Authors: H. J. Hampson
We walk through the flashes and into the vestibule, and I'm thinking 'yeah, definitely been here before' but still can't think when. Someone points us towards an elevator and as we're riding up I decide to break the silence.
"This place seems familiar, you remember coming here before?" I ask her.
"Probably before my time," she says and I'm trying to figure out if she's being sarcastic when the doors open and it all comes back. Fuck, she's right. It was before her time. It was the party where I met that Monique chick. Met … that's a fucking understatement I know, but I can't bring myself to think about what I actually did.
The roof garden where Clyde De Vine had his barbecue is now an indoor bar. There are huge plants all around, a massive bar along one side of the room, and above us a huge glass dome. It feels like a giant conservatory. But fuck me, the dragon tattoo … her make-up stained face, all that coke.
"Are you alright?" Stella whispers. She's gripping my arm and pulling me towards a lectern where the host is standing.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm just a bit knackered," I whisper back.
The blonde behind the lectern flashes her cocaine-white smile at us. She's wearing a tight, short red cocktail dress and has got her hair all done up on top of her head. Sophisticated sexy, I think.
"Hey guys, welcome to the party. I'm Felicity, your host for the afternoon."
American, not so sexy. She leads us to a table and asks what we want to drink. I order a beer, then change my mind and ask for a Coke, and Stella orders a glass of champagne.
"Cool, I'll bring them right over," says this Felicity, making blatant eye contact with me. I ignore her.
"Is something wrong?" Stella asks, sounding concerned and no longer pissed off.
'I think Serge is planning to kill you and this party is giving me nightmares about the time I raped a waitress' I imagine myself saying, but don't. "Nothing, I'm just tired and hungry, you know?" I lie, fake yawning to emphasise the point. Stella smiles at me, obviously the argument is forgotten. I so want to tell her everything, but what's the point in getting her freaked out when I don't know for definite what's going on?
Felicity comes back with the drinks. Again, she catches my eye and smiles. She is kind of hot, no lie, but since the night when I had the fight with Dean, and me and Stella kind of got together, I've not been with another girl. It's not like I believe in a God, but for some reason I feel like I've used up all my bad behaviour credits and now it's best to keep in line and stay out of trouble. Someone or something has done me a massive favour letting me get away with the 'bad stuff' and I guess I feel a vague sense of duty to behave, as a sign of respect to whoever of whatever has been protecting me. Plus Stella is a good shag and it's kind of nice what we got going here … all the more reason for me to sort this shit with Serge out, I remind myself.
"There's Boadecia," Stella announces, and sure enough I see the Amazonian, stick-thin figure of the supermodel emerging from a crowd of admirers at the bar. She waves at us and starts walking towards us, or more floating, the way only models can. She's wearing a long, silver dress that shimmers under the lights and does look pretty amazing, even though she's got a lesbo-short haircut, no tits and death-white skin. In St Tropez she seemed to take a liking to Stella, or rather Stella as Krystal, probably because they share 'drug-hell' pasts. She used to have a big heroin habit and I still reckon she's a bit of a junkie.
"Krystal, darling, it's so good to see you again."
She leans over me to air kiss Stella, literally leans, she's so tall. There's a guy with longish, messy hair trailing behind her who must be her latest squeeze. He nods at me, I nod back, immediately thinking 'wanker'.
"It's so cool you could make the launch party sweetie, I'm so excited ... oh and by the way, this is Quentin, he plays guitar in a band called Lab Rats on Smack, they're
so
hot. Have you heard them?"
Stella just giggles and shrugs. I'm sure she's been dying to do a duet with those guys, not. He looks like a junkie too, and is actually ugly. I don't know what it is with models. Supposedly the most beautiful women on the planet, yet they all date guys who look like they stack shelves at Tescos. Stella and Boadecia get into some pointless conversation, and so I'm just standing there like a fucking lemon. I've got nothing to say to the Shelf-stacker. I don't even want to talk to him in case he breathes his junkie-AIDS germs over me, and besides, I'm not in the mood for small talk with this Serge business on my mind, and the bad vibes this place has. Will CJ call? Will Monique randomly appear?
I scan the roof-terrace hoping to see someone I know. There are plenty of people I recognise but no one I'd call a friend. It makes me feel depressed. What am I doing here? I'm an actor stuck in a bad play, and all these people are actors too, fake people. I wish I could go back to the good old days when I'd hang out in tacky night clubs in the West End with boys from the team, chasing girls and getting stupidly pissed. Life was simpler then. No one was trying to kill anyone I knew.
Boadecia and the Shelf-stacker drift off and we end up talking to another couple: a girl who's only famous for being the daughter of a rock star and her boyfriend, another Shelf-stacker. We're sat round a table at this stage, someone has ordered cocktails. I take one and gulp it down quickly, even though I wasn't going to drink – the nerves are getting to me. Then I check my phone: fuck all. Stella is chattering away to Allegra, or Amelia or whatever her name is and the Shelf-stacker is just sitting there, with shades on, blatantly high as a fucking kite. I can't stand it any more so I decide I'm going to call CJ myself, but I need to find somewhere quiet. I'll have to go back downstairs, into the hotel.
So I'm walking towards the lift when that Yank bird, Felicity, appears in front of me. We have to pass each other through a narrow gap between two tables and as we do she pushes herself into me.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she says, her face so close we could have kissed each other.
"No worries," I tell her, a bit freaked out, and carry on walking towards the lift without looking back. I'm totally not in the mood for flirting, nor whatever else she has in mind.
The first floor down is deserted, but it's just a corridor of hotel rooms. There's a maid at the end of the corridor piling bed-sheets onto a trolley.
"Erm, excuse me," I ask her, "could I use a room to make a phone call, please?"
