Star Struck (3 page)

Chapter Four

I jerked into a loose kind of wakefulness as the car drew up under a tree, dusty with leaves and ornamented with some kind of bird I didn't recognise. My limbs were dull and unresponsive, my attempts to sit up made me look like a cadaver being poked. ‘Wha'?'

‘This is it.' Felix's voice was edgy, excited. ‘This is the convention. Look at it, Skye, all the cars! And there's one of those great big van things, whatchacallems …'

‘Horse box.'

‘Winnebagos. Wow. How American. And look, there's one of the Shadow Fighter craft.'

Sleepily I turned my head until I could see the black triangular ship, parked incongruously on a trailer behind a Volkswagen Beetle. Its swept-back wings looked a little the worse for wear in the white sunlight and part of the paintwork had peeled off near the pilot's section, but that just added to the glamour in my eyes. It was
real
, it was
used
. It looked as though it genuinely had flown through the B'Ha sector with a Skeel warrior on its tail. Despite the Valium my heart beat a tiny bit faster.

Felix turned in his seat. ‘Okay, we're going to have to get out now, Skye. Take a deep breath, lover, it's not a long trip, I can see the foyer from here.'

I slumped back against the seat, unable even to rally the sense of terror I knew I should be feeling at the prospect of that overarching sky pressing onto my head. Felix opened the door and helped me to manoeuvre myself out onto the sandy concourse. ‘Here we go.'

The light burst upon me as the hot air hit. Air rattled into my lungs and yet the feeling of suffocation grew.

‘Look, I know you're Valiumed up to the hilt, but is there
any
chance that you can walk?' Felix panted, lugging my unresponsive body along the length of the car, propping me against the hot metalwork with blatant disregard for the potential for third-degree burns.

‘Can't … feel my … feet,' I mumbled, through numb lips. Life streamed past, dreamlike.

‘Oh, this is just bloody great. What am I going to do now, leave you here and hope that everyone thinks you're a really convincing special effect?'

The air blew across my face, incendiary-hot and laced with grit. I could barely summon the strength to blink. Slowly and inevitably my legs gave way and I slithered down the car's bodywork in a sweat-lubricated collapse, landing with my skirt bunched under my buttocks and my shirt rucked over my bare midriff. The smell of hot tyres made me feel slightly sick.

Footsteps approached, soft in the dust and I saw a pair of feet surrounded by the trailing hems of what looked like pyjama bottoms. ‘Hey. What's up?' The voice was unfamiliar. British. Northern English to be exact, the flat vowels reminding me of home. I tried to look up but could only waggle my head.

‘Just a little hitch, nothing to worry about.' Felix bent his head to my ear. ‘Skye, you might want to get up here, this guy is a definite twelve on the ten-point scale.'

‘She looks pretty out of it,' the considering voice went on. ‘You might have to carry her.'

‘What, with my back?' Felix stood up again. ‘We'll wait a minute; the drugs should be wearing off by now.'

‘Oh, right.' The voice softened, not quite as far as sympathy but definitely less brusque. ‘Not a good traveller then, your girlfriend?'

‘Girlfriend? Seriously?' Felix threw me a look. ‘Well, she's a friend, she's definitely a girl, but my God, if there was a wrong end of the stick award, you just took it.' Felix went into full camp mode. ‘I've had this all the way from England, d'you know she can't even
pee
unaided when she's like this?'

Er, hello, I wanted to say, you insisted that the tranquillisers would help … I didn't need them at home any more. Much.

‘Look, I'll give you a hand; it's too hot to leave her here.' And the next thing I knew I was being lifted and hurled across a bony shoulder, with my skirt pinging free from my buttocks to fall up around my waist leaving my knickers on display. If I'd been half-way capable I would have kicked and screamed, but the Valium was still jamming my system like an unfriendly radio-wave; I knew I was the subject of some indignity but couldn't do a damn thing about it.

As my head lolled onto the chest of my carrier I registered a rib cage under a thin T-shirt, lots of dark hair brushing against me, and I must have been hallucinating a little, because it looked to my slightly unfocused eyes as though there was half a broken pencil sticking out of his mouth.

‘This is very kind of you.' Felix was trotting alongside. I hoped it was his hand that pulled my skirt down to conceal my cheap chain-store briefs. ‘Very impressive, throwing her over your shoulder too. Very butch. I know she looks like there's nothing to her but, phew, she's got really dense bones, our Skye.'

Thanks, Fe, I thought, as the man dropped me unceremoniously into what felt like a leather armchair.

‘'S okay. She looked a bit uncomfortable out there on the ground.' A pause during which I tried to look up again, but couldn't get much more than an impressionistic view of various limbs and a patch of wall covering which gave the initial impression that Nevada motels were decorated by the state's trainee graffiti artists. ‘Anyhow. If you're here for the convention, I'll see you around.'

