Confessions of a Hollywood Star (15 page)

It was obvious to me that (once again) she’d engineered this party so she could pour buckets of salt into my wounds in front of an audience. It wasn’t enough to send me the invitation she’d sent everyone else – announcing that the party was to send Carla off on her college career and to celebrate the completion of Dellwood’s first movie. At the bottom she’d written with her own fair hand,
Can’t wait to compare notes on the movie. You have to come! Everybody’s going to be there. They’re all looking forward to seeing you again!

As soon as I read Carla’s invitation, I called Ella.

“I wasn’t going to mention it,” said Ella. “When you didn’t say anything I thought you weren’t invited.”

“I wish I wasn’t.” If only I had some previous, unbreakable engagement (speaking at the UN or dinner with Sofia Coppola for instance).

“Well, you don’t have to go,” said Ella.

“Oh, yes I do.” This wasn’t an invitation, it was a challenge. “Lola Cep never backs away from a challenge.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Ella. “The way Gruppenführer Seiser works us we’ll be dead before the end of August anyway.”

I hadn’t had a single dream since I’d started at Bergstrom’s. Even my subconscious was wiped out. But that night I dreamt I was in one of the rooms, trying to scrub bloodstains out of the carpet. (This had happened to Gracia.) It wouldn’t come out (which was the only connection between Bergstrom’s and Shakespeare that I could see). I scrubbed and scrubbed but it didn’t even fade. And then Mrs Seiser started shouting for me. “Lola! Lola! What’s taking you so long? You better be doing a good job. I’ve had complaints!” (This had happened to me.) I shouted back that I was almost done. I started rubbing so furiously at the stain that my own hands started bleeding. And then I heard footsteps marching purposefully down the beige carpet. “Lola!” barked Mrs Seiser. “Lola! Do you want me to fire you? Do you want the whole world to know that you don’t even have what it takes to be a maid?” And then Mrs Seiser started to laugh. Only it wasn’t Mrs Seiser’s laugh, which was like somebody grating an iceberg. It was the clear, pure sound of hundreds of tiny glass bells tinkling in a mountain breeze. Mrs Seiser had turned into Carla Santini, the way people do in my dreams. Even though in the real world I absolutely refused to even look under a Bergstrom’s bed, in the world of dreams I dove under it like a prairie dog scurrying into its hole. “Lola, where are you? You have to come to my party. You’re the guest of honour.” I could just see Carla’s Jimmy Choo shoes in the doorway. “You know, Lola, you can run, but you can never hide,” she purred.

Oh yes I can…
I whispered in my heart.
Oh yes I can…

Those words:
Oh yes I can…
were still running through my head when the alarm went off and I opened my eyes. Since I joined the real workforce I hit the snooze button at least six times before I finally dragged myself out of bed, but this morning I leapt to the floor with a cry of unfettered joy! That was it! That was all I had to do!

I was going to have to drop Bruce Springsteen a note and point out a song he’d forgotten to write: “Born to Hide”.

You Can Only Wonder Why Nothing Ever Goes The Way It Should

“I
don’t like it,” said Ella. “This has got to be one of your craziest ideas yet.”

I pulled a mop handle out of my back. We were in the first-floor supply closet at the time, which was the only place where a working girl could get five seconds of privacy or peace at Bergstrom’s.

“I knew I shouldn’t tell you. You never like anything.”

Ella put on the Marilyn Gerard stern, is-that-a-smudge expression I’d seen so many trillions of times before. “What if you get caught?”

[Cue: the weary kind of sigh Jesus often used when the disciples were being really dense.] “But I’m not going to get caught. When Charley Hottle comes back I’ll just be stepping out of the bathroom. I’ll explain that we were understaffed today so I’m late finishing up.”

“And then?”

“And then we’ll chat for a few minutes. You know, about how much I admire his work and his dedication to family values in this crass age of sex, exploitation and violence. And then I’ll work my charm on him.”

And if that didn’t do the trick, I’d tell him about my mother’s operation and how the doctors said she’d lost the will to live and how if she knew that I was going to be in a movie (the dream she had for herself in her lost youth before everything started to go so horribly wrong for her) I was sure that she’d try to survive at least long enough to see it.

“But what if Gruppenführer Seiser finds out? What about Gracia?”

