Dazzled (19 page)

Her shoulders slumped a little, and she covered up a yawn.

“I hate getting this sort of interference from the studio – it’s why I mostly stick to working with independents. They trust me to make it the best film I can. But with these guys, they’ve got the marketing people blowing smoke up their ass, telling them they need this shot or that shot to sell the film. But that doesn’t give them license to order my actors around – or me.”

She shook her head. “I love this business, I do. But it all comes down to money in the end. It’s not even like this is a particularly expensive production – for
Hollywood. Damn it, I’m not wasting a day of the schedule just to placate those idiots. I’ll see what Trina can do in the edit suite. If I’m not happy, maybe they’ll get their reshoot.”

Then Jo-Anne looked at me. “But keep that to yourself, Clare. I haven’t made a decision yet. Capiche?”

I saluted. “Yup. Message received and understood.”

She gave a quick laugh. “And good work on those rewrites, by the way. Something you should think about taking further, honey.”

Huh?

I was left with my mouth hanging open unattractively.

Later that evening, Miles met me for a drink in the bar. It was the first time we’d really had any chance to talk since he’d hooked up with the scuzzy ho. She was off meeting with her publicist, probably plotting and stirring her cauldron at the same time. At least it meant I could spend time with my best – sigh – friend.

“I can’t believe the studio are making us do all
that
again,” he complained.

“Well, it won’t be so bad the second time, will it? At least you’ll know what to expect.” I paused, wondering if he’d drunk enough alcohol to tell me the truth. “So did you? You know, get a chubbie?”

He choked on his beer.

“Oh, hell, Clare!”

“Whoa! You did, didn’t you? Is that what caused the merkin mishap?”

“Clare, please! I’m fucking begging you! Never,
never
speak to me of this again.”

“Are you kidding? Just think of all the free drinks I could get telling
that
story.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Well…”

“Clare!”

“No, of course I wouldn’t. Chill out, Miles.”

“Bloody hell.”

“God, the look on your face!”

“You’re evil.”

I laughed. “You say that like it’s something new. You know I love to torture you. By the way, what did Lilia say? If she noticed, that is.”

“You’re a bitch,” he muttered. “And yeah – she noticed.”

Polly walked over to join us. “Hard day?”

I dissolved into laughter, while Miles just closed his eyes and looked like he was praying.

“What did I say?” asked Polly, but from the look on her face, I’d guess she knew
exactly
what she’d said.

“Oh, you know,” I wheezed between giggles, “Miles was finding it
hard
to concentrate. In fact I’d say the competition for worst day so far was
stiff
, not to mention that the acting was a little
wooden
.”

Polly collapsed onto the bench next to us, tears running down her face at the look Miles was giving me. She patted his knee, which certainly caught my attention.

“Never mind, honey,” she said. “Maybe we’ll see your sweet face on the Adult Video News awards. Although I don’t think they call it an ‘Oscar’.”

By now, I sounded like I was gurgling, and had spit beer down my t-shirt.

“Yeah, yeah,” Miles mumbled. “Laugh it up. I should fire your arse. Yeah, I think I’ll do that.” He pointed his finger at my chest. “Clare – you’re fired.”

“’S’alright,” I snorted, “you weren’t paying me anyway, but you
have
given me plenty of blackmail material – we’re good.”

He sighed and rubbed his face. “Whatever. Anyway, my mum would kill me if I fired you – and
your
mum would help her bury the body.”

Polly chuckled. “You’ve known Clare forever – you must have some dirt on her!”

Miles’ head snapped up, and a wicked grin spread across his face.

“Yeah, I do!
Eli Grant
and his ‘tiny todger’.” He made air quotes as he said it.

“Don’t. You. Dare!” I shouted, making Polly jump.

Miles laughed and leaned back in his seat looking relaxed. “You can dish it out, Clare, but you can’t take it.”

“Fine,” I sulked. “I won’t say anything about your
erection on set!
”

Okay, I may have spoken those words
slightly
louder than I meant, because several sets of eyes swiveled in our direction, and Miles groaned.

“Never mind,” said Polly, standing and stretching tiredly. “From what I hear, it was nothing to be ashamed of. Keep up the good, um, work, Miles.”

“Why are we friends again?” he said to me once she’d gone.

“Aw, you love me really,” I said, wrapping my arms around his waist, and planting a squeaky kiss on his cheek.

