Further Under the Duvet (28 page)

*

That evening, back at the ranch, things weren’t so good. Not only had Tandy not got the part but they’d told her she’d never make it because her look ‘is so over’.

‘What can I do?’ she moaned. ‘This is how I look. What am I supposed to do?’

‘Plastic surgery?’ Nick suggested.

‘I’ve had it,’ she said.

‘Really?’ I asked curiously. ‘What, exactly?’

‘Nose, lips, eyelids, cheekbones.’

‘Boobs,’ Nick chipped in. ‘You forgot your boobs.’

She lifted her face from her hands just long enough to scorch him with a look.

‘But you have so much talent,’ I told her.

‘Talent, shmalent.’ She gave a scornful wave of her hand.

‘This is Hollywood. What use to me is talent?’

She turned her tear-stained face to mine. ‘We must go out and drink white chocolate martinis.’

‘That’s the closest you get to a square meal, right?’ Nick said.

‘Gimme a break! I eat. Often.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot. You had an aspirin last Tuesday.’

‘I’m an actress! Eating isn’t an option.’

‘I’m giving you a hard time because I care about you.’

‘You don’t care about anyone but yourself.’

‘Not true.’

‘Is true.’

‘Guys, guys,’ I said hastily. ‘Break it up.’

‘I’m going to the store.’ Nick swung from the room.

Fifteen minutes later he was back, looking out of his mind with worry.

‘You are not going to believe this. I’ve just met crazy Karl, our unfriendly neighbourhood alcoholic –’

‘– He pulled a knife on you?’ Tandy asked, in alarm.

‘No, far worse. He said hey and asked me how I was.’

‘Then he asked you for a dollar?’

‘No, he said he was real sorry for all the crazy stuff, the yelling and the howling like a dawg. Says it won’t happen again. He’s cleaned up his act.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘I’m going to miss him howling like a dawg,’ Tandy admitted. ‘So what’s happened to him?’

‘Dunno,’ Nick shrugged. ‘Far as I can see he hasn’t been the same since Grace called in on him.’

‘I met the man for two seconds,’ I defended myself.

‘What is it about you?’ Nick considered me with his bleak dark eyes.

Later, in some white-tiled, glass-fronted bar, after three different men asked for and didn’t get Tandy’s number, she got maudlin about her audition.

‘They way they treat people is the way I used to treat shoes. I used to stroll through the store, ignoring some, picking others up, then saying the most
hurtful
stuff.’

‘Like?’

‘Like… too high, weird heel, wrong colour, too low. It’s so CRUEL.’

I nodded sympathetically. People at the other tables were beginning to look.

‘And now when I’m at the market buying, like, apples, I pick
the shiniest, reddest ones, RIGHT? But I try to send out vibes to the apples I left behind, to let them know that just because I didn’t choose them doesn’t mean that they’re all not WORTHWHILE and UNIQUE. In case any of them feel BAD, you know? Oh no!’

Two martinis had just arrived courtesy of a man who was winking energetically from across the room.

‘Take them back,’ Tandy beseeched the waiter. ‘Please.’

‘He’s really cute,’ I tried to persuade her.

‘Thank you,’ the waiter said, warmly. ‘So are you.’

‘I… um… actually meant the man who’d sent the drinks,’ I explained. ‘But thank you.’

The next day Tandy had already left for her job before Nick surfaced, wafting into the kitchen in a morning-fresh, citrus cloud. He had a strangely alluring unkempt look about him, and he always seemed as if he could do with a good scrub. Even when he’d just had one. Even when he was actually
having
one, according to Tandy, who’d admitted last night that she’d had sex in the shower with him one ‘horrible’ (her word) evening when they’d both had about ten vodkatinis too many.

‘Won’t you be late for work?’ I asked him.

‘No work today, Grace.’

‘Why not?’

‘Audition.’

‘That’s great! Why didn’t you say?’

He shrugged. ‘Tandy was so bummed over her lousy audition yesterday I thought telling her about mine might bring her down.’

‘So what’s the part?’

‘Mild-mannered, happily married father of three who blows the whistle on a chemical company that’s poisoning the water system.’

‘
Real
ly? That’s excellent.’ And what a change from the stalker/slasher/wacko parts he was usually up for!

‘Nah, just kidding.’ He slung himself into a chair. ‘Psychopath. Neo-Nazi tendencies. Impressive collection of knives.’

