Breaking Hollywood (36 page)

He opened the door and waved her in. As she passed, she wondered if he could see that the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.

She had to play this properly. She immediately headed for the sofa, but playing it cool, scanning the room as if searching, while positioning herself so that he couldn’t get to the phone
first. ‘Nope, I can’t see it.’

She really couldn’t. It wasn’t there. Fuck! Where was it? Eli had already found it. Right now, he was staring at her like that because he knew exactly where her phone was, exactly
what she’d tried to do and exactly how he was going to dispose of her body.

But then . . . ‘Oh, here it is!’ The level of relief was way disproportional, more on a level of saving a child from a burning building or pushing someone out of the path of a
speeding car.

She snatched it up, the motion making the screen come alive, so she quickly turned it, pressed it towards her body, then stepped to the door.

Eli didn’t move.

He was still in the doorway, eyes trained on her.

‘You’re sure that’s it?’ he asked, obviously expecting her to do the normal thing and look at it again to check. From the angle he was standing at, he’d have full
view of the screen.

‘Positive,’ she said breezily.

He still didn’t move.

He was blocking her path. He had no intention of moving, and his face was a mask of cool suspicion.

The time for bluffs was over.

He knew she was up to something she shouldn’t be. She knew he knew.

If he asked to check the phone, he’d soon discover she’d been filming Logan, which, as well as being wrong on every level, was probably illegal.

He just needed to ask and it was over.

The question was,
would he
?

‘Eight Letters’ – Gary Barlow

Davie

He didn’t want to do this.

Davie had a flashback to when he was a little kid and his mother would bribe him to do things he didn’t like doing. The dentist. The doctor. Working hard at school. The reward was always
the same. They’d get the bus into Glasgow, and they’d go to the cinema to see the movie of his choice. Twice a year, maybe three times if he was lucky. They didn’t have the cash
for that kind of thing, but sometimes if Ena had picked up a bit of extra casual work, or got a bonus from one of her three cleaning jobs, the cinema was his oyster. And he loved it.

Now his movie-viewing experience was slightly different. He watched them on his home cinema, a $200k exercise in indulgence, with a bar, a popcorn maker, permanently stocked, reclining leather
chairs and sofas, and any title he wanted to see, whether they’d been released yet or not.

That was the kind of pull Davie Johnston had in this town. And that’s exactly where he wanted to be now. Lying in the dark, escapism on the screen, his mind anywhere but here.

The truth was, he couldn’t put it off any longer.

He’d been avoiding it for months. Stalling. Deferring. Until now.

The pool at the Fairmont Miramar had a gaggle of twenty-somethings with perfect teeth, hard bodies and high-grade ambition lying on the sunloungers that spanned each side.

It hadn’t been hard to track down Zander. It never was if you knew how to find someone. A call to a publicist, who’d call another publicist, who’d call a friend, who’d
call a bit actor who worked as a personal trainer to a star who had a chef who knew a waitress who had slept with the chauffeur who’d driven him home.

Or some variation of the above.

Davie had simply asked his agent, Al Wolfe, to find out where Zander was living, and thirty minutes later, he’d called back with an address that surprised him. He’d been sure Zander
lived in Venice Beach, but this was a Santa Monica hotel.

Odd.

Now he was approaching bungalow 1, and even though he was the one who needed to meet, there was a huge part of him that was hoping Zander was out. Busy. Sleeping. Anywhere but here.

‘Davie?’

None of the above. He was sitting on the steps outside the bungalow, white T-shirt, jeans, smoking a cigarette. This could have been any one of a thousand nights in their youth.

Zander sitting on some kind of concrete structure, a cig dangling from his mouth.

Only difference was, back then, he wasn’t staying in a hotel room that cost the same for a week as it would now cost to buy the houses they’d grown up in.

‘Hey.’ He considered offering to shake hands and then decided against it. Too formal. Too weird.

Davie kicked off the conversation. ‘Hope you don’t mind me coming out here.’

Zander shrugged. ‘Not at all. Good to see you.’ Davie wasn’t sure if that was a lie. If it was, it was a convincing one. He sat down on a small brick wall that bordered the
steps.

‘Good to see you too.’