There was a short pause, during which my rescuer left and Felix took in our surroundings. I felt contained in the armchair and my breathing slowed. Fe started to giggle.

‘Wow, trust you to find the yummiest guy around to get carried by. Stay there, I'll check us in.'

I didn't enquire into the alternative to staying, bearing in mind that I had almost no control over my arms and my legs seemed to be made of fuzzy felt. I sprawled against the leather, head hanging over an arm and my hair pendulous in the heat. An upside-down view through the huge tinted window showed me a vast brown sky, overtopped by a vast brown plain. A couple of spectral mountains in the far distance looked like an enormous sway-backed old horse sketched against the sky and served to emphasise the immediate flatness. In my head Nevada = Las Vegas glitz, not that bottom-of-a-pond flat beigeness.

There were people moving around me, a general feeling of swirling humanity. Voices collided, accents clashed. All I could see though, from my position in the chair, was feet, and my drug-padded brain did its best to match intonation to shoe-culture. The drawl of the southern states seemed to marry up to several pairs of Kicker boots and one pair of flip-flop sandals standing near the window. The brittle English tones belonged to some polished brogues and high heels walking towards the door. Two pairs of bare Scandinavian-designate feet paddled briefly into vision and then out again, and an immaculate set of New York loafers hesitated beside me for an instant before meeting another, similar pair and disappearing from my field of view.

‘Okay, I got our key.'

Drugged as I was, I registered this. ‘One room?'

Felix's face swung into sharp focus. ‘By the time I'd got the tickets, this was all that was left. Don't sweat it, we can always take it in turns to use the bed. And –' he looked around and then lowered his voice – ‘hopes are that I'm going to get part-shares on a few other rooms, if you get my drift.' His voice went down another notch. ‘
Seriously tasty.
Bloody hell, Skye, why did we never come to the States sooner?'

‘Have you seen Gethryn?' Despite the brain-numbing, I was still conscious of why we'd come. Of why I'd left my comfort-zone so far behind that it wasn't even visible with binoculars. ‘Is he here?'

‘That's most likely his Winnebago out front there. But it doesn't look like he's hanging round the check-in, no.'

‘Oh.' I slumped further into the chair and my eyes closed. ‘Pro'ly should sleep.'

Felix sighed. ‘All right.' He jerked me upright and bundled me physically into a lift. After several goes the doors managed to close, everything jolted and jangled for a few moments and then the doors opened onto a grey-floored corridor, along which Felix half-dragged me by my elbows with my heels kicking little static sparks off the floor covering as I shuffled along beside him. We must have looked like room service for a shy serial killer. There was a moment of juggling as Felix tried to cope with my drooping form and the room key, which involved my being propped against the wall by my forehead like a roll of unwanted carpet, then we were in. As we entered I thought I heard Fe mutter quietly, ‘Got to get you fit for Friday.'

Fit? For what? But I hardly even had enough wakefulness for curiosity, and the feel of pliancy beneath my back as I dropped onto the bed drove any questions out of my head altogether.

Chapter Five

Wakefulness came suddenly. The room was awash with garish daylight, which streamed through the too-thin curtains and bounced off every surface like a toddler full of additives. The place seemed to be made of mirrors and edges. Judging by the silence and the immobility of the blanket-wrapped floor-blob that was Felix, it was early in the morning, but I'd even slept off the jet-lag and was now spread out under the remaining covers in the vast bed, wide awake. Not just awake either; there was an almost unrecognised tingling in my middle, a vague tugging sensation near my heart. I was actually
excited
. I lay still for a moment, realising how much I'd missed these everyday feelings then, careful not to wake Fe, I padded over to the window and threw open the flimsy curtains, alert for my first real view of Nevada desert beyond the windows.

Alas, this last available room in the motel had still been available for a reason. The view from our first-floor window was a small yard, bounded on three sides by off-shoots of the motel and partially haunted by a rangy yellow dog which wandered in and out of vision, nosing the dusty ground. Tucked behind what was obviously the kitchen wing I could see the tops of a couple of dumpsters, and the slumped landscape I'd noticed the night before was reduced by the buildings to a taupe hillside. Even so I felt the fizz of anticipation rise. I was here, I'd done it – this was America! Somewhere, out there, beyond those bins and dog turds, was Gethryn Tudor-Morgan, and beyond that … I gave a little shudder. Since the accident I'd lost my love for boundless horizons; those things that had once seemed full of promise and exhilaration now held the unknown and unfamiliar and the possibility of sudden screaming.

Cautiously I opened the window and pushed my head out. The air smelled strange. Not badly strange, just different. At home the air smelled of diesel fumes from the ring-road, the zippy scent of pine from the trees opposite the window and sometimes, when the wind was coming from the north, of heather and wildness from the moors. Here the air smelled dry, spicy. And slightly ‘off', but that was probably the dumpsters.

