Famous (10 page)

‘Slow down!’ hissed Lisa, giving him an evil look.

Jasper appeared to have contracted a very sudden and violent case of verbal diarrhoea and was presently having three simultaneous conversations with me, Lisa and Samuel, all on completely different subjects. Somehow he was successfully managing to juggle all three without either losing the other parties’ interest or forgetting what it was we were talking about.

‘Bloody boring pregnant woman,’ he whispered, turning to me.

‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘The night is being completely dominated by someone who has yet to form arms or legs.’

‘What’s up with Lizzie?’ he asked.

I explained the Simon, Lisa and big baby surprise situation.

‘Oh,’ said Jasper. ‘That’d explain the look then. I was beginning to think she was rehearsing for the role of Margaret Thatcher.’

As I sat talking to Jasper, eating the delicious zalmon, I suddenly felt myself becoming hot. Very, very hot. All over.

‘Jesus!’ I exclaimed to Mands, who was sitting on my left. ‘I think I’m having a hot flush.’

‘Bloody hell,’ she replied. ‘It’s a bit early, isn’t it dolls?’ I poured myself a glass of water, but it did nothing to cool me down. My body was on fire. I lunged across Mands for another glass.

‘Not very Singapore girl,’ she muttered. I was too uncomfortable to apologise.

‘You’re going a bit red,’ she observed.

And then, very suddenly, I was not only hot-all-over, I was also incredibly itchy. Skin crawling, tear-the-flesh-from-my-bones type itchy.

I excused myself from the table and walked into the bathroom, madly scratching my body all over. It gave me some temporary relief and I made my way back to the table.

But not for long. Within five minutes I was hot and itching all over again, worse this time. I felt like tearing my clothes off and jumping into one of the ice buckets. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

‘Jesus,’ said Mands, looking at me. ‘What’s happening to your face? It’s going all blotchy.’

I reached my hands up towards my face and that’s when I saw them. Red welts all over the backs of my hands.

‘Fucking hell!’ I exclaimed, jumping up and running towards the bathroom.

Mands and Lizzie followed in hot pursuit, watching me fling my clothes off in the hallway and run for the shower.

‘Need cold!’ I exclaimed, hurling myself into the shower.

‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Mands and Lizzie, staring at me.

‘You’re covered in blotches!’

And I was. My entire body, from head to heel, was covered in large red and purple welts.

‘They’re even on your bum!’ cried Mands.

‘It must be something you’ve eaten,’ said Lizzie.

The cold water gave me some temporary relief and after ten minutes of icy showering I was ready to bring my blotchy body out.

‘Jesus! What’s happening to your eyes?’ pointed Lizzie, as I gently dabbed my red welty body dry.

‘Whaddayamean?’ I hissed, staring at my blotchy arms and legs.

‘They’re closing over.’

‘And your lips,’ added Mands. ‘You look like Lisa Rina.’

‘Have a look in the mirror,’ they instructed.

They were right. Both of my eyelids were so completely swollen that my eyes had become two thin green slits. And my lips were so big they were eating each other.

‘Oh Jesus!’ I moaned, starting to cry. ‘Somebody make it stop!’

‘We’re off to the A and E,’ declared Lizzie, swinging into action. ‘Mands, call us a cab!’

‘I wanna come too,’ complained Mands.

‘Look,’ said Lizzie. ‘One of us has got to stay here and it’s not me. If I have to look at that poxy spineless git and his nappy-hugging wife one minute longer, I’m gonna kill the both of them.’

‘Right,’ said Mands, assessing the potential damage and phoning us a taxi.

‘I’m coming too,’ said Jasper, meeting us in the hallway. ‘I’m bored. Bloody hell!’ he added, noticing the state of me.

I wanted to hop into the taxi naked, but Mands persuaded me to put on her silk robe.

When we got to the emergency room Lizzie made me peel the robe apart and flash the nurse on the reception desk.

‘Lord above!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s an allergic reaction if ever I saw one!’