She looks up from her trolley, confused. "You want room?" she says. Great, foreign.
I wave the mobile at her, "Yeah to make call?"
The lift pings behind me, I turn round and I'm kind of shocked to find that Felicity is striding towards me. Oh Christ. All I want to do is make a fucking phone call.
"You need some help?" she says.
"Yeah, I just need to make a call. I was wondering if I could use an empty room."
"Oh, I see," she replies, raising an eyebrow, like I mean something else.
Then she says something to the maid in foreign, and turns back to me, smiling.
"She's South American, you don't speak Spanish?"
I shake my head, I really don't like the way she's taking over this situation.
Again she asks the maid a question in Spanish.
"Ah, si, si," says the maid, and pulls a bunch of keys out of her pocket. She inserts a key card into one of the doors and opens the room.
"Gracias," says Felicity, walking towards the door with me. I really want to tell her to fuck off, but I don't.
"Right, well, thank you, I'll just..." but before I can finish the bitch has followed me into the room and shut the door behind her.
"Erm…"
"God, you're hot," she says, making towards me. I feel totally helpless.
"I really don't think this is a good idea. I have to make this call…" I'm saying, but I'm sitting down on the bed as she looms above me, her tits almost in my face. My stomach is jumping around but, it has to be said, it's a nervousness tinged with excitement. I have to call CJ though.
"I've heard you're a real bad boy," she's saying, "I like bad boys. Screw me real hard, any way you like."
Oh Christ. I'm trying to fight it, but the old panther is stirring, awakening, as she straddles me.
"My girlfriend…"
"Oh come on Beaumont, I just want a fuck not an affair."
She's undoing my jeans, now, kneeling in front of me. My cock is semi-hard and despite myself I groan with pleasure as she takes it in her mouth and starts sucking me off, herself moaning like a fucking porn star. I resign myself to it now, the panther's won, mauled the good boy to pieces. I guess this won't take long.
Her blue eyes stare up at me, as she stops chomping on my cock.
"Undo my dress,"
I feel like a robot, no longer in control as I push the zip of her red dress down. And as she's stepping out of it (revealing this amazing toned body it has to be said), I see Stella's face, she must be wondering where I am. And then I remember CJ, the reason I'd come down here in the first place. But her body is so hot, so perfect. Her tits are big and blatantly fake and this turns me on even more because I know these kinds of girls really will let you get away with anything. But I curse myself and her as she straddles me again, sinking my cock into her cunt.
"Yeah baby, fuck me real hard," she's saying, and I'm giving it a good go, but then all of a sudden I see that Monique bird's face, and it turns me off.
"We've got to stop this," I tell her.
"Oh no baby we've only just started, you know what I want? Let's get on the floor."
She climbs off me and gets down on all fours in front of me, so her hot, tight ass is staring right back at me. Then she gets her fucking hands there parting the cheeks, her scarlet nails digging into the pale, fat skin.
"Shit," I say aloud, try to block Stella, Monique and CJ's faces from my mind and get down and kneel behind her. If this girl wants it, who am I to turn it down? There's fuck all for it. God, this girl is forward.
"Oh yeah, baby, that's right, that's good," she says as I push into her. And fuck me, it's good.
She's making a hell of a noise and I remember hoping there was no one in the next room, but I can't stop. We're really going at it, but then above her moans of pleasure I hear the strains of R Kelly's 'Ignition' – my mobile ring tone. She looks back at me as I reach for it in the pocket of my jeans, which are still round my thighs.
"Ignore it."
It's CJ.
"I can't," I say, stopping mid-fuck, still inside her.
"CJ mate, give me ten seconds and I'll call you straight back."
I hang up before CJ can answer.
"Sorry darling, important call," I tell her. She scowls at me.
"What? You fucker, you can't just stop there."
"Just put your dress back on, please," I say, slightly panicked because this girl seems a little crazy. I'm already standing up and doing up my trousers. She gets up too and starts pulling her dress on, swearing under her breath. I try to push her towards the door.
"It's nothing personal, honestly."
"You'll fucking pay for this, you bastard, you…" but before she can finish I've got her out onto the corridor and closed the door behind. I stand against it and sigh. Her threat's freaked me out but there's no time to think about what she might do. I press the recall button, hold the phone under my chin as I do up my jeans, and CJ answers before the first ring finishes.
"Yo, man, what's up?" he says.
"Nothing, just some crazy shit," I tell him, "so any news?"
"Yeah, my man Rodney, he followed your manager dude to this café in Dalston, got a table right next to them. So your agent man, he met this guy there, this creepy foreign-looking dude. This sounds bad man, but Rod says they were talking about some girl called Stella, you know any Stellas?"
Stella. How can he not know? But then I remember he knows her, as everyone else does, as Krystal.
"Erm, yeah, what did he say about her?"
"Well he said it sounded like they were organising a hit on this chick. He kept hearing the date the 1
st
April,"
"Oh my God."
Today is, what? The 26
th
March…so that's five days' time.
"Yeah, but the weird thing is, Rodney said it sounded like this foreign dude was offering your man the money, is your agent a hit man on the side?"
"No, no he's not." My blood has turned to ice.
"And then, right, they start talking about this other girl..."
"Denise?"
"Yeah, that's right, you know her too?" CJ says, almost giggling, like these are all my girls on the side.
"No, not really."
"Oh well, yeah, they were talking about this Denise, saying something about an operation and the foreign guy kept saying, she'll definitely be ready and how she was a dead-ringer. I mean none of this makes any sense to me but…."
It is The Substitutors. They're going to take Stella out and replace her with another look-a-like. Serge is in on all this, he's going to get Stella killed. He must be in on the deal. In less than a week. I'm suddenly aware of the silence surrounding me in the hotel room.