The Perfect Location (25 page)

Calypso didn’t answer him; she was stuffing her passport into her handbag.

‘I did it because I love you, that’s why. And that’s why I want to help you now.’ He spoke softly, pleading with her to understand.

Calypso stood by the front door, holding her bags. ‘I never asked you to go to those lengths. I never asked you to love me. I’ve got to deal with this myself. Just as I should have dealt with Raphael by myself. Goodbye, TG.’ And she closed the door and walked out of TG’s life.

Trying to get on a flight to LA was a nightmare. On the plane, Calypso relived the memory that she had tried to convince herself wasn’t real for the last twelve years. She remembered she was sick. That her head was pounding and her nose streaming and that she had felt like crying. She remembered pleading to Leeza. ‘I just want to go home. I feel terrible. We shouldn’t have come, Mom. I don’t think I can do it.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Calypso,’ her mother was brusque. ‘Dr Footlights always gets any good actor through. Out, out! Come on. Time to show them what you’ve got.’

Leeza had walked around to the passenger’s side of the old orange Chevy. The paint on the door was peeling and Calypso remembered it made a terrible creaking sound as she opened it. Calypso rested her head against the cold glass of the plane and closed her eyes. It seemed like yesterday, and she allowed the memory to flood back to her.

Leeza had made her stand up straight by poking her long fingernail into her back.

‘You look fine. A little pale, but that just adds to your beauty, honey. Let’s go.’

Walking briskly in her high-heeled silver sandals, she pushed open the door to the office in front of them. The receptionist looked over Leeza’s mother. Clad in pale blue Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, a tight white t-shirt, with large breasts, bottle-red hair blow-waved like Marilu Henner, she was the stereotypical Hollywood mother.

Looking at the child, she was surprised to see she did not fit the bill of most child actors who came in for castings. Small, extraordinarily pretty, pale, and quiet, she showed none of the standard Hollywood potential child star precociousness. Usually they started performing as soon as they opened the door, just in case the receptionist became a ‘somebody’ one day.

‘Hello, this is Calypso Gable.’ Leeza made a waving movement with her hands towards her daughter. ‘I’m her manager, Leeza. We’re here for the Baked Goodness commercial audition.’

‘Please sit and wait till her name is called,’ barked the receptionist.

Calypso sat, and let out a little cough.

‘Don’t cough,’ hissed Leeza. ‘It’s revolting.’

Calypso rolled her eyes. How can you not cough? It’s impossible. Closing her eyes, she prayed for bed or death. The cold had not seemed serious two days ago but now it was a full-blown flu and a double dose of Tylenol hadn’t helped. Her mother had dragged her out of bed that morning by her feet, literally.

She felt too hot in what Leeza had made her wear. A red-plaid woollen skirt, a long-sleeved white blouse with a lace collar, white woollen tights, a red knitted jumper with snowflakes all over it, and black patent leather Mary-Janes. Jesus, she looked like a reject out of a Target Christmas catalogue, she had thought. Never mind it was going to be 96 degrees that day. The commercial was for a baking brand for Christmas goods, so Leeza had gone all out on the perfect little ‘white bread’ Christmas costume.

Calypso was fourteen years old and about to play a ten-year-old for the audition. Being tiny of stature had served her well when she was younger, but as she matured the roles dried up, the phone stopped ringing and soon she was out on the hustle again, with Leeza at the helm, pushing and cajoling Calypso within an inch of her life.

‘Calypso Gable?’ She heard her name called.

Standing up, Leeza followed her. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, only the talent in the auditions,’ the casting director cut her off.

Leeza stood outside the door trying to listen. When Calypso emerged weeping a few minutes later and ran out to the car, Leeza followed, her stilettos clicking on the concrete of the car park. ‘What happened?’ she cried.

‘He told me to fuck off and I shouldn’t have come because I’m sick,’ said Calypso, struggling to open the car door.

Leeza fumed. ‘Who the hell speaks to my baby like this? You’re the best and he needs to know it. It’s not right for someone to abuse my baby like that!’

Leeza opened the car door for Calypso. ‘I’m going to tell him what I think about this. You wait here.’