After only five minutes of sitting in the waiting room, watching Jasper pace back and forth from the drink machine and visibly wear a hole in the carpet, I was ushered through to the doctor, Lizzie by my side. So, it was at exactly midnight that I found myself sitting opposite an Indian male doctor of approximately fifty years of age, wearing nothing but a pale pink silk robe, my eyes all but closed over and covered from head to toe in large itchy red welts.

‘Oh my!’ exclaimed the doctor. ‘How does the other person look?’

He mistakenly assumed I’d been involved in some sort of uncouth bar brawl.

‘Actually…’ I replied, ‘I think I’ve had an allergic reaction to something.’

‘Peanuts?’ he asked. ‘The last time I saw a reaction like this, nuts were responsible.’

‘No,’ I replied.

‘What have you been eating?’ he asked, staring at the red welts all over my arms.

‘Zalmon and poompkin,’ I replied.

‘Beg your pardon?’ said the doctor.

Lizzie relayed the dinner menu to him, in English, while I furtively scratched my arms and legs, like some sort of scabby town leper. There’s no doubt I would have been locked away in the cellar in years gone by, while the rest of the village rejoiced and threw the only key into the moat.

‘I see,’ he said, nodding his head. ‘And may I ask what spices and herbs you used when you were cooking this?’

‘Well…’ replied Lizzie. ‘You see, we didn’t actually make it.’

‘Who did?’ asked the doctor.

‘Um…Manuel did,’ replied Lizzie.

‘And who is Manuel?’ asked the doctor.

‘He’s the head chef at Prego,’ answered Lizzie, adding for the doctor’s benefit, ‘It’s a very nice restaurant on Ponsonby Road. Fabulous food and service.’

‘You recommend it?’ asked the doctor.

‘Yes,’ replied Lizzie.

‘I see,’ repeated the doctor, making a note of the restaurant name on his pad. ‘So a chef made it?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, very close to tears. ‘We didn’t make it because we can’t cook for shit and we had to get a chef in. Now can you please for the love of God give me something to stop this itching? Or am I going to have to kill myself? And the both of you?’

‘Righty ho then,’ said the doctor, instructing me to lie up on the examination table as he closely peered at my cloak of welts and swollen bits.

‘I think you are having an anaphylactic reaction to something,’ was his verdict.

This was confirmed after he consulted all of the medical journals in his office, every other doctor on duty, and some not on duty but at home sleeping.

As I lay naked on the examination table, scratching myself all over and requesting that Lizzie put her French-manicured nails to use and start scratching me too, the doctor informed me that I needed an injection of adrenaline.

‘Okay,’ I replied. If he’d said a good rogering from himself would cure me I would have said okay too. Anything to stop the itching.

Lizzie, who had been a pillar of sanity and grown-up-ness, crumbled into a fit of hysterical giggles at the sight of the needle approaching my naked, welt-covered body.

‘Ow!’ I complained, as the needle pierced the inflamed skin on my right arm.

‘There you go,’ said the doctor, motioning for me to hop off the table. ‘That should take away the blotches and the swelling. But if you have any problems I want you to ring me. And I am giving you a prescription for a strong antihistamine,’ said the doctor, writing on his pad.

‘C’mon Rudolph,’ said Lizzie. ‘Let’s get you home. I’ll come and stay at your place tonight, just to keep an eye on you.’

On the way out we woke Jasper, who had passed out in one of the plastic waiting-room chairs, and put him into a taxi, before ringing Mands with an update. She said that everyone had finally vacated her apartment, including an incredibly drunk Simon who had managed to smash her favourite Nest vase on his exit.

‘Fucking arsehole!’ she screeched.

‘I hope he cut himself?’ said Lizzie eagerly.

‘Yes, twice,’ confirmed Mands. ‘But unfortunately nothing was severed.’

‘What a crying shame,’ said Lizzie, shaking her head.

The next day Mands and I phoned Manuel who deduced (after listing the hundred herbs and spices he had used in the meal) that it was probably Tahitian vanilla beans I was allergic to, which he had used in the vild muzroom vice.

Oh well, at least it was something exotic, I consoled myself, and not mangy old peanuts.

