Going La La (18 page)

Washing out the conditioner, she waited until the water ran clear before turning off the shower. She didn’t know much about him either. After he’d dropped them both off he’d said he’d give her a ring about work. But he hadn’t. It had been a week and she’d heard nothing.

Wrapping the towel around her head like a turban, Frankie walked back into the changing room, relishing the cool air. Maybe his regular assistant was better now and he didn’t need her any more. Which wasn’t such a big deal. She’d find another job. Grabbing the hairdryer, she pulled off the towel, shook out her hair and, tipping her head upside down, blasted it for a few moments with hot air. Thinking about it like that, it didn’t matter if he called or not. She didn’t care either way. Turning off the hairdryer, she looked at herself in the mirror, frizzy-haired and flushed. So why did she feel she was trying to convince herself?

‘I’ll tell you what I am dying for,’ announced Rita, appearing from the shower sporting a cleansing clay face mask, ‘and I haven’t had one for ages.’

‘I thought you were off sex,’ deadpanned Frankie, taking out her make-up bag and rubbing concealer on to the shadows under her eyes.

‘Very funny,’ she tutted. ‘I’m not talking about sex.’

‘What then?’ Frankie dreaded the answer. She didn’t think she could bear any more of Rita’s self-help tactics. Yoga she could stretch to – bad puns aside – but she’d had to put up with wheatgrass and macrobiotic food and, after reading her Feng Shui book, Rita was forever going on at her about leaving the lid up on the loo.

Rita smiled. The kind of smile she always gave when she fancied getting drunk and disorderly. ‘Margaritas. On the rocks. Salt around the rim.’

Frankie smiled back. ‘Now that’s the kind of self-help I like.’

19

‘Who’s the woman?’

‘What woman?’

‘The woman on your mind.’ Dorian began snapping his fingers in the air like a Flamenco dancer, trying to grab the attention of the waitress.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Reilly fiddled with his packet of Marlboros. He was dying for a cigarette.

They were sitting at a table in El Fiesta, a Mexican restaurant famous for its lethal margaritas, taking advantage of its happy hour. And they weren’t the only ones. The place was buzzing with the hip Hollywood crowd, gathered around the wooden tables, knocking back rounds of tequilas and eating cheese quesadillas and plates of refried beans and rice. This was Hollywood’s idea of Mexico. On the whitewashed walls multicoloured striped Mexican blankets fought for space with mocked-up
reward
posters for moustached, sombrero-wearing bandits (all bearing an alarming resemblance to Chevy Chase), the Gypsy Kings belted out of the speakers and Latino beauties wearing brightly coloured frilly skirts and ruched tops served five-dollar jugs of margaritas. Only in LA could the waitresses look like Salma Hayek and Jennifer Lopez.

‘Come on, you’ve hardly said a word for the last half an hour.’ Dorian caught the eye of one of the waitresses at the far end of the room and flashed a smile. ‘It’s got to be a woman.’

‘Nope.’ Reilly shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in women.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Dorian’s eyes travelled up and down the waitress’s uniform and rested firmly on her impressive cleavage. ‘How can you not be interested in a pair of those?’

Reilly ran his fingers through his hair. It still had traces of oil from when he’d been working underneath the truck, trying to fix the leak that had sprung in the head gasket after being smashed by Frankie’s Thunderbird. ‘I thought you were talking about women, not their tits.’

‘I am. I am.’ Dorian fussed with the collars of his Gucci silk shirt and sat up as straight as possible, puffing out his chest. ‘I got distracted.’ He winked at the waitress as she sashayed her way through the maze of tables and chairs towards them. ‘So there’s definitely nobody on the scene?’

‘Nope.’ Reilly slouched across the table, resting his chin in one hand. He stirred the complimentary bowl of guacamole with a stale tortilla chip, deciding whether or not to brave it.

‘Why not?’ asked Dorian, hastily rubbing cherry-flavoured lipsalve across his lips. ‘It’s been over two years since you split with Kelly. You need a girlfriend.’

‘I like being by myself. No hassle.’

‘No fun.’ Dorian smacked his lips together, ready for action.

‘I don’t see you having a girlfriend.’

‘I have
girlfriends
. Plural is much more enjoyable.’

Reilly grinned lazily. Changing his mind about the guacamole, he abandoned the tortilla. It stuck up, like a shark’s fin in its sea of lumpy avocado. ‘So what’s the count at the moment?’

