Dirty Movies (32 page)

‘Out of what exactly?’

‘Harper Films,’ muttered Joe defiantly.  

‘I see,
so that’s what you and your little band of desperados are calling yourselves. Surely you could have come up with a better name that that. May I suggest ‘Fatally Optimistic Productions’ or ‘No Hope Pictures’ perhaps’?

‘I’m warning you
, Stephen…’

‘No I’m warning you
,’ he snapped, ‘or rather
urging
you to seek help over the inordinate number of frighteningly bad decisions you’ve been making recently. Flitting away your career on a loser and a drunkard…Tut tut Joe, I thought you were smarter than that.’ 

‘Put Polly
back on the line,’ demanded Joe but Stephen had already hung up.

Back in the studio
, a deathly hush had descended. The fuse had been lit and any minute now the bomb would explode.

As quick as a flash, Stephen lifted his hand and belted Polly across the face. Bam! As her head ricocheted backwards there was a horrible crunch as he smashed her phone into her left temple. Raising his fist again, Danny sprung out of nowhere and grabbed his arm.

Dizzy with pain, Polly lurched away from him clutching her head. Blood was seeping through her fingers and muddling her vision but somehow she managed to reach the studio door without tripping over any camera cables. Then she was out, half-running, half-stumbling through the studio gates and towards the main road with one thought and one thought only; to put as much distance between her and Stephen De Vries as possible.

Dimitri the Doorman watched, fascinated, as the handsome Englishman marched up and down the hotel lobby like a soldier on some never-ending Parade. Up and down, up and down, up and down. His English was limited but he only need glance at Cristian the concierge’s pursed lips to know that Joe De Vries’s language was not of the civil variety.  

Dimitri tried again. ‘But sir
, are you zure I can’t ‘elp wiz anyzing?’

Joe shook his head tersely and resumed his marching. He
had never felt so sick. Sick with guilt, sick with worry, sick from feeling like he had made the biggest mistake of his life finishing with Polly yesterday, sick from consuming the most god-awful ham, egg and chips from the room service menu at lunchtime. In his nervousness, he kept burping greasy, regurgitated pig as the worst kind of scenarios firebombed his brain. Polly’s fingers plunged into leftover boiling fat in the catering van, camera cases being dropped on her knee caps, her gorgeous body impaled on a boom pole. There was no end to Stephen’s capacity for cruelty.

Lifting his phone again, he was distracted by the sight of Danny jumping out of a taxicab outside
. As he watched, Polly slowly emerged as well. Hurdling eight suitcases and a bellhop who was bending down to tie his shoelaces, he reached the doorway just as they entered the lobby. Polly was walking at right angles and had her face half-buried in Danny’s jacket.

‘Thank fuck you’re alright!’ he cried
, but his words shriveled up as she lifted her face towards him. Her fringe was matted and stained maroon, and the left side of her face was puffy and misshapen.

Joe was horrified. ‘Jesus, what happened?’

‘Your brother ran out of lighting set-ups to annihilate,’ said Danny bleakly.

‘Why the hell didn’t you stop him?’

‘Joe don’t,’ sobbed Polly, ‘none of this is Danny’s fault.’

No it’s mine
, he thought.

‘Take her straight to hospital
,’ he urged Danny, shepherding them both back to the taxi rank. ‘I’ll follow in a bit.’

‘Why? Where are you going?’

‘To finish what I started.’

‘No don’t. Joe
, please, I’m begging you,’ cried Polly grabbing his arm. ‘I don’t want you going back there.’ Her battered face dissolved into tears again. ‘Just take me home, I want to go home,’ she said feebly then fainted.

With reflexes as keen as his guilt, Joe caught her easily in his arms.
‘Right, hospital. Fast!’ he said, scooping her up as Dimitri sprung forward to hail them a taxi. Lying Polly gently down acrodd the back seat, Joe hopped in after her as Danny jumped in the front.

‘Urgenţă, Urgenţă!’ cried the Irishman, waving a fistful of Romanian Leu in the driver’s face. The guy didn’t need to be told twice. Hitting the accelerator, he cut across three lanes of traffic and sped off down the hill.

For Polly
, the next few hours would be lost forever in a fug of pain and fuzziness, peppered with wafts of ‘eau de disinfectant’ and the occasional sharp, scratchy sting of a needle. Throughout the whole ordeal, Joe sat glued to her side mangling his fingernails one by one as Danny looked on in silence. The two men hadn’t spoken since their brief altercation and the atmosphere in the room was chillier than the autumnal wind outside.

When
a bearded tea lady came by to offer them afternoon tea, Polly finally stirred and opened her eyes.

‘Joe
?’

‘I’m right here
,’ he said, flying to her side. The doctor had diagnosed mild concussion but to Joe it was terminal, a terminal failing on his part that she was lying in this hospital bed and not him. He should never have involved her without facing the fallout from his brother first

‘You didn’t go back to the studios, did you?’ she asked him anxiously.

