Namedropper (23 page)

He sat on the edge of the deep end and dangled his legs in the water. “Your nose is burning,” he called.

“Your anorak is unzipped,” I called back.

Then I swam towards him, stopped two feet away, and began to tread water. “You don't have to talk to me again. I know the routine.”

He ushered me closer with a wave of his hands, as if I were a plane coming in to land. “I
want
to talk to you again.”

“Okay,” I fluted, “talk to me, because I'm leaving tomorrow.”

He nodded his head bravely. “Are you going to go back to England with them?”

“Yep. Got my seat booked and everything.”

He nodded some more and fiddled with his zip. “Um. I'm going to Las Vegas tomorrow. We've got a showcase Saturday night at the Hard Rock Café Hotel.”

“That's nice.”

“Yeah, it is.” He zipped and unzipped. “Why don't you come with me?”

I held my breath, ducked down to the bottom, and did a handstand. That was my deal with myself: if I can do a handstand underwater, I'll go with him. He didn't know that, and was peering anxiously at the bubbles when I surfaced. “Okay, I guess.”

If anyone ever asks me to marry him, I'll do a handstand, and if I don't fall, I'll land on my feet and say, “Okay, I guess.” I didn't worry about money or booking a flight or how I would eventually get home, or if Manny would mind.

Ray was not at all happy about it. He said a flat no, until I reminded him that any notion he might have had of being a father figure was most likely negated by his sexual relationship with my best friend. Treena, to her credit, argued my cause with passion. She turned out not to be an irredeemably bad person. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for her.”

Ray thought that staying at the Chateau Marmont was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

“For you and me, maybe. Not for Viva. She'll probably be
living here in five years' time. Whatever she does, she will live an elegant life. But she hates vulgarity. And in five years my Viva will be too embarrassed to have a dirty weekend in Vegas. That is something she can only do either before she turns twenty or after she hits seventy. I've been waiting, since I met her, for her to act like a teenager. You even said it yourself. So here it is. You have to let her go.”

“It's not a dirty weekend,” I stammered. In the end, Ray didn't so much give me his blessing as wash his hands of me.

Treena helped me pack, sat on my suitcase for me as I attempted to close it. No matter how I tried, I couldn't fit in the Rocky and Bullwinkle alarm clock. I gave it to her. If she didn't want it, she could leave it for the room. We shared the last of a bag of pretzels and a can of Coke and curled up together on the bed. She was not the same. Not even her body, increasingly slender and hard, felt the same. But the action was familiar—we had fallen asleep like that so many times before—and that gave me some comfort.

Soon she was asleep and whistling through her nose. I extricated myself from her hairless arms and went to return my typewriter to reception. I asked the night man if Antonio Banderas had rung for me. He didn't miss a beat. “I'll just check.” No, Mr. Banderas had not rung. Not yet.

The air was balmy and I wandered through the back entrance of the hotel out onto the street. I wanted to take a photo of the Rocky and Bullwinkle shop. I was skirting left and right, trying to find the best angle, when I heard a woman call “Hello.” I walked a little way down the slope and saw a Hispanic girl sitting on the steps of a Psychic Help shop. There are hundreds of Psychic Help shops in LA, most of
them makeshift shacks. They form a sort of shanty town of hope against logic. I've laughed at them a hundred times, imagined what kind of saddo goes in there and lays down cash they don't have, to be told they will attract a lot of money in the future. Unhappy people, who have never recovered from not being discovered by Steven Spielberg. Thirty-five-year-old men too old to play the ingénue, too young to spend the rest of their lives being waiters, old enough to know that that's what will happen anyway.

“Hello. You want me to read your palm? I'm getting very impressive psychic vibes off you. I could feel them from all the way down the street.” This girl was my age and beautiful, apart from her incredibly buck teeth. “It's only five dollars.”

“Only five dollars.”

“Yes.” Her voice was so serene and her hair was so pretty. She had told me I had impressive psychic vibes. She had complimented me. If someone told me I had impressive boogers, I would want to be their friend. She took my five dollars and sat me down under a purple lampshade. When she took my hand, it sent an uncomfortable twinge up my arm because I was seated too far away. I wanted to tell her, but I was worried about interfering with her reading. Her black brows furrowed.