‘About twenty.’ Dorian smiled flirtatiously at the waitress as she appeared to take their order. ‘Twenty-one with any luck.’

Dorian ordered them two margaritas each, the extra-strong variety made with José Cuervo tequila, Cointreau, fresh lime juice and plenty of ice. Reilly knocked back the first one, enjoying the sting at the back of his throat, while Dorian chatted to somebody on one of his mobiles.

‘So what happened with Frankie at the shoot?’ Snapping his phone shut, Dorian licked the salt from the rim of his glass and tasted his drink. ‘Mmm, fucking marvellous.’ He looked very pleased with himself.

‘Nothing.’ Reilly started on his second drink before looking back up at Dorian, who was staring at him, eyebrows raised. ‘What are you trying to say? Did I sleep with her?’

‘I wasn’t going to ask, but now you’ve mentioned it . . .’ Dorian feigned a look of innocence, as if the thought had never crossed his mind. It didn’t fool Reilly.

‘Jeez, you’re a dog on heat, man.’ Lying back against the seat, he tried rubbing a splodge of brake fluid from his T-shirt. It didn’t budge. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but no, I didn’t.’

‘And you’re not going to see her again?’

‘Maybe, but if I do it’ll be at a shoot. I said I’d call her if I had any jobs in this week, but it was pretty quiet, so I didn’t.’ He stirred his drink with one of the plastic cactus-shaped stirrers. ‘As far as Frankie and I are concerned, it’s a work thing. My assistant was sick and she filled in. End of story. If I never saw her again it’s no big deal.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘Yeah.’ Draining the dregs of his drink, Reilly crunched up the ice cubes. What he’d just said wasn’t strictly true. He had thought about Frankie a few times that week. In fact Dorian was right, she had been on his mind tonight. But he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t want to date her. In fact he didn’t want to date anybody. Over the past couple of years, since the divorce from Kelly, he hadn’t wanted anything more than a casual fling, and somehow he couldn’t see Frankie as the one-night-stand type. To be honest, he wouldn’t want a one-night stand with her anyway. Not that he didn’t think she was cute, because she was, but she wasn’t his type. She was uptight, stubborn, had one helluva temper and, judging by what she ate for lunch at the breakfast cereal shoot, one of those pain-in-the-butt vegetarians. Catching the eye of the waitress, he ordered the same again. But if it was no big deal whether or not he saw Frankie again, why did he feel as if it was?

Taking the ticket from the waistcoated valet parker, Rita tucked it into the fake Chanel handbag that she’d just bought from a stall on Venice Beach and, linking arms with Frankie, steered her towards the entrance to the restaurant, a doorway strewn with multicoloured Christmas tree lights.

‘This place does the best margaritas in town,’ she announced as the doorman held open the door for them and they walked inside, the sound of the Gypsy Kings and the smell of refried beans floating towards them.

‘What’s it called?’ asked Frankie, trying to keep up with Rita, who, desperate for a drink, was propelling her down the small terracotta-tiled lobby that led into the main restaurant.

She paused for a moment at the entrance to adjust her miniskirt. ‘El Fiesta.’

Reilly saw Frankie before she saw him. There she was, standing in the doorway with her redheaded flatmate, towering above her in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He watched her chatting to her friend, before looking over and catching his eye. At first she looked surprised, but then she smiled. He smiled back, suddenly feeling nervous. What was the matter with him? He was thirty-four years old and he felt like a teenager.

‘Oh, my God, Reilly’s here,’ hissed Frankie, her heart suddenly speeding up to keep time to the Flamenco beat of the Gypsy Kings. ‘Don’t look.’

It was the wrong thing to say to Rita.

‘Where?’ shouted Rita over the top of the music, standing on tiptoe. She spotted them in the corner. ‘Oh, over there, with Dorian.’ She waved brightly. ‘Come on, we’ll join them.’ She set off, pushing through the crowds of people. Frankie had never needed a margarita more than she did right at that moment.

‘Bloody hell, there’s no escaping you, is there?’ whooped Rita, throwing her arms around a delighted Dorian and giving him a kiss on each cheek.

Frankie hung back, looking embarrassed. So did Reilly, who finally said, ‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’ She smiled awkwardly.

‘Hey, look, I’m sorry I didn’t call this week, but work’s been pretty quiet.’

