The Rise, page 8
Space. Contemplation. Privacy. Breathe.
Her internal monologue was interrupted by a chorus of screams and cheers that made the ground under her feet tremble.
Logan rushed off stage towards her and then two arms were around her, lifting her and swinging her round.
‘Mom, come on – I want you to come on stage.’
‘Logan, no.’
‘C’mon, Mom.’
Where were the Navy Seal bodyguards when she needed them?
Her one hundred and thirty pounds were no match for a six-foot boy who worked out with a personal trainer six days a week.
The spotlights blinded her; the crowd roared; the rest of the band cheered as the lead singer pulled his resistant mother onto the stage.
‘Mexico! I want you to meet my mom!’
As 107,000 camera phones captured the moment, she realized that the plan to hide out until she was ready to deal with all this shit had just hit a large, son-sized complication.
It was time to get back to the real world before the real world came to her. And somehow, for Chloe’s sake, for Logan’s sake, and for the sake of her sanity, she knew she had to find the strength inside her to kick its ass.
13
‘RIDERS ON THE STORM’ – THE DOORS
His head was in a vice, and the wheel was turning tighter and tighter. Only a few more seconds now and his brain would explode, grey matter would splatter against the walls, and forensics would have to use tweezers to pick skull shrapnel off the carpet. Any second now. Any second.
‘Zander, some, like, chick keeps calling, and she says if you don’t speak to her now, she’s going to break the fucking door down. She has, like, a serious attitude problem. Is she, like, your wife or something?’
Zander opened one eye, took the phone being dangled in front of him by Daisy… Donna… Deedee… fucked if he knew. Shit, he’d taken it too far last night. The bottle of Jack Daniel’s he remembered; the coke he’d rather forget. If the pain in his head was a sign that he was about to die, let it be soon, here in…
He made a quick scan of the room. Yep, definitely his own apartment. How he’d got back here was a mystery to him right now, but at least he wasn’t lying in some fleapit hotel off Sunset with unidentifiable bites trailing across his back.
That had been the night before last.
Ignoring his companion’s unanswered question, he put the phone in the vicinity of his ear and grunted.
Her reply was instant. ‘It’s me.’
Zander automatically winced. His PA, Hollie only spoke two words, but they had all the impact of a double bullet shot to the centre of the forehead. Fierce, unrelenting and unequivocally honest, for the last ten years she’d managed all the sane aspects of his life. Only two people had real meaning in his world: if Wes Lomax was his father figure, Hollie was the sister who would defend him to the world while poking a finger in his chest and berating him behind closed doors. It was an unusual dynamic in the land of the sycophants, but he needed that kind of reality – just not today.
‘What the fuck are you doing? No, don’t answer that. On a messed-up scale of one to ten, give me a figure,’ she said, her tone thick with irritation.
‘Ten.’
‘You are such an asshole. OK, open the door.’
‘Why?’
‘Cos I’m standing outside, you moron, and I’m not wasting these Manolo Blahniks on breaking down the fucking door.’
He hung up.
‘Baby—’
‘It’s Dixie. Don’t call me “baby”. I’m, like, a feminist,’ Dixie wailed, while pulling on the crotchless g-string that matched her purple lace peephole bra.
He groaned on the inside.
‘Can you open the door. Please. Dixie?’
With a petulant stomp, Dixie crossed the room and swung the door open, making no effort whatsoever to conceal her partial nudity.
Hollie barely glanced in her direction, marching straight to the huge circular bed in the centre of the room. He took no credit or blame for the furnishings. He’d bought the apartment in Venice with that first pay cheque and never got round to moving. There was no need to. It was on the third floor of the pale green timber-clad block, on the corner of Speedway, just over the invisible line that separated the wealth of Santa Monica from the eccentricities of its artisan neighbour. The location suited him. On the edge of the sands, he could ride out on his paddle board at dawn, and when he opened the windows at night, he could hear other people laughing, talking, fighting, just being.
Somehow, that mattered.