As he ate his Captain Crunch, he looked kind of depressed.

Then the phone rang. Another heartbroken woman for Nick. Except it wasn’t. The call was for me! And there was only one person in Los Angeles who had my number: Robyn Dude, theatrical agent and ass-kicker extraordinaire. This could only mean one thing – an audition!

I know I’m not a human being. I know I’m an angel whose mind is on higher things. Or at least it should be. But when Robyn growled at me to show up at some suite in Wilshire with my résumé and headshots, I suddenly wanted that part. Fiercely. Violently.

So desperately that for a while I forgot why I was actually on earth. Seven Deadly Sins, I reminded myself sternly. Perhaps today I’d see if I could tick off, ooh, let’s see, how about… Pride!

‘Tell me what you know about Pride,’ I said to Nick.

‘It comes before a fall.’

‘That’s all you can tell me?’

‘Pride is a big ole march they have in San Francisco every year.’

‘Ohhh-kaaaay.’ Why did I expect him to make sense? After all, this was the man who’d told me that Sloth was a small British animal.

Nick loped off to his audition and I dressed for mine. The part was for the fat, supportive sister of the kooky, beautiful heroine. Another fat girl part to add to my fat girl résumé…

In the suite in Wilshire there were dozens of us, all doing our best to exude fat, supportive, sisterly energy. But in a strange, smug way I suspected I was the best. At one hundred and twelve pounds I was certainly the fattest, and humming in a warm place inside me was the conviction that the part was
mine
. So sure of myself was I that I was able to chatter brightly to the sweet girl next to me. Who confided that nothing had gone right in her life for so long that she was beginning to suspect her ex-boyfriend had put a curse on her. Her car had been stolen, her highlights had turned a funny colour and she hadn’t worked in six months. When I heard my name being called, I touched her on the shoulder and said, ‘I hope you get the part.’

‘I hope you do too,’ she replied. Which was a kind of stupid conversation because there was only one part and there were two of us, but I suppose we were bonding.

I’d never been to an audition before but having done a run-through with Tandy for
her
audition I knew exactly what to do. A girl called Lana fed me my lines and Wayne, the director, watched from the back of the room.

‘I am so kurrr-ay-zee,’ Lana said, acting the part of the kooky heroine.

‘Hahaha,’ I laughed, in what I hoped was a fat, supportive, sisterly way.

‘Thank you!’ Wayne shouted.

‘You’re welcome,’ I said, then turned back to Lana, waiting to be fed my next line. She remained oddly silent.

‘Go ahead,’ I encouraged.

‘Thank you,’ Wayne called again. ‘You can go now.’

‘But I’m not finished.’ I held up my page of dialogue.

‘We would like you to leave now.’

Then I understood. When they shout, ‘Thank you,’ they’re not actually thanking you, they’re telling you you’re crap. As I slunk towards the door, Wayne yelled, ‘Next!’ I was barely aware of the nice girl I’d been talking to in the waiting room being ushered in past me.

I was crushed.
Crushed
. Tandy had warned me about auditions: meat racks, cattle markets, where they treat you as if you’re not human. (Well, obviously I’m not, but how were they to know?)

As I trudged towards my car I wanted to go home. Not home to Silverlake, but
home
home.

I’d been so sure I’d get the part. I burnt as I remembered how I’d thought it was in the bag when it wasn’t. What’s that Nick had said? ‘Pride comes before a fall.’ And he’d been right. I’d certainly taken a tumble…

Then the sense of that began to dawn on me. If I’d had the fall, I must’ve had
pride
. Pride.

And all at once it was as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds. I’d done five now. Only Greed and… and… what was the other one? Oh right, Lust. Only Greed and Lust to go.

There was the sound of running feet behind me. It was the sweet girl I’d spoken to in the waiting room.

‘I got the part,’ she gasped. ‘They just took one look at
me, before I’d even read, and they said, “You’re our Mary Ann.” It’s totally weird,’ she added. ‘They don’t usually do it this way. Like, never. They’ve sent everyone else away.’

And sure enough, flooding out into the car park came a stream of supportive, sisterly women, now looking peeved and disappointed. A disgruntled mutter reached me.

‘It’s like you were my good-luck charm or something…’ She looked at me in a kind of confused wonder, a little like the way Granola did.

‘I’m really happy for you,’ I said, because, actually, I was.

To celebrate my ritual humiliation at the audition I went to a bar with Tandy for apple martinis. It was wall-to-wall beautiful people.

