Namedropper (18 page)

I picked each piece of celery out because celery takes up more calories to chew than it actually contains and is therefore an even bigger waste of time than Eyes
Wide Shut
. So I ordered what I really wanted, which was a hot chocolate and a slice of cheesecake. As I plunged my fork into the glutinous
yellow cake, I studied the people at the other tables. There were a lot of Japanese girls with Vivienne Westwood carrier bags and dyed hair. If Ray were here, he would say, “There's a nasty Nip in the air.” He's anti-Semitic too, although he doesn't quite know it.

When Manny took me to New York last time, Ray asked me, “What's your family there like? What do they do? I bet they're all diamond merchants.” He referred to one journalist as a “fucking Irish potato-head.” Apart from the “nasty Nips,” there was a harassed-looking woman reading the
Guardian
and an old lady with pale lilac hair and no eyebrows. She was eating a broccoli quiche. I know because she told everyone: “I am eating a quiche. It has broccoli in it.” I was moderately interested.

I got talking to a nice gay couple from San Francisco, because they noticed I was now reading
Breakfast at Tiffany's
. The elder lover had receding peroxide hair and the young one I don't really recall too much about, other than that I fancied him and might have fallen in love with him if he hadn't taken wild offence at something I said and stopped talking to me entirely. Here it is: for a joke, I pronounced Truman Capote's name the wrong way. They looked at me, and then at one another, and then they just got up and left, without even tipping the waitress. I am self-destructive. Everyone says so. I'm always mispronouncing words I know how to say perfectly well so that everyone will think I'm dumb and laugh at me and hate me forever.

I went to Boots and messed with samples and the lady behind the counter shouted at me because I put eyeliner straight from the pen to my lids. “You're supposed to test it on
the back of your hands!” she screamed, as if eye/pen contact could only result in a drawn-out death. So I had a big thick black trail on one eye and not the other. Why should I test it on my hand? What good is it to me there? I adjourned to the Estée Lauder stand and sprayed a lot of different perfumes on my wrist until I smelled so disgusting I believed I would throw up if I didn't rip my own skin off within three seconds. I pulled and pulled, but my skin stayed on my arms.

And then, because I was there and not in History, I decided to watch a film. Having seen every movie playing in the West End, I had no option but to buy a ticket for
The Crow: City of Angels 2
. It was awful, and I sat there thinking, “Why am I by myself in an empty cinema at four in the afternoon?” I left before the end and went directly home, without passing Go, where I slammed the door behind me and retired to my boudoir. I was dressing up as Elizabeth in
The V.I.P.s
, with a pencil skirt, cream angora sweater, fat lady's coat, flesh-coloured stockings with a black seam, and a snood, when the phone rang.

I wasn't at all surprised to hear from Ray that night. Whenever he's a pig, he always rings me after a couple of days and chats as if nothing has happened.

“Oh. Hello. How was your lunch date?”

He started speaking all fast and bubbly and difficult to understand, like an MTV VJ. “It was great. She was fucking great. I think you'd approve. She's really cool, really sorted. She's a bit like you.”

“But tall and blond?” I cooed, viciously. He laughed. I didn't. “Well, Ray, you seem to have chippered up. I thought, after Brighton, you were never going to speak to me again.”

“Yes, I'm sorry about that. I was just having a bit of a funny turn. I'm fine now.”

“Oh, how marvellous, because I'm fucking miserable.” I held the phone away from me and made a face at it.

“Don't be sad.” I heard his voice, like a tiny fairy at the bottom of the garden. “I'm so happy. I don't want you to be unhappy. I've really got my head in a good place.”

I pressed the receiver to my mouth. “What, at the top of your neck?”

He ignored me. “I've got an idea. Can I come round?”

I carried the receiver out into the landing and yelled down the stairs, “Manny, can Ray come over?”

Manny waved a hand above my head, like “Sure, whatever.” He doesn't fancy Ray and is, more to the point, unimpressed by him, although “Ray is certainly very impressed with himself.” He doesn't think Ray's glamorous enough to be my friend: “There's a difference between being working-class and being common, and Ray, I'm afraid, is the latter.” Manny adores Treena—“She has the most wonderfully shaped head”—and I can tell he is, against his better judgement, rather intrigued by Drew.

