Sinners (17 page)

‘The mechanics are fine,’ Woody said when they had got that far.

‘Yeah!’ Steve agreed. He was lying on top of Sunday and she could feel his thin hard body, and shivered in spite of herself. His lips had been insistent and demanding.

‘Now,’ Woody said, ‘I want you to keep holding her with one hand and edge the top down with the other. We’ll take it from the beginning and shoot.’

Steve smiled at her as he got up. ‘One take, huh?’

She smiled back at him. ‘I’ll try.’ She felt elated and excited in spite of herself. She knew Steve would be impressed with her body. She became unaware of the crew, Woody, everybody, and immersed herself in thinking only of Steve.

The scene started smoothly, but then Steve fluffed a line and Woody shouted, ‘Cut.’

They began again, the small Mexican clapper boy saying in his fractured English –
‘Cash
, scene 31. Take two.’

Everything went well. Steve started to kiss her and pull off her top. ‘Mamma mia!’ he muttered under his breath as he looked at her briefly, and then embraced her tightly.

His shirt was open and she felt a cool film of sweat between them. Her fingernails raked his back.

‘Cut,’ shouted Woody. ‘Cut,’ he repeated as they made no move to separate.

Steve drew slowly off her. She was breathing heavily and staring at him.

‘I think I just blew my insurance,’ he said.

Roundabout
was going well. The new script favoured Charlie, and even Angela Carter’s part had become minor in comparison.

He threw himself into his role completely, enjoying himself. He knew he was giving a good performance – the dailies told him that, and the way the crew laughed after certain scenes. It was notoriously hard to get any reaction from a crew. They were there to do their job and nothing ever moved them.

Angela and he were casually friendly. Since her break-up with Steve Magnum, she had started an affair with Cy: it occurred to her that professionally Cy was a much better bet. So she concentrated on playing her part effectively, and getting Cy to dump Emerald.

A rush of publicity resulted from Dindi joining the cast. The newspapers started to refer to her as film star Dindi Sydne or Mrs Charlie Brick. She posed for countless stills and enjoyed it all thoroughly.

On the screen she came over as surprisingly fresh and appealing, and Angela started complaining to Cy that her part was too big.

In a way Charlie was pleased, but it didn’t please him when reporters visited the set and took more interest in her than in him. After all, he was the star of the family.

Eventually he insisted that all reporters be banned, and a feud between him and the publicity department began. Dindi was on the publicity department’s side, and she and Charlie had a series of fights about his attitude. They also had fights about the money she was spending. And about Serafina and the children, who had been with them nearly a month.

Charlie complained that Dindi spent no time with them at all.
He
was busy at the studio every day, but
she
was only needed a couple of days a week, so she had plenty of time to spend with his family if she wanted to.

She
didn’t
want to. She loathed Serafina and thought the children a couple of brats.

Charlie was furious, especially because he had only agreed to her appearance in
Roundabout
so that she would be polite to his family. Secretly he tried to get her taken off the film, but that was one request he wasn’t granted. It was too late.

He fully realized now that he had married a tough, money-grabbing, ambitious female. Just the sort he had been running from.

One lunchtime he confessed his mistake to Clay.

‘I don’t know what to do, love, I don’t know what came over me. I must have been bloody mad. I don’t even fancy her any more.’

He didn’t tell Clay that the reason he no longer fancied her was because in a recent argument she had yelled at him, ‘You might be a good actor, but you’re a lousy lay.’ The remark had stayed with him. He was extremely sensitive about his sexual prowess.

Was he a lousy lay? Michelle Lomas hadn’t thought so.

He brooded on it and finally went to bed with a pretty extra, who assured him that he was ‘fantastic’.

Clay was embarrassed. He was in two minds whether to tell Charlie about Rome. He decided not. The marriage was floundering anyway and Charlie might be choked that he hadn’t mentioned it before.

Serafina had fortunately found herself a boyfriend. He was a gardener on the estate, a former character actor, about the same age as she was, and very charming. They made a colourful pair.

Charlie suggested that they went on the trip to Las Vegas which he had promised Serafina. She would be returning to London with the children in two weeks, and he wanted to be sure she enjoyed herself. He hired a private jet for the short journey.

Dindi was unenthusiastic about going, but it was either that or staying in Los Angeles with the children, so she agreed to go. It would only be a two-day trip, and perhaps she could fit in a little session with the George Raft-type manager.