“Someone is jealous of you. A woman with brown hair. Do you know who this could be?”

Thinking about it now, all women have brown hair. Hardly anyone is really a blonde. But I wanted the psychic to like me and I told her that I knew exactly who she was referring to.

“They have cast a dark spell on you. You have a wonderful, bright aura. But every day your aura is getting a shade blacker.
If this is not reversed, then eventually …” She caught her breath and so did I.

“For your own good, you must let me help you. I am going to light candles for you and I am going to pray for you.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

She gripped my hand. “The prayer will cost ninety dollars and the candles will cost a hundred dollars.”

Tears of humiliation stumbling down my face, I gave her everything I had. Thirty-two dollars and one quarter. She told me she expected to see the rest of it tomorrow.

I spent a sleepless night under the blankets, boiling hot, but terrified of uncovering any part of me. When I met Dillon in the lobby the next day, my skin was grey and my eyelids purple. I thought I'd better tell him what had happened in case he thought I was a smackie and decided not to take me to Vegas. He wanted to go round and bust up the shop and get my money back. But when we got there it was all boarded over. A couple of doors down from the boarded-up shop was a tattoo parlour. So instead of getting back my money, we went next door and got tattooed instead. If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done it, but Dillon took my hand, sat me down, and said, “She'll have that.” He picked out a heart with ivy around it. I was so angry that he had chosen on my behalf that I forgot I didn't want a tattoo at all.

“No, I'll have that.” I pointed at a sketch of a violet. “To remind me of Elizabeth Taylor's eyes.”

“Where do you want it?”

“On her bum,” ordered Dillon.

“Not on my bum. On my tummy.”

The tattooist was a massive skinhead. Why aren't there
beautiful tattooists? It would make the whole art seem far less intimidating.

He opened a clean needle in front of me and then leaned over and got to work. It felt like someone was pinching me very hard. If I hadn't been with someone I was trying to look pretty in front of, I think it would have hurt a lot worse. As it was, I let my body relax and tried to ride out the pain. I was glad I couldn't see. Dillon cried more than I did. He had settled on a detailed depiction of a tiger holding a banner that said FREEWHEELIN'. It took almost forty-five minutes. He already had one tattoo, of an iguana, on his back. But it was not very impressive. In fact it looked more like a stain or a piece of mould than a tattoo. They taped bandages to our wounds, took our money, and told us that a scab would form and then fall off after a week. Dillon paid for both of us and walked back to the hotel with his elbow at a right angle. He said it made him feel better.

“How are you going to sing?”

“I don't sing with my arm.”

“I know, but you look so funny.”

But within an hour the pain had subsided to the extent that I got up the courage to ring Manny and tell him I was not coming home as planned. We chatted for a bit, about the weather and seeing Natalie Portman. Then I told him not to get angry, but I had something to confess.

“Oh my God. Did you get tattoos?”

“That's a funny question. Um. I didn't get tattoos, plural.”

He started to hyperventilate. Then he caught himself and started yelling. “You stupid, stupid girl. How could you mutilate
your body like that? You, a Jew, whose people were mutilated against their will.” I would carry that thought with me for the rest of my life. In that second, my violet lost its appeal. I knew Elizabeth Taylor would not approve of it. The call was costing about five dollars a minute. I racked my brains for something to win him over, some brilliant argument that would make it all right.

“But Manny, they look so pretty on Drew Barrymore.”

He actually screamed. Like a girl. Like a girl getting a tattoo. “And you would do something just because Drew Barrymore did it?”

“Do you really want me to answer that? Because if you really want me to answer, I will.”

After all that, telling him I was going to Vegas with an international rock star I had only just met was pretty small potatoes.

The short plane ride was not the most comfortable experience of my life, even though we were on the leather-upholstered private jet owned by the head of Skyline's record label. I had to sit bolt upright not to scratch my wound on my vest. Dillon still had his arm stuck out at a right angle. The rest of the band had flown out to Vegas the day before on a BA flight. Skyline weren't playing for four days, but the label was so pleased with them that they decided to show them a good time in the city of sin. Everything was paid for in advance: the flights, the suites, the room service, the limos, the money to go gambling, the money the band would lose gambling.