Ray brought fish and chips and we sat around the dinner table listening to his big plan. He was wearing a baggy grey polo-neck jumper and three days of growth. He and Manny drank a bottle of red wine and I had a Sprite. When Manny went to the kitchen for an ashtray, I tested how sorry Ray was about being mean by making him open my Sprite for me—he did it without flinching—and getting him to check my nose for snot. I tilted my neck back and he peered up my nostrils. “All clear, darlin'.”

“Are you sure? It feels itchy.”

He put his arm round the back of my chair and kissed my cheek. “Right, what I've come to say is, I'm going to America to do promo next week.”

I wiped my nose. “Yeah? So?”

“They're releasing the second album on a new label who are much more supportive. And the record company here has given me a bonus because the album's gone platinum. They've given me ten thousand pounds to play with, as holiday money. I was thinking, since you finish school next week, that you could come with me. They're putting me in the Chateau Marmont for five days. I'll pay for your flight and your room and you could even bring a friend, so you don't get bored when I'm doing all the MTV promo and that.”

My guard was somewhat up because this I know about my one male friend: Ray can be a very sweet boy, but mostly when he doesn't think too hard about it. And this all sounded suspiciously well thought out. But I was deliriously happy. My highs are so high and my lows are so low. Get out of school and go straight to L.A.? Yes, thank you so much. I plonked myself in his lap and tucked his hair behind his ears. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I know you're going to do that Religious Studies exam brilliantly. And I want you to have a reward. I don't do enough for you. You're my kid sister and I don't like to see you hung up on … life.”

Manny came back into the room. “You mean hung up on this Drew person?”

“Yes, that especially. I don't want you to think about it anymore. Or any more than you need to. Be a kid. Have some
fun. Go shopping on Melrose. Share a swimming pool with Jack Nicholson.”

“Jack Nicholson's definitely going to be in my swimming pool?”

“Well, whoever. Someone like him. It is California.” He laughed nervously, fearful I was missing the point.

“Okay, someone like him, so does that mean Roman Polanski or Warren Beatty?”

Manny sighed as he poured himself another glass of wine. “Well, Warren Beatty is now a happily married man with many delightful children. I'm sure he lives on a ranch in Vermont. And it's not going to be Roman Polanski because he's banned from entering the country.”

“Yeah, he's right.” I sounded suspicious.

“Look,” wailed Ray, tugging at his sleeves, “we'll be in a great hotel. I'm getting the full treatment. Proper pop-star stuff. At some point, I swear to God, there will be a movie star in your swimming pool.”

“A proper one? Not just some chick from
Dawson's Creek?”

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

I jumped up. “Okay then, I'll go.”

“Well, I think it's an excellent idea,” Manny said, smiling. Then he sipped from his glass, one eyebrow raised in an arch as curly as the writing on a Coke can.

Ray was like an excited little kid at a birthday party who had just been told he could help the birthday girl blow out the candles. “It will be brilliant. You could take anyone you want. You can take Treena. I have to go on Monday, but I've got you
two tickets leaving on Thursday so you don't miss any school. I've got a day in New York, a day in Boston, and then I get to Los Angeles the same day as you. I'll pick you up at the airport and we'll go to the hotel together.”

I popped a soggy chip into my mouth and picked up the phone. The vinegar mingled with my growing excitement. “Treena, do you want to go to Los Angeles on Thursday? Ray's paying.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I hopped triumphantly from leg to leg and did a little bear dance as I slammed down the phone. “Treena says, ‘Yeah, okay.'” In my experience, slamming down the phone is an act best employed and most enjoyed when you're very happy. If someone really angers you during the course of a telephone conversation, you should hang up very slowly and calmly, without saying another word. That always gets them. I've done it to Manny twice and Ray a couple of times. It's not worth doing it to Treena because she wouldn't notice. She barely knows what a phone is. Half the time I have to yell, “Treena, you're speaking to the wrong end. Try again.”