Clay and Natalie came along, and Serafina’s friend, whose name was Morton, and whom Dindi had cruelly nicknamed Mortuary. She was especially furious that he was accompanying them. ‘A fuckin’ gardener, only your mother would pick a gardener!’ she moaned.

*    *    *

They stayed at the Forum, arriving early on Saturday morning.

Clay, Natalie and Charlie relaxed round the pool, while Serafina and Morton, armed with six hundred dollars given to them by Charlie, set off to try their luck at the tables.

Dindi complained she was tired and left to take a nap.

‘This is the life!’ Clay exclaimed, as a toga-clad redhead served him a giant Planters Punch beside the pool. ‘What a great place!’

‘Any place would be great for you where they have girls sticking their bottoms in your face,’ Natalie said tartly. She smiled at Charlie. ‘Coming for a swim?’

‘No, love, I’m just going to relax.’

Two women in multi-coloured flowered bathing-caps were arguing nearby. ‘It is him, Ethel, I know it is.’ ‘No, it’s not, he’s much
fatter
than that.’ ‘Ethel, I’m telling you it’s him.’ They stared pointedly at Charlie until the one called Ethel suddenly approached and said loudly, ‘Are you Charlie Brick?’

He lapsed into his Indian voice, ‘I’m very sorry, madam, but you are quite mistaken.’

Clay joined in and said, ‘This is the very famous Swahili poet, Señor Charles Bleakworth.’

‘Oh!’ The woman’s mouth dropped open. ‘I told my friend you weren’t anyone.’

The woman departed, leaving Charlie and Clay in fits of laughter. It was a game they had been playing for years, making up names, characters, confusing people. For a movie star, Charlie was very infrequently recognized – a fact that both disturbed and delighted him. He became so immersed in each role he played that he became that character on the screen and as each role was different, the real Charlie Brick became very hard to spot.

*    *    *

By lunchtime Charlie wondered if he should phone the room and wake Dindi.

‘I’ll get her,’ Natalie said, ‘I have to go upstairs anyway.’

‘We’ll find Serafina and meet you in the Orgy Room,’ Charlie said.

‘The
what
?’

‘It’s a restaurant, great food and near-naked waitresses.’

‘Oh, Clay will
love
that. I’ll see you there in about twenty minutes.’

*    *    *

‘She’s a great girl,’ Charlie remarked, watching Natalie’s slim figure out of sight. ‘You’re a lucky man.’

Clay laughed. ‘I suppose I am. You know it’s going to be seven years this month. Seven years!’

‘Lorna and I would have been married thirteen years this year. December’s our anniversary. December the fifth.’ He sighed. ‘You know, with all I’ve got now, the money, the fame, everything, all I really want is Lorna back.’

‘Oh come on, Charlie, it’s over, finished. She’s married to someone else now, and so are you. For Christ’s sake don’t keep thinking about her. You’ve got a world of cooze at your feet.’

‘Is that all you ever think about?’

Clay laughed. ‘Give me something better to think of. I’ve knocked off two beautiful little pieces since I’ve been here.’

It irritated Charlie when Clay talked about his sex life. It was a known fact that he was well hung, and the thought made Charlie extremely jealous. He always made a careful point of never going to bed with a girl with whom Clay had slept.

‘Doesn’t Natalie mind?’ he asked, thinking of the embarrassing scene he had had with her in London.

‘She doesn’t know,’ Clay protested, ‘just suspects sometimes. In fact, she only ever caught me once, and that was with the German au pair. Terrible fight. I told you about it, didn’t I? When she chased me bollock-naked into the garden and I fell in the pond?’

‘Yes.’ Charlie laughed, remembering the story well.

‘That German bit had the biggest pair of knockers I ever saw. It was Natalie’s fault for hiring her. She knows what I’m like about tits. By the way, while we’re on the subject, that friend of Dindi’s – Sunday Simmons – what wouldn’t I give for a piece of that!’

‘Hmm . . .’ Charlie thought about Sunday reflectively. He had thought about her several times since the party and decided that she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He remembered her eyes, strange browny-yellow tiger eyes.

‘I wonder if she fucks,’ Clay said.

‘They all do,’ Charlie replied shortly. ‘You offer them a job and they all do.’