Two Hispanic boys came arguing out from a doorway, aprons tied around slim waists. I watched eagerly. It made a change from ogling Mr Harrison next-door-but-one coming home from his teaching job with his jacket off. These two were shouting Spanish obscenities, all waving fists and sleek hair, until they'd fought their way into the shade of the wall under my window, where they made up with a deep kiss and went back inside, arm-in-arm and laughing. I pushed down the inevitable needle of pain that wormed its way under my ribs.
Michael and I had been like that, once. Fighting and making up, loving and laughing. Michael …
A sudden image flowed into my head, a man, tall and blond standing in a doorway. It was so much like a memory that, for a second, I almost thought … but then I realised I was thinking of a photograph that Felix had shown me. A second-hand memory. All there was. All that was left of our love.

Tears kissed against my cheek and I swiped them away angrily. Except for the brain damage and stress-related panic attacks, I'd got over the whole thing marvellously. Everyone said so. Even as their eyes traced the scars, they agreed that I'd done amazingly well …

‘Leave your fingers alone.' The sleepy voice rose from the middle of the rolled-up bedcover.

‘Sorry.'

‘What are you doing anyway, hanging out of the window and thinking about the past?' Fe snuffled his way forward to grab his phone. ‘Jesus Christ, it's six a.m., Skye! Get some more sleep.' There was a waft of fusty sleep-warmed air as he turned over. ‘Things'll kick off soon enough.'

‘Mm, maybe.' But I had no intention of sleeping. The curiously gold sky beyond the window enthralled me, the warm scents in the air were shouting to me of exotic life going on where I couldn't see it. There was a weird unreality about this pebble-dashed dawn. Like this whole trip was a vision or a play, that the world outside was just a stage set. Nevada, with its completely fantastical landscape, beckoned to me like a carnival stallholder and, for the first time since the accident, I actually wanted to see what was happening outside.

I dressed in the little bathroom. Felix must have brought the cases up after undressing me last night, which I knew I hadn't done myself because I wouldn't have left my bra on. Thank heavens he still had some sense of decency left. Then, cautiously aware that it had been a long time since I'd ventured anywhere strange alone, I took a deep breath and tiptoed out of the room. I found my way down a flight of stairs and out of an unlocked side-door into the emptiness of the day.

The air hit me like a missile. All my pride at my new confidence evaporated and I crouched as the hugeness of the outdoors crashed against me, raging and worrying its way inside my head, making my heart knock against my ribs and my breath sting inside my mouth.
This wasn't home
. Everything was new, and the newness threw itself against me, filled with unpredictability, like a dog that appeared friendly but might at any time turn and bite, and I knew I couldn't do it. Couldn't face this new strangeness; I'd been stupid even to think that I might.
Stupid, stupid Skye …
As I began backing my way towards the safety of the building, the door behind me swung open again, catching me with its leading edge and sending me flying down into the gravelly dust of the pathway.

‘Oh, bollocks!' The voice of the person who had so carelessly flung open the door sounded annoyed rather than apologetic. ‘What the hell is anyone doing out here at this time in the morning?'

The shock and indignation counteracted the panic, drove back the stress-demons and shrank the world to a manageable size. The sky stopped its assault and I could breathe properly, so I made the most of it and scrambled to my feet, brushing my knees with my hands ostentatiously. ‘Don't mention it,' I said, wheezing slightly as the panic abated. ‘No, really, I'm fine. Hardly any arteries severed.'

I was unsurprised, given the English accent, to find myself grinding my teeth at yesterday's rescuer, a man who had had a closer view of my knickers than any man I wasn't sleeping with. Now I was finally getting a proper look at him, I suspected that my knickers were the closest he'd ever come to female underwear, unless he was a secret transvestite. He didn't, to put it plainly, look like a man who got on with women.

He didn't look like a man who got on with
people
.

It wasn't as though he was ugly. Oh no. Not ugly at all. In fact, on first glance you might even call him obliquely handsome. Hair slightly too long, eyes very dark in a lean, frowning face, shoulders which stooped as though his nose was somehow invisibly connected to the floor; he looked like a beautiful man that someone had rubbed with worry until his edges blurred. It was his expression that made him look so disagreeable. As well as pyjama bottoms and a long shirt, he wore a scowl that instantly made the infinity of outdoors seem not enough space to get away from him in. He was scowling so hard that his eyes were down to slits and his mouth was twisted
and
pursed in a feat of gurning I'd never seen bettered.

