Angels (26 page)

“How about that new embroidered denim skirt?” Emily suggested.

ANGELS / 203

“I can't, it makes my knees look funny.”

“No, it doesn't.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Try it on and show me.”

“Come into my room.”

Twenty-nine seconds later, a perplexed Emily was forced to admit,

“Christ, it does. I don't know how. Normally your knees look fine.”

She began rooting through the suitcase on the floor, looking at my clothes and commenting. “That's a lovely skirt, I've got that Tshirt in pink.” Then she paused and groaned, “God, these are gorgeous.” I looked. She'd found my turquoise sandals and was pulling them out from under a pile of socks. “Gorgeous. And they're new.

Look, the price sticker is still on them. How come you've never worn them?”

“Just waiting for the right occasion.”

“Which, I believe, might be this evening.”

“Ah, no.” I swallowed. “Not tonight.” At her sharp look, I ex

plained, “They're high and uncomfortable; I want to be relaxed this evening.”

I wasn't sure she really believed me, but she let it go.

In a mutation of the laws of physics, the day was interminable, but it also went far too fast. Each individual second endured for quite some time, yet all of a sudden it was five-thirty—too late to get news. Emily spoke to David, who said that Hothouse were obviously taking the script seriously, that the time lag indicated that Mort was discussing it with his bosses. But Emily wasn't reassured.

“He didn't get enough of a buzz going,” she said sadly. “I've seen what happens when the hype works. The agent rings the executive in the morning and fires him up so much that he's shelled out two million dollars by lunchtime. Often without even having seen the script.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Honest to God. I can give you four separate instances where a studio paid barrels of cash without having read a 204 / MARIAN KEYES

single word. The agent offered them a one-hour window to make a preemptive bid. They all came through—too terrified of someone else getting the chance.”

“But what if it's a bad script?”

“It often is, but by the time the studio discovers they've paid two million dollars for a dog, it's too late. The writer's sunning himself in the Caribbean and is already on his next project.”

“That's insane.”

“It's an insane kind of town. Anyway, might as well try and enjoy my weekend,” she said, sensibly. Then she put her face in her hands and screeched, “I can't fucking BEAR this.”

She emerged with a shaky smile. “Just taking a moment. Right, where's my makeup bag? C'mere and I'll do your face.”

“But you've got to get ready for your date.”

“Ah, it's as easy to do two people as it is to do one. And it's not every night you go to a movie star's birthday party in the penthouse of L.A.'s most fabulous hotel.”

When she put it like that…“Look, are you
sure
you don't want to go?”

“Quite. There's a good chance I'll get laid tonight. A bird in the hand and all that. Are you sure
you
want to go? You don't seem very thrilled.”

She was right. Going to Cameron Myers's birthday party was dream-come-true stuff and I wasn't as fizzy as I should be. As I once would have been. I felt ashamed of myself. The only time I'd come close to feeling any real excitement lately had been at Emily's pitch—and I was starting to wonder if I'd been mistaken about it.

“I just don't seem to be great at enjoying myself at the moment.

Everything, even the brilliant stuff, is a bit flat.”

“You're depressed. This whole thing has really taken its toll on you. Naturally enough.”

“The part I'm most looking forward to is going out with Troy,”

I admitted.

ANGELS / 205

“It's great you're his date,” she agreed. “He might have asked Kirsty otherwise.”

“That bitch!” I exclaimed. “I never told you what she said to me at the party…”

I related the story while Emily did her usual stunt with the makeup and barrettes and stuff. I ended up wearing the same black dress I'd worn to Dan Gonzalez's bash—I'd nothing else—but Emily did something to me with a chiffon neck scarf and said my look was “Very Halston.” Then came the moment of truth: we finally removed the tights from my head—and my bangs were as flat as Holland. I owed those boys.

At half past seven, as Emily clacked out the door, a fragrant, glittery vision, she paused and turned back to me. “Just in case you were thinking…about Troy. A word of advice. Human Teflon.”

“That's two words.”

“Wonderful to have around but…he's nonstick. Enjoy yourself but don't expect anything. Promise?”

I promised, then promptly forgot about it. I had to take my enjoyment where I could find it.