‘Oh, it’s fine.’ She tried to look as if she didn’t care, when really she was already dissecting the sentence in her head.
I didn’t call this week, but work’s been pretty quiet
. At least that meant he hadn’t been deliberately avoiding her. But on the other hand, it also meant that as far as he was concerned, their relationship was strictly work-related. She didn’t know why that should bother her. After all, that’s how she’d described it to Rita. But she was bothered. ‘I’ve been pretty busy anyway,’ she added breezily. So what if that was a white lie. She had been busy, if you could call doing yoga, sunbathing on the balcony, having lunch and flicking through Rita’s self-help books busy.

‘Great.’ He looked relieved. ‘To be honest, I felt a bit guilty, not getting in touch. Especially when I asked you to work.’

‘It’s OK, honestly.’ She fiddled self-consciously with her hair, wishing she’d done something with it and not just given it a quick blast from the hairdryer. She could feel it shrinking into curls as she stood there. A big curly halo around her head. Lovely.

Dorian interrupted. ‘So what are you two gorgeous babes drinking?’ He looked at Frankie and Rita.

‘What do you think?’ replied Rita, pushing him playfully. ‘And I want two. I’m gagging.’

Letting out the dirtiest laugh, Dorian squeezed her round the waist. ‘Me too,’ he leered.

Empty stomachs and pint jugs of margaritas determined the kind of evening it was going to be. The party spirit was helped along by Dorian – who else? – who started flirting with a bunch of twenty-first-birthday-partygoers, a bevy of silicone blondes from the Valley, and invited them to join their table. Which meant everybody ended up squashing in next to each other as they shuffled along the benches. Not that anyone seemed to mind. Rita happily tucked herself next to Reilly and the bowl of guacamole and tortilla chips, while Dorian sat next to Cindy, the birthday girl, but kept swapping places so he could take turns in wedging himself up against each of her friends.

Frankie, however, found herself pushed into the corner away from Reilly, Rita and Dorian, and stuck next to one of the blondes, a six-foot stunning Gwyneth Paltrow kind of blonde with flawless honey-coloured skin Frankie had previously thought could only be achieved by airbrushing. Gwyneth turned out to be called Sandy, a girl who appeared to have been born without the modesty gene. Striking up a conversation, Frankie found herself hearing all about her ‘totally cute’ boyfriend, a basketball player called Ben (nicknamed Big Ben), her ‘totally divine’ new Mustang and her ‘totally amazing’ modelling career.

An hour finding out all there was to know about Sandy’s totally awesome life left Frankie totally sickened and, making her excuses, she escaped to the loo. Locking the door behind her, she leaned against the washbasin. For some reason she couldn’t stop thinking about Reilly. All night she’d wanted to talk to him, but he’d been sat at the other end of the table. She’d watched him out of the corner of her eye, joking with Rita and talking to Cindy, the birthday blonde. A couple of times he’d caught her eye before she’d had the chance to turn away and smiled.

Despite the drinks inside her, she still felt jittery about seeing him. God knows why. Splashing some cold water on her face, she looked in the mirror. A piggy-eyed, ratty-haired person stared back. Christ, no wonder he’d been looking at her in such a funny way earlier. She looked bloody awful. Digging out her make-up bag, she daubed on a bit of eyeliner, plenty of concealer, a few coats of mascara. She even rubbed on some hot-pink lip gloss that had come free with some magazine or other and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. Staring at her reflection, a thought struck her. Why was she doing this? Who was she trying to impress? Don’t be ridiculous. She wasn’t trying to impress anybody. What was wrong with putting on a bit of make-up? She was doing it for herself, to make herself feel a bit more presentable, especially having to sit next to Sandy, Ms Totally Perfect. And it wasn’t as if anybody was going to notice anyway.

‘Whoooh, who’s dolled herself up then?’ foghorned Rita as Frankie sat back down at the table, luckily managing to avoid Sandy, who was now being chatted up by Dorian. She felt herself blush salsa red and threw her a desperate ‘
Shut up
’ look. Rita didn’t notice. Normally she could drink anyone under the table, but tonight she was nearly sliding underneath it. Completely bollocksed, she’d entered the stage of drinking called ‘not knowing where the hell I am’. A stage she’d reeled into thanks to the two rounds of tequila slammers she’d downed while Frankie was in the loo.