Not Wanted in Hollywood (13 page)

“
I can’t
believe you thought for one moment that my boy was going to be okay
with this,” Lee said, pinning me with his gaze.

“
I didn’t,
that would be why we are arguing at the moment,” I said.

Lee softened. “I know, thank you for going
with Jake to see his mother.”

I nodded.
Really what could I say? He had fallen in love with the woman and
married her once. Regardless of how it turned out, she was the
mother of his child.

Lee’s eyes trained on the bruising on my
cheek.

“
Don’t,” I
said.

“Don’t what?” I could tell Lee was holding on
to his temper by a thread.

“
Don’t get
angry when there is nothing that can be done about it. Griffin will
be looking into it and I’m depending on him to do the right thing,”
I said.

Lee didn’t
answer. My experience with the Griffin men meant that I knew this
was not a good thing. Before I could argue the point some more I
could see Alistair had finally worked out a reason that he had
dragged me in here. He was standing at the door that led to the
dressing rooms, angrily gesturing in my general direction. Of
course, most of the things that Alistair did were done
angrily.

“
Look,” I
said. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Lee nodded, his eyes swinging back and forth
intently. I could see that he had reverted to cop mode and it was
interesting on occasions like this to see exactly how much like his
son he was.

Finding that Alistair had managed to upset
another of the girls did not come as a complete shock. What was new
however was finding that
Denise was about
ready to tear him apart. In the last two weeks Hammy hadn’t cared
one bit what Alistair had done with the girls as long as they were
able to get on stage and earn him some money. Thankfully, Denise
seemed to be made of sterner stuff and she was determined to
protect the girls from Alistair.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Hugh who was watching
the proceedings with unabashed delight.

“Well, Alistair was talking to Brandi about
the reason why she was stripping. She started talking about her
dreams to be a dancer. He interrupted and started on about some
affair that she was having with Hammy, how she had sold her soul
and then it all went downhill from there.”

I nodded,
understanding how this was exactly like all the interviews that
Alistair had done over the last two weeks. I did not understand why
he was considered such a popular documentary maker. The man had a
gift with getting everybody offside. I could see how people would
forgive that aggressiveness when he was targeting the government or
big corporations, like he had done in all his films up until now.
But that hard hitting style did not work when you were dealing with
people who were just struggling to make ends meet any way they
could. At best he came off as insensitive. At worst it exposed
exactly the type of person he was, self-interested and judgmental.
I had spent two weeks trying to deal with the fallout of these
interviews. Not for the first time I wondered what I was doing
here. He didn’t need a personal assistant. He needed a social
worker, an etiquette coach and some major therapy.

Hugh watched me keenly. “You knew about
Brandi and Hammy didn’t you?”

I looked at
him but didn’t confirm. Regardless of what I personally thought of
the older Hammy sleeping with Brandi, who must be just barely into
her twenties, it was their business, not mine. Anyway I’d only just
found out after the fact, thank goodness. Considering my talent of
walking in on people at awkward moments, I was grateful that I had
missed that particular scene.

“
I need
coffee,” Alistair barked at me.

It was good
to know that the reason he had insisted on me being here was
because of the vital work I was accomplishing. I went to the
dressing room where the coffee machine was. It was pretty much the
only benefit that the girls working here had got from Alistair
upending their lives. In the first week I had managed to get him to
spring for a coffee machine. Of course the reasoning I had used was
that it would be so much better if I made it myself with a machine
on site, rather than having to go to the nearest coffee shop. This
message was brought home to him after a truly awful cup of coffee
that I had got for him from a store nearby. Of course I had bought
it and left it for half an hour before giving it to him. That may
have had something to do with his unusual generosity in this area.
Working on the coffee I could hear sobbing coming from a corner of
the seemingly empty dressing room. I followed the noise and found
Brandi sitting on the floor in a closet.

“
Hey,” I said
gently. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

I don’t know
what I said, but my query only managed to send her into a fresh
wave of sobbing. I sat down next to her and put an arm around her
shoulder.

“
It can’t be
that bad,” I said. “Alistair’s a jerk, whatever he said comes from
a really damaged part of his soul.”

Admittedly I
was being a bit hard on the man I was supposed to be working for,
but frankly if he had reduced Brandi to tears, again, then he was
the kind of person who kicked puppies for fun.

Brandi looked up at me, smiling through her
tears, until her eyes found the bruising on my cheek and then she
dissolved into wrenching sobs again.

“
I am so
sorry,” she said between gasps for breath.

“What are you sorry for?” I asked.

“Your face. You shouldn’t have got hurt. That
isn’t right. You’ve been so nice to us, especially when he is so
mean.”

I didn’t want
to tell her that unfortunately that was my job description. I was
the one who picked up the pieces when my clients showed the world
how wonderful they were. It was kind of a Hollywood version of good
cop, bad cop. Except in our case it was more like good cop, damaged
beyond belief cop. Brandi just dissolved into more
tears.

“
I have a
boyfriend,” she said.

I wasn’t surprised. A lot of the girls did
have boyfriends and Brandi had that pretty sweetness to her that
men loved.

“He was the one that told me if I slept with
Hammy we could get some money out of him.”

Ah, the boyfriend was the special kind of
slime that unfortunately some of the girls attracted.

“
Why would he
want me to do that?” Brandi said. “He told me if I did it that we
could get me out of here and start our life together.”

What could I
say? The guy was taking advantage of her trust and love. I knew it
and deep down Brandi knew it as well. That was probably the reason
for the never ending waterworks that she seemed to have.