“Nah,” he said. “You’re more like a bad habit.”

He was joking. I knew he was joking. But I wanted to cry.

Clueless

Miles

Clare’s time in California was running out. In a couple of weeks, she’d be going home.

It had been a shitty few days, so having her around had been pretty much the only thing that kept me sane.

We’d been sitting in my trailer during a break in filming, and suddenly Rhonda turned up.

She charged in, eyes flashing. She reminded me of Taz, the cartoon Tasmanian Devil – in other words damn scary. I was waiting for smoke to come out of her nose or something.

“Miles!” she snapped, brandishing a newspaper in my face. “Something you forgot to tell me? I have gone
over and over
the importance of
image
with you. And then I get blindsided by this shit! What gives?”

Clare grabbed the newspaper from her and paled slightly as her eyes scanned down the sheet.

“Miles, it’s… about your dad.”

What the fuck did that bastard have to do with anything?

She passed me the paper in silence, and I could feel Rhonda’s eyes burning into me as I read.

When I’d finished, I pushed the newspaper away from me and looked up.

“Yeah, so?”

Rhonda looked like she was going to explode.

“So?! So?! Miles – this is
serious
! I’ve got the studio crawling up my ass and I really don’t appreciate the view. Talk to me!”

The gist of it was that my bastard of a father had contacted some tabloid newspaper back home, giving them all this crap about how I was living it up in Hollywood, while he was half starving and trying to survive off state handouts, and I wouldn’t give him the time of day, and he was in debt and going to get thrown out of his apartment. Blah blah blah.

Like I could give a shit. Bastard hadn’t done an honest day’s work in his life, and had never once paid mum any child support. When he walked out, he took every fucking thing that was worth anything, even our TV. And now he was selling this trashy, made-up version of his so-called life.

It made me sick.

“What do you want me to say, Rhonda? He was a shitty father and a git of a husband to my mum. I haven’t seen the bastard since I was eight.”

Her face softened slightly.

“You’ve had no contact with him
at all
since then?”

“No.”

“Okay… well… good. The studio PR people will have to deal. They’ll probably pay him to keep his mouth shut and…”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“Miles, this is how it works: the studio don’t want this sort of negative publicity. They’ll pay him off and…”

“NO!” I yelled, making her stop mid sentence. Okay, so I didn’t yell much generally but this shit was
way
out of order. “Rhonda, you don’t get it. You
can’t
pay that bastard off – he’ll just keep on coming back.
I
know
him. He won’t care what contract you get him to sign – he’ll break it. Yeah, you can sue him but it’ll be too late and the money will be gone – women, drink, horse races. That’s what he does. That’s what he’s
always
done. Let him sell his hard luck story once. After that, no one will be interested.”

She peered over her glasses at me. “You sure about this, Miles?”

“Yeah.”

I saw Clare give a staccato nod of her head, and felt relieved that she agreed with me, and she backed me up all the way. She hated him almost as much as I did.

Telling mum was worse, and because she didn’t Skype, I had to do it over the phone.

“Hi, mum. It’s me.”

“Miles! Hello, luv, this is a nice surprise. How are you? How’s Clare?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s good. How are you?”

“Oh, nothing to complain about. But tell me everything. How’s the film going?”

“Um, well…”

She paused, and I could hear the anxiety creeping into her voice.

“Has something happened?”

“Sort of, yeah. It’s not… I don’t know…”

“Spit it out, luv.”

“It’s dad.”

I could practically feel the ice creeping down the phone.

“Your father? What about him?”

“Mum, have you seen the
Daily Mirror
today?”

“No. Why?”

“They’ve published a story about me… and him.”

I waited for her to respond, but there was nothing. I couldn’t even hear her breathing.

“Mum?”

“I’m still here. What did they say?”

“A load of crap and his hard luck story.”

“Hard luck! He’s lucky he’s not in prison. What lies has he been spinning this time?”

“Like I said, just crap. About how I’m making all this money, and he’s been frozen out, and is living off benefits. About to evicted. You know, the usual.”

“Well, we both know he’s a liar, so you mustn’t let it worry you, Miles.”

“I’m not worried, mum. Honestly. But the chances are you’ll have reporters knocking at your door. Rhonda spoke to Melody in London, and they’ll send someone to help you if it gets to be a problem.”

She gave a humorless laugh.

