I Heart Hollywood (16 page)

‘Just a tip on the interviewing thing—I’m pretty sure you don’t have to go back to the guy’s hotel room at one a.m.,’ Alex replied evenly. ‘I’ve always managed to keep my pants on in interviews.’

‘Really? Because I didn’t think you had such a great history at keeping your pants on.’ It was out before I’d thought about it. Such were the perils of being so bloody quick.

‘Right, there are pictures of you on the internet, whoring yourself all over LA with some asshole actor you just met, and
you’re
bringing up
my
past?’ At least I’d got his attention now. Shit. ‘Is this where I mention the part where you were dating someone else behind my back when we met?’

‘No, this is the point where you calm down and realize that this is all really stupid and that I wouldn’t ever cheat on you and that sometimes, just sometimes, trashy websites print things that aren’t true.’ How dare he be on the other side of the country for our first row. I could practically hear him thinking down the line but he still didn’t say anything.

‘Look, Alex, all I’m asking is for you to trust me and not the internet. That shouldn’t be too hard, should it?’ I was not happy. These kinds of conversations had not gone well for me in the past. Plus, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t considered crossing a very unprofessional line with James, which wasn’t exactly helping my argument ring true.

‘I’m sorry, this is all just too weird,’ Alex said, finally. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘I’m sorry too, I didn’t mean to say that stuff,’ I sniffed. ‘I’m just being all paranoid because we haven’t really spoken since I got here and then all the pictures and stuff and then Mary called and now you’re freaking out—’

‘Angela, hey, hold up,’ Alex interrupted. ‘I meant, I’m sorry I can’t really talk about this over the phone. We’ll only end up saying dumb stuff. More dumb stuff.’

‘So what, we’re not going to talk until I get back?’

‘You’re back on Sunday.’

‘But it’s Tuesday…’ I bit my lip. ‘Can’t I just call you later?’

He sighed loudly. ‘I’m sorry. Just, well, let me call you, OK? Bye.’

I looked at my phone, just to check. Yes, he had hung up. This really was the perfect start to the perfect day. If I’d known I was going to get into such a mess anyway, I would have just shagged James senseless when I had the chance. Bloody stupid bloody conscience.

‘Angela, you’re on the internet!’ Jenny shrieked from the bedroom. ‘You’re freakin’ famous!’

Brilliant, just brilliant.

It took me far too long to convince Jenny to back away from the laptop and not email my details directly to Perez Hilton. She felt very strongly that I should be making the most of my potential new-found fame, or at the very least sign up for reality TV shows and get us both into gifting lounges. I, however, felt very strongly that I should go back to bed and sleep until everyone in the world stopped reading celebrity gossip or the internet broke down, whichever came first. But I couldn’t. I had things to do. I had a blog to write, and tomorrow, assuming James was still on for it, I had to drag my arse out of the hotel and carry on with the interview. He might have emailed the magazine but he wasn’t answering his phone to me. Swearing I would meet her for brunch as promised, I sent a still slightly pissed-off Jenny on her way and settled down at my laptop.

The Adventures of Angela: Valley of the Woes

Hmmm. So my LA adventure isn’t exactly going according to plan. Since you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’re fairly familiar with the internet and the pages full of wonderful, wonderful things it contains. Like net-a-porter.com. Unfortunately, it turns out there are some pages of not-sowonderful things and lots of those pages are made right here, in LA.

Now, I did sort of know that before I got here because who
hasn’t
whiled away a few harmless minutes/hours/entire working days on Perez Hilton or WWTDD? Come on, there isn’t a person alive who doesn’t want to see the private mobile phone pictures of a Disney starlet, right? But what I didn’t know was, despite all the evidence out there, sometimes not only are the things on these websites not entirely truthful, sometimes they are as familiar with reality as I am with Brad Pitt. That is, not familiar at all. Goddamn it.

I guess a lot of people think it would fun to be on one of these websites, to be pictured hanging out with celebs in some swanky Hollywood nightclub but, well, just like the websites themselves, sometimes things aren’t what they seem.

Hopefully, I’m still in for a Hollywood ending…and I’m still waiting for your recommendations as to where to get one. Email me at [email protected]

After emailing the blog to Mary (and praying to every conceivable deity I could think of, including the genie from Aladdin), I searched through mine and Jenny’s wardrobes twice, searching for a ‘I really haven’t done it with James Jacobs’ outfit; but now, for some reason, everything looked as if it was right out of the Playboy Mansion.

