Confessions of a Hollywood Star (12 page)

“But Mr Fork, you don’t understand. It’s my mother. She’s ill. She’s very ill. Terminally ill. I just thought if I could have the tiniest little part in your movie – in a crowd – even at the back of a crowd – at least I’d know that she’d gone to her death proud of me and knowing I was going to be all—”

“I’m telling you one more time.” He’d taken out his cell phone again and was shaking it in my face. “If you don’t get out of this car, I’m calling the cops.”

I’m not really afraid of being arrested. I mean, many great people have done time. Ghandi was in jail. Martin Luther King was in jail. Nelson Mandela spent most of his life behind bars. And according to my history teacher, Eugene Victor Debs even ran for President of the United States from prison. So I’d be in good company. But I wasn’t ready for the clanging shut of the cell door just yet. And I knew from my extensive experience of Karen Kapok that it’s impossible to reason with someone in such a totally irrational and agitated state as the one Bret Fork was in. I got out of the car.

I was still standing there, watching the empty road (well, empty of Bret Fork and his four-by-four) when Sam screeched to a halt in front of me. He looked pretty agitated, too.

“Lola! What are you doing?” He opened the passenger door. “I’ve been going crazy. I thought something’d happened to you.”

I squashed myself into the Karmann Ghia while I started to explain what I was doing a mile from the movie.

“Hang on! Hang on! Back up the truck.” I could see that the look of stricken concern with which Sam had been gazing at me had changed to something more like awe. “Are you saying that I finally get to see you and you leave me standing on the street like a jerk while you
followed
some dumb movie star, and then when he was in the deli you hid in his car? Is that what you’re saying?”

Maybe the look on his face wasn’t awe; maybe it was horror.

“You don’t have to take it personally.” I tried to explain. “It’s not like I planned it. It just happened. You know, like spontaneous combustion. I was going to come back.”

Sam shook his head in the way of a mechanic who has tried everything but who is going to have to scrap the car. “You just don’t know when to stop, do you?” He started the engine. “You go though the give way signs. You go through the red lights. I bet you don’t even see the yellow lights.” He pulled into the road.

“Oh for God’s sake. It’s not like I was going to hurt him or anything. I just wanted to – hey!” I tapped Sam on the shoulder. “You’re going the wrong way. The movie’s back there.”

“I don’t feel like the movie now. I’m taking you home,” said Sam. “You may not know when to stop, but I do.”

I Go Through Another Give Way Sign

I
got Sam to drop me off at Ella’s so I could discuss recent events in the privacy I never get at home but sorely deserve.

Ella was surprised to see me. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the movies with Sam.”

I explained about Sam’s irrational mood swings.

Ella said I never ceased to amaze her. “You have more balls than the Yankees and no conscience as far as I can see. If I’d treated someone like that I’d be racked with guilt, but you don’t seem very upset.”

I wasn’t. I knew Sam would get over being mad at me pretty fast. He’s a mechanic, after all. It’s a very Zen profession. They don’t get hung up on minuscule, transient things. Besides, deep down, Sam wouldn’t really want me to change my nature – and my nature is spirited and unpredictable. That’s what he loves about me. It’d be like getting a lion so you could keep it in a cage.

“Let me worry about Sam. Right now I have other, far more pressing things on my mind.”

“Oh really? Like what?”

[Cue: dramatic pause of great detective about to name the killer.] “I found out where the film crew’s staying.”

Sometimes Ella blooms under my tutelage and sometimes she reverts to her more cautious and repressed self.

“But you can’t be sure that they’re staying at Bergstrom’s,” she said when I told her. “I mean, maybe it’s just his girlfriend’s staying there.”

“And why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she stay with him at the Santinis’?”

“OK, maybe not his girlfriend. Maybe just a pal.”

“Oh, please. He’s come here to work, not go fishing. And anyway, so what if I’m not sure? Nothing in this life is certain, is it? But there’s a good chance that I’m right. I mean, they do have to be somewhere – and they aren’t anywhere else that I could find.”

Ella gave me the kind of look those with limited imaginations and the tendency to be easily discouraged often give those who are creative, bold and non-accepting of petty limits and defeats (you know, wary).

