The Truth about My Success (3 page)

“Right. Right. I should’ve realized.” Abbot nods. “It’s just that I was texting and you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry, Dad. I left my phone here.” She makes it sound as if it was an accident, but in fact Oona always leaves her phone at home unless she’s at work or at school – somewhere that keeps her away most of the day and where Abbot knows he can only call in a real emergency – or he’d be texting constantly to make sure she’s all right.

“You should try never to forget it.” This is something Abbot says at least once a day. “I know you were only outside, but things can happen, Oona. You know that. People get killed just taking a shower.”

“You want me to bring my cell into the shower with me?” teases Oona.

Once upon a time, that would have made him laugh, but he doesn’t laugh now. “Of course not, honey. I’d hear you if you fell.”

Unlike Mrs Figueroa, Abbot Ginness is not a warrior. He lives firmly on his knees, though he wasn’t always like this. He used to go to work and ride in cars and walk up streets and run down stairs and take showers and laugh and sing and have dreams and never think about what disaster was huddled around the corner, waiting to jump him. Until his wife got sick with a cancer. She was only in her early thirties. The doctors got rid of that cancer, but then she got another. And then another. And another after that. That was when he stopped praying.

The bills mounted. Abbot was trying to work and look after Lorna and look after Oona, but he couldn’t keep up. Lorna’s death didn’t make anything easier. He had debts he could only pay if he were a gambler on a serious winning streak or a criminal. He was too depressed to go to work most days, and when he did go he just messed up. The job went, then the house went. He and Oona and Harriet wound up living in his truck. And now here he is, so defeated he thinks that the world is trying to destroy him; so terrified of all the bad things that could happen that he can barely leave the house. And so worried about losing his daughter that he’d be happy if Oona never had to step outside their front door.

“Anyway,” says Oona, “I did all the Saturday chores, so unless somebody locks themselves out or knocks out the power there shouldn’t be anything you have to do. I’ll bring the cans in when I get home.”

His eyes are back on the screen. “Thanks, honey. That’s great.”

“You not going to get dressed today?”

“No. No, not today. I think I’ll just stay in today. Stay here.”

When he’s OK, she tries to get him to at least step outside because she read that sunshine is good for depression. But when he’s like this it’s better to keep him inside. The sun may shine the blues away, but it also shines on the liquor store down the road. The last thing he needs is a drink. Even one beer will make him cry.

“Right. You take it easy. I’ll make a sandwich for your lunch and leave it in the fridge.”

“You don’t have to do that,” says Abbot. “I can fix myself something.”

But he probably won’t.

Oona makes him a sandwich and leaves out a packet of crisps and a tin of soup. Then she changes her clothes and puts Harriet in her backpack. She always takes Harriet to work with her. Brightman, the manager, lets Harriet stay in his office, and all the staff take turns walking her during their breaks. If Oona left Harriet at home she’d never get walked; and she’d be lonely with only Abbot and daytime television for company.

When she’s ready Oona goes back to the living room and gives Abbot a hug. “OK, Dad, I’ll see you later.”

He looks up at her. “You’re going already?”

“’Fraid so. It’s Saturday, Dad. My shift starts at eleven.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go,” says Abbot. “As soon as I get back on my feet—”

“As soon as you do, I’ll quit the job,” Oona quickly agrees. This is something else Abbot says fairly frequently. “But for now I need it.” Weekends during school; at least five shifts a week in the summer. She saves every penny she can for college. Oona has plans.

Behind Abbot’s head twin sisters who were separated at birth and have just been reunited in front of the entire nation after fifty years are crying. Abbot looks as if he may cry, too.

“I just wish—”

“I really have to get going, Dad. The bus—”

“I know, it’s a long ride. But you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

“You just rest,” urges Oona. “I’ll be home before you know it.”

“No you won’t,” says Abbot.

Jack
has called an emergency meeting of the Dependents of Paloma Rose. Which means him and Leone, since Arthur, apparently, is still at last night’s dinner. As far as Jack Silk is concerned, a heart-to-heart with Leone gives him no more pleasure than having a tooth pulled, but he has no choice. He may have lost sight of the ball for a while, but now that his eyes are locked on it he can see the clawed foot of Disaster trying to kick it out of his way.