Who in their right mind would believe I was sleeping with an A-list movie star? This was me we were talking about: mismatched underwear, not capable of curling my eyelashes without catching my eyelid, dodgy muffin top in all but one pair of my jeans, Angela Clark. Slightly useless, can’t even change a plug at twenty-seven, not a seducer of superstars, dress-shedding über-minx, Angela Clark, international super-slag. I settled on my jeans (sadly not the non-muffin-top pair) and stripy Splendid rugby top. Buttoned up. Every wanton inch of me covered. Sweating like a bee-hatch in the seventy-five-degree weather but covered from head to toe.

‘So I get that you didn’t love The Beverly Center,’ Jenny said, adjusting her sunglasses and spinning out of The Hollywood’s valet parking lot. ‘And I’m guessing that you’re gonna be freaking out about those photos for pretty much the whole day, right?’

‘Probably,’ I agreed sombrely. I was still so numb from my conversation with Alex, I didn’t even have the energy to be scared of Jenny’s driving.

‘So what can we do to get you out of your funk?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ I traced a finger along the edge of the car door. At least since we were in the convertible my hair would look like crap whether I’d done anything with it or not. Which I hadn’t. And, joy, the sun was out. If I was really lucky, I could get burnt again.

‘God, you’re going to make this hard work, aren’t you?’ Jenny slapped the steering wheel. ‘I know, Angela, if someone said “LA” to you, what would you think of?’

‘What?’

‘What would you think of? What would you associate with Hollywood?’ she pressed on.

Paparazzi. Blonde hair. Breast implants. ‘Sunshine?’

‘Anything else?’ she asked.

Feeling completely out of place. Missing Alex. Worrying about James. ‘Movies?’

‘Which movies?’

‘Jenny,’ I really wanted to just go back to bed. ‘Are you getting at something?’

‘Honey, I’m just trying to distract you. This is all gonna be over by tomorrow. Sometimes life throws you a curveball and you’ve just got to run with it.’ Jenny pulled up outside a row of shops. Sparkly, shiny, lovely looking shops.’ Or shop for it.’

‘Where are we?’ I asked, blinking up at the prettiness. Everything was so white. And big. ‘What are we doing?’

‘We’re about to spend an obscene amount of money,’ Jenny grinned.

Once the car had been safely handed over to the valet parking assistant (I would never get used to that), Jenny pulled me along the wide, sunny street past designer store after designer store.

‘Never before in my life have I wanted to be a hooker so badly,’ I clutched at Jenny’s hand, my mouth wide open. ‘But oh, would you look at that bag?’

‘I know, hello
Pretty Woman
,’ Jenny squeezed my hand back. ‘Even I would sleep with Richard Gere for that dress and, hello, so old now?’

‘So this is Rodeo Drive?’ I marvelled. ‘Why on earth did you take me to a mall yesterday?’

‘Because we can’t actually afford anything here.’ She pulled me away from the Louis Vuitton window, leaving my sticky paw prints all over it. ‘But I thought it might distract you for a while.’

‘We can’t afford anything?’ I fought the urge to go into the closest shop and buy a giant hat. And gloves. ‘Really?’

‘Angie, when we go shopping in New York, where do we go?’ Jenny asked.

‘Bloomingdale’s? Bergdorf’s?’ I couldn’t stop staring at the pretty things. Things I’d seen in magazines, in
The Look
, but that were now right here in front of me! In a shop! To buy!

‘Not where do we go to try things on but never buy them unless they’re in the sales. Where do we actually go shopping?’

‘Um, Century 21 and Filene’s,’ I admitted. ‘When you’re not there to stop me, Gap.’

‘Exactly. And I killed my credit card at The Beverly Center yesterday, so no, we really can’t afford anything.’ Jenny fished around in her handbag for some lip gloss, slicked a completely unnecessary layer on top of her already shiny lips and then added a desperately needed pop of colour to mine. ‘But no one needs to know that, right? There’s nothing like trying on thousands of dollars’ worth of couture to take your mind off your problems.’

If my only issue with LA was still that it wasn’t nearly as glossy and glamorous as I’d been expecting, then Rodeo Drive would have solved all my problems. From the dramatic white marble store fronts, the palm trees sprouting up out of the glossy pavement, right through to the serious-looking doormen that stood sentry outside each designer destination, this was everything I’d been expecting.