When he’d first moved in, he had a chair, a sofa and a bed. When Hollie had come to work for him, she’d had a try at persuading him to move to a more affluent, secure neighbourhood. When that fell on deaf ears, she helped him buy the apartment next door and then remodelled the two into the kind of penthouse an A-list actor with simple tastes should call home. A vast, open-plan loft with a long glass wall that became opaque and inscrutable at the touch of a button. Dark-stained maple floors, white walls, grey leather sofas. A screen that could motor across the floor to separate the bedroom and living area at the touch of a button. On the walls, the two original artworks by Jack Vettriano were Hollie’s idea too, a nod to his Scottish heritage.
The soft furnishings were cream, the bedding was 800-thread count, the cutlery and crockery expensive. All Hollie’s choices. As long as there was beer in the fridge, sport on the TV and his surfboard was by the door, he barely noticed.
‘OK, hero, get up.’ She pulled back the Pratesi sheets.
‘I can’t.’
‘Don’t make me kill you.’
Hollie turned to Dixie. ‘Nice outfit. Look, honey—’
‘Don’t call me “honey”. I’m, like, a feminist,’ Dixie announced for the second time in five minutes. Zander closed his eyes. He couldn’t look. No one should witness blood being spilt at this time in the morning.
‘OK, let me try that again, Hillary Clinton. Can you please do something for me?’
Not bad considering every word was spat out through clenched teeth.
‘Can you, right now, take your skinny, half-covered ass and remove it from my sight?’
‘But…’
Hollie was one step ahead of her. She pulled ten hundred dollar bills from her wallet.
‘For your lingerie fund. Stick with purple – it’s your colour.’
It was difficult for the self-proclaimed feminist philosopher to work out whether that was a compliment or an insult.
Hollie pulled out another wad of notes. ‘And here’s another grand for your phone.’
‘But—’
‘It’s that or I call the cops and say you’re a stalker who broke in here. Your choice.’
Dixie flushed with rage, then realizing the futility of the situation, grabbed her clothes, pulled a Lycra minidress over her lithe frame and stomped out carrying her shoes. She left her phone on the table.
Her parting words were, ‘I’m at Sparkles every night. Drop by.’
Zander didn’t reply. Just shut his eyes and braced himself for attack.
‘Classy. I can see the attraction.’ Hollie’s sarcasm barely dented his frazzled brain.
‘OK, Mr Stud, what’s going on? This is the third morning in a row I’ve had to drag your ass out of a naked situation. Zander, you’re not helping me here.’
Zander couldn’t reply, too busy trying to manoeuvre himself into an upright position. Didn’t matter. What was going on? He could never explain it to her. When he’d stepped out of the clinic last week, he’d been so determined to stay clean. Make it right. Step out of the ‘fuck up’ lane. But…
‘Mr Leith, this is Sarah McKenzie from the Daily Scot…’ The next bit was hazy until, ‘I have a few questions about the disappearance of your father. Actually, I’d like to speak with him too, but I can’t seem to track him down.’
How the fuck had that come up now, twenty years down the line? His family situation had been covered and put to bed two decades ago. Every reporter who had ever asked had been given a stock answer: ‘Zander’s family were private people and had no wish to be in the public eye.’ In today’s celebrity-obsessed, online culture, they wouldn’t have stood a chance of retaining any privacy, but back then his home life didn’t cause so much as a ripple of publicity. Since then, all requests for interviews or information about his family had been denied. All eyes turned to Zander’s new Hollywood life, and over the years he’d provided them with so many headlines there had never been a reason for anyone to go raking up his past. End of story. Nothing to report. Until now. Nothing about this made sense.
Had something happened? Had Jono turned up? But no, that was never going to happen, was it? Yet… there was a reporter on the phone and her words kept playing in his head. And the only thing that made them stop was oblivion. Hollie pulled the sheets off the bed and balled them in the corner, then picked up the glasses, bottles and discarded clothes and took them all into the kitchen. It was only on the way back that she noticed the detritus on the coffee table.
‘Coke last night?’