“So what are you planning to do now?”

“
We’re
going to go over to Bergstrom’s tomorrow evening and introduce ourselves to Charley Hottle, that’s what I’m planning to do.”

Ella was shaking her head like one of those dogs in the back window of a car. “Oh, I don’t know, Lola. What if he recognizes us from when we were thrown off the set?”

You can understand why visionaries and revolutionaries get pretty frustrated. The number of times some people have to be told the same thing before they get it is no less than stupefying. “We’ve been through this. He isn’t going to recognize us. We look totally different when we’re clean and dry and intact.”

[Cue: sour face and ten-ton sigh.] “So I take it you want me to drive us there,” said Ella.

Mrs Magnolia was glad to see me the next morning, even though she hadn’t exactly been rushed off her feet in my absence.

“It’s this movie,” judged Mrs Magnolia. “It’s turned the whole town upside down. Do you know it took me forty-five minutes to get home last night because Lucy Rio was signing autographs in the shopping centre and it caused a traffic jam? Can you imagine? The only time we’ve ever had a traffic jam around here before was when the sewer backed up and flooded the main road.”

I sympathized. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? So much ado about nothing.”

“Even Mr Magnolia’s getting carried away. If he polishes that car any more he’s going to wear a hole right through it.” She sighed. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I think you and I may be just about the only two level-headed people left in town.”

Ella picked me up after work.

Bergstrom’s Travel Lodge is a large, sprawling, two-storey brick building that looks vaguely colonial (there’s a clock tower and a rooster weathervane on top of that), which was obviously constructed in more hopeful times. You know, when someone for some reason thought New Jersey was going to become the tourist hot spot of the eastern seaboard.

“Wow…” breathed Ella as we pulled off the highway. “I’ve never seen it so full before. It looks like a car auction.”

“I don’t see the equipment trucks, though. Maybe they’re still on the set.” I unfastened my seatbelt. “Come on, let’s go and make sure that Charley Hottle’s registered.”

The lobby continued the colonial theme (rounded wooden chairs and tables, brass lamps, a fake fireplace complete with coalscuttle and upholstery featuring eagles and flags). At the very back was a high, polished, wooden counter with a sign on the front that said, “Bergstrom’s – Where the Journey Is as Important as the Destination”. There was a hallway on either side of the lobby, and the door to one of them was propped open with a cleaner’s cart, but there was no sign of a maid and no one behind the reception desk.

“Hello?” I called. “Hello? Is anybody here?”

Ella surveyed the desk. “Isn’t there usually a bell or something?” There was half a cup of coffee and a large, black book that was obviously the register next to the computer, a pink sweater over the back of the high, swivel chair behind it, and three phones on the counter, but no bell.

“It’s sort of eerie, isn’t it?” whispered Ella. “It’s like they’ve been abducted by aliens or something.”

“Except that I can hear footsteps above us.” And the opening and closing of doors somewhere else in the building. I called again, “Hello? Hello?” When no one answered I leaned over the desk and turned the register around.

“Lola!” hissed Ella. “Lola, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I want to see if Charley Hottle’s checked in here.”

“But you can’t do that. It’s private.” Ella is not only my best friend, she likes to double as the conscience she says I don’t have.

I flipped back a few pages and found one that had Plentitude Productions written at the top. I wanted to shout and sing and jump up and down. I wanted to run onto the roof and scream to the sky and the sun and the passing cars:
I was right! I was right! I knew I was right!
But all I said was, “If it’s so private they shouldn’t leave it lying around like that.” My eyes ran down the page like a mouse down a wall.

I’d just spotted Charley Hottle’s name (room 65) when a woman suddenly appeared down the hallway to our left and started banging on one of the doors. “Gracia!” she shouted. “Gracia! Hurry up! Aren’t you done yet? Paloma needs some help upstairs.”

“
Pero
Mrs Seiser,” Gracia shouted back. “There is throw-up beneath the bed. I need more cloths.”

“I suppose we should be grateful it isn’t a body,” snapped Mrs Seiser. “I’ll get some rags.”

Ella jumped at this intrusion, but I calmly shut the book and was leaning with my back to the counter by the time Mrs Seiser came marching towards us like an invasion.

