Namedropper (19 page)

As we boarded the plane, we saw Antonio Banderas skip up the staircase, wearing a dark grey linen suit and pale loafers. I make a point not to get infatuated with any film star who still has a healthy career, but him I love. He reminds me so much of the old-fashioned Latin lovers that he might as well have died in 1962. And he's so very beautiful that you wouldn't even want to have sex with him. There would be no point; it
would be like virtual-reality sex. You'd be looking down on yourself, unable to feel a thing. But I wanted to look at him up close, just kind of have half an hour to peer at him.

Ten minutes into the flight, the stewardess brought us each a packet of pretzels and a glass of champagne. Within about three sips I was blasted and decided to write Antonio a letter explaining why he should let me interview him for my school magazine, although I wasn't certain that we had one. It started off quite plausibly: “I am a student at Griffins School for Girls in London. I know that you must be incredibly busy, but I was wondering if there was any chance that I could interview you for my school paper. It would be a real scoop!” Then I added three more exclamation marks for luck and because English is not his first language. And then I put upside down exclamation marks at the front of every sentence because I thought I'd seen that in a Spanish dictionary.

But by the third paragraph I was scribbling: “¡¡¡So anyway, I'm not an actual jet-set chick—I got bumped up to first!!!! I am drunk on free champagne so I feel it's okay to tell you that you are the most beautiful man in modern cinema. Some people think I look Latin, although really I'm Jewish!!! I like your suit. Is it linen? How is the kid you had with Melanie Griffith? I'm sorry her career has faded, ¡¡¡I thought she was great, especially in
Something Wild
. Please send her my love.”

I handed it to the stewardess and told her that my friend Mr. Banderas was sitting in the upstairs deck and could she give him this note from me? Treena begged me not to do it. “It's a long flight. What if he shouts at us? What if he tells you to fuck off? Then we'll have to feel awful for ten whole hours.”

“What, he's going to tell me off for saying he's handsome and has a lovely wife?”

She huffed and started flicking through the in-flight entertainment guide. I watched her pretend to read. Her eyes weren't as vivid as usual. They used to be emerald green, and now they looked more like spinach. I wondered if she could still see me properly through them. There was an outbreak of tiny red bumps across her forehead and her cheeks glistened with an oily film. Her brows were overplucked, too skinny at the front and straggly at the outer ends.

I never pluck my eyebrows unless I have something very serious to worry about, and then I use the pain to help concentrate my thoughts. She must have been thinking about something, although she had chosen not to share it with me. Which doesn't shock me. Treena doesn't really have a whole lot to share: she just is. It's very straightforward, but that means it's awfully hard to tell when something's amiss. She had definitely lost weight. All the lunch breaks that she should have spent eating Toffee Crisps in the canteen, she had spent hunched over her work in the library. I tried to remember the last time I had heard her get really excited about anything. It was a good two weeks, which may not sound like that long, but it is. Treena's favourite word is “amazing.”

The stewardess came back and said, “I don't mean to be funny, but is Mr. Banderas really your friend? Because he seemed rather confused by your note.”

Oh, God. I curled up into my chair. Why am I such an idiot? Stupid, stupid me. Stupid Antonio for getting freaked out by a little girlie love letter. We heard nothing more and I
spent the rest of the flight putting a hex on his career. We were free to stand up and walk around the plane, so I meandered around the cabin and cursed it. I was glad the curtains were drawn so I didn't have to look at the poor people in business class. I plunked myself back into my seat and pushed a couple of buttons until it turned into a bed at least as comfortable as my one at home. But I was plagued by visions of Antonio calling ahead to his agent to let all of Hollywood know that a strange and uncool person was about to land in their country. I took solace in my complimentary travel kit, which contained, amongst other things, an aromatherapy facial spray and a tub of juniper eye cream. There was even a sofa in first, with a coffee table stacked with the new editions of
Vanity Fair
and
Vogue
and vibrantly coloured American candy and bottles of booze.

I nudged Treena. “See that table? I dare you to put that bottle of champagne in your hand luggage.”

She didn't look up from the magazine. She appeared to be engrossed by the play list for the country music station. “No.”

She still didn't look up. I grabbed the magazine from her hands and hissed, “Dolly Parton, Kenny Loggins, Garth Brooks. Now will you put it down and go steal me a bottle of champagne?”

“I can't. It's against the Lord.”

“It's what?”

“Against the Lord.”

“You mean against the law.” It still amazes me how many expressions Treena has gone through her life completely mishearing, without any qualms and without anyone correcting
her. I guess if someone's as pretty as she is, you want them to be right.

“Whatever.”

“Look, it's not against the law. Everything here is free. If we don't take it, some fat fucker will. You have no qualms about stealing chocolate from family newsagents, or clothes from market stalls. Those people work for a living. This is an airline. We are in first class. These people are super-rich. It's fine.”

“No.”

So I did it myself. The stewardess saw me and actually smiled as I tucked the bottle into my bag.

It felt like we had swopped places. Maybe I am more powerful and daring than Treena, but only in airports and above oceans. Maybe her charisma vanishes outside Camden. Let me think. No, I've been very impressed with her in West London too. She had simply changed. It was as if the exam questions had scuttled up the pen as she wrote and run all the way up her arm and into her brain, never to loosen their grip. They crawled across her body like a plague of tiny ants. She bored me. I worried about spending a whole week with her, and already cursed her in my head for leaving wet towels on the floor, which she surely would, and for not wanting to play Twister at one in the morning, which two weeks ago would have been unlikely. But that was before her eyes turned the colour of spinach.

Imagine if Tommy Belucci suddenly became more famous and successful than Ray. He wouldn't like it. I felt the same way. The most exciting city in the most exciting country in the
world and I was with the wrong person, or rather it had all been a terrible case of mistaken identity. In Camden, I could never have imagined a more right person to be with—to do anything with: to walk with me to the corner shop, to hold my hand on a trip to the moon. In a flash it suddenly occurred to me that if I had to spend one more minute with this person, I would actually fall on the floor from boredom.

As the plane descended into LAX, I felt like a maraschino cherry being dropped onto a bed of whipped cream. Every nervous, insecure, kvetchy pore in my body was genuinely jubilant and to hell with Treena and Antonio. The horrible bit is when you've landed but they won't let you off, they just keep circling the runway. I hate looking at food after I've finished it. No matter how much there is still left on my plate, I have to have it out of my sight. Sitting strapped into your seat on the plane ten minutes after it's landed is like that times ten. Finally, we were allowed to unbelt. I gathered up my bags and clipped back my hair, which had had a total hysterical attack and was pining for its real mommy, Art Garfunkel. As we disembarked from the plane, Antