Authors: Alexandra Potter
‘Dorian?’
His name escaped from her lips just as Rita arrived with Matt, muddied and breathless. She cast a startled look at Frankie and then back at Dorian. Nobody spoke. Instead they stood huddled together, Matt and Rita with their arms twined around each other, Reilly and Frankie awkwardly apart, staring as Dorian was suddenly lit up in a pool of light from the helicopter beam. With his wrists handcuffed behind his back, he was being pushed roughly up the stairs, like a prisoner to the gallows. Flailing, he turned round, desperately searching for help, and looked directly at them. His expression was one of sheer terror. But he couldn’t see his friends, blinded as he was by the searchlights. And turning away he stumbled forward, disappearing from view through the trellised archway to the waiting cop cars beyond.
30
They drove back from Beverly Hills Police Headquarters in silence. Reilly hunched grimly behind the wheel, Frankie slumped next to him, eyes closed, face tilted towards an opened window, while squeezed in the back, among a dismantled barbecue, camera equipment and piles of old newspapers, cuddled Rita and Matt.
The party spirit had long gone. They’d just spent over two hours with the LAPD trying to find out what was happening to Dorian. It had been a waste of time, one of those red tape, jobsworth situations, being passed from officer to sergeant and then back to the clerk at the front desk. Not being blood relatives they were treated suspiciously, as if they were guilty accomplices, and curtly informed that although as yet no charges had been made against Mr Dorian Wildes, he was being held in the cells overnight. Which, reading between the lines, was the same place they were going to end up if they didn’t stop asking questions.
‘Poor Dorian,’ murmured Rita. ‘Having to spend the night in there.’ She knew he was used to his super-sprung, extra-soft mattress, goose-down duvet and faux-fur eiderdown. A glass of mineral water by his bedside and aromatherapy candles to gently ease him to sleep. A concrete cell would kill him. ‘What do you think’s going to happen to him?’ She leaned forward, speaking louder to make herself heard above the noise of the truck.
‘I don’t know.’ Reilly shook his head, his eyes never leaving the road. ‘I really don’t know.’ He repeated it quietly, as if he were speaking to himself, his face creased with worry.
A few minutes later they turned into Rita’s drive. Pulling up behind her Thunderbird, Reilly kept the engine running while Frankie climbed out first. As the Bronco was only a two-door, she needed to pull the front seat forward for the two lovebirds in the back.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ Rita said, clambering out, still managing to hold tightly on to Matt. Without waiting for Frankie, they began sauntering up the driveway together, arms around waists, wrapped up in a blanket of lust and anticipation.
Frankie let them go. Her hangover was beginning to kick in and she felt like shit. Tonight she could do without having to sleep on the sofa with a pillow over her head, trying to block out the sounds that would no doubt be coming from Rita’s bedroom. After sharing a flat with her for over five years, she’d been privy to Rita’s vociferous dirty talk and ear-splitting orgasmic howls more times than she cared to remember.
Glad of the cool night breeze, she leaned against the opened passenger door and glanced at Reilly. Apart from a few words at the party, they hadn’t spoken all evening and she groped around for something to say, aware of the seconds trickling like coloured sand through an egg timer.
‘So, what’s with your roommate and the surfer?’ Reilly spoke first.
‘She met him a couple of weeks ago,’ Frankie relaxed, relieved the ice was broken. ‘She’s in love.’
‘Yeah?’
Frankie nodded. Why were they making small talk about Rita and Matt? It was two in the morning and their relationship was the last thing she wanted to talk about. But then again, it was much easier and a lot less awkward than talking about themselves. ‘It’s great for Rita, but not so great for me, seeing as I get to spend another night on the sofa.’ As soon as she’d said that, she wished she hadn’t. Sad, lonely and desperate wasn’t the kind of image she wanted to convey.
‘Are you telling me you guys share a bed?’
Frankie smiled self-consciously, realising she’d just provided him with every man’s fantasy.
‘It’s a one-bedroom apartment,’ she explained. ‘We don’t have much choice.’
Resting his arms on the steering wheel, Reilly turned away and stared ahead out of the windscreen. After a moment he spoke. ‘Look, I don’t know if you’re interested, but there’s always a spare bed at my place . . .’ His voice tailed off uncertainly.
Surprised by his offer, Frankie hesitated. ‘Won’t Chrissy mind?’ Her name was the first thing that sprang to mind. Immediately she regretted mentioning it.
Reilly’s face wrinkled into a frown. ‘Chrissy?’ He ran the flat of his palm across his stubble. ‘Who’s Chrissy?’
Frankie felt a creeping embarrassment. ‘The girl I saw you with at Malibu. Dorian said he’d invited you and her to the party and I just assumed . . .’ She faltered, realising that nobody had actually said Chrissy was Reilly’s girlfriend. As usual she’d just put two and two together and come to about a hundred and fifty.
Noticing his cigarette had burned down to the filter, Reilly tossed it out of the window and, flicking open the lid of an old Zippo, lit up another one. Inhaling, he leaned back against his seat, shaking his head. ‘Dorian is one helluva matchmaker,’ he muttered, a faint smile on his lips. Turning sideways, he looked straight at Frankie. ‘I’ve met her once, the day I saw you. To be honest I didn’t even remember her name.’
‘Oh.’ His gaze was unnerving and she stared down at her hand, still grasping the door handle, and began fiddling with the bracelet on her wrist. She felt a mixture of relief, satisfaction, excitement. And embarrassment that she now looked like the jealous female.
‘But then, it’s not as memorable a name as Carter Mansfield, is it?’ added Reilly after a pause. ‘That’s one you’ll never forget.’
His sarcasm wasn’t lost on Frankie, who looked up. ‘No, but it’s not one you want to remember either, is it?’
‘Isn’t it? You both looked pretty close before I interrupted.’ Now Reilly was the one sounding jealous.
Frankie was surprised. But even more so by her reaction. She was flattered that he was jealous. Pleased. ‘Thank God you did interrupt. If you hadn’t I might have been arrested with the creep.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Why not? Dorian was.’
Taking a long drag from his cigarette, Reilly stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray, grinding the embers against the blackened filters of dried-out stubs. ‘Dorian was arrested because the cops had a tip-off someone was dealing drugs at the party.’ He spoke quietly, his voice barely audible over the engine. ‘They were waiting outside the gates when I arrived. I overheard a couple of them talking about it.’
‘It was probably Carter Mansfield.’
‘C’mon, Frankie. A multi-millionaire film star?’ Agitated, he ran his fingers through his dishevelled hair. ‘I’m sure the guy’s not impartial to a few lines of coke, but the only drug dealing he’s ever done has been in those God awful movies of his.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t him, who was it?’
He ran his teeth over his bottom lip and didn’t say anything. Frankie translated his silence as an admission of guilt.
‘
You?
’
‘Hell, no, what do you take me for?’
‘Well, who then?’ She was confused, and beginning to get exasperated. It was too late to start playing Guess Who’s the Drug Dealer.
Reilly released a deep sigh. ‘I think they were looking for Dorian.’
‘
Dorian?
’ she gasped, looking around in the darkness as if worried somebody might be listening in the shrubbery. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You’re saying it was Dorian?’ Frankie couldn’t believe it. This was like a storyline straight out of one of Carter Mansfield’s films. It would never have happened in Fulham. ‘You’re telling me he’s a drug dealer?’ Suddenly it all fell into place. Mobile phones constantly ringing, endlessly driving around meeting people ‘for a coffee’, his bulging wallet full of cash, the silver attaché case which never parted company from his wrist. No wonder he was Mr Popular at parties, and invited to every celebrity bash in town.
‘It’s not like it sounds. He’s not into the hard stuff, it’s mainly pot.’
Frankie looked blank.
‘You know, marijuana.’
‘I know what pot is,’ snapped Frankie. ‘I have been a student.’
Reilly looked out of the window, the muscle in his jaw twitching.
Regretting her irritability, Frankie tried to appear casual. ‘Where does he get it all from?’
‘He grows it.’
There was a pause. ‘Don’t tell me. On his balcony.’ Frankie suddenly experienced a flashback. One of her, taken from over the last fortnight, lovingly watering his plants.