The guilt that flashed across his face said it all.
‘Jesus, Zander, they’re testing you again in ten days. Right, detox until then. Man, can you just stick to being an alcoholic and give me less shit to deal with? Now come on. You’re due on set in an hour and the 405 will be a bitch, even at this time. I don’t need this. I could have been working for—’
‘Matt Damon. I know.’
It was their personal joke. Hollie had interviewed for Damon on the same day as Zander. Zander had offered first.
‘Clean-living. Married. Kids. No drama. Instead, I got you. Come on, Zander, don’t screw this up. I need the pay cheque and it’ll be a bitch to find another job if you turn up dead. No wonder I comfort-eat.’
Another private joke. Hollie was one of the few women in Hollywood who was not under a size four. In any other town, she’d be considered a healthy shape, but here, if her natural chocolate-brown hair and lack of cosmetic intervention didn’t set her apart, the fact that she wore size-twelve jeans made her as rare on the West Coast as a genuine blonde.
Over in the hung-over corner, her attempt at truthful cajoling only served to up the remorse.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
It was only day five on set and he’d been wasted for every one of them, except the first. He’d managed to resist the coke from the bobblehead on his first hour out from the clinic, because just as he was about to snort, he’d realized – correctly as it turned out – that he might be tested for drugs the following morning at the studio. He’d watched it blow out of the car window, then he’d stopped at a liquor store and bought a vat of Jack Daniels. As soon as the first test was done, all bets were off. He’d been high and drunk by lunchtime and had pretty much stayed that way ever since. Thankfully, he knew the role inside out and had managed to pull off the read-throughs, but he was on the edge of blowing it again and he knew it.
It was only because Hollie possessed the driving skills of a stunt racer that he made it to the Lomax lot in Century City for the 6 a.m. call time, showered, shaved and smelling like he’d just walked out of Tom Ford’s boudoir. Two litres of black coffee and four Advil had taken the edge off the pain; now the fresh orange juice was slowly transforming his complexion from grey to pink.
Hollie had already checked the schedule for the day. Morning in wardrobe. His character, Seb Dunhill’s suits had been custom-made by Burberry, but there was still work to be done on the rest of his outfits. Afternoon in rehearsals for the first scene, shooting the following day. Courtesy of the LA city chiefs, they’d closed down a section of Wilshire Boulevard for a car chase that was filming the next morning at five. Hooking up with Dixie at Sparkles again just became a rain check.
The prep was his least favourite part of the process. A necessary evil. He just wanted to be out there, being someone else, not in here having his crotch position measured by Nessa, a very pleasant but noisy Texan grandmother who had mastered the art of speaking loudly while holding a spray of pins between her teeth and called him ‘sweet cheeks’. They were on their fourth costume adjustment and she had already served up more industry news than Deadline.com, when she paused for breath, before switching to the next subject.
‘And ain’t that great news that Mirren McLean is back in town? I was getting worried about that girl. Never liked Jack Gore. Eyes too close together.’
‘Why? Where was she?’ No amount of suave pretence could mask the sharpness of his tone.
‘Why, sweet cheeks, her car went off a canyon. Rumour has it Gore is gonna be a daddy with that Mercedes Dance – my sister worked on her wardrobe last year, and thank the good Lord she’s pretty cos she ain’t gonna win any medals for bein’ smart. Married man. What was she thinking?’
Hollie came in clutching a clipboard, square black glasses falling to the tip of her nose.
‘OK, you’ve had a couple of calls. D’you want to go over them now while you’re in Nessa’s capable hands?’
‘Hollie, what happened to Mirren McLean?’
Hollie thought for a moment, assimilating the facts and then relaying them in the correct order.
‘Hit the press last week that Jack Gore and Mercedes Dance were doing the naked samba; she’s first trimester with his kid; Mirren went off grid for a few days after trashing his Maserati over a cliff—’
‘Amen!’ Nessa interjected.
‘And then she turned up in Mexico City. Now she’s back and, according to Entertainment Tonight, has started shooting on the set of Clansman 5. You’re welcome.’