He shook his head. ‘I’ve been here all along.’

Polly’s smile was as
weak as the tea. ‘Good. I don’t want Stephen ending up next to me.’

‘He won’t be coming within a billion feet of you ever again. Not with me as your bodyguard
.’

‘Don’t be silly
,’ she said, smiling again. ‘Your forthcoming directorial debut will keep you busy enough.’

‘So the rumours are true?’
said Danny, snapping his head up. ‘When, exactly, were you planning on sharing this?’

Joe
looked at him meditatively. ‘Can we do this another time?’

‘No we bloody can’t. Have you any idea how worried we’ve been about you? Sally even hired a private investigator
.’

‘Well he can’t have been
very good considering I’ve been at home for the last few weeks. Look, I only arrived here yesterday and I was going to explain everything in person but…’

‘But you thought it was more important to jump into Polly’s bed first
!’

Joe
lost his temper then and yanked him into the corridor.

‘Is this what it’s all about
then, Danny? Is that the reason you’ve been such a shit to Polly? Don’t try and deny it. Janie told me last night.’

‘
You’re out of your head! You’re welcome to her.’

‘Bollocks. You don’t spend six hours in a Romanian hospital for someone you don’t give the first fuck about. Stop acting like such a
dick!’

‘
Fucking unbelievable!’ hissed Danny, shrugging him off. ‘In my book,
dicks
don’t help out girls when they’ve just had the shit beaten out of them.’

‘
They don’t stand by to watch who’s packing the punches either,’ countered Joe. ‘What’s the matter, Danny? Afraid you couldn’t afford the next pair of designer trainers if you lost the GBA gig?’

Danny looked stunned. ‘But I
grabbed his arm, I stopped him!’

‘Not soon enough,
Stephen’s hardly
Muhammad Ali
. You could have stepped in long before he had the chance to make mincemeat out of her left temple.’

Before Danny could reply
, he stormed back into the ward

‘What was
all that about?’ asked Polly, as he hovered, scowling, on the edge of her bed.

‘Nothing
,’ he muttered. In truth, he was feeling utterly ashamed of himself. Goaded by guilt, he had just used Danny as a verbal punching bag and landed a few low blows that even his scummy brother would be proud of. None of this was Danny’s fault. Polly was no more his girlfriend than Christy Turlington, at the very least he should put him straight about that. However, on strolling back outside the only thing waiting for him, besides an empty corridor, was a friendship as broken and smashed up as Polly’s face.

Chip Anderson polished off the last of the damp beer glasses and sneaked another peek at the regal-looking broad perched at the end of his bar. You didn’
t get many lookers like her in
Chip’s Place
. It was the wrong end of town for the snitty college kids for starters, but with sophistication oozing out of the woman, like the sweat from his pits, he’d bet this classy dame would have outshone every last one of them.

Deciding
to try his luck, Chip slicked back his tired, grey ponytail and tossed away his dirty dishcloth, but the randy old cowboy only got as far as offering her a dish of shriveled-up peanuts when the front door opened and a stinging autumnal wind came raging in like a cantankerous old bitch, rattling the dusty Moose heads above his whiskeys and the giant neon Budweiser sign looming over the jukebox. The door slammed shut again and a man-giant in an enormous grey duffel coat stood plugging the entrance, steam rising off him like roast beef fresh from the oven.

Chip r
ecognised him instantly. Everyone in these parts knew about the weird, moose-obsessed loner who lived out in the woods. The guy only ventured out to buy groceries and drink a solitary beer here at
Chip’s Place
or at his rival
Al’s Bar & Grill
down on Main Street. One of Chip’s wisecracking regulars, Billy-Joe Johnson, liked to tell tall tales of all the creepy techno gear he’d gotten a peek of in the back of the guy’s pick-up truck once. Even now, he could hear the old man gleefully likening it to torture props from some late night horror movie.

‘Hey buddy, what can I get ya?’ called out Chip
, uneasily. At the same time the classy dame rose gracefully from her stool.

‘I believe he’s looking for me
,’ she said, with an accent so posh it could’ve cut every beer glass in his joint. 

‘You’re a hard man to track down, Benito
,’ smiled Christine, striding over to Italian-kiss his prickly hedgehog stubble. ‘I must have had half of Maine out looking for you.’

‘Was up in ze woods
,’ he grunted, plonking his enormous bulk down on the spare stool next to her. Benito reeked of the subject of his nature documentaries but Christine felt safe and secure in his mighty shadow.

‘Still trying to capture that elusive shot for the
BBC, old friend? I hope they’re paying you on delivery only.’