“Don’t worry about me. Any reporter that comes knocking on my door, I’ll send ‘em off with a flea in their ear.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. But it’s probably best if you say ‘no comment’ to anything anyone says. Or just ignore them.”

“Well, if you say so. But I’d love to give them a piece of my mind.”

“Yeah, I know.”

There was an even longer pause.

“I’m so sorry, luv.”

I didn’t understand what she meant.

“Why are you sorry? You didn’t do anything.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t have a better father.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. What could I say? I barely knew the man. We only heard from him when bailiffs came knocking on the door because of some debt he’d run up in mum’s name.

“Nah, better off just you and me, mum.”

“You’re a good boy, Miles. Look after yourself. Give Clare a hug for me.”

“Yeah, thanks, mum. Bye.”

She never liked talking on the phone much.

Clare stood next to me, having heard my half of the conversation.

“How’d it go?”

“She was upset. Apologized for
him
being a fucking awful father.” I rubbed my eyes, tiredly. “And she told me to give you a hug.”

“Pay up then,” she said, wrapping her soft arms around me.

I pulled her closer and rested my head against her neck while she held me.

That had been a bad day, leading to a bad week. The story had been all over the internet, too. The worst thing was that reporters started hounding my mum at work and coming by the house. Luckily, she had some good friends who protected her from the worst of it, and even Melody sent someone to help her, which I thought was pretty decent – even if it was in the agency’s best interests, too. I was angry that there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Maybe I’d look him up when I got back to London. Pay that fucker a personal visit. Yeah, I really liked the idea of that.

After a few days, the stories began to disappear as other news took over. Things began to calm down, and the couple of reporters who came to the location went away with a few grainy shots and nothing else.

I was allowed to get on with the shoot, and get on with my life.

But I wasn’t going to forget what that bastard had done.

Today had been the last day of location shooting and all the principal photography had been finished without going a day over schedule. Jo-Anne had been amazing, and I was in awe of how she’d managed to get everything completed in time, on budget, and without yelling even once.

She told me to expect a couple of days in the studio once Lilia and I were back in LA, plus three or four days of dubbing some of the dialogue. But otherwise I was done. I’d finished my first – and probably last –
Hollywood movie. I kept waiting to feel something, anything, but I just felt hollow.

I was going to miss Clare like hell.

Things were going well with Lilia, I thought, and the sex was pretty good. It was irritating to keep seeing photographs of us together on the internet, but I figured that would ease up once we were back in LA.

I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do next. Rhonda was keen to keep some momentum, as she put it, and send me for more auditions, but she wasn’t pushing anything, which was cool of her. Melody had been in touch, too, saying that a stage job had come up back in
London, but when I wasn’t able to commit to the long rehearsals because of the publicity schedule for
Dazzled
, I had to pass. She said there’d be other opportunities, but it made me nervous to turn down work.

And Clare had to get back for the final year of her university course – a large part of me wanted to go with her, away from all of the crazy.

She’d been just so fucking fantastic, coming out here to support me. Yeah, the best friend a guy could have. I wanted to do something to show her how much I appreciated it – I just wasn’t sure what.

Although I had to admit, it was kind of hard to juggle having a girlfriend and a girl
friend
who hated each other. I mean, seriously – glaring, ignoring, cold-shouldering, and making all these bitchy, barbed comments. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t get on.

“What are you thinking?”

Lilia’s soft voice interrupted my thoughts. I hadn’t wanted to wake her, so I’d been lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for the last half hour.

“Hey, beautiful!”

I leaned over and kissed her shoulder. She had a thing about morning breath fucking 24/7. Maybe it sounds gross, but it didn’t bother me. I loved everything about her – well, except the way she treated Clare.

She ran her hand down my chest and tugged playfully at the sheet by my waist.

“So… what were you thinking about?”

Looking back, the smart thing would have been to lie.

“I was just thinking about Clare.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I could have cheerfully punched myself in the head.

“Oh!” she snapped, her eyes flashing dangerously. “Well, as you think about
her
so often, maybe you shouldn’t be here!”

“Um, we’re in my room, Lilia.”

Yeah, another wrong answer
.

“Fine!” she snarled. “I can fix that!”

I knew I had about two seconds to dig myself out of my newly dug crater before Lilia went postal.

The brain to mouth chain reaction hadn’t done me much good in the last ten seconds, so I didn’t risk speaking. Instead, I held her arm gently and leaned over, pressing her into the bed, showing her with my body reasons not to be mad at me.