He surprised me by muttering ‘yeah, sorry', but then went right back to reinforcing my prejudice against him by flopping down onto a raised planter and extending his scowl to include it. The bed contained a desiccated-looking bush and some brittle earth, and his expression was so irritable that I was slightly surprised nothing burst into flames. He stretched out his legs in front of him, revealing a grubby pair of bare feet, and fumbled in a pocket, relaxing his mouth enough to clamp the resultant cigarette between his lips and then swearing around it until he found a lighter.

The presence of another body helped me feel less like the scenery was on some personal attack mission. My muscles began to slacken and my breathing eased into a regular rhythm as I took a large lungful of the desert air. It smelled primarily of tarmac from the road that ran about fifty yards from us, occupied only by the occasional sticky swish of overheated rubber as a car passed or turned into one of the parking spaces that were ranged along the white painted sides of the hotel. Great. All the way to Nevada and it smelled like a warm afternoon on the York by-pass. I sneaked a sidelong look at the man lounging against the planter and found that he was looking at me.

‘What's the story?' He blew a ribbon of smoke from the corner of his mouth and chewed at his lip. ‘You part of this circus?' A filter-tip waved to indicate the banner stretched taut across the front entrance ‘Broken Hill Motel welcomes Fallen Skis Fans!!'

I stared. ‘Spelling mistake
and
dodgy punctuation?'

A grudging inclination of the head. ‘Guess we'd better watch out for those fallen skis. Could be bloody dangerous.'

The first hint of a sense of humour encouraged me. ‘I came because … well, Felix made me.'

‘You're not a fan then.' Another stream of smoke billowed out like a speech bubble.

‘Oh, no, I am! A huge fan, I mean, I've got all the DVDs and the books and I'm a member of the forum and everything. I even –' half-embarrassed I looked down at my feet kicking little piles of stones into order – ‘I'm teaching myself to speak B'Ha.'

‘Good for you.' Whether or not he meant to be condescending I couldn't tell, his face refused to reveal anything. But at least he'd stopped frowning. ‘What was all that, yesterday? Not being able to walk?'

‘Oh, nothing. Just – stupid. Valium. I … I have these weird panic attacks sometimes. When I'm stressed.' I felt myself blushing, as though I was admitting to something perverted. ‘Felix thought … I don't take it much any more,' and even I heard the words as justification. ‘Stupid,' I repeated.

He turned those dark eyes my way. ‘Hey.' The glowing cigarette tip described a series of tiny circles as his gaze flickered from me to it and back again. ‘We all have our crutches.'

‘I'm not an addict,' I found myself forced to add. ‘It was just to help with the travelling and being in strange places and everything.'

‘Okay.'

‘How about you?' I was getting no sense that he was enjoying our staccato conversation but I wanted to keep it going, for some reason which escaped me. Perhaps I just wanted him to distract me from the fact that I was thousands of miles from home. His long Yorkshire vowels could have come from next-door. ‘Are you with the show?'

Now he wasn't looking at me any more, his eyes had found the distant horizon beyond the car park and were scanning up and down the pencil-lines of the mountains as though he was waiting for some kind of sign. ‘Me? Oh, yeah, I'm “with the show”.' A deep sigh that made the smoke trail stutter. ‘But, hey, it pays the bills.' Then his gaze came back, scanning my face. I watched his eyes trace the line that vanished up under my, necessarily over-long, fringe. ‘What happened?'

‘What do you mean?' My mouth had gone dry. I should have been used to it by now, but nowadays fewer people mentioned it and I'd managed to kid myself that it wasn't as noticeable.

‘The scar. On your face.'

My hand came up and I slid a fingertip along the raised weal which ran from the top of my cheekbone, around my eye, through the brow to hide beneath my hair. It was an unconscious movement; I was only aware I was doing it when I saw him make a twisted-mouth face again. ‘I was in a car smash.'

His eyes darkened. ‘How long ago?'

‘Eighteen months. Well, nearly two years now.' I dropped my hand. Watched him reach out, almost as though he was going to touch my face, but instead he wove his hand through his own hair, hooking swathes of it back.

‘Anyone hurt?'

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Uh, yes. Me.' I pointed again at my forehead.

A half-smile around the cigarette. ‘I meant, anyone else.'

I closed my eyes. Felt the ghosts. ‘My best friend. And my fiancé. They died.'

I kept my eyes shut, waiting for the platitudes, but none came. The man said nothing. From the sounds of it he was lighting another cigarette. When I finally pushed the most overwhelming of the emotions back underground and opened my eyes again, he was staring at the dust. The still-glowing tip of his previous smoke lay beside his bare feet, but he didn't seem to be looking at that, instead his eyes flickered as though he was reading his own thoughts. After a few seconds he shook his head, glanced at me quickly, and rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. Held out his forearm to me. It was criss-crossed with pin-prick scars regularly spaced around the elbow, as though his arm was attached with flesh nails.

‘Snap,' he said.