They meet at Ferlinghetti’s late in the afternoon. Ferlinghetti’s is designed to look like a beatnik coffee house in the 1950s. The chairs and tables are all mismatched, the walls are covered in yellowed newspapers and old book jackets, the floorboards are scrubbed but worn. The lighting’s so low that the room is dark and shadowy, and though public smoking is, of course, no longer allowed, it feels as though clouds of smoke are drifting past the tables.

Leone sits down as if she expects the chair to collapse. “I don’t know why we had to come here,” she complains. “I feel like somebody’s going to start reading some depressing poem about foot fungus in a minute.” Leone likes cutting-edge modern – and astronomically expensive. Places where the customers who aren’t celebrities are only there to see the ones who are. “Why couldn’t we go to Funky Monkey or Z? They have coffee.”

“I like it here,” says Jack. “It’s quiet. A good place to talk.” He’s passed Ferlinghetti’s a couple of times, but he’s never been in here before, either. Which is why he chose it. If they went somewhere Leone wanted to go she’d run into at least a dozen people she knows, and then the only conversation they’d have would be hello and goodbye.

“It makes me itch,” says Leone.

“You can take a shower when you get home.” Jack hands her one of the menus stuck between the sugar bowl and the salt and pepper. It’s stained. “Let’s just get the ordering over with so we can discuss the matter at hand.”

Leone is as enthusiastic about discussing the matter at hand as she is about being in Ferlinghetti’s, and starts prattling on with talk so small it’s like a dust cloud, obscuring everything. By the time the waitress comes over neither of them has more than glanced at the menu.

“What do you recommend?” Jack isn’t hungry, but he doesn’t want this to be a quick cup of coffee and go.

The young girl with the order pad is dressed more like a pallbearer than a waitress, but she has a nice smile. “Well…” Her eyes move from Jack’s face to his suit, to the gold rings on his fingers and the clear polish on his nails. Leone might be fooled, but she knows he’s never been here before. She leans towards him conspiratorially. “You’re pretty safe with the
On the Road
all-day breakfast. The home fries are epic.”

“
On the Road
it is.” He shuts his menu, still looking at the waitress. There’s something about her… He almost feels that he knows her. No, that’s not it. He feels as if he should. Maybe it’s just that she seems like a good kid. Pleasant. Uncomplicated. Unlikely to sling an egg your way.
Simpática
, as Maria Trudenco would say. And she does have a nice smile. “How’s the coffee?”

“It’s really good.”

“Right. Then I’ll have a large Americano. Soy milk, no sugar.”

The girl turns her smile on Leone. “And for you?”

She might as well have stuck out her tongue. Giving the impression that she is only here because her companion has a gun on her, Leone shoves the menu away from her with the very tip of a fingernail. “Just a double espresso. And make sure the cup’s clean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says the waitress. Though that isn’t what she mutters under her breath.

Their order comes, the waitress goes, and Jack says, “Right. So now, if it’s not too much trouble, Leone, how bad is it? What exactly is going on?”

Leone stirs the tiny spoon around and around in the tiny cup. “I would’ve said something, but I didn’t want to worry you, Jack. I know you have enough on your plate.”

“You’re all heart.” It wasn’t the extraordinary talent and beauty of the infant Susan Minnick that made Jack take her on as a client. It was the extraordinary determination and single-mindedness of her mother. She was going to make her daughter a star or kill them both in the attempt. She has about as much heart as a machete. “So how bad is it?”

Leone switches on a smile. “Not that bad.”

“I’ll repeat my question, shall I? What’s going on?”

“Oh, you know…”

“If I did, Leone, I wouldn’t be asking.”

She finally stops stirring. Very carefully, Leone places her spoon on her saucer. “Well she has been acting up a little lately.” Staying out to all hours. Disappearing for whole days. More photos turning up on the Internet. Nothing really scandalous, just slightly provocative in underwear and bikinis. “No worse than your average magazine ad,” promises Leone. She doesn’t mention the one of Paloma on the Mad Tea Party ride at Disneyland, wearing mouse ears and swinging her T-shirt over her head.