The great thing about old friends was that they could have a comfortable pause in a conversation without feeling the need to fill it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those moments.

Davie cracked first. ‘I’ve fucked up with Mirren.’

Zander squinted against the sun as he looked up. ‘What happened?’

Davie launched into the story, leaving nothing out. Zander barely commented, and yet, somehow, about halfway into the story, Davie realized it was OK.

It was yet another flashback to their childhood relationship. Zander would sit there, smoking, the strong, silent, brooding type, while Davie gave a long-winded, dramatic but funny account of
some situation he found either shocking or moving. A feeling of comfort descended, and Davie could see by the lowering of Zander’s shoulders, the loosening of his jaw, that he felt it
too.

‘Oh, man, you are so fucked,’ Zander said, when Davie got to the bit in the restaurant when he’d finally told Mirren the truth.

‘And what did she say?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

Davie shook his head. ‘Nothing. She just got up and punched me in the face.’

‘Christ, I love her.’ That was all he had to say, for it to become one of those bizarre moments in life. Zander started a chain reaction that began with him laughing, and before
long, Davie succumbed to the hilarity until they were both wiping away tears of amusement.

‘I feel for you, pal. I do. Do you remember she did that to me once?’ Zander asked.

It took Davie a moment, but he got there. ‘You took a bottle of whisky from your maw and da’s cupboard,’ he said, his Scottish accent becoming thicker. ‘And when your maw
found out, you said it was Mirren.’

‘A black eye that lasted a fortnight,’ Zander confirmed, before going into the bungalow and returning with a bottle of water for him and a beer for Davie. They drank in silence for a
few minutes before Davie spoke, this time from the heart, the crazy moment of surreal amusement gone.

‘Don’t know what to do, Zander. I just got her back in my life. Can’t lose her again.’

He realized as he was saying it that it was just as relevant to this guy here.

He hadn’t wanted to come, but now that he was here, he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Zander swallowed a mouthful of water.

‘You know what you have to do. You have to cancel the show.’

Davie nodded, his body language screaming ‘reluctance’.

‘The contracts are signed. No cooling-off period. Bastard Gore knew what he was doing.’

‘So pay him,’ Zander said. ‘If it’s the money . . .’

‘It’s not the money.’

Actually, it was partly the cash: $2 million, up front, for doing nothing. That thought made Davie’s teeth grind. It was more than that, though. He could handle losing the money. He just
didn’t know if he could handle losing the show. If the figures continued to grow on their current trajectory, it could easily bring him $10 million over the next three years. That was a whole
lot of visits to the cinema with Ena Johnston.

But . . . it was the only way. He already knew it. He’d just had a vague hope that Zander could see another way out.

The sun was beating onto Davie’s back, so he pulled off his blue True Religion T-shirt, then immediately wished he hadn’t. There was no doubt he was in great shape – he was
lean, muscular, and last weekend’s spray tan was still giving a glow. With his black curly hair styled by Christian, Salina and Beata at Rossano Ferretti (and yep, it took a whole team), he
was definitely an attractive specimen of manhood – unless he sat, as he did right now, next to Zander. Six inches taller, eight or more inches bigger in the shoulders, the biceps, the chest.
Zander was a powerhouse of raw masculinity. But hey, as everyone would say when they were kids, Zander got the looks, but Davie was the funny one.

If only they’d known how close to reality that was.

‘If it’s not the money, then buy him out. Cancel it. Take satisfaction in the fact that you might be out of pocket but that guy is officially a wanker.’

‘I’ll suggest that description for his obituary in the
Post.
’

‘Great,’ Zander replied, smiling, before Davie shattered the peace like a grenade.

‘So are we going to talk about it?’

Zander thought about it for a few moments, before asking, ‘Do you feel like you need to?’

Good question. Davie wasn’t sure. For forty years they hadn’t talked about it, hadn’t known, had no idea. They’d been best friends through choice, through mutual
affection and a joint dissatisfaction with their lives. And all those years of hustling and grafting and achieving the impossible paled into insignificance when he’d found out last year that
Jono Leith was not only Zander’s father but Davie’s too. Ena had had a brief affair with him over four decades ago. That’s why she and Davie had lived in that terrace, so his dad,
that arrogant, deluded, cruel, megalomaniac prick, could see his lad growing up.