She stalked back across the car park, tossing her hair in defiance. Inside the office, the receptionist was not sitting at her desk. Stomping down the hallway, Leeza passed empty, dusty offices. A temporary place for casting agents to use for auditions. At the back of the building, she saw a man sitting at a desk. He was on the phone, laughing. She stood in the doorway.

‘Are you the director who just told my daughter to fuck off?’ she demanded.

‘Hang on, buddy, I will have to call you back.’ He hung up the phone.

‘Are you the mother who sent a clearly sick child to an audition?’ he answered her back as rudely as she had spoken to him, as he stroked his unkempt beard. With a knee-length black leather jacket and thinning hair pulled back into a ponytail, Leeza thought he looked more like a bounty hunter than a director.

Leeza stood her ground. ‘She is the best actress you will see. If you had any smarts you would see past her limitations today and recognize her true talent.’

The silence was thick with tension. They faced each other off. Finally, Leeza spoke again. More softly this time. ‘She really needs this job.’

A pause.

‘Oh hell, I need this job.’

The truth was out.

He looked at her closely, pleading, making it clear she would do what it took to pull him over the line. Well, she is hot, in a kind of porn-star way, he thought. Big hair, big earrings, big tits, although they looked real, which was surprising. He was a nobody TV commercial director who hoped to make his own feature film from a script he had been writing since he was twenty. The only thing was, he was thirty-five, and so far the height of his career was this commercial.

Leeza tossed her red hair and walked over to him, placing her hand on his crotch. ‘You saw her on a bad day. She is very talented and very good at what she does, as am I.’ Her long orange nails scraped gently over his penis. He looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘That’s right, you enjoy yourself,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘I would like to suck you though, if you will let me.’

Why not, he thought. He nodded.

‘Yeah. Yeah,’ he said, quickly and breathlessly.

‘Well, I would but I need to know my baby is going to be your girl for these commercials?’

‘Okay, okay,’ he whispered, feeling like he was about to explode from her hand rubbing up and down on his swelling shaft.

‘Well, you need to make a call, honey. You need to call her agent and tell him she has the job, okay?’

He nodded as she shut the office door, went down on her knees, unzipped his pants and placed his swollen cock in her mouth. Waiting patiently while he pulled his phone out, his cock was hard in her mouth but she just let it lie there till he had done his part of the deal. She dialled the number, keeping his penis in her mouth, then handed it over once she heard it ring.

When the receptionist answered, he asked for Calypso’s agent.

‘Hi, you sent Calypso Gable for the audition with me today?’

Every time he spoke Leeza sucked, when he paused she stopped again.

‘Yeah, I’m good, man.’ He let out a moan. ‘I’m fine, man. I was just stretching, it’s been a long morning.’

‘Anyway, Calypso has the gig. I’ll get production to send over the contract tomorrow. No problem, man, my pleasure, seems like a talented kid.’

As he hung up, Leeza sucked with an intensity he had not expected from an older woman. He felt himself being sucked into Leeza’s vortex and he didn’t give a shit; he was about to come and all was good in the world. Finally he burst into Leeza’s mouth and she expertly swallowed with no fuss. Standing up and wiping down the knees of her jeans, she walked over to her handbag, rummaged around, popped a mint into her mouth and reapplied her coral lipstick.

‘Thanks,’ she said, dusting herself off from what was in her mind clearly a simple business negotiation.

‘No problem,’ he replied with a sigh, zipping himself up and trying to catch his breath.

Leeza left his office, hearing him call out a meek, ‘Thank you’ after her. Sometimes that’s what it took and Calypso would never know. It wasn’t cheating on her husband, she never even considered it as that; it was just what she had to do. She would rather suck the cocks of Hollywood than have her baby do it. There was no need for any of that now, was there?

Calypso got out of the car. Her head was throbbing, she was sweating profusely and she was crying. She had followed Leeza into the office to make sure she didn’t embarrass her in any way. Her mother was crazy sometimes and Calypso often felt like the adult. Walking inside, she saw the receptionist coming back to the desk.

‘Um, hi, my mom has to speak to the director. Can you tell me where he is?’

‘Down the hall, last office on the right.’