His marijuana plants
. Christ, she was an accomplice . . .
Eventually, Reilly sighed. ‘It’s been a long day. I better be heading back as I’ve got an early start tomorrow. I’m flying down to Mexico for a couple of weeks. Work, not a holiday.’ He caught her expression. ‘I would have asked you along to assist, but it’s a big advertising shoot and I needed someone with experience.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ But she couldn’t hide her disappointment.
Fiddling with the frayed ends of the woven bracelet on his wrist, Reilly debated whether or not to repeat his offer of a place to sleep. If he did she’d probably think he was coming on to her and tell him to get lost. But if he didn’t this could be the last time he saw her. What had he got to lose? ‘The offer’s still open about the spare room.’
Frankie hesitated. It reminded her of that old Clash song, ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ Normally she would have said no, but she wasn’t feeling normal. Not after the kind of night she’d had. As she deliberated, a gust of wind blew across the bonnet of the Bronco, wafting echoes of laughter and over-enthusiastic shrieks from the apartment. Frankie glanced at Reilly and they both couldn’t help smiling. As always, Rita was right on cue.
Without needing to say anything, she jumped back inside the Bronco, slamming the door as Reilly revved the engine. Leaning back over his seat, one hand on the wheel, he began reversing out of the drive. Frankie watched him, letting her eyes navigate the familiar contours of his face: the fine lines criss-crossed underneath his eyes, a sharp crease etched down the middle of his forehead – a result of frowning too much, dappled freckles on the bridge of his nose which were almost indiscernible underneath his tan. It reminded her of the first time she’d ever looked at him, on the flight to LA. Back then he’d been a stranger, someone who’d annoyed the hell out of her, someone she’d hoped she’d never see again. It was ironic to think that after everything that had happened, she was sitting next to him, looking at his face once more. Except this time she was seeing a completely different person.
‘It’s nice to see you again, Reilly.’ She couldn’t help herself.
For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard her, as he didn’t say anything.
Because he couldn’t.
Frankie’s words might have been softly spoken, but each one was ringing loudly in his ears. On paper it didn’t sound like any big deal; after all, it wasn’t as if she’d just declared her undying love. But he knew there was a lot more significance attached to those words than just a casual ‘Nice to see ya’. It was the first time she’d admitted he meant anything to her. The first time he felt she cared about him.
Putting the car into gear, he turned back to face her, looking straight into her eyes. ‘It’s nice to see you too, Frankie.’
They stared at each other. Neither said anything. Neither had to. Finally Reilly looked away and, putting his foot down, accelerated towards Laurel Canyon and into the headlight-flecked darkness ahead.
31
Reilly’s house was perched at the top of a narrow winding street and could be reached only by a steep climb, along a path splattered with ripe figs from the overhanging trees and through an overgrown garden with a bleached-out hammock strung across the veranda. Judging by his truck, Frankie had been expecting an untidy bachelor pad – a poky apartment littered with dirty washing, a week’s worth of take-out cartons, a sink full of encrusted coffee cups – but it wasn’t anything like that. For a start it was tidy.
‘The cleaner’s just been,’ he admitted sheepishly, turning on a lamp as she followed him into the vaulted living room.
Frankie looked around. There were two large old velvet sofas, worn almost bald in patches and faded from the sun, a sprawling bookcase stuffed full of books and CDs, none of which seemed to be in their cases, and a low wooden table that bore the marks of a thousand cups of coffee, red wine, olive oil. The place had a good feel to it. A real fireplace stood in the centre of the far wall, with its blackened brickwork and mantelshelf cluttered with knick-knacks picked up from travels abroad – a piece of driftwood, a carved African statue with a broken spear, a toy propeller plane made from a Budweiser can, a silver photograph frame from Mexico laid on its side.
Frankie picked it up. The glass had fallen out, or broken, but there was still a photograph inside. She held it up to the lamp to get a better look. It was a picture of Reilly and a woman, the same woman she’d seen in his wallet. They were standing on the beach with their arms round each other. She was laughing into the camera and holding her hair back from blowing across her face, and he was looking down at her, smiling. He looked different. His hair was much shorter and he was thinner, younger, happier.