She does leave out one or two minor things – how she had to stop Paloma’s credit cards because she kept maxing them out, and the money that’s gone missing from her bag since she stopped those cards, and Paloma coming home so drunk she either passed out or threw up before she could get to her room – but otherwise does a reasonable if reluctant job of catching him up with the life and times of Paloma Rose, including the final weeks of shooting the last series when she stormed off the set at least once a day (which he’ll eventually hear about anyway) and the new, non-mother-approved clothes she sneaks out in (which sooner or later he’s bound to see).

“So that’s it,” she says when she’s given her version of this morning’s scene with the egg. “Now you know the whole pathetic truth.” And she laughs in that way she has that always reminds Jack Silk of funeral bells:
bring out your dead
…

“This is the beginning of the end.” Jack closes his eyes, but when he opens them Leone is still sitting across from him with her smile like a replica watch and the spectre of Paloma is behind her, wearing very little and sulking. “You know that, right Leone? The beginning of the end. The glory days are just about over.”

The whole pathetic truth is, of course, even worse than he feared. Matter-of-fact as Leone’s account has been, he can read between the lines. Hollywood can be very forgiving, but its forgiveness is in direct proportion to how much you’re worth. Unless you’re seen as a tragic genius, of course. Paloma’s value isn’t limitless. There are thousands of girls who are just as pretty and just as good at memorizing their lines and delivering them who would be only too happy to take her place. The business and people’s memory being what it is, Paloma would be forgotten in a month. And as for genius; the only claim she has to genius is the genius of pissing everybody off. Nonetheless, she’s creating a mountain of offences for which she’ll need to be forgiven. Not only has Paloma alienated everyone connected with
Angel in the House
– cast and crew, cleaners, make-up, security and the passing visitor – but during the break between seasons she’s been disappearing with such skill and such frequency that it’s a wonder she hasn’t been asked to join the Magic Circle. He doesn’t even want to think about the pictures. Or where it is she goes when she stays out all night. Or with whom. What if she gets pregnant? What if she runs away with some guy who makes Seth Drachman look like Prince Charming?

“Oh come on, Jack,” coaxes Leone. “Don’t be such a gloom goon. Look at the stuff other actors do. This is nothing. I mean, let’s be real here. It’s not like she’s been arrested or anything.”

“Not yet. Thanks to me.” It was he who kept the lid on things when she drove into that fence.

Leone doesn’t like to think about the fence, and so she doesn’t. “And she only throws things at me.”

“Stop trying to cheer me up.” One day you’re throwing a fried egg at your mother, and the next you’re throwing your phone at the maid. “It’s not going to work.”

“I’m only saying—”

“What about the drinking?” asks Jack. “How bad is the drinking?”

Leone shrugs. “Not that bad.”

“Not that bad,” Jack repeats. “I’ll take that as a not that good. She’s following in her father’s wobbly footsteps. She gets totally blotto and vomits in the hall.” He taps his fork against the table. “Smoking?”

“I don’t know, Jack. She uses mouthwash.”

“And what about drugs?”

“She’s only sixteen.”

“Drew Barrymore. Tatum O’Neal.” Jack can feel his blood pressure rising. He’s going to get palpitations for sure. And the tic. The tic will be coming back. He’ll be living on the street with palpitations and his eye blinking like a hazard light. “You want me to keep going? Bring the list up to date?”

“I don’t think so,” Leone shakes her head. “No, I don’t think she’s into drugs. She’s just being a spoiled brat.”

Spoiled brat is putting it mildly, if you ask Jack Silk. She’s as spoiled as a Chinese Emperor. It amazes him that Paloma isn’t dizzy all the time, considering how she thinks the entire world revolves around her.

“At least that’s not putting a strain on her acting talent,” says Jack.

Leone taps the spoon against her empty espresso cup. “It’s not that big a deal, Jack. It’s just a phase.”

Just a phase. Jack sighs. He’s had three clients in the last five years who phased themselves into oblivion. He can’t afford to lose another one. Jack Silk was a very big deal yesterday; tomorrow he may be no deal at all.

“Leone, have you replaced your brains with Styrofoam? Don’t you get it? The ratings are down. The sponsors are backing out the door. The network may not renew. Paloma doesn’t have the luxury of having a phase. By the time it’s over she’ll be a has-been.”

“Oh, Jack, I thi—”