‘Why was it horrible?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘You said when you slept with Nick that it was horrible.’

‘The sleeping bit wasn’t horrible,’ she said awkwardly. ‘It was afterwards… He never mentioned it again. And there were – are – all these other girls.’

I nodded. There
were
a lot of girls around Nick.

‘No, thank you, she doesn’t want it.’ Irritably I shooed away a waiter who’d showed up with a bottle of champagne and a phone number.

‘No, wait. Which guy?’ Tandy asked.

‘The gentleman raising his glass like a character in a low-rent James Bond movie,’ the waiter said politely. ‘May he join you?’

‘Sure,’ Tandy sighed. ‘If it’s okay with you, Grace?’

‘Er, sure.’

By the time we left two hours later, Tandy had agreed to go on a date with James – I’m sure that wasn’t his real name – the following evening.

Back home Nick had celebrated getting the part of the neo-Nazi psycho by going to the movies. With Karl.

‘Crazy alcoholic Karl?’ Tandy was aghast.

‘Who hasn’t had a drink since Sunday,’ Nick replied.

‘He was talking about you.’ He addressed this to me. ‘He decided to stop drinking, he says, when he had a moment of Grace.’

‘Just because my name is Grace doesn’t mean it’s anything to do with me.’

‘What is it about you?’ Nick stared at me, lost in consideration.

‘Nothing. There’s nothing about me.’

Tandy and I stood in the Rodeo Drive store, struck dumb by the beauty of the leather goods before us – the sturdy, curvy shapes, the way the light caught the devilishly pliant hide, the slender long handles just begging to be slung over our shoulders.

I wanted to possess them so
badly
.

‘Other people go to art galleries,’ Tandy admitted. ‘I come here and look at the purses. They’re so beautiful that sometimes I cry. I used to be like that about shoes, but –’

‘– handbags are the new shoes,’ I finished for her. I may have been on earth for only six days, but I’d taken care to learn the most important stuff. That kind of knowledge would take me anywhere.

‘When I do my first not-straight-to-video movie,’ she promised, ‘I’m going to come in here and buy every purse they have.’

‘Me too. When I play my first non-fat girl part,’ I said. ‘Tandy, can I ask you something?’ And yes, I admit it was a trick question. ‘Is it greedy to want to steal one of these bags?’

Tandy was appalled. ‘Greedy? It’s totally normal.’

I tried again. ‘Would it be greedy to want to steal
more
than one?’

‘Depends. What were you planning on doing with the both of them?’

‘
Both?
Well, I was thinking of more than two.’

This seemed to impress her.

‘Okay, what would you do with them all? You can’t really wear more than two at the one time.’

‘I’d have some next to my bed so they’d be the first thing I’d see when I woke up. I might frame some and hang them on my wall and I’d keep the rest in my closet, and when I was depressed I’d take them out and kiss them.’

After an awkward pause she asked, ‘Are you going to give one to me?’

And, shamefaced, I had to admit, ‘No, Tandy, I want to keep them all for me.’

‘
That
’s greedy,’ she said huffily. ‘That’s, like, not nice. I thought you were my friend.’

‘Sorry,’ I whispered, suddenly restored to normality. Of course I’d give Tandy one of the bags I wanted to steal from Prada. All of them, if she wanted. (But hopefully she wouldn’t.)

‘Hey.’ Her smile was sweet. ‘This is crazy. No one’s going to steal anything.’

‘Good,’ said the male assistant who’d materialized behind us. ‘I have a horror of scenes.’

I perked up. I’d just committed my sixth deadly sin. So that was how greed operated – blinding you to friendship and generosity. All for the sake of some nicely stitched leather.
Very
nicely stitched leather, I thought, in lovely colours, with zips and locks and… I could feel myself getting sucked in again.

Of my seven deadly sins I only had Lust to go. As if on cue, a woman hurtled into the store and flung herself on a purple ostrich-skin evening bag.

‘Ohmigod,’ she shrieked. ‘I totally
lust
after this. One of these is better than sex!’

Naturally enough this gave me pause for thought. In my great yearning for a bag had I also done Lust? It would be very useful if I had, of course, because I could spend my last day on earth lying by the pool. Maybe I’d even get to talk to that pale and interesting man who’d been there two days ago. But I’d always expected that I’d feel Lust about a man, not about a handbag. I wasn’t ready to give up on that yet.