I was nervous that Dillon might run off and leave me the moment he was reunited with his scally mates. But when we
met them in the lobby, he held my hand. He could have wrapped his arm around my waist, or placed it on my bottom. Or stood three feet away. So I was rather moved at this gesture of non-aggressive friendship. His peers were vaguely sketched versions of him with police lineup alterations: the drummer had a boss eye, the bass player had a beer belly, the guitarist had a broken nose. They were friendly, if slightly suspicious of me.

If the Chateau Marmont would be played by Angelica Huston, the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino would have to be played by Pamela Anderson. It's eye-catching and thrilling, but ultimately unenlightening and a little goes a long way. Our room was amazing, but it scared me a bit. It had a bathroom on both sides of the hall and a Jacuzzi in the middle of the lounge. I guess everyone who sets up in Vegas knows what a filthy town it is. The bed was about the size of Sweden, and over the seven fat pillows at the head hung a huge framed photo of Mick Jagger. Dillon launched into a very poor impression.

“Start me up! Well, if you start me up, I'll never stop!”

“That's what I'm worried about, mate.”

We went and dumped our bags and headed straight down to the casino to start gambling on the Jimi Hendrix and Sex Pistols slot machines. There were German tourists and Hell's Angels and Mafiosos and Been There Babes, but mostly there were old people, anywhere and everywhere. And this is Las Vegas's premier rock 'n' roll hotel. I was prepared, because Tom Wolfe had described the town as “Disneyland for OAPs,” but I think Dillon was a bit freaked out. Only ten dollars down and he suggested we go outside and sunbathe for a while.

The hotel swimming pool was a re-creation of a California beach, with palm trees, golden sands, and wave machines. It was accurate in every detail, other than that the California sea does not, to my knowledge, have Crosby, Stills, and Nash piped underwater twenty-four hours a day. Classic Rock was, as was to be expected, the name of the game. It just kept popping up in the most surprising places: even the elevator was swathed in leopard print and adorned with an Aerosmith quote. It did feel odd to be standing next to Dillon, in an elevator packed with white-haired ladies in pantsuits, under an enormous gold sign reading LOVE IN AN ELEVATOR—LIVIN' IT UP WHEN I'M GOIN' DOWN.

Even though that was what I wore when I first met him properly, I was embarrassed to be in my swimsuit in front of Dillon. So I did what I did the first time and covered myself with a towel. Neither of us could get wet because of the tattoos. We had nothing to do but spread out on loungers and drink margaritas. Dillon had to order them because they wouldn't serve me without proof that I was twenty-one. He ordered one for himself, many times over, and shared it with me when the waitress wasn't looking.

The cocktail eradicated the pain of the tattoo and thoughts of Treena, Ray, and Drew. I felt all remnants of Drew wash out of my body, as if someone were sucking them out through my little toe. Before long, the towel was on the floor and my arms were crossed behind my head. The tattoo itched, but the sun warmed my legs and face and I felt like a cat on a windowsill. And the sun was studded with rhinestones. Every now and then, Dillon would reach across from his recliner and lay a hand on my elbow. The music blared across the sun deck, a pleasant run
of Fleetwood Mac, Beatles, and Tom Petty, blighted by occasional patches of Genesis or Whitney Houston.

Then the inevitable happened. The song I most and least hoped for every time I encountered a radio tuned to FM. The opening chord struck my cool like the cry of an Arizona bird of prey that got horribly lost and ended up with the seagulls, circling Brighton Pier. This wasn't the time or the place, with this person I didn't know, for such incandescent beauty. I blocked my ears but the words forced my fingers apart with kisses and promises that they'd always be there for me. I forced my head onto my shoulder, but I could still hear it.

“ …
those days are gone forever, I should just let them go but
…”

Dillon leaped up and kneeled beside me, blocking my sun. “Don't cry, Viva, please don't cry. What's wrong?”