Popcorn (9 page)

FOURTEEN

T
he first thing that struck Brooke as Bruce ushered her into the lounge of his fabulous Hollywood home was how designed it looked. It was beautiful but completely impersonal with its vast white couches, glass and steel tables and shelves sparsely decorated with extremely costly
objets d’art
. Like an enormous and incredibly expensive hotel. Brooke loved it.

The truth was that in the previous three or four years Bruce’s workload had been so high and his ascendance so meteoric that he had had no time at all to arrange his personal life. He still owned his old apartment off Melrose Avenue, and in it were all his old framed movie posters and stuff like his
Star Wars
space gun. But it was just gathering dust. Perhaps one day he would move it all and re-personalize his world, but for the time being he was happy simply to decide upon a price and purchase a lifestyle appropriate to his rising status. Farrah, his nearly ex-wife, who had previously provided Bruce with the semblance of a private life, had long since tired of being married to a workaholic movie nut. She had retreated from his world, taking most of their stuff (which was hers anyway) and their daughter with him.

Bruce had never been very interested in personal lifestyle. Even as a student he had been famous for owning only one pair of jeans and one saucepan. He had always put all his huge creative energies into his work. There was none to spare for picking out cushion covers or visiting kitchenware shops. All Bruce required from a home was somewhere to wash and sleep. Of course, the more luxurious it was the better, and with his current abode he had pretty much reached the pinnacle of luxury. As far as he was concerned, he would be happy to stay exactly where he was for ever.

He was not going to get the chance.

The first thing he should have noticed as he followed Brooke into the room was a pair of pink Doc Martens boots lying on the carpet, boots that had not been there when he had left the house that morning. He should have spotted them instantly; there should have been a fast zoom to a close-up on the boots, and a sinister musical sting to inform him that things were terribly and dangerously amiss. But there was no sting and no close-up. Bruce scarcely registered the boots and remained oblivious of the fact that their presence indicated he was in very big trouble.

In the brief moment of thought he gave them, he imagined that they must be the property of his fourteen-year-old daughter, left under a couch on some past visit and only now dislodged by the cleaner. He kicked them back out of sight. The last thing a man wants in mid-seduction is to be reminded that the object of his lust is only a few years older than his own child.

Mid-seduction? Hardly. He hadn’t even started yet and the sun was already up. He would have to get a move on.

A boyish grin, a nervous half-smile.

Extreme close-up on girl’s lips.

Lips part slightly, revealing white teeth teased by tip of tongue.

Fuck music plays. Bang, they are at it like rabbits on E.

Not quite. Even Oscar-winning directors can’t edit reality. The dull pre-sex preamble had to be gone through, and there was not a great deal of time to do it in. It was Bruce’s own fault that they were so late. It was he who had suggested that they watch
Ordinary Americans
, a two-hour picture, and they had sat through the whole thing.

It had been worth it, though, there was no doubt about that, a real ego buzz. There is nothing quite like having a gorgeous girl gasp at your masterpiece. Brooke had loved his film, or at least she had professed to — and done so with sufficient conviction to satisfy Bruce. It had been a very curious sensation, sitting beside this girl, all wound up to make a move on her but not wanting to disturb her enjoyment of his great work. Which would be more exciting, hearing her gasp at his powers as a director or at his powers as a lover? Every time he had got himself ready to chance brushing a gentle kiss along her delectable bare shoulders, those same shoulders shook with mirth at one of the many dazzlingly witty ironic juxtapositions of image and dialogue with which the movie was peppered. Every time he was ready to slide an arm round her or ‘accidentally’ lay his hand on top of hers, the movie arrived at another of his favourite bits and he had to stop to let her concentrate.

Bruce had lots of favourite bits and vanity had been stronger than desire. He had let her watch the whole movie unmolested. Hence the lateness of the hour, the coldness of the approaching dawn and the fact that he was not even at the proverbial first base. He cursed himself for not having made a shorter film. He had always thought about cutting the discotheque sequence; after all seventies kitsch had been done and double-done. On the other hand, it was such a funny scene, the way the guy kept getting more and more stains on his white Travolta suit, first food, then wine, then puke and finally his own blood. Classic stuff. You couldn’t cut it; it would have been a crime. Still, it had added eight minutes to the movie. Eight minutes in which he could have been making love to his favourite ever Playboy centrefold.

The movie had finally come to an end, however, and they were back at his home. It was time to make a move.

“It really is a wonderful picture,” Brooke said.

She had said it a hundred times already. She knew it and he knew it. The awkward pre-sex atmosphere had led them into one of those circular conversations in which nobody can think of anything to say and so instead, they continually retread ground already covered.

“I can’t believe you sat and watched the whole thing on an editing machine. That shows real dedication.” Bruce, too, had ploughed this furrow many times.

“Well, you know, like I say, it’s such a wonderful movie,” Brooke said again.

“Well, I’m delighted you think so, but it still shows real dedication to have watched the whole thing like that…and on an editing machine.”

Brooke simply could not bring herself to comment further on the wonderfulness of the movie. They lapsed into silence.

Bruce looked at his watch. “Shit! It’s nearly four a.m.” It wasn’t meant to come out like that, but he hadn’t realized it was quite so late. “I thought it was about two thirty.”

“Is that a problem?” Brooke enquired. “Did you have anything planned?”

“I’m afraid so. My wife will be here at nine.”

This was disappointing news. Brooke had not been one hundred per cent sure what she wanted when she accepted Bruce’s invitation to come home, but meeting estranged spouses certainly wasn’t it.

“I thought you said your divorce came through.”

It is true that Bruce had said this, in the car, as they left the Governor’s party. It hadn’t really been a lie. The whole world knew that he and his wife had parted irrevocably, and the thing really would be final in a day or two.