It was after Ray had gone home, as Manny lay on his bed reading a book about the socialist symbolism in Hollywood musicals, and as I soaked in the bath, that I began to wonder why, even for her, Treena had sounded so underwhelmed. The next day at school she said I had just caught her in the middle of her revising and of course she was excited. She was just so worried about the RS exam. Like, hello, get a grip. It's Religious Studies. Who cares if you don't remember lines from the Bible? God's so fucking lazy, he just gave dictation, rambling, freaking out about floods and locusts. God must be
really, really rich for the guys who had to type up his words not to call him on his self-indulgence. I wonder if God can get into the VIP room at the Met Bar?

When final exam day came, I found I had spent all week packing and consequently had no time whatsoever to revise. Ray's plan backfires again. Reward schemes are never very successful with me. Manny tried to potty-train me by buying a doll that wets itself and giving it a treat when it did its business on the potty. The treat was a packet of Smarties. When I saw them, I got so excited I wet myself. This was a somewhat similar situation.

I didn't care. Everyone else spent the morning recess hunched over their desks, desperately trying to cram in some last-minute information. I danced about the classroom doing the Jets dance from
West Side Story
. I felt sad that I was letting Drew down, but not so sad that I had to stop dancing. Treena was slumped in the back of the room with one hand over her eyes and the other holding open the textbook. Her eyes moved furiously across the page and she traced the words with her finger. The contents of her pencil case were spread before her. She had two erasers, a rule, a bottle of Tippex, pencils so sharp they looked like Susan Faludi's mind, and extra ink cartridges for her fountain pen. I remember when she bought that Tippex. It was so she could paint the heels of her Doc Martens white.

The exam went great. In terms of failing heroically, I can think of nothing more humiliating than almost passing. That's something I feel very strongly about. I once got 49 percent in a Maths exam, and I just wanted to die. So I glanced
briefly through the paper, reached the conclusion that I was not going to do well, and opted to do very, very badly instead. I answered a few questions, and those I did were written with my left hand so that the writing was so slanted it could barely be read. It was a laborious and rewardingly pointless act. When the bell went and I was still only one quarter of the way through, I felt a huge sense of relief. There, I did the best I could do, just not in the way they expected me to. I'd be surprised if I even got 10 percent.

Treena seemed worried. She stayed behind to talk to the teacher and said I didn't have to wait. So I didn't.

I skedaddled home and started making the final sundress selection. Yes: pale blue one in the Eve Arnold photo of Marilyn Monroe brushing her hair in a public toilet. Yes: cherry-printed Marilyn cocktail outfit from
The Misfits
. No: white, full-skirted Elizabeth Taylor in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. There was no way that dress would survive the ten-hour flight without
molto
crumpling.

I took three different pairs of sunglasses, six pairs of underpants (three of which were black and lacy and the rest were plain white with high waistbands). I put a bottle of sunblock in a travel bag and a few pieces of costume jewellery. Then Manny came and checked my packing and pointed out everything I had forgotten, like toothpaste and toothbrush, bras, trousers, T-shirts, shorts, and shoes. The next day Manny and I rose at 6:30 A.M. I put on a purple tweed dress, black ballet slippers, and big dark glasses, and he drove me to the airport, where we met Treena, who was wearing jeans and a hangdog expression. I had come as Jackie Kennedy. She had come as Jackie Mason. Despite her unusually dishevelled appearance,
we got bumped up to first because the tickets had been booked through the record company.

The check-in attendant and passport control kept requesting that I remove my glasses so they could match me to my picture. My passport photo was taken when I was thirteen. I don't know if I had flu that day, or if the photographer shouted out an obscene suggestion at the moment he pressed the shutter, but it really does not look like me. My nose is wide and squashed. My smile is this horrible crooked slash with three old ladies' teeth sticking out over my bottom lip. My cheeks are all puffy. The only orderly thing in the frame is my hair, which is a perfect triangle of frizz. I look like Barbra Streisand. After a stroke.

They looked at me suspiciously when they checked my passport like I was taking the piss—no one could be that ugly. But I wasn't distraught because I knew the hideousness of the photo was only exacerbated by how pretty I looked in the flesh. I didn't want to take my glasses off entirely because I wanted people to think I might be a young film star on my way to a meeting with Billy Wilder, who was coming out of retirement for me. I'd just flip my glasses onto my forehead when they asked me, and sigh because I didn't want to have bloodshot eyes for the test shots.