The corners of Benito’s
mouth twitched. ‘And I’m surprised to see you this far into the wilderneez, Christine. No Gucci or Prada round ‘ere. Shouldn’t you be tucked up in one of your eight mansions with your famous ‘usband?’ His voice was light but his eyes were as black as coal. Benito hated film industry bigwigs with a passion, equaled only by his love of moose.

‘Yes, well, the less said about him the better
,’ replied Christine briskly. ‘May we have a couple of beers over here please?’ she asked the riveted Chip.

‘How’s Flavio?’

‘No idea. He stopped returning my calls decades ago.’

‘Imbecille!’ spat Benito, outraged. ‘’Zat man wouldn’t know talent if it came up and smacked him on the culo
.’

Christine was touched. ‘That’s very sweet of you to say so
, darling, but I gather he’s coping rather well without me. He now runs a very successful film distribution company out of Paris.’

Benito wrinkled his big
Roman nose as if she had just farted.

‘And what about you,
mio dolce
,’ his said, his face softening, ‘I bet you are still entrancing audiences around ze world.’

‘Not for a good while now
,’ she admitted. ‘To be perfectly honest, Benito, I’ve spent the last decade more in the wilderness than you.’

‘But zat is abominable!’ he cried, banging his giant’s fist down on the counter, ‘you light up zat lens even more than my moose. If only I could find a way to capture their pa
ssionate spirit as I did yours!’

Christine tried not to giggle. ‘Look
, darling, I appreciate you meeting me tonight, but I must confess, I came here with something of an ulterior motive…’ She stopped suddenly when she saw the roguish gleam in his eye. ‘It’s a
work related
motive,’ she added firmly, quick to quash any romantic notions he might be concocting in that enormous head of his. ‘How do you fancy a change of scenery?’

Benito wrinkled his nose again. ‘I love my Moose, so it would ‘ave to be something spectacular. Having zaid that
, I wouldn’t mind filming ze leopards in Kenya,’ he added longingly, ‘or ze lions in…’

‘Ah, I think you might have
misunderstood me,’ said Christine, cutting him off mid-sentence. ‘I’m afraid I’m not in the market for documentaries, anymore than I am for bridal wear. You see, Benito, myself and a few others have started up a film company and, as one as the principal producers, I can’t tell you what a thrill it would be to work with you again…’ Her words faltered when she heard a low growling sound. She glanced at the floor, half-expecting to find an angry dog encircling her fur-lined boots. Then she caught sight of Benito’s mouth shaped in a rabid snarl. 

With an animalistic roar, he leapt to his feet.‘Bugiardo! You are a liar!’ he cried, banging his fist on the bar counter and sending Chip’s manky peanuts skywards. ‘You told me you no longer work in the industry and now you-a tell me this??
A Film Company? A PRODUCER??
Christine, you ‘ave slain me!’ This revelation had wounded him more deeply than a hundred years of abortive nature filmmaking.

‘Benito
darling, stop!’ she pleaded with him, wiping beer off her sleeve.

‘I will never return, NEVER!’ he screamed, his eyes
all a-blaze. ‘I swore on my Mama’s life I would never set-a foot on another slime-infested film set again. My talent is too special, too
precious
to a-waste on the likes of them.’

‘But it’s not what you think…’

‘You ok ma’am?’ butted in Chip, nervously. He was clutching his drinks tray to his chest like a shield.

‘Fine thanks
,’ she lied brightly, ever the lady. Benito just glared at him.

Finally
, after a great deal of outraged harrumphing he sat back down again.    

‘What was all zat
you said about you no working and livin’ in ze wildernez then?’ he asked her, grumpily. ‘You made me think you ‘ad quit!’

‘It was more forced than voluntary.
Everything was looking rather bleak until the day dear Joe came to visit ….’

‘Who is zis
,
Joe
?’ demanded Benito instantly, looking thunderous again.

Christ
ine smiled. ‘My brother-in-law. Well, technically, soon to be
ex
brother-in-law. Stephen and I split up. Joe came to me two months ago seeking funding for a script, not a sugar mummy.’

‘
iz good, zis script?’

‘
Yes it is,’ breathed Christine, eyes sparkling.

‘Then why not take it to your ex ‘usband?
He iz the genius, no? If it’s as good as you say, surely ‘e should be directing zis, zis
masterpiece
?’

Christine’s
lips pursed with anger. ‘Because, quite frankly Benito, the bloody bastard doesn’t deserve it! He’s broken every marriage vow going, as well as a few more I’m pretty sure weren’t even included.’

The big Italian regarded her thoughtfully.

‘Amore mio,’ he began gently, ‘I admire your spirit but I’m afraid I cannot ‘elp. I ‘ate ze industry and everyzing it represents; ze idiot directors, ze pompous producers, ze bastard critics…’

‘Won’t you at least read the script? For me?’

‘What is the point?’ he shrugged. ‘It would ‘ave to capture my ‘eart like…like…’ Like you, cara, he finished privately.

