’ she
retorted, sulkily.

T
he barman placed Joe’s drink down and he waved away the sparkler immediately. There were more than enough fireworks flying between him and Polly at the moment.

‘All of it
,’ he said quietly. ‘More than you know.’ There was a pause. ‘I only found out you were in LA thirty minutes ago.’

‘So you decided to drive round every late-night bar until you found me?’

He studied her face for a moment. ‘Would it make a difference if I had?’

‘No
.’

‘Shan’t lie then’ he said with a grin. ‘I couldn’t sleep
, so I went for a drive and ended up here. The sign out front was subconsciously reeling me in. That, and the promise of all the wonderful music I might hear.’

‘Has Michael
forgiven you for running off?’

‘
I think so. I hope so.’ Joe shrugged. ‘He says he understands after all the Sy Jacob stuff.’ He took a sip of his drink and made a face. ‘Christ, that’s filthy. So what brought
you
to this enchanting establishment?’

Polly unfurled the pineapple from the glass and took a bite. ‘I’m here for the canapés
.’

‘Of course.
How silly of me.’

‘I bet Sam Harper’s not quite so magnanimous
.’

Joe looked puzzled.

‘For running out on her as well. Girlfriends tend not to like that thing very much.’

‘Well since she’s not my
girlfriend
, I can’t be in her boyfriend bad books,’ said Joe slowly. ‘Unlike you and your encyclopaedic library of Joe De Vries fuck-ups.’

‘But you’re not my boyfriend either
,’ she pointed out, blowing moody green bubbles in her drink.

‘No…’ said Joe thoughtfully. ‘But I wouldn’t mind giving it
a shot.’

Polly ceased blowing bubbles immediately.

‘Look, I know I screwed up, god knows how many countless times,’ he began, in a rush.

All of a sudden she felt sick.

‘…and I know I have more baggage than a Heathrow Terminal carousal in August…’

Her chest was like a vice, crushing, squeezing.  She couldn’t breathe.

‘…and…’

‘Air. Must have air
,’ she gasped, racing for the door.

Once outside
, she cupped her mouth with her hands and focused on her breathing. She was acting like a crazy woman. Why was she so terrified of the words she craved to hear? Without thinking, she stepped out into the road, but was furiously beeped into a retreat by a passing taxicab. Changing direction, she belted back up Hollywood Boulevard, swerving around dawdling tourists like a vehicle in a high-speed car chase. Meanwhile, Joe had exited the bar and was sprinting up the sidewalk after her. She made it all the way to the corner of Highland Avenue before he caught up.

‘Polly, stop
! Would you just stop a minute!’ he yelled, grabbing her arm. ‘I’m sorry. I never should have said anything. I know I don’t deserve to be with you, let alone five minutes alone with you drinking a disgusting cocktail, but I’ve started now so you’re just going to have to hear me out.’

He tried to take her hand but she flinched away.

‘All that stuff with Cassie was like LA June Gloom around my heart,’ he said despairingly. ‘I couldn’t see how badly I was treating you, keeping you hanging on for months without so much as a text, turning up in Bucharest only to break your heart, right before Stephen tried to break your nose, which again, was entirely my fault. And as for the last year… Can’t you see? None of it was clear to me until recently.’

As he stood there, sandwiched between the stars of Arnie and Marilyn and pouring his heart out
to her, Polly’s eyes were fixed on the twinkling lights of
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
up ahead. She couldn’t look at Joe. She couldn’t let him in again. She couldn’t risk it. If she did, then in a few months’ time when something else cataclysmic happened, as it always did with Joe, she would be heart-broken all over again. And then what? Another two-year sentence? Pining away for him like a puppy at the kitchen door?

She turned to face him
, shaking her head, slowly, reluctantly, fighting back the tears.

‘Joe…I’m sorry, I can’t
.’

It was like Bucharest all over again
, only this time the Converse was on the other foot.

‘It’s too complicated…’

She watched him brush his hand across his mouth in despair as she tried to justify herself. Spelling out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work. He was too much of a flight-risk, their calamitous history, all the stuff with Sam.’

‘What do you mean
by that?’ he said, sharply. ‘I told you before, she’s not my girlfriend.’

‘
There’s still something between you.’

‘You’re wrong. There never was anything, except…’ he hesitated for a moment. ‘Ok, there were a couple of drunken fumbles in Mozambique but nothing since
, I swear.’

Polly’s face tightened. ‘I see. So all that time I was worrying myself stupid, you wer
e shagging your way out of your misery.’ Her jaw began to tic. ‘Wow, Joe, you really must be a stud. You managed to bag yourself a free script and a ticket to the big-time. And here I was accusing Lucy of sleeping her way to the top!’

‘Don’t do this
,’ he pleaded, but she was already storming up the Boulevard once more, past the tube station and the entrance to the Hollywood and Highland Center, with its soaring palm trees and sweeping stairway. He didn’t catch up with her again until she was right outside the gaping golden aperture of The Dolby Theatre, next door. The home of the Academy Awards.

‘Polly!
Stop! For god’s sake!’

He spun her round to face him and her cheeks were marbled with tears.

‘You loved me,’ he said, frantically. Tears of his own were starting to form, like some melancholic dance troupe waiting in the wings for their big appearance. ‘I know you did. Back in Morocco. Jesus, Polly, if we could just go back to then…’ He trailed off, remembering the night, two years ago, when he had allowed himself to drown in her, albeit for a few revelatory, hours.

Polly was crying harder now. She was thinking about that night too.

‘But how do I know you won’t run away again?’ she sobbed.

‘You can’t
,’ he said simply, ‘you just have to trust that I won’t.’

‘But it’s not enough!’

‘Ok, then maybe this’ll help.’ As he said, it he dragged her into his arms and kissed her with more passion and romance than any of the Best Picture weepies that had claimed victory in the auditorium behind.

After a while
, he pulled away and started undoing his trainers. 

‘What are you doing
now?’ asked Polly, faintly.

Straightening up
, he started knotting the loose laces together, before arranging his trainers around her neck like a muddy, faintly whiffy décolletage.

‘If you take me back, I won’t need footwear anymore
,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ll be dancing on air for the rest of my life.’

He took a step back to admire his handwork as passing tourists shot them odd glances.

‘So?’ he prompted, anxiously. ‘What do you say?’

Polly glanced down
at his Converse then smiled. One of her heart-breaking, spine-tingling, all-over slam-dunkers that had hooked him right from the start.

‘I think I better buy you some new socks
,’ she said.