THE FREEMAN WAS
new, the most glamorous hotel in a town crammed with glamorous hotels. We could hardly get into the noisy lobby, so jammed was it with people meeting for drinks, waiting for dinner, and tripping over sculptures. Everyone was astonishingly good-looking—and most of them were staff. It took a long time to get anyone's attention—like Troy muttered, they hadn't been hired for their ability—but eventually we were directed to a special elevator, which was policed by two bouncers who frisked us for cameras and tape recorders.

The lift shot us straight to the top floor, playing havoc with my already swoopy stomach. And when the lift doors opened, straight into the penthouse, I nearly got snow blindness. It was all white.

White walls, white carpet, white tables, and huge white leather sofas. I got a fright seeing a disembodied blond head floating in midair above one of the couches—then I realized it was just a girl whose white leather cat suit had merged with the white leather of the couch.

Troy and I stepped reticently from the lift and exchanged a nervous smile. “Where's Cameron?” he murmured.

I looked around: there were only about a dozen people there, but never had I seen such a condensed distillation of gorgeousness.

It was like walking into an episode of
Beverly Hills 90210
—girls displaying lots of bare, tanned, toned ANGELS / 207

flesh and boys with square teeth and noticeably well-cut hair, all laughing and holding martini glasses.
What on earth am I doing
here
?

This conviction intensified when my sweep across the room landed on Cameron Myers. And I have to say that, despite my excitement facility not operating at full capacity, I did get a bit dizzy and starstruck, as though a plane had flown just two inches over my head. He was on his knees in front of a plain white hole in the wall, a very modern fireplace.

“Hey,” he said, scrambling to his feet when he saw Troy—and I must admit he did look much shorter and dinkier than he does onscreen. “You came!”

“Happy birthday, man. Thanks for inviting us. This is Maggie.”

“Hello.” I was almost on a level with Cameron Myers's perfect, symmetrical face, with the white-blond hair, the blue, blue eyes, and the tight, evenly tanned skin. He was nearly as familiar to me as one of my family, and yet…

Wait till I tell them back home. They'll never believe me
.

I realized I was staring, so I shoved four orange orchids at him.

“These are for you.”

He seemed genuinely touched. “You brought me flowers!”

“But it's your birthday.” I gestured at the room. “I'm sorry they're not white.”

He laughed a sweet laugh and I had the urge to pick him up under my arm, start sprinting, and not stop until I had him safely locked in a cage. He was so cute, like a puppy.

“There are drinks in the kitchen. Help yourselves.”

“I'll get them,” Troy said, and headed off across the room, leaving me alone with Cameron Myers.

“Hey, do you know how to do this?” He gestured helplessly at the synthetic E-Z Light logs at his feet.

“Err…yes, it's easy.”

“I love a real fire. It's kinda homey. Will you help me?”

What could I say? It was July. It was Los Angeles. It was eighty degrees out there.

208 / MARIAN KEYES

But he was Cameron Myers and he wanted a fire.

“Okay.”

Once the fire was crackling brightly, and Cameron had called down for marshmallows, Troy handed me a martini, murmured, “How about this place,” and took me on a tour. It was huge. The “reception room” (as they say) must have been eighty feet long, and there were three enormous bedrooms, so full of dazzling white cotton, it hurt to look at them. There was a kitchen, an office, countless bathrooms, even, would you believe, a screening room. All around were dotted soft white cashmere throws, white suede cushions, white porcelain vases. Maybe it was good that Emily hadn't come.

She might have been tempted to start stealing stuff.

“Who are all the other people here?” I whispered. “Any of them famous?”

“Don't think so. Wanna-bes, Maws—”

“Maws?”

“Model-Actress-Whatevers. Another word is ‘mattresses’—models, actors, waitresses. Now, get a load of
this
!” He opened a door onto a roof garden.

“Wow.” We stepped out into the sultry night—far hotter than in the air-conditioned rooms—the air dense and musky with the smell of flowers. There was a hot tub, steaming into the night. But most impressive was the astonishing view.