Christine looked crestfallen. ‘Right. I see. Well, if you have a change of heart
, I’m staying at the
Mooseman Lodge
until Friday. It’s been lovely seeing you again, Benito. Next time we mustn’t leave it fifteen years between catch-ups.’

Giving him a quick peck on the cheek, she busied herself in the fuss of expensive-sme
lling hats, gloves and scarves, as the Italian took a meditative swig of his Bud.  In truth, Benito was a little fed up of Moose. No matter how many clever tricks and angles he used, he was only ever able to capture one expression on their hairy noble faces; bored indifference.

‘Is zis script really as good as you say it is?’ he
asked her suddenly, fixing her with his heavy dark eyes.

Christine smiled behind her pink cashmere scarf and nodded.

Michael stood at the back of the arrivals hall of Heathrow Terminal Three
, scanning the streams of exhausted passengers pouring out of the gate like water from a leaky tap faucet.

Christine’s flight had landed
two hours ago, yet there was still no sign of her, or her Louis Vuitton luggage. What’s worse, he had a stinking headache, caused in part by the over-excitable airport tanoy, and he was having to fend off the dewy-eyed stares of three teenage schoolgirls opposite. Michael had already explained to them that he was neither a movie star nor rock singer but they clearly didn’t believe him.

Feeling
a touch of empathy for Justin Bieber, all the attention his silly hair attracted must drive him nuts, or at the very least straight to the nearest barbers, Michael wondered off to check the arrivals board again but went smack into a heavily laden trolley instead. Ignoring the torrent of abuse raining down on him, Michael rubbed his shin and scowled. Fucking airports. They were nothing but a steaming hub of pent-up hostility, where common courtesy was left behind in the long-stay car parks and replaced with endless delays, shit coffee and interminable family bickering.

He scan
ned the board again. No mistake. The flight had landed, so what the hell was Christine playing at? She had known he was up to the proverbial with casting stuff today.

All would
be forgiven though if she walked through the doors with Benito De Luca in tow. Michael had spent the last three nights working through the guy’s entire back catalogue and aside from a few too many lingering close-ups of a very young, pre-Botoxed Christine, he had been genuinely blown away. Benito’s endlessly long steadicam shots were even more awe-inspiring than Scorsese’s.

Feeling a tug on his trouser leg
, he glanced down at a little girl beaming up at him. She had cute blond pigtails and was trailing a very fetching hot pink Barbie backpack, but her happy, gappy grin was all too reminiscent of Lucas. Any attempt to contact Lily since Morocco had been thwarted by some pretty intense embarrassment on his part. Having been so quick to damn Vincent’s dirty deeds, there was little hope in Lily seeing him as anything other than a hypocrite and sleazebag after his own indefensible behaviour.

‘Yoo-hoo! Mi
chael darling!’ cried Christine, as she materialised in a puff of grey chiffon. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. It’s awfully good of you to come and meet me.’

‘Did you have a good flight?’ he asked her, dutifully kissing her cheek.

‘Nothing too horrendous. Mind you, the food in first class wasn’t quite up to its usual standards. There wasn’t a trace of lobster in my seafood surprise.’

Michael threw his hands up in mock despair. ‘It’s a goddamn conspiracy! How on earth did you cope?’

‘With surprising difficulty,’ she responded, narrowing her eyes playfully. ‘Now you mustn’t tease, I’ve had just about enough of all that with those awful paper-pushers in customs. They didn’t take too kindly to me bringing in thirty flight cases without some silly little document called an ABC cargo.’

‘ATA carnet
,’ corrected Michael. ‘I’m impressed Christine, that sounds like one helluva shopping trip even for you.’

‘Oh they aren’t mine. Blame ou
r new Cinematographer. It’s his super-dooper technological wizardry that’s causing all the fuss.’ She reached out then to touch the arm of the man behind her. ‘Benito, sweetest, come and meet our fabulous producer, Michael Wilson.’

Michael did a
double take. He had been in such a fug that he hadn’t even noticed the great hulk of a man hovering behind her.

‘Benito
,’ the man grunted, thrusting a large, hairy, paw-like hand in his face.  

‘Hi!
Shit! Pleasure to meet ya!’ blustered Michael, more star-struck than his teenage girls. ‘Your films are amazing, sir! It’s a real honour to have you on board!’

‘Are you sure ‘e’s a Producer
?’ murmured Benito to Christine. ‘Usually I can smell zair bullsheet all ze way from Passport Control.’

‘Can’t take credit for that I’m afraid
,’ said Michael, dryly. ‘I’ve just spent the last two hours standing next to the Gucci counter in duty free.’

Benito stared at him for a moment before his great bearded face
exploded in amusement.

‘Belissimo! At last! A Producer with a sense of humour!’ he guffawed in delight.