“Gracia? How did Gracia get into this?”

“His room’s on her floor, isn’t it? She’ll get into trouble.”

Maybe the cleaning chemicals we used were affecting Ella’s mind. “How can Gracia get into trouble when she doesn’t know anything about it?”

“Mrs Seiser will blame her, that’s how,” snapped Ella. “She blames her for everything.”

“That was before I started working here. Now she blames me.” I shifted my weight to the foot that wasn’t going numb. “And besides, by the time the worst happens – which it won’t – the Gruppenführer will be gone and the night manager will be on duty. Charley Hottle doesn’t usually get back before six or seven.” Mr Wolsky, the night manager, was a boy scout compared to Mrs Seiser’s Nazi general.

“And I have to do what?”

“Practically nothing. You just have to distract her while I borrow back my pass key.”

“Oh, Lola…”

“You don’t even have to do it in person. Just call her on your cell phone. Say you think you left your watch in the employee’s bathroom. Ask her to check if it’s there, and if it is to lock it in the safe.”

“All right.” Ella said this grudgingly.

“And be waiting for me at seven. Park in front of the diner. If I get out sooner, I’ll call you.”

Ella sighed. “Sometimes I think it was a really great loss to the criminal world when you decided to go on the stage,” she said.

The first part of my plan went exactly as it was supposed to – which I guess I should’ve taken as a warning. But I didn’t. I watched Mrs Seiser answer the telephone. I watched her frown and heave her bosom and march off to the employees’ bathroom. I was through the front door quick as a missile and into the office; and up the stairs before she returned, empty-handed.

Once inside Charley Hottle’s room I just stood there for a few minutes, looking around. Like the rest of his crew, Charley Hottle was obviously used to having servants. Although the bed was perfectly made and the bathroom sparkled (Gracia is very good at her job), aside from that it looked like the coast of Florida after a hurricane. He must’ve left in a hurry that morning because there was stuff thrown everywhere and there was a notebook and a gold Rolex on the bedside table in a puddle of change.

I sat on the closed toilet seat, cleaner carrier at my feet, and took out the book I’d brought with me. I figured I was going to have a long wait.

But I didn’t. I’d hardly opened my book when I heard someone fumbling at the door. Although a person less accustomed to the jolts and surprises of the gods might have panicked, I silently praised the person who installed the temperamental electronic lock system in Bergstroms, because if they’d used the old-fashioned kind with manual keys whoever it was would’ve been inside before I could think, let alone move. In the minute or so I did have to think while he or she tried to open the door, what I thought wasn’t
Charley Hottle’s back early
, but
It must be Mrs Seiser!
I blame Ella for this. Ella’s the Johnny Appleseed of Doubt, sprinkling its seeds around with gay abandon and the worrier’s chant of
What if? What if?
Despite my strong character, Ella’s pessimism had had its effect. So because I knew for sure that the film crew never knocked off this early; and because I wouldn’t put it past the Gruppenführer to have noticed a passkey was gone and be conducting a room-by-room search for the culprit; and because I could hear Ella saying, “Didn’t I tell you this wouldn’t work?” by the time the lock finally released I was in the closet.

I kept the door open a crack so I could see a figure walk past. It wasn’t Mrs Seiser. It was a youngish man wearing a black T-shirt that said Plentitude Productions on the back in white. He went over to the bedside table, picked up the notebook and stuck the watch in his pocket. I was congratulating myself on having made the right decision because he’d obviously been sent to get things Charley Hottle had forgotten, when instead of leaving he sat down on the bed and picked up the phone. He called somebody called “Honey” – as in “Honey, I can explain.” I could tell this was going to take some time, so I sat down.

Except for my two seconds on the toilet, it was the first time I’d been off my feet all day and my work-wracked body, grateful for the rest, must’ve passed out. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I remember waking up. It was the sound of heavy breathing that woke me. The closet door was shut so I was in total darkness, and at first I didn’t know where I was or what the grunts and sighs were. There might’ve been a gorilla on the other side of the door for all I knew. And then I remembered I was in a closet at Bergstrom’s, so that pretty much ruled out gorillas. The only animals allowed in were guide dogs.

