May 2006
‘Will you stop looking at me like that?’ said Melissa as Alex drove their 4x4 up Highway One towards Pacific Palisades.
‘Like what?’ asked Alex, glancing towards the passenger seat.
‘You’re looking at me weirdly,’ she said with a disapproving pout. ‘Like I’m a stranger or something.’
Alex chuckled and squeezed her knee. ‘Maybe it’s because you do look like a stranger. My wife left for the hairdresser’s at nine o’clock this morning and she hasn’t come back.’
Even members of Melissa’s fan club would be hard pressed to spot her tonight. Her face was nearly make-up-free, her usually red lips muted with a pale beige stain. A four-hour session at Guido, Beverly Hills’ most sought-after hairdresser, had turned her glossy blond mane chocolate brown, while her knee-length navy tea-dress hadn’t quite extinguished her sex appeal but had made her less available, more serious.
‘I want this part, Alex. Tonight I’m going to show him I am Danielle.’
Alex chuckled to himself. They were on their way to dinner with Christopher Hayes, the maverick director and screenwriter whose latest project was adapting Next Door But One, a Pulitzer-prize-winning book about sexual tension in 1950s suburbia. Melissa had already been offered the role of Nancy, the young temptress who seduces a Madison Avenue advertising executive away from his wife. But she didn’t want to be Nancy; she wanted the smaller but more pivotal role of Danielle, the wife.
‘Nancy gets you the front cover of GQ,’ she’d told Alex while reading the script in bed. ‘But Danielle wins you an Oscar.’
Most of the time Alex tried to avoid Hollywood’s power-broking party circuit, but he’d agreed to come along tonight because he was a huge fan of Christopher Hayes. The director had spent the eighties and early nineties making deeply intelligent and often quite weird films – studies of small-town paranoia, many of which Alex had seen with Emma at the Cornerhouse, the little art-house cinema in Manchester. Every actor in Hollywood wanted to work for him, and judging by the huge Spanish-style mansion overlooking the ocean, his off-the-wall movies were big business.
A maid in grey uniform answered the door and led them through to an open living area facing the Pacific, which was fading from view as the sun sank behind dusky clouds. Alex couldn’t help but grin inanely when Christopher came over and shook their hands and introduced them to the other dinner guests.
‘Al, Melissa, you both know Justin Coe?’ he said.
‘We’ve met,’ simpered Melissa. ‘And of course I’m a huge fan.’
‘Oh, I can’t think why,’ said Justin, flashing his perfect white teeth.
Justin Coe was one of Hollywood’s biggest and most bankable stars. He had signed up to play the role of Ray, the advertising executive in the movie.
‘So what do you do, Al?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Al’s just a singer,’ said Melissa.
‘Really?’ said Justin, his smile dimming slightly. ‘You done anything I might have heard?’
‘Nothing much yet,’ said Alex. ‘Made a few demos, hoping to get a few gigs in the valley.’
‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ said Justin, steering Melissa away. ‘You really have to meet Daniel over here . . .’
At dinner, Melissa was seated between Christopher and Justin, while Alex was relegated to the other end, next to Christopher’s wife Jennifer, an impressive and rather intimidating woman wearing a camel-coloured trouser suit. Alex sat quietly, just absorbing the Hollywood shop talk – who was making what, who was screwing who, who had a terrible coke problem, who was in rehab – swinging between boredom and awkwardness. By the time the dessert was brought out, he had taken to playing a game with himself, counting the times the word ‘awesome’ was used in conversation. He watched as Melissa and Justin stood up, heading out towards the swimming pool ‘for a smoke’. He was just about to follow when Jennifer touched his arm.
‘You really shouldn’t have fucked with him, you know,’ she whispered.
Alex looked at her, startled. ‘Who?’
‘Justin. Or Teeth as I like to call him,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s not the done thing to make the star look stupid, even if he doesn’t realise.’
‘Sorry, he was being a knob.’
Jennifer laughed, a full-throated, fruity chuckle. ‘Knob,’ she repeated with relish. ‘I love the way you speak – and that wasn’t supposed to sound patronising. You wouldn’t believe how much bland shit I have to listen to at these things. It’s nice to meet someone who says what he thinks.’
Alex smiled politely, trying to remember everything Melissa had told him about Jennifer in the car. She was a former columnist for the New York Times turned scriptwriter and novelist. That might explain her forthright approach.
‘So with that in mind, why don’t you tell me what you th
ought of Firefly?’
Firefly was Christopher Hayes’ last movie, a twisted tale of unrequited love set in a remote town in the Midwest.