“We are, practically. That’s why she’s coming round — money stuff.”

Brooke shrugged. “Oscar at night, alimony in the morning: life in the Hollywood fast lane.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. How could there not be? Two strangers already dealing with the difficult problems of whether to go to bed together and if so how to get to it, and now this. As chat-up lines go, ‘My wife will be round in a couple of hours’ is only one step from ‘I am a regular drug-user and I always share needles’.

“Oh well…” said Brooke. “It’s been a lovely night.”

He had not even offered her a seat. They were both still standing, looking at each other across a vast couch.

“You really think so?” Weak, so weak. He had meant it to sound boyishly anxious, nervous and attractive, but it hadn’t. How much better to have said, “It could get lovelier’ or ‘Not as lovely as you’ or even ‘Never mind that, how about a fuck?” But no: “You really think so?” Pathetic. For a moment Bruce recalled ‘I stand here on legs of fire’, and the erection that had been straining in his trousers for the previous three or four hours took a momentary dive.

Brooke was beginning to feel a little out of sorts herself. This big man, this Oscar-winning king of cool wearing pointy boots and Bogart’s tux was just standing there. What did he expect? Was she supposed to offer herself unasked? Was it a power thing? Maybe he thought a bit of polite small-talk was beneath him. Maybe babes were expected just to climb aboard.

“Yes, I do think so. It’s been a lovely night.”

This was absurd. She said something dumb, he said is that so? and she said yes, it was so. How long could they keep this up?

Brooke summoned up all her powers of imagination in an effort to advance the dialogue. “Kind of like a first date. You know, we had a dance, we saw a movie…”

“That’s a nice thought. It’s been a long time since I had a first date.”

They were getting there.

“Me neither,” Brooke agreed, and then, after a tiny pause, she looked him in the eye and said, “Brings back the old first-date question, doesn’t it? How far do you go on them?” Well she couldn’t do any more than that. Not without actually taking off her clothes. Now it was up to him.

“So…What’s the answer to that, then?”

She was annoyed. She certainly was not going to beg him to make a move on her. He had picked her up at the party, he had brought her to his home. He had to make some of the running, if only for form’s sake.

“Well the rule in school was the boy gets a feel of the boobs but only from outside the bra.” Her voice showed traces of the irritation she felt. “These days I tend to think the rule depends on the guy.”

She sat down. Bruce had still not offered her a seat but she sat anyway. Elegantly, beautifully, a vision. She crossed her legs and Bruce took a personal close-up on the slashed skirt of her dress falling either side of her knees.

“Nice table,” she said, studying her reflection in the shiny glass.

“I like it.”

“I can think of a good use for it,” said Brooke.

“Help yourself.”

She took some cocaine out of her bag and began to chop it up on the table. “Just to keep you bright and cheery for your wife,” she said pointedly.

Belatedly Bruce recalled his duties as a host. He put on some music and fixed a couple of drinks. Now he was getting somewhere. He sat down beside her.

“It’s so great that you liked my movie.”

Back on the damn movie. How the hell did that happen?

“It really means a lot to me.”

He said it quickly, trying to coat his boring platitude in a cloak of sincerity. It sounded so lame. After all, he’d only known this woman for four or five hours and here he was trying to suggest that they had some kind of intellectual bond. “It really means a lot to me.” Oh yeah? Why? He’d just won an Oscar, the entire industry had come together to honour him, and here he was trying to tell a nude model he’d picked up at the party that her opinion was of particular significance to him. Of course, Brooke knew he was bullshitting, and he knew she knew.

“There was one thing I didn’t like about your movie,” she said.

Bruce sighed to himself. He had provoked this gorgeous creature into feeling she had to justify herself intellectually. He’d told her that her opinions mattered to him and they both knew she’d had offered no opinion at all beyond ‘neat movie’. Now she was obliged to think one up. He would have to sit through some desperate, second-hand, pseudo art-babble about derivative imagery, or some such thing, culled from the cover of last month’s
Premiere
.

“Here it comes,” said Bruce trying to affect good-humoured indulgence. “I knew your enthusiasm was too good to last. What’s the beef?”

“I didn’t like the sex scene.”

That surprised him. “What are you, a nun? That was the sexiest scene I ever made. I edited it with a permanent erection.”

Brooke shrugged and took a sniff at one of the little white lines on the table. “Sure it was sexy, sort of. But it wasn’t true. Everything else in the movie was so real — the guns, the attitude, the blood all over everything, the guy’s skull exploding when that big statue of Mickey Mouse fell on his head…”

“That’s my favourite scene, by the way, because it’s all about irony.”

Brooke handed Bruce the straw and he too took a sniff.

“So why couldn’t the sex be real too?” she asked. “The only place overacting is still encouraged is in sex scenes. Did you ever see
Nine and a Half Weeks?
Jesus, you only had to tap that woman on the shoulder and she had an orgasm. Why can’t the sex be convincing? Convincing is sexy. Girls wear pantyhose, you know, not stockings. When they get laid they have to take off their tights. I never saw a girl take off pantyhose in a movie.”

“That, I’m afraid my dear, is because pantyhose is not sexy. It is impossible to remove pantyhose in a sexy manner.” Bruce rather regretted the ‘my dear’. It was verging on rude and Brooke was, after all, his guest. But really! Trying to tell him how to make movie.

Brooke snorted up the last of the lines and stared at Bruce for a moment. He wondered if she was going to ask him to call a cab. Instead she got up off the couch, stood before him and, to his astonishment, began to dance. The music was sexy and the lights were low and she was dancing. In fact it was more an undulation than a dance, a kind of slow shiver that seemed to go up her body from her toes to her head and then slowly down again.