The Sex Was Great But... (4 page)

“I don't think anything's broken, at least,” I offered. “I mean, I think it will most likely heal in time.” I think I'd heard someone on
ER
say something like this.

Rather sweetly, Leo assured me that his act of bravery was “nothing” and told me that I didn't have to wait around. “I'll be all right in a bit,” he promised stoically, taking my cardigan away from his nose. It was still bleeding.

Any way you looked at this situation, this guy had acted as my White Knight. I really did want to repay him. Even if his nose wasn't broken, it was badly bruised, and his right eye was all puffed up as well. He looked like a character off a made-for-TV thriller.

“It would make me feel a lot better if we went to the E.R…. I mean I'd pay, obviously,” I said, trying not to think what the press would make of me turning up with a beggar with a broken nose at Cedars-Sinai hospital.

“Erh! Gross!” I heard a trendy teenage girl in a Hello Kitty T-shirt mutter as she stepped over our little group to cross the road. “I hate these street scum. They get drunk and beat each other up. It's really bad news.”

I looked up, horrified that I had just been classified as street scum by a member of my target audience. The guy I wasn't warming to called out to them, asking if they had any spare change to get his mate to the E.R. He was so appalling.

Sensing my disgust, he grinned at me wickedly. “Yeah, sorry about your diaphragm and all, but this is office hours for us, if you get my drift. So, much as we'd love to chat, we'd better get back to fucking work if we're going to have anything to drink tonight.” Then he slapped my White Knight on the back. “Come on, Leo man, look lively!”

“Work?” I spluttered, shocked that I'd got my stereotypes so wrong. Maybe I
was
the shallowest, most judgmental girl in the world. “You actually
work?
”

“Fuck off. Course we work. What, you think it's a fucking leisure activity, standing around this shite corner in the fucking heat in these get-ups? Breathing in the carbon dioxide and groveling for bollocky bits of spare change from stuck-up wanker yuppies like you?” the offensive beggar spat.

I was really offended that he thought I was a stuck-up wanker yuppie—whatever they were. Trying to be agreeable, I acknowledged that it probably wasn't that nice, and hugged my knees even tighter.

“You know something?” he said, crouching low so he could stare into my face. “I was thinking this before, but you fucking look really familiar—don't she, Leo?”

Hugging my knees into my rib cage so hard it hurt, I suddenly remembered that we were right by the bus stop with the ad for my show on it. I so didn't want to get into a discussion about myself with this guy.

“Fuck, I've got it now,” he declared, and my face froze over at the imminent exposure of what he was about to say. This whole sorry episode was about to be the
National Enquirer
's lead-in. “Holly Klein—Street Scum.” I know it's shallow to think of things that happen in terms of headlines, but it's part of being a celebrity. PR is part of the high school curriculum in this town.

“Yeah…I got it. You was in Seattle last year on the
Kill the Rich
riot werncha?”

I shook my head, relieved beyond belief that he hadn't realized who I was.

“You sure? Weren't you that chick who smashed that cop with the flagpole, then?”

“No,” I said, now indignant that I was being mistaken for a perpetrator of violence against officers of the law. Somehow shallow didn't seem so bad an insult.

“Yeah, you was. It fell down when we all climbed up on it, and you and that geezer with the tattoo of a skull on his face started swinging it at those cops.” He nudged Leo. “You should have been there, man. It was wicked.”

“Really? You were in the Seattle riots?” Leo asked, looking at me for confirmation.

His colleague nudged me conspiratorially. “It was brill, wasn't it?”

“I wouldn't know, would I?” I said through gritted teeth. “I've never been to Seattle.”

Still he wasn't having it. “Yeah, you woz. Check it out, Leo. She was wearing these green dungarees, right, only with no shirt or nothing, and you could see her tits, see, and—”

“I've just got a familiar face. I promise you I have never been to Seattle.” I turned back to Leo. “Please let me give you something for your help,” I pleaded.

His colleague wasn't going to let it drop, though. “I've got it. You were at that club last night with that nutter Dingo.”

I was getting annoyed now. “Honestly, you don't know me.”

“Yeah, that was it. The Aussie guy with the steel plate in his head? And the crucifix in his nose? You spewed up on the bar and got thrown out. Now you remember her, doncha, Leo?” He thumped Leo in the chest and, taking the cardigan away from his nose, Leo studied my blushing face intently for a moment. “Nah, it's not her, Kev. The girl last night had a harelip.”

“Sure it's her. Fuck, you were wasted darlin'.”

“Look, I wasn't there. Even Leo agrees that you're mixing me up. Look at my mouth. Do I have a harelip?”

But Kev was too busy laughing at the memory. Pointing at me, he virtually fell off his curbside perch. “And then when the heel of your shoe got stuck in the pavement when they was throwing you out everyone caught a load of your arse. What a sight.” He was holding his sides he was laughing so hard.

“Honestly, our paths have never crossed,” I replied stiffly. I
really
wasn't liking this guy.

“Anyway, thanks to you, him here with his bleeding nose has got the potential to earn some serious sympathy bucks—haven't you, mate?” He punched Leo hard in the ribs, which caused Leo to knock his nose and grunt with pain.

“Don't punch him like that,” I snapped. “Your colleague could have a possible broken nose.”

“My what?” He was standing in front of me now, bending over me, positioning his face inches from mine and grinning from ear to ear. “My fucking what?”

I began to feel afraid.

“My
colleague?
Did she just call you my
colleague?
” Throwing his head back, he howled with the laughter of the totally demented, and I desperately wanted out.

The traffic started whizzing past, but none of it went anywhere near Kev.

Leo looked at me with doleful eyes. “Shut up Kev,” he told his friend, and then he turned to me. “You said you didn't think it
was
broken.”

He looked so pathetic in his black felt cap with the ears, holding my once too-adorable-for-words cardigan up to his bloodied face, that I wanted to cry. “No, well, I'm not a doctor, am I? I was just trying to be sensitive,” I explained feebly.

The odious Kev was still laughing and still holding his sides as he mimicked my accent again. “Your
colleague.
”

I so hated him, but I ignored him and focused on Leo. “I'm not a doctor, and you really should see one. I'm happy to pay, honestly. I want to pay in fact. I feel responsible. Please, let me pay.”

Leo shook his head firmly, but the charmless Kev waded
in again. “Take the fucking money, man, and let's go to the liquor store.”

I gave him a withering look, to let him know just how low down on the food chain I thought he was. He grinned his stupid grin and walked back to his spot on the corner.

I watched him as he accosted a couple of Japanese girls in enormous rubber platform shoes and flares. He lowered himself down like a limbo dancer so he could look right into their faces, and they giggled as if he'd tickled them. While they rummaged through their bags for money I turned my attention back to my hero.

“Come on, Leo. Your friend's right. Not about the liquor store thing, but you should accept money for a doctor. You earned it; it's only fair.”

“Just leave it okay,” he said angrily, looking into me with his neon green eyes. They felt like lasers, slicing into my shallow and selfish soul. “I didn't do it for the money, right? I hate theft, that's all. I only wish I'd hit the arsewipe myself.”

“Sorry, that was insensitive. I know you didn't do it for the money, but let me drive you to Cedars-Sinai. Please…I'll pay. I'll sit with you and then drop you back here. I would genuinely like to pay for you to see a doctor. Honestly, my organizer alone is worth as much to me as my life itself. Without it, I'd be…well…disorganized. Very disorganized. And you wouldn't want that, would you?”

He pulled the cardigan away from his face and smiled. His nose had stopped bleeding but the blood was congealing and his clothes were covered in the stuff. “Nah, forget it. I don't want your money.”

I nodded because I thought it might be a bit discourte
ous to point out that, as far as stereotypes ran at least, that was precisely what beggars
did
want—money. That was, after all, why he approached me in the first place.

Kev was sidling up to a group of guys in chequered shirts, whining for a dime so he could get a cup of tea. “Only, me passport and all me money was nicked,” he was whimpering. “And I'm really depressed and all.”

I looked from Kev to Leo. They were cut from different cloth. Without even knowing who I was, he had come to my rescue. I don't think anyone else in my life had ever done something so selfless for me.

Maybe it was a result of the complete randomness of the day, or a need to change the opinion of ten thousand women, or because I felt so relieved to have my stuff back. Or maybe it was my guilt, or the fact that he was being so nice about it all and his eyes were greener than any green eyes I'd ever seen before. Or maybe I just wanted to annoy Kev, but I found myself inviting Leo to come back to my house so that we could clean his wound up. And he accepted.

“Hey, I know where I've seen you now,” Kev announced as he watched us climb into the Explorer. “Leo, man, remember that magazine that Tifanie bought last night on the way home from the club?”

Leo was looking at me and nodding when Kev confirmed that I was “That shallow bitch on TV that gets on everyone's tits.”

S
he couldn't drive. I could tell, by the way she had to try every key before finding the right one for the ignition. Also she asked me to remind her how to select reverse. “I don't normally go backward,” she explained as I did it for her.

“My name's Holly, anyway,” she offered as she put on her seat belt and advised me to do the same. “You probably know that, I guess.”

I didn't know, actually, but I thought it would be rude to point this out, so I said something anodyne like, “Holly…I like that. It suits you.”

She rewarded me with a smile you could sink a comedy club in, accompanied by a self-deprecating eye-roll.
“I think it sounds fake. You know—Holly, as in Little Miss Hollywood?”

I nodded seriously, to show I understood such things, but suddenly I couldn't get Kev's last words to me out of my head.

“Hey, man, she's dying to shag you!” he'd hissed in my ear as I left him outside the liquor store. “Believe me, Leo, I can tell these things.”

I wished he were right. Unfortunately Kev's sixth sense, especially in matters sexual, is utter bollocks.

“It is my real name,” she added. “Not the Klein part—my agent thought of that. My real name is Holly O'Reilly, but Larry said it was better to go with a Jewish name.”

“Yeah, course. Yeah, I see what you mean. My name's real too. Leo Monroe—actually, even the Monroe's real.” She didn't laugh, as I expected, instead she nodded, like we were relating on some higher level, but I suspect she was just concentrating on her driving. I was aware that the palm trees seemed to be flying
at
us rather than past us.

To make myself seem even more of a dickhead, I added, “My agent said I can keep
both
my names.”

It must have sounded dumb, but maybe not to her, because she laughed. I liked the feeling that I could make her laugh without even really trying. Also, I really
did
like the name Holly. I've never shagged—I mean known—anyone called Holly before.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a total idiot. I knew I was out of my depth here. I knew I was never likely to be invited to shag a girl like Holly, but it was hard not to wonder what it would be like just the same. Especially when she turned to me and smiled—not a polite, “how nice of
you to say” smile, but a big goofy grin. I'd never seen such perfect teeth in my life.

I smiled back at her, and in the normal course of events I would have been self-consciously aware of how National Health my own smile was, but as it was I had to grab the wheel and save us from driving into a big Mercedes.

“God, sorry.” She giggled, and took her eyes off the wheel again to smile at me. Yeah, Holly Klein was a babe. Apart from her driving—that was crap. She drove like this speed-head my mum dated once—Keith, I think his name was.

But the similarities to Keith stopped there. Holly had a face shaped like a cherub's, porcelain skin and a figure that screamed Health Regime. Keith had looked like a stoat recently rear-ended by a bus. Actually, even for my mum, Keith had been a mess. She's a bit of a hopeless romantic, my mum—hopeless in that the men she dates are never the romantic types.

Holly said that she didn't usually drive herself around L.A. much, and I believed her. Even getting off from stationary had been a near-death operation. I was pretty sure she'd hit the car behind, but she didn't seem to notice and I didn't want to put any more pressure on her after the bag snatch and all.

“Okay?” she asked, arching one perfectly sculptured brow as the other car's alarm started squealing. She fixed me with one of her killer smiles and explained how she hated “all those alarms that are everywhere these days” and didn't I think they were so pretentious?

As we drove along and she pointed out landmarks along the L.A. boulevards, I realized that she thought a lot of stuff was pretentious, which seemed at odds with the designer items littered around her car. Her car was all leather, with
a wood trim, tinted windows and an expensive-looking stereo, car phone and other gadgets that I didn't know the name of. Apart from the gadgets it was the same sort of car that Dave had back in London, though.

Thinking of Dave brought back a lot of memories I would rather forget. Dave is this geezer I've known since school, who'd made a fair whack of money running illegal raves. His problem is he takes way too much charlie to be allowed behind the wheel of a car, so he has this midget do his driving for him.

The midget's name is Omar, and he isn't really a midget at all—he just has an incredibly short torso, which means when he's behind the wheel you can't see his head. It gives the impression to cars behind that there's no one behind the wheel. Dave thinks this is really cool, and that's why he gave the job to Omar.

Dave's car has tinted windows, too, and to make conversation I decided to tell Holly about how his car is similar to hers. But, weirdly, when I tried to explain about Dave and Omar and the tinted windows it came out sounding like a boast.

Holly was driving across three lanes of traffic in one hair-raising diagonal charge at the time, and a lot of the other drivers she was cutting up were banging on their horns. One way or another my story kind of fell in on itself.

“Is Dave a close friend, then?” she inquired later, adjusting the mirror to check her lipstick.

“I went to school with him but, er, no, I wouldn't call him a mate or anything. He's a bit of a git, really. It's only cause he gives away the odd taste of charlie that anyone gives him the time of day, if you know what I mean.”

She nodded, but I didn't think she did.

She asked me if I enjoyed school as a kid. At first I thought she asked me if I
went
to school as a kid, but I must have misheard. Whatever. I figured it was a loaded question so I didn't bother replying. She didn't seem to notice because she was focusing on driving.

“Can you wind your window down and yell ‘turkey' at that guy behind us for me?” she asked matter-of-factly.

I said, “Yeah, sure.” The turkey in question didn't seem to take it well, though, and next minute he was driving alongside us and shaking his fist. He was yelling something back at me but I couldn't catch it.

Holly must have pressed a button somewhere, because the window started winding up, concealing me from the turkey's view. “Just ignore him,” she advised, then she shot me another smile.

Yesterday I wouldn't have dreamed of being in the company of someone like Holly. She was off my scale, out of my range. Not the sort of girl I'd ever even attempt to pull. Not even with a few drinks under my belt. Now here I was, rescuing her bag, getting beat up in the process, and insulting other motorists on her behalf. I couldn't help feeling a bit proud.

“I suppose you don't want the air-conditioning on, do you?” she asked.

“Go for it,” I told her.

“Really? You're not cold?” She sounded like she didn't believe me.

Was she nuts? I wondered. Why would I be cold in this heat? “No way. It's sweltering. Aren't you hot?”

“Okay,” she said enigmatically, but she didn't turn on the
air-conditioning. After a while, I asked if I could wind down a window.

“Sure.” She seemed surprised. “I just thought you might be cold…you know with the coat and the hat, I just figured…”

This was going to be tough. How was I meant to explain Kev and his theories on procuring money from strangers to a girl like Holly? “I know Kev can be a bit off the scale, but he has this theory, see. By wearing a coat and hat when it's hot you make people think twice. Like you when you saw me, didn't you think to yourself, Why is he wearing all those clothes when it's so hot?”

“Just a sec. I'm trying to find my indicator. Shoot! I always get confused with the wipers.”

The wipers started sweeping across the window. She giggled, fixing me with another one of her smiles. “I'm not great at driving am I?” she asked, crinkling her nose.

That was when I decided that I really liked her. Not
like
in the I-want-to-shag-her way, but
really
liked her. I liked the way she didn't let the horn blowers and the near scrapes with death perturb her, and I especially liked the way that, when everyone blasted their horns at her and shook their fists and shouted, she smiled at me.

Obviously I wanted to shag her as well.

“People are so mean when they get behind a wheel in this town. I don't know why. Anyway, what did you say about wearing hats when you're hot?”

I felt so dumb. “Just that we…um…wear the hats to be, well, noticed, really. It made you notice
me,
right?”

“That was the whole problem, remember? I didn't notice you. I bumped into you and you fell into the bus stop.”

Could I feel any more ridiculous? I wanted to tell her about myself—about how I wasn't really a beggar, about how I'd come to crash-land in L.A., about how I was a normal guy with a normal background—but instead all I said was. “Oh, right, yeah, course. I forgot.” I definitely hated everything coming out of my mouth, but I didn't seem to be able to stop. I was on a roll to ruin.

“Okay,” she agreed, pronouncing the word ok-ay in a way that made it sound like two words—and I was pretty sure those two words were “dumb” and “ass.” She didn't have a clue what I was on about. I wasn't sure I did either. Hanging out with Kev this past month I'd got used to him. Even his begging had started to seem almost reasonable. But now I wasn't so sure.

I opened my window and stretched myself out in the seat. My face was throbbing, so I closed my eyes and let Holly get on with the business of driving. There were a few questions floating around my head as I started to doze off, but my face just hurt so much that the rhythm of the throbbing eventually put me to sleep.

After a while I realized she was talking to me again, and as I came to I sucked in a bit of saliva that had started to dribble out of my mouth. I'm not normally a dribbler, so I can only guess that my subconscious was making me dribble in order to sabotage my chances with Holly.

“Is begging a big thing in Britain then? Are there a lot of guys like you?”

“Like me?”

“You and your friend, Kev.”

Was I a guy like Kev? Did she actually think that I was
in any way, shape or form similar to Brew Crew nutter Kev? This was horrible.

She giggled. “Sorry, did that sound bad?”

I gave her a look that said it did.

“What I guess I'm saying is that it's not so popular here in L.A. It's not what people normally come to L.A. for.”

“I didn't come here to beg,” I said firmly. “I mean, I don't beg. Not usually. It was just today. Kev wanted some beer, and I needed to get myself sorted with my passport and shit, and, well, I guess I just sort of fell in with the idea.”

“Like you fell into me you mean?” She giggled. “Sorry for laughing, but you looked so funny crumpled up inside my face on the bus stop chair.”

I folded my arms across my chest sulkily.

By the time we turned off Sunset Boulevard into Laurel Canyon I regretted everything about my life. How could I have I let Kev talk me into going out on the crack with him? How could I have submitted to wearing the ridiculous hat I now wanted to chuck out the window? The only thing that stopped me was pride, which was what now compelled me to stick it back on my head.

Okay, I'll admit it wasn't one of my coolest moves.

She glanced at me and looked like she wanted to say something, but changed her mind. We wound our way up into the hills in silence. The tight turns and hairpin bends were fairly hairy, but we mostly stayed on the tarmac. I felt responsible for the lull in conversation.

“Sorry if I was being too intense back there,” I told her. “It's my face. Sorry, but it just really fucking hurts.”

“No, it's not you. I'm thinking about this readers' poll—you know, the article your friend Kev mentioned?”

“I wouldn't give any thought to anything Kev said if I were you,” I reassured her.

“No—see that's the point. If someone like Kev has read it, the whole of America must be discussing it by now.”

“I'm not even sure Kev can read,” I told her. And I wasn't being disloyal either. Kev can't read. Nor can his mum. No one ever read to him as a kid—how bad is that? When I found out about the lack of literacy in his life, I read him
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
which is the only book Tifanie owns that isn't about how to make it big as an actor in Hollywood.

“
You
can read, though?” she asked. I said yes, but I was really hurt that she'd asked me. How thick did she think I was?

“I'm not as shallow as people say I am,” she assured me a few minutes later.

“I don't doubt it,” I agreed, only she didn't look reassured.

The next time we spoke was when she pointed out her house on Mulholland Drive.

“That's my house.”

My eyes traveled up her arm to where she was pointing, slowly taking in the smoothness of her pale limb
en route.
For the first time in my life I saw the point in hand-kissing. I looked at her face to see if there was a chance in hell she'd ever consent to let me kiss her anywhere.

No…not one chance in hell.

I forced my gaze to leave her arm and looked up to where a massive steel and glass structure stared arrogantly down on me and my little black hat with earflaps.

“Wow! You live there?” I asked, giving her arm a playful nudge, but she flinched at my touch, making it clear that
physical contact with her was not in my contract. As we entered the driveway a squat Latino-looking geezer in a straw hat—a gardener, I guess—looked up from trimming the topiary at the front of the property and waved.

Holly waved back, and he stopped what he was doing to observe our car's journey down the driveway.