She punctuated the sentence with an extended bow.
Zander’s heart rate gradually returned to somewhere near normal. OK, it had nothing to do with what happened back then. Nothing to do with Glasgow. Or with them.
‘Hey, I meant to say, a journo called Sarah something from the UK has left you a couple of messages. Want me to reply?’
‘Let me think about it.’ Like it wasn’t all he’d been doing for the last few days.
Nessa stood back and finally removed the pins from her mouth. ‘OK, sweet cheeks, you’re good to go and I’m a happy woman,’ she said with a cackle of endearment.
Zander gave her a hug and then followed Hollie down a labyrinth of corridors. Over four decades Lomax Films had grown from one man with a flair for selling ideas to one of the biggest deals in town. Jerry Bruckheimer. Paul Bonetti. Kent Lang. Brian Grazer. Steven Spielberg. James Cameron. Wes Lomax had topped them all when his production company batted out of its league with The Brutal Circle and gave Lomax the dollars and the balls to set up his own studio. Lomax Films didn’t have the vast reach of Sony or Time Warner, but they’d whipped Lionsgate and Miramax last year and were on course to do the same again.
The physical demands of the afternoon were a welcome relief after the mental stress of the morning. Nothing took your mind off your problems quite like the discomfort of having your scrotum crushed in a harness swinging ten feet in the air. Seb Dunhill had to jump from a helicopter and land on a tanker carrying toxic waste en route to down-town LA. There was a gift for the late-night talk-show hosts. That was a gag that wrote itself.
As soon as his character had saved LA, he was being shipped to the Middle East – balls intact – to save the world. In reality, most of the movie was being shot in Nevada.
‘You go on – I just want to stop by Wes’s office and check in.’
Hollie eyed him with cynicism. ‘Or are you going to find a store cupboard and down a quart of bourbon?’
Zander gave her his most winning grin. ‘That was the old me. The new me is teetotal.’
‘Since this morning?’
For the first time in a week he laughed. ‘It’s amazing what you can achieve in one day.’
Hollie shook her head. ‘Mood swings. Great. I swear Matt Damon would have been a lot easier than this shit.’
Zander rode the lift two levels to the executive floor, then ducked into the men’s room and pulled a miniature of Jack Daniel’s out of his jacket pocket. It was gone in seconds, the taste washed away by the miniature of mouthwash in his other pocket. After washing his hands, he took a bottle of Clive Christian 1872 from the vanity and gave a quick spray. Just enough to cover any lingering booze smell, not too much that Wes would be suspicious.
‘Hey, Monica, is the boss in?’
Wes’s secretary had been with him since he started out. She must be in her sixties by now, but the most generous secretarial package in the business kept her looking on the right side of forty-five.
‘Sure. I’ll let him know you’re here.’
She’d barely pressed the button on her phone line when Lomax came striding out of the office and greeted him with a bear hug.
‘Good to see you, buddy. You’re looking great.’
Wes led the way back through to his office and they both sat on the white buffalo-skin seats that bordered a sleek black Italian marble board table. A crack ran across the middle of it. Rumour had it that Wes had smashed it with a machete after a deal had gone wrong. The truth was that a four-way with three porn stars in steel heels had left its mark. Wes didn’t mind which story people believed.
‘Feeling great,’ Zander concurred.
Wes contemplated him for a moment. They’d been together in this business a lot of years and their relationship had long passed the need for niceties and platitudes.
‘You sure, son?’
‘I’m sure.’
They may not need niceties and platitudes, but sometimes a little dishonesty was called for. Wes chose to believe him. They batted about some stuff on the movie for a few minutes before Monica knocked on the door. The age-old sign that Wes’s next appointment was waiting.
They shook hands and almost made it to the door before Wes put out an arm to stop him.
‘Zander, the last one was close. It can’t happen again.’
He didn’t have to ask what that meant. If the public stays onside, an A-list star can survive one public meltdown. He couldn’t survive two.