Calypso walked down the hall. There was no one around, and she heard laughing from somewhere in the building. Last office on the right, the girl said. She opened the door slightly to peep in and saw her mother on her knees with the director’s penis in her mouth. His eyes were closed and his face was red. Calypso shut the door quickly.

Running down the hallway, she blurted to the receptionist, ‘Don’t tell my mom I was here, I was supposed to stay in the car.’

‘Okay, whatever,’ said the girl, not interested in the slightest.

Calypso pretended to be asleep when her mom got in the car, and when she went home she slept for sixteen hours straight. Waking up, she imagined she had dreamed what she had seen, although her father, Bob, had found her crying outside the trailer the next day. She couldn’t tell him why, just cried in his arms, then straightened her small frame and never spoke about it again. If she didn’t talk about it then it wasn’t real, she told herself.

By the end of the day
,
she convinced herself the fever had made her hallucinate and she had seen nothing. Although she was not surprised when her agent rang to say she had the contract for the Baked Goodness commercials. ‘See honey, I told you they would see your talent. Even half dead, you still outshine them all!’

Calypso had smiled weakly at her mother, happy at least the commercial would ease the constant arguments about money between her parents. But the image of Leeza on her knees, real or imagined, stayed with her as her profile grew and the work became more frequent, and she was never quite sure whether she had a career based on her talent for acting or Leeza’s talent for blowjobs.

As the plane taxied onto the tarmac at LA, Calypso was tired from lack of sleep and from the memories that haunted her but she wanted to get the situation sorted. There was no time to waste. She knew that the blackmailer would move swiftly if she didn’t contact him. She rang Greg from the airport. ‘I’m here, yes, I’ll come straightaway.’

Leaving LAX in a cab and going to her agent’s office, she thought about Leeza. So she hadn’t imagined her blowing the director years ago when she had the flu, she thought as she watched LA go past her window. Her mother had been formidable and Calypso had never stood up to her. But now Calypso was going to have to sort it out. Two million dollars was money she did not have. She could find it if she had to but then this person, whoever was blackmailing her, would keep coming back for more, possibly selling it to the media for even more money.

Calypso was beside herself. Her concern was not for her career but for Leeza and her father. What would this do to them?

As she pulled up outside the building, Calypso paid the driver and signed an autograph. She was back in town and this was one problem she had to fix herself. Greg came and led her by the arm to the boardroom. Sitting at the large round table was the head of the agency and Mandy, her manager. ‘This is a fucking nightmare,’ started Greg. ‘I cannot tell you what harm this will do to your career. In fact, I doubt you will even have a career if this gets out.’

Calypso sat down and poured herself water from the jug on the table, her hands shaking. ‘I want to see it,’ she said strongly.

‘No, you don’t,’ said Greg.

‘Yes, I do. I have to know,’ she insisted.

Greg looked at the head of the agency, Julius Gelfman, who had been in the industry for forty years. He had said nothing, just watched her and Greg. Julius had seen it all, many times. Nothing fazed him, this was just another problem they had to smooth over.

Julius nodded. Greg flicked a switch on the remote control on the table and the screen at the head of the room flickered to life.

There was an office on screen, and Jerry Hyman sat at his desk. A woman walked in, her back to the camera. She talked to him for a while, but there was no sound. Then he undid his pants and the woman walked over and got on her knees and sucked his cock. Calypso did not move a muscle while she watched. The woman then got up and said something else, the man laughed and as she turned, Calypso confirmed to herself it was her mother. She knew, from the way she walked, the way she tossed her red hair and the jumper she was wearing. It was Calypso’s favourite jumper growing up that year. A blue one, with two dancing bears appliquéd on the front. Calypso also knew it was her mother from the way she gave head to Jerry. It was just like she had seen Leeza, years ago after the audition.

‘Turn it off,’ said Calypso.

Julius spoke quietly but firmly. ‘What do you want us to do, Calypso?’

‘Does my mother know?’

‘No,’ answered Greg. ‘Not yet.’

‘I’ve a few strategies I can run by you if you want. Ways to deflect the media if this comes out,’ said Mandy, leafing through long pages of notes in front of her.

‘No more secrets, no more strategies. I want you to call the police,’ she said firmly.

Greg called the police who then called the FBI. Calypso left Julius to brief them with the details. She had to see Leeza.