I’ve lived long enough with Karen Kapok to know when someone is eyeing me suspiciously. “Who are you looking for?” she demanded.

“The manager. We—”

“That’s me.” I hid my surprise. Mrs Seiser’s general demeanour seemed better suited to the job of prison guard than hotel manager. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

The phone started ringing as she strode past us to the opposite hallway. “Get that for me, will you? If it’s someone wanting a room before August, tell them we’re all booked up. If it’s someone wanting to speak to one of the guests, they’re all out so they’ll have to call back later.”

I picked up the phone. I’d seen enough movies with hotels in them to be able to do this cold. “Bergstrom’s Travel Lodge, where the journey is as important as the destination,” I said in my most businesslike voice. “May I help you? Just wait one minute please and I’ll check… Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m afraid we’re fully booked at the moment. Perhaps you’d care to make a reservation for later in the summer … or even in the autumn? That’s a spectacular time of year in New Jersey – when the entire countryside looks like it’s dressed in a coat of many colours.”

Ella poked me in the ribs. “Stop ad-libbing!” she hissed. “You don’t work here, you’re just answering the phone.”

I turned my back on her. A great actor can’t let the audience distract her. “Thank you so much for choosing Bergstrom’s,” I purred. “Please call again when your path next takes you past our door.”

Ella groaned as I put down the receiver. I told her she sounded like the pipes in our house. She told me I sounded like some kind of New Age salesperson.

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask their star sign,” said Ella.

“And I’m surprised yours isn’t the crab.”

The phone had just started ringing again when Mrs Seiser rematerialized carrying a bucket and some rags.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” I called.

“Thanks.” She held up her hand. “Just a few more seconds…” She charged past us and disappeared through the door where Gracia had found throw-up under the bed.

“She seems pretty busy,” said Ella. “I guess they’re not used to so much business.”

I said, “Um…” I was watching the door in case Charley Hottle suddenly walked through it, but though my mind wasn’t forming conscious thoughts, deep down below the surface, where creativity and instinct meet to become genius, it was engaged in serious thinking. It does that kind of thing all the time.

Mrs Seiser finally came back again.

“I’m sorry.” She continued briskly past us. “But I’m having one of those summers. These people really think that they’re the centre of the solar system. You’ve been very helpful, for which I am grateful, but if you’re here because of the movie I—”

This is where the creativity and instinct meet to make genius bit comes in. Without any of the work or trouble of conscious thought I said, “Movie?” I gazed at the back of her head in innocent surprise. “I’m sorry…” My voice was hesitant and polite. I didn’t want to be rude to an adult of course, but I was genuinely confused. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mrs Seiser stopped as though there was a white rhino in her path. She turned to look at me. “You don’t?” Her eyes moved from me to Ella and back to me. “Are you saying you two don’t know they’re making a Hollywood movie nearby and that the film crew’s staying here? I thought everybody within a hundred mile radius knew that.”

“Really?
Here?
” I fairly clapped my hands in girlish glee. I turned to Ella. “Wow, did you hear that? They’re making a movie in Dellwood! And we didn’t hear a word about it!” I turned back to Mrs Seiser. “How exciting for you to have the crew in your hotel!”

Mrs Seiser sighed a nothing-is-all-good kind of sigh. “I suppose so. But they’ve pretty much taken us over and it’s – well, it’s a little stressful.” She stepped behind the reception desk. “But enough of that, since you aren’t here because you want to talk to the producer or the director or ask the soundman about his equipment like everyone else in the county, what can I do for you?”

Ella looked at me – expectation mingled with fear of the unknown.

I smiled back at Mrs Seiser, knowing exactly what I was going to say. “My friend and I are looking for summer jobs.”

I could tell from the way her eyes were practically popping out of her head that my friend had stopped breathing.

“Oh…” Mrs Seiser murmured. It was a weakly hopeful sound. “Well, I
could
use a couple of extra chambermaids – just while these movie people are here, you understand…” She looked us up and down. I prayed she couldn’t tell that Ella lived in an exclusive community where everyone had servants. “I don’t suppose you have any experience?”