*    *    *

Natalie went upstairs and changed into pants and a shirt. After lunch she thought she would try the hairdressers, she wanted to look particularly attractive for that evening. She knocked on Dindi’s door; they had adjoining suites. There was no reply.

Blast the little tart! She wasn’t about to go searching the hotel for her. The bitch would just have to miss lunch.

Natalie walked slowly to the elevator. Things were going well between her and Charlie. She had noticed the small intimate looks he kept giving her. She smiled to herself. It wouldn’t be long.

The elevator arrived and she stepped in. It was going up. A tall brunette in a short toga said, ‘You musta pressed the wrong button, people are always doing that. It’s a drag, you’ll have to come right to the top, and then it’ll stop at every floor down.’

The elevator zoomed silently up, finally stopping at the eighteenth floor. The girl in the toga got out, and two girls got in, pressing the hold button for another girl hurrying to join them.

Natalie, standing at the back of the elevator, saw Dindi emerge from a room with a good-looking dark-haired man. Then the elevator doors closed and she saw no more.

The girls were talking. ‘Well, he grabbed my thigh and I said, “Knock it off, jerk.” ’

‘Honestly, some guys have such a nerve.’

‘You can get black and blue just walking around here!’

‘Excuse me,’ Natalie said. ‘What’s on the eighteenth floor. Is it part of the hotel?’

The three girls all stared at her. ‘Offices,’ said one.

‘Steam room, staff rooms, management suites. Are you English?’ said another.

‘Yes.’

‘Charlie Brick’s staying here, you know,’ the third girl confided, ‘and Tom Jones came in here one night when he was playing Caesar’s. Hey, I’ve a cousin in a place called Leeds, maybe you know her? Her name’s Myrtle Long, she’s a model.’

‘No, I don’t know her.’ Natalie shook her head.

‘I
looove
English actors,’ the first girl said, ‘Roger Moore, Peter Sellers, Omar Sharif. Oh, boy!’

‘Omar Sharif’s not English,’ said the girl with the cousin, ‘he’s an Arab.’

‘Well, I dig Arabs too.’

Natalie smiled. Steam rooms, offices, staff rooms, management suites was definitely where Dindi must have been. She wondered with whom. But whoever it was, she planned to find out.

*    *    *

‘I think Dindi’s still sleeping,’ Natalie remarked, arriving for lunch.

Serafina scowled, furious at having been dragged away from the roulette wheel to eat. ‘That girl will sleep her life away. A truly fit person needs no more than six hours a night.’

Morton yawned, as if to confirm the fact that Serafina needed only six hours a night.

Clay was grinning at a statuesque lady, poised with pencil and pad, ready to take their order.

Charlie wished he were back at the house in Los Angeles quietly getting stoned. He didn’t feel social. It wasn’t right for him to be forced to spend an active weekend when he was working. He should be resting, studying his script. He wished he had brought George, instead of leaving him with the children.

‘What’s on for this afternoon?’ Clay asked.

‘I’m going to the hairdressers,’ Natalie announced.

‘Morton and I shall be returning to the tables,’ said Serafina. ‘The sun saps your vital energy and ruins your skin.’

‘I think I may sleep,’ Charlie said.

At that moment Dindi appeared, flushed and pretty. ‘Hi there. I thought this is where I’d find you. Charlie, sweetie, I’m doing stills this afternoon. Can I have some bread? I’ve seen some things I want to buy.’

‘Stills for what?’ Charlie asked, unaware that the studio had arranged anything for Dindi that weekend.

She pouted. ‘For a magazine.’

‘What magazine?’

‘Just some magazine, I don’t know.’

‘Well you had better know, otherwise just forget it.’

‘Forget it?’ Her blue eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean, forget it?’

Charlie realized the whole table was listening – Clay embarrassed, Serafina spiteful, Natalie sympathetic, Morton uninterested.

He smiled coldly. ‘Dindi, love, be a good girl and run along and find out what magazine it is. Now that you’re such an aspiring actress it wouldn’t do for you to appear in the wrong sort of publication.’

His voice was mild, but Dindi realized she had pushed too far. ‘OK, honeybunch,’ she said, tossing blonde curls. ‘See you later, gang.’ And she wriggled off in tight jersey slacks and cutoff sweater.

Charlie sighed. He didn’t want it and he didn’t need it. After the movie Dindi was out.