“No smog tonight,” he observed as we leaned over the balcony, staring, awestruck. Far below us were pristine Spanish-style homes, neatly parked cars, the springy tops of palm trees and the jewel-bright turquoise of underlit swimming pools. The pools were like stars—at first I noticed only one, then another, then suddenly, popping up out of nowhere, there were too many to count. They dotted away randomly into the distance, until they became too small to see. Past the nearby streets, the megalopolis of Los Angeles was laid out like a grid of Christmas lights, a city of the future that stretched for miles until it blurred into a horizon of electric color.

ANGELS / 209

The odd thing was that I couldn't see a single human being, but they were out there—countless hopefuls caught on the grid, like so many flies in an infinite spiderweb. Infinitesimally, I felt the collective weight of all the dreams on that net of light: the beautiful girls waiting tables while waiting for their one big break; the would-be actors, writers, and directors who'd poured into this reclaimed desert from the four corners of the globe; hundreds of thousands of individuals hoping that they'd be one of the pitifully few who made it. Such longing, such dogged determination; I imagined I could nearly see it, rising into the night sky like steam.

“Awesome?” Troy quirked his straight mouth.

“Scary.”

“Yeah. Want to sit down?”

There was a wide choice of wicker chairs and top-of-the-line lounge chairs (with about twenty different inclines), but “
This
is the one for us.” Troy seemed amused by a squashy, swinging sofa suspended by ropes from an overhead beam.

At first I felt a twinge of fear that the ropes wouldn't hold our weight (
my
weight, really. Could you imagine the shame if I clambered aboard, only to yank the hooks out of the beam and send the whole thing crashing to the floor?). But then I got totally into it. We each took an end and curled on the cushions, our feet almost touching.

Look at me, I thought, amazed by myself—swinging in the warm night, high above a city, sipping a martini with a sexy, sexy man.

Yes, now about the “sexy, sexy man.” They say that you don't know how sad you've been until you feel happy once more. Similarly, you don't realize how much you haven't fancied anyone until it happens again. Troy's easy grace, his greenish eyes, his very nearness generated something in me—what I could only describe as readiness.

“I could get to like this,” he said softly. From his tone and the accompanying sidelong glance, he wasn't just talking about the view/frosty drinks/swinging sofa setup. I might have lived a fairly sheltered life, but I'm not a complete ditz.

210 / MARIAN KEYES

“Me too.” I kept my inflections neutral.

“You're sure? You really do feel okay? You know, after those phone calls about your husband?”

“Fine.” Well, I felt fine at that precise moment, anyway.

He nodded. “Cool.”

“Tell me about your meeting last night.” Emily had implied that his work was important to Troy, so I wanted to know.

He told me a little about the three projects he was trying to get off the ground, the various setbacks, how hard it was to get financing. I encouraged and commiserated where appropriate, but it was as if we were speaking in code.

If only he'd touch me. The skin on my leg almost tingled with the need for his hand…

“Is there a Maggie here?” Someone had stuck their head around the door. “Cameron needs ya. His fire has gone out.”

The mood broken, Troy made a regretful face and said, “Better go in.”

Back inside, more people had arrived, but there were still only about thirty of them. Cameron beckoned me across the chilly tundra and yelled raucously, “Come on, baby, light my fire!”

“Lord,” I murmured, “what have we missed?” It looked like the high-jinks factor had gone up several gears while we'd been outside—but no sooner had Troy and I commandeered one of the white leather sofas than I discovered how mistaken I was. Cameron's boisterousness was about as rowdy as things got; as parties go, this one was very well behaved. And as movie stars' parties go, it was a bitter disappointment.

“No one's had their face slapped, there's been no jiggery-pokery in the hot tub, not one television has been thrown in the swimming pool,” I said sadly. And apart from a couple of slender joints doing the rounds, there wasn't even any obvious drug taking.

“Irish, you're obsessed!”

I shrugged. “Just trying to make up for lost time.”

ANGELS / 211

Around the fireplace, weaving in and out in a tight knot, all of the
90210
crew seemed to know each other. And while they were perfectly cordial to Troy and me, they weren't overly friendly. For once I didn't care because Troy was the only person I wanted to talk to. He resumed telling me about his work while I widened my eyes and licked my lips and looked up from under my lashes—and then realized I was sipping from an empty glass. Had possibly been at it for quite some time.