The bottom line was that Davie loved Zander like a brother, before he knew he actually was.

Davie shrugged. ‘Guess not. Didn’t matter for all those years. Doesn’t need to matter now.’

‘Good. Case closed.’

Davie grinned. ‘Glad to see you’ve discovered a new level of emotional depth and spirituality.’ Amused sarcasm dripped from every word.

Zander countered, ‘West of Scotland DNA. Can’t argue with genetics.’ The stereotype of the West of Scotland male who couldn’t find his emotions with a search team and a
Sherpa was one they were both familiar with. Growing up, they’d been surrounded by men like that. Suppressed feelings. Brusque exteriors. Boys don’t cry.

Zander stubbed out his cigarette on the wall, then tossed it into his empty bottle. ‘If it makes you feel any better, Mirren is fucked off with me too.’

‘What have you done?’

‘She thinks I failed a drug test.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yep. But I’m clean. Was when I took the test too. Must have been messed up, so we’ve got people looking into it. In the meantime, they won’t insure me, Wes is being a
dick, and I’ve been fired.’

‘So it’s all going well?’

‘Great. Never better. Every day above the ground is a good one.’

‘Excellent.’

The two of them were grinning again. Ridiculous. The guy’s life was falling apart and yet, somehow, there was black humour there.

‘What about you?’ Zander asked. ‘All good? Apart from the whole “Mirren decking you” thing?’

Davie nodded. ‘Sarah is on tour with South City, so I haven’t had sex for weeks. My ex-wife is a lesbian, and her partner hates my guts. My kids think I prefer Justin Bieber.
I’m shitting myself over co-hosting the Oscars next week. And I’ve got some mad stalker who’s trying to freak me the fuck out. So yeah, all good.’

Davie’s phone rang and he was about to flick it to voicemail when he spotted Mike Feechan’s name on the caller ID.

He knew better than to ignore it. If Mike couldn’t find him, there was every chance he’d round up a SWAT team and come looking.

‘Davie?’

‘Yeah.’

‘We have a situation.’

‘Oh God. Are the kids OK? Sarah?’ He felt his heart ramp up to palpitation mode.

‘They’re OK. Everyone is OK.’

Davie didn’t get it. ‘So what’s the problem?’

‘It’s your house, Davie. Fire crews are there now. It’s not looking good.’

‘Love Me Again’ – John Newman

Mirren

The blinds in Mirren’s office were closed, which was a necessary discretion as she was standing in the middle of the room, on a white sheet, wearing a black balconette
bra and a matching lace thong. Janet Reger. Her red waves were twisted up on top of her head and secured with a pen, chopsticks fashion, and her stylist, Maddie, was hollow-eyed, anxious and
showing every stressed-out symptom of ‘one week until Oscars’ madness.

‘OK, we’re down to the blush Dior sheath or the gold Chanel,’ confirmed Maddie, a blonde, bespectacled lesbian who had the face and body of a model, and the creative brain of a
true fashionista.

Mirren looked at the two dresses hanging from hooks on the back of the office door. Over the years she’d had dozens of fittings here. She was so constrained on time it was far quicker for
the stylist to bring the options to her, rather than visiting each fashion house in turn. This year, Chanel and Dior and every other major label had sent dresses over, because she was nominated.
She still couldn’t help thinking that she’d got the sympathy votes. Would her name be up there if the establishment weren’t making a show of support over her daughter’s
death? Maybe. But maybe not.

She’d get a better sense of it at the ceremony next week. In the meantime, she just had to get dressed and get out of here. None of this mattered. All that she cared about today was
heading for the one event that did really matter to her: the opening of Chloe’s Care, the drop-in centre she’d funded to support troubled teens.

‘OK, let me try the blush one again. I think that was my favourite.’

‘I think so too,’ Maddie agreed. ‘Since the year that Charlize Theron won in gold, anyone else pales by comparison. No offence.’

That’s why Mirren loved Maddie. Brutal honesty was refreshing. The fact that she had the balls to say what she thought reassured Mirren that she’d never go to an event looking like
crap on Maddie’s watch.