It took me a few more seconds to realize I was in the middle of a Passionate Love Scene. My first thought was that I was in the wrong room. That kind of thing happens all the time (it definitely happens to
me
all the time). Had I misremembered the room number? Had I been so afraid that Mrs Seiser was suddenly going to materialize in the hall that I went through the wrong door? I mean, it couldn’t be Charley Hottle I was listening to. I knew from a piece in the local paper that Mrs Hottle was back on their ranch in Colorado with the seven kids. And a man who was always going on about family values and stuff like that wasn’t going to be panting and grunting over some other woman, was he?

They moved away from the closet, and I moved on to Plan B. Plan B was getting out of there as soon as possible. Even if I had to simply stroll out of my hiding place in a cool and nonchalant manner, give them a pleasant smile and calmly sashay out the door. I figured they’d be too surprised to say or do anything, and by the time they did I’d have vanished from the hallway as if I’d been beamed up by Scotty.

They got pretty involved in kissing and murmuring on the other side of the room. I started to count down from twenty. When I hit zero I’d make my exit. Nineteen … seventeen … fifteen … thirteen … eleven … nine…

I took a deep breath and reached for the doorknob.

Five … three…

And then he said, “How about a drink, Lil? I’ve got a bottle of wine I was saving for just this occasion.”

I wasn’t in the wrong room. I recognized Charley Hottle’s voice. Horror and surprise brought me back to the floor so fast I banged my head against the wall. Another thing I knew from the local paper was that Mrs Hottle’s name is Tamara.

Once I recovered from my shock that Mr Family Values was messing around with a woman who wasn’t his wife (so much for believing what you read in glossy magazines), I realized that although this was obviously bad news for Mrs Hottle – and I did sympathize with her – it was even worse news for me. I couldn’t very well just stroll out of the closet as if I’d wandered in there by mistake now. A man who’s cheating on his wife isn’t going to be happy to see a witness – especially someone as famous as Charley Hottle. He’d think I was going to run straight from his room to
The Enquirer
to sell my story.

Lil demurred. She’d had nothing but a bagel all day and was worried that the wine would go straight to her head.

“No room service in this dump of course, but maybe we can get a pizza delivered,” suggested Charley Hottle.

Lil didn’t feel like pizza. She was all pizzaed-out.

The next suggestion was Chinese food.

Lil worried that they hadn’t heard how bad monosodium glutamate is for you in the New Jersey outback.

Good God
, I thought.
I’m going to be here all night
. My stomach growled. Lil wasn’t the only one who was running on empty.

Charley Hottle figured they could get the diner to send something over, but Lil wasn’t too keen on the diner either.

“Well there is nowhere else.” He wasn’t murmuring any more. “I haven’t got the car, remember?”

She finally gave in.

I rubbed the foot that had fallen asleep. What was I going to do? Aside from the fact that I was either going to starve to death or go into paralysis if I had to spend the night in the closet, what if he wanted one of the items of clothing he’d actually managed to hang up?

It was another few hours while he looked for a corkscrew. They’d just clinked their glasses together when the phone rang.

I figured it was probably his wife, calling to tell him all the cute things the kids had done today.

“I’d better get it,” said the family man. He obviously thought it was probably his wife, too. “You never know, it could be an emergency. Lucy may have broken another fingernail.”

It wasn’t his wife.

“The garage has brought the car back,” he informed Lil. “It’s downstairs. Come on, let’s go to that Italian place Hal was talking about. We can have the wine when we get back.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. Talk about being saved by the bell.

I gave them fifteen minutes to get out and away from the travel lodge, and then I limped out of my hiding place. I didn’t really want to run into Mr Wolsky if I could help it, so I went out of one of the fire exits at the back.

Near-death experiences (or, in my case, near-total-disaster experiences) definitely put things in perspective. Normally, I would’ve been worried that Ella had given up and left me to walk home. But I was so relieved to get free before the next morning (especially without being caught) that I didn’t care if I had to crawl home on my knees.

Even though I know how loyal, steadfast and true Ella is, it was a mega-pleasant surprise to see that her car was in front of the diner, just where it was supposed to be. But she wasn’t alone. Sam was beside her, turned in his seat, chatting to Ella, but with his eyes on the hotel. He nodded when he saw me as soon as I came around the building.