Monday morning came around and I was undeniably still suffering from the weekend’s events. Though the welts and swelling had settled down significantly, I still looked remarkably like a human patchwork quilt. Thankfully the itching had subsided and I no longer felt it necessary to run around completely naked. To top off my suffering my first meeting of the day was with Trixie and Davis. We were meeting about shampoo. Again.

‘Well…we’ve been thinking…’ began Trixie.

Well at least that was a start, I thought to myself. Lord knew that didn’t happen often.

‘…about the shampoo,’ continued Davis.

Bless. It looked like they were really going to be on the ball today.

‘We all know that shampoo is silky…’ said Trixie.

‘…and soft…and blah blah,’ finished Davis.

‘Agreed,’ I replied.

‘But that’s sort of well…’

‘…been done,’ finished Trixie.

‘Right again,’ I replied.

Why did they always have to finish each other’s sentences? I wondered.

It appeared that neither of them was capable of starting a sentence and carrying it through to the full stop by themselves. It was like witnessing a tag-team relay of stupidity.

‘And we know that it’s got the fruit,’ said Davis, ‘y’know…’

‘…fruitavessence,’ finished Trixie.

Dear God, they had made the word up themselves and he still couldn’t remember it.

‘But…’ said Davis. ‘Wouldn’t it be good if…’

‘…if one of the shampoos gave you, like, big hair…y’know, like…’ said Trixie.

‘…like volume,’ finished Davis.

‘And the little bits that gave you big hair could be called…’

‘Volumisers!’ they both chorused in unison.

Oh dear God, I thought to myself. I appeared to have somehow been transported straight into a scene from
A Clockwork Orange
.

I took another sip of my coffee and stared straight back at them across the table. They were both sitting there grinning and shuffling excitedly in their seats, waiting for my response.

I took another sip of coffee, and struggled to think of a simple way to tell them their idea was complete and utter crap and no brand manager in their right mind would buy it.

‘Well…’ I said, suddenly realising I simply didn’t have the energy to deal with these two today. ‘That sounds great. Good work.’

And with that I got up and left the two of them blabbering on about volumisers, and headed off to an ad shoot for one of my clients, Sensy Soap.

I pulled up to the gates of the filming studio only to be confronted by several chanting and banner waving women.

Oh bloody great, I thought to myself, as I spotted my mother at the front of the rowdy throng, leading the chant.

‘Ads Don’t Work They Hurt! Ads Don’t Work They Hurt!’ they shouted.

Hell. I had no choice but to drive straight up to the gate and wait for the security guard to open it for me.

My mother had spotted my car and came round to the driver’s window, indicating for me to wind it down. She stopped her chanting.

‘Hello Sam,’

‘Hi Elizabeth.’

‘What happened to your face?’

‘Long story,’ I replied.

‘You’ve got nothing to do with that television ad they’re making in there, have you?’

‘No,’ I lied. ‘I’m just here for a meeting.’

‘Okay then,’ she said, although she didn’t seem convinced. ‘Do you want to come over for dinner tonight? Your father’s cooking.’

How unusual.

‘Can’t sorry, other plans.’

‘Okay-dokay then,’ she said, standing back as the gate opened, and gallantly waving me through before she started up her chanting again, ‘Ads Don’t Work They Hurt! Ad’s Don’t Work They…’

I found the filming studio and thrust myself inside the door.

‘Christ! Did you see those bloody women outside?’ asked Jeff, the director.

‘I thought that one at the front with the army pants was going to clock me one when I drove past.’

‘No kidding.’

You’re just lucky she didn’t, I thought.

‘I really hope they’re gone by the time we wrap.’

‘So do I,’ I replied, finding myself a seat.

The two female models in the ad were sitting on deckchairs in front of me, waiting for the filming to begin. I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. It appeared they were talking about food. It was all models seemed to talk about these days. It’s true that we always want what we haven’t got.

‘Why? What did you have for lunch?’ asked the one with the brown hair.

‘Just lettuce,’ replied the blonde one.

‘What, the whole thing?’ asked the brunette, a look of horror on her face.