Hollywood Husbands (6 page)

‘No, thank you. Look, sis, I’ve got to run. There’s a lot of stuff I have to organize.’

‘You only just got here,’ she protested.

Kissing her forehead he said, ‘We’ll be living in the same town. We haven’t done that since we were kids. It’ll be just like old times, won’t it?’

The shine was off her day, but she nodded anyway.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said, ‘as soon as I’m settled.’

The moment he left she phoned her mother, who knew no more than she did, and was very upset about the situation.

‘Has anyone spoken to Marita?’ she asked.

‘Corey says she’s gone back to Hawaii with the baby to stay with her family,’ her mother said.

‘Not permanently, I hope?’

‘I don’t know.’

As soon as she hung up, she felt an urge to talk to Mark. They had been apart for five weeks and she still had withdrawal symptoms. For six years they had shared each other’s lives. Except he had led a separate life of his own in England, one she was supposed to know nothing about.

Bastard.

That didn’t mean she couldn’t miss him if she wanted to.

Without thinking she wolfed down the rest of the pizza, an act she immediately regretted. Mark would have laughed at her. Sometimes, when she went on eating binges, he called her the Fat American. Hardly a title suited to her slim curves. When they had fights – and it had not been a peaceful six years – she called him the Uptight Englishman. They used to joke about writing a sit-com with the two nicknames combined. ‘It’d be a smash!’ Jade would laugh.

‘Only with you in it,’ he’d reply.

They always used to go on trips together. She enjoyed his world as much as he was fascinated by hers. Twice a year she had accompanied him to Africa on his photographic safaris, and she would certainly miss the breathtaking beauty of waking up in the wilderness with the most incredible dawn skies and the sounds of nature all around.

Mark Rand.

He was part of her past.

She had to stop thinking about him.

Chapter Six

Wes Money shared a birthday with Silver Anderson, only he didn’t know it, and even if he had he wouldn’t have cared. He was thirty-three years old and getting nowhere fast. The trouble with Wes was that he had no direction in life. Having tried a little bit of everything, he had failed to succeed at anything.

* * *

Wes Money was born in a slum area of London to a sometime hooker and her part-time pimp. Childhood was not exactly made in Disneyland; growing up was a tough game, and Wes learned early on in life to play it fast and dirty. When he was twelve, his mother found herself a rich American (or at least she thought he was at the time), married him, and moved to New York. Wes thought he had died and gone to heaven. He was getting laid at thirteen (all the little high school girls just
loved
his cockney accent), getting arrested at fifteen (shoplifting – nothing lethal), and getting out at sixteen. He did not say goodbye to his mother – she probably never even noticed he was gone. By the time he split, she had divorced her husband and returned to her old ways. Hooking suited her better than cooking.

Wes moved in with a buxom stripper who thought he was twenty. He did a little pimping of his own, but his heart wasn’t in it, and a small amount of drug dealing led him to the fringes of the rock business, and what he thought at the time was his true love – music. He discovered he could sing, unearthing a low throaty growl which lent itself to the heavy-metal sounds popular in the seventies. After toiling as a roadie for a year with a group called
In the Lewd
, his chance came when the lead singer came down with an acute case of the clap. Without hesitation Wes stepped into his shoes if not his pants.

Ecstasy followed. He was twenty-two and singing with a group. Fourteen-year-old virgins threw themselves at him. He met Mick Jagger and Etta James. He was going to be famous!

In the Lewd
disbanded after ten months. They hadn’t even gotten a record deal. Wes was pissed off, although he quite expected other groups to be lining up to sign him.

Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. So he moved to Miami in search of the sun, and took a job as a bartender in a night club where he met a Swedish divorcee of forty-two, with money, steel thighs, and no sense of humour. She kept him for three years, which was all right with him, especially as he was making it with her maid, a well-stacked Puerto Rican girl.

Both relationships ended when the Swedish woman decided to get married again, and the bridegroom-to-be was not him.

Reluctantly he went back to tending bar at one of the big hotels. A suitable job for someone who couldn’t make up his mind what to do next.

Vicki entered his life when the last thing he was looking for was a woman with no money. Vicki was twenty and perfect. There was no way they couldn’t team up. Love was a new experience for him, and it made him uneasy. Vicki was a dancer in one of the lavish hotel shows, and unfortunately she made even less money than he did. They lived together in a tiny ocean-front apartment, and before long Vicki was making ominous mumblings about marriage.

A picket fence, unpaid bills, and babies was not the future he saw for himself, so he cheated on Vicki with her best friend, and made sure she found out. Then he left town and returned to New York, where he soon realized it was too cold for him – but not before doing a small part in a porno video for a fast thousand bucks cash.

The money bought him a one-way ticket to Los Angeles, where he rented a two-room run-down house in Venice – on the boardwalk – and worked as an extra in a few movies. After a while he got bored hanging around film sets, and drifted back to tending bar at a variety of Hollywood hang-outs.

One day he woke up and he was thirty-three.

* * *

Luckily Wes was not in his own bed, as he would have been so depressed he might have killed himself. He groped for a cigarette and looked around, while a thousand needles jabbed relentlessly at his temples. He had no idea where he was.

A half-full glass of scotch stood on the bedside table next to a pink telephone and a frilled Kleenex holder. There was also a cheap plastic alarm clock, and an ashtray shaped like an owl, overflowing with old cigarette butts.

Well, he obviously hadn’t hit pay dirt. For years he had been looking for another Swede. Being kept by a woman was the kind of cushy lifestyle that appealed to him.

Yawning loudly he sat up. A stuffed ginger cat stared down at him from a shelf. ‘Good morning,’ he said amiably.

Was it his imagination, or did the cat wink?

Shit! Too many late nights and hard women.

The bedroom was small and hot. No air conditioning. He had definitely lucked out.

‘Anyone home?’ he called, and his hostess made her entrance. She was a plump blonde with teased hair, caked makeup, and silicone breasts displayed through a polyester negligee.

‘I thought ya’d never wake up,’ she said. ‘Y’can put it away quicker than my old man; an’
that’s
goin’ some.’

He could swear that he’d never set eyes on her in his life. And he must have been very drunk to have honoured her with the pleasure of his cock. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

She eyed him appreciatively. ‘At least y’can get it up, which is more’n
he
could when he ran out on me. You’d be amazed at the number of fagolas around today.’

‘Really?’ He dragged on his cigarette and pretended to be surprised.

‘I ain’t kiddin’ you, hon.’ She fluffed out her hair and gave him a long, lingering look. ‘I gotta be at work in half an hour… What the heck, I’ve time if you have.’

He would sooner have walked on hot coals all the way back to New York. This drinking of his had to stop.

She began to divest herself of the negligee. Underneath she wore a red garter belt, red patterned stockings and nothing else. Her bush – wiry and black – grew all the way to China. He was surprised she didn’t back-comb and style it.

‘Nothing I’d like better,’ he said, lifting the sheet and peering down at his penis – rigid, but only with the need to take a piss.

‘Looks good t’ me,’ she leered.

‘Just checking,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘I’ve got this ongoing case of herpes. The doc says it’s only catching when it flares up. However, in the interest of not passing anything on, I like to keep an eye on it.’

She froze. ‘You low-life!’ Quickly she struggled back into her negligee, rolls of fat shaking indignantly. ‘Get out of my bed and take a powder.’

‘It’s not communicable now,’ he protested.

‘Just get lost, scumbag.’

She turned her back while he pulled on his pants and shirt. He left her house without another word being exchanged, and was surprised to find himself in the Valley.
How
had he made it to the Valley in the condition he must have been in?

Fortunately his car was parked outside. An old Lincoln won in a poker game. He did have his moments.

Stopping at a coffee shop on Ventura Boulevard, he went straight to the men’s room. In the mirror above a cracked basin he wished himself a happy birthday. On the wall somebody had scrawled
MY MOTHER MADE ME A HOMOSEXUAL
and underneath someone else had written
IF I GIVE HER THE WOOL WILL SHE MAKE ME ONE TOO?

Leaning closer to the mirror he saw the marks of time and too much booze. Right now, unshaven, with a hangover and bleary eyes, he didn’t look too good. But he washed up nicely, and when he had lived with the Swede he had been positively good-looking. Of course, manicures and facials and massages and new expensive clothes helped anyone look good. Life with the Swede was quite a few years ago though. He missed her steely thighs,
and
her money.

Anyway, he could still get most women if he put his mind to it. He had longish brown hair and regular features marred only by a broken nose (acquired in a bar-room brawl), and a small inch-long scar beneath his left eyebrow (the result of an argument with Vicki when they split). His eyes were the colour of fresh seaweed, and while he didn’t exercise or any of that crap, his five feet eleven inches was in pretty good shape – give or take a few extra pounds.

He knew how to please the ladies too. Sober or drunk he could still make ’em sing Streisand.

After coffee and a couple of sugar-packed doughnuts he set off home, almost stopping for a teenage hitchhiker in red shorts – only changing his mind when he realized he was playing Russian roulette with his sex life. There were all sorts of things to consider nowadays: herpes, which he didn’t have – not to mention AIDS, which did not mean a shot of pencillin and goodbye Charlie. AIDS meant death. Slow and lingering.

Shuddering, he decided he definitely had to clean up his act. No more lost-weekend nights. In future he had to
know
who he was sleeping with.

Outside his house lurked a local prostitute. Once, when he was really busted, he had let her use his bedroom for a week. She entertained forty-two men and the place had smelled like a doss house toilet. Never again.

‘Hiya, Wes,’ she trilled. ‘I brought you a present.’

He was touched. The local hooker had remembered his birthday.

No such luck. It was a packet of cocaine he had ordered for an acquaintance.

‘How much?’ he asked.

Money was exchanged for goods, and he realized funds were alarmingly low. Even though he could sell the coke at twice the price, it was time to find another job.

Inside his house nothing had changed. Dirty clothes, dirty ashtrays, dirty sheets – the usual mess. Idly he wondered if he could hire the hooker for maid service. Probably not. She would think it was beneath her.

Punching on his phone answering machine he waited for the message that would tell him he was wanted for another group. Singing was his life – only he hadn’t done any in years.

‘Listen, pal,’ said the voice of his friend Rocky. ‘You gotta do me a big favour. Tonight there’s this party up in Bel Air at some TV star’s place. Silver Anderson. Me and Stuart were supposed to take care of the bar, only the stupid sonofabitch broke his arm jumpin’ out of a movin’ car. Don’t ask me why. Sixty bucks for a coupla hours. You can’t let me down. Okay, pal?’

It was his birthday. He had nothing else to do.

Chapter Seven

Jack Python drove a dark racing-green Ferrari. He did not like anyone else behind the wheel, and as most of the parking valets in town were aware of his idiosyncrasy they were quite happy for him to park it himself.

Leaving The Beverly Hills Hotel, he walked briskly to his car, trailed by a couple of tourists from Minnesota who, camera in hand, hoped to get his picture. Before they could summon the courage to ask, he roared off into the hazy afternoon sunshine.

He was supposed to play tennis, but breakfast with Howard and Mannon had sapped his energy and he didn’t feel like it, so he cancelled the appointment on his car telephone, making it for the next morning. Then he tried Clarissa at the studio, only to be informed that she was on the set and unavailable.

‘I know who you are!’ a girl in a white convertible at a stoplight yelled.

His smile of acknowledgment was uncomfortable. He honestly did not enjoy public recognition – unlike Mannon, who revelled in it, or Howard, who craved it. When Howard was first made the head of Orpheus, his finest moment was getting the front round table at Morton’s restaurant, wiping out two movie stars and a very important producer.

The Three Comers. Well, they sure had come a long way. Three guys with big ambitions sharing one small apartment. And they’d all made it to the top. He was proud of their achievements.

He drove slowly to his penthouse in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, preferring the looseness of hotel life to the responsibility of his own apartment or house. It gave him a nice sense of freedom.

Clarissa rented a home on Benedict Canyon, and he spent a lot of time there. Lately he had been thinking of leasing a place at the beach for the summer. Not in the Malibu Colony, that was too full of recognizable faces. More like Point Dume or Trancas. The idea really appealed to him. Maybe he’d just take the summer off and become a beach bum. He also thought it would be good for Heaven, who might like to come and stay with him for the summer.