“Trudie, Alistair’s yelling for you. Again.”
I could tell that Amber had gone past the point of tolerance for
Alistair. It was amazing how quickly a relationship could turn into
complete and utter contempt.

“
Over here,”
I said.

Amber looked down at the two of us sitting on
the floor in a closet and I could physically see her repress the
sigh.

“Alistair?” she said.

I nodded and
shrugged at the same time. I’m pretty sure Alistair set her off,
but there were some deep seated issues here.

Amber squatted down beside us. “Alistair is
going nuts out there. Something set him off and he’s taking it out
on everyone else. Can you go out there and do whatever it is you do
before someone kills him.”

I grimaced and Amber realized what she had
said.

“Sorry, poor choice of words. I’ll take care
of Brandi.”

I nodded, got up, grabbed the coffee and went
out to face Alistair.

“
Where have
you been?” he
snarled
, grabbing the
coffee out of my hands.

“
Putting out
fires,” I said noncommittally.

He shoved the
digital voice recorder that he seemed to carry with him everywhere,
into my hand. “I need the notes on this transcribed. I also need
you to watch some of the show and take notes on your impressions.”
He obviously saw my confused expression. “I want to get a woman’s
perspective of how she feels when watching another woman performing
on stage.”

I had to hide my distaste at the gleam in his
eye. I really was not aware of a way that Alistair could make this
project any more uncomfortable for all involved.

Grabbing my laptop I found an empty booth at
the back and started working on the transcribing. I also kept an
eye on the stage so I could do the notes that Alistair requested.
Unfortunately I kept being distracted by the disjointed effects
from the recorder. It was one of those sound activated ones so
there was always problems with the flow of conversation. It also
had a tendency to activate at random noises.

Taking a
quick break I looked up and had to smile. As I looked around the
room I spotted Travis in a corner watching
everyon
e with that studied look he had.
Dominic Caldwell had taken up position in one of the booths with
one of his colleagues keeping him company and keeping the women
away from him. Jorge was sitting with his wife and both of them
were watching me as if expecting to have to spring into action at
any point. Crystal and Edwin were getting a drink. Edwin had the
long suffering look on his face of a man who got dragged to a strip
club by his wife and he had no idea how to deal with the situation.
His eyes kept darting around as he tried manfully to avoid looking
at the naked women while his wife was standing next to him. Lee was
shadowing me around the club. When I moved, he did. If I didn’t
know how sweet it was that he was here to protect me, I would
definitely find it creepy.

A good
proportion of tonight’s clientele were attending purely to make
sure that I was safe. While it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling to
know so many people cared about me, I really hoped that the girls
working weren’t depending on tips tonight
, because takings were going to be a bit on the lean
side.

I lowered my
head and went back to work. To be perfectly honest I was just
waiting for this night to be over. My cheek was throbbing and I had
the beginnings of a headache.

“You know the makeup doesn’t help.”

I looked up to find an older woman standing
at the table.

“
I’m sorry,”
I said, self-consciously ducking my head and letting my hair fall
forward.

The woman’s face creased in sympathy. “You’ve
put makeup on to hide the bruise. It looks like it’s wiping off.
It’s very obvious at the moment.”

I felt
embarrassed. I shouldn’t have and I was mad at myself that I was.
This woman was a stranger but I still felt that I had to
explain.

“I’m not one of the dancers. I’m an
assistant. I walked in on a robbery today. Bad timing.” I indicated
the bruise.

“
I’m sorry,”
the woman said. “I work with a lot of the women in this industry
and see a lot of bruises. I have a tendency to walk up to people
and talk when I shouldn’t.”

She had kind
eyes and I always thought the world needed more people who cared
about strangers. “My name is Trudie,” I said.

“
Susan,” said
the woman. “Can I sit down?”

I indicated the seat with my hand and she
took it.

“
I’m really
sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I work for a church group and we
help a lot of women who are abused. Most don’t talk about it. I’ve
learned that sometimes I need to initiate the
conversation
,” Susan said.

I shrugged. “I understand. I’m sitting in
this place with a massive bruise on my face. It’s actually kind of
nice that someone cares enough not to look in the other direction.
Believe me I’ve had a few of those looks today.”

Susan smiled but quickly sobered. “How
exactly did you get that bruise?”

“
Like I said,
I came into work and there was some guy holding a gun on the owner.
I walked in, not knowing what was going on, he reacted and hit my
across the face. Next thing it was lights out for me,” I
said.

“
This kind of
place is not really a safe one to be in,” said Susan.

“Do you normally come to places like this
looking for women?” I asked.

Susan shook her head. “I used to work here,
many years ago. I got out because somebody cared enough to help me.
I come back here sometimes to offer someone else the same
opportunity.”

“Do you get taken up on it very often?” I
asked, curious and thinking this was the kind of story that
Alistair should be concentrating on. No chance I was going to tell
him about it though. I’d had enough tears to cope with today and
Susan seemed nice. No way did she deserve the Alistair
treatment.

Susan shook her head again. “Usually I don’t
get much of a chance. Hammy chases me out but I heard that he died
and there is a new owner so I thought I’d give it a go.”

“
Hammy’s
wife, Denise, owns the place now,” I said and noted the look of
sympathy that crossed Susan’s face.

“
Do you know
Denise?” I asked.

“
I knew her
when she first married Hammy,” Susan said. “We were both dancers
back then. It was a long time ago. I remember that she was so in
love with Hammy.”

“
I don’t see
it,” I mused. “Denise does not seem the kind of person to fall for
Hammy. I worked with him for a couple of weeks and I didn’t
understand why any woman would willingly be in his company for
longer than five minutes.”