Yes, the Ugg boot girls were still everywhere, but they had been watered down by a new breed of LA woman. I couldn’t help but stare. They were tiny, just like the platinum blondes, but they seemed so much glossier, so much more expensive, and I could not tell you how old a single one of them was. You couldn’t actually see any discernible designer labels on anything they wore, unless you checked out the shop assistant carrying the stiff paper bags out behind them, but they reeked of money. One of them stepped right out in front of us without looking, making me jump back. She paused, looking at me and Jenny in the same way I sometimes looked at the puppies in the window of the pet store near Bloomingdale’s, as if we were cute but she really didn’t want to get too close in case we slobbered on her. Or worse.

‘So what do you want to try first?’ Jenny asked, completely oblivious. ‘Dior? D&G?’

‘Oh, there.’ I pointed across the road to a gorgeous window display, full of beautiful ballerina-style dresses in pretty petal colours. ‘Miu Miu me up.’

After my second glass of champagne, I was more than ready to accept that Hollywood had its charms after all. Jenny was head to toe in couture, a gorgeous bronze dirndl skirt cinching in her tiny waist and five-inch platforms forcing her onto her tippy-toes.

‘How do they feel?’ The inordinately attractive salesman cupped my foot in his hand and slipped the ankle strap of a beautiful, sequin-covered sandal through the little tiny silver buckle.

‘They feel lovely.’ I was almost too afraid to stand on the delicate little heels. When would I feel more like Kylie and less like Lily Savage when I tried on a girlie outfit?

‘You know, I think we just got one of the matching purses in today. It’s in the back,’ he whispered. ‘I have to see how it looks with the shoes.’

‘Me too,’ I agreed, staring at my feet. Why would anyone ever put their foot inside an Ugg in LA? In New York, it snowed, it was cold, you needed their sheepskin-lined goodness; but here, you could feasibly walk around in nothing but fairy-spun Miu Miu creations all year round. In fact, you didn’t even have to walk; this was the perfect place for Limo Shoes. Maybe that was why everyone drove everywhere.

I flicked around my BlackBerry, while my New Best Friend, the shoe salesman, was bag hunting. The BlackBerry was still a bit of a mystery to me. I’d got into enough trouble with just a mobile, without being able to respond to work emails whilst out and about. Out and about meaning drunk. Before I could cast it back into the bottom of my (very jealous to be surrounded by all these younger Miu Mius) handbag, it started to buzz in my hand.

‘Hello?’ I answered automatically.

‘Angela, it’s James.’

Oh, James. Bugger. I’d been so distracted by the prettiness, for fifteen minutes I’d managed to forget all about everything.

‘Angela, are you there?’

‘I am.’ I waved manically at Jenny. I couldn’t do this alone. Even in eight-hundred-dollar sandals. Especially in eight-hundred-dollar sandals.

‘I wanted to say I’m so sorry about the photos. Blake is trying to get them taken down right now.’ He sounded genuinely worried. But then he was an actor. ‘Are you OK? And we’ve spoken to the magazine. It’ll all be fine.’

‘Well, it was a bit of a shock—’ But before I could finish, Jenny snatched the phone out of my hand and sprinted down the shop.

‘James? Jenny,’ I heard her begin before she vanished out of hearing range. I fumbled with the teeny tiny buckles on my sandals but apparently they had been crafted by elves and my lumbering sausage fingers (swollen from the LA heat, surely?) couldn’t unfasten them quickly enough.

‘I don’t know, she’s kind of messed up,’ she said, slinking back up the store. ‘But I’m trying to take care of her. We’re shopping.’

‘Jenny,’ I hissed, ‘give me the bloody phone.’

‘We’re in Miu Miu,’ she winked, holding me at arm’s length. ‘Yes, I think she’d love that. OK, I’ll put you on to someone.’

By the time I’d found my way out of the shoes, my BlackBerry was in the hands of my lovely sales assistant who had returned holding something long and disarmingly sparkly. ‘But of course Mr Jacobs,’ he gushed, hanging up and giving me the phone. And the pretty sparkly thing. I felt like a kitten with a pingpong ball. BlackBerry or shiny bag. BlackBerry or shiny bag.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked Jenny, unable to take my eyes off the bag. It was long and slender and round, like a pencil case I’d had in Year Eight. But, unlike the pencil case I’d had in Year Eight, it had a tiny five-hundred-dollar price tag, hidden discreetly inside the beautiful lining, and was covered in glittering, golden iridescent sparkles. Oh, and a little leather strap to slip around my wrist so that I would never, ever, ever lose it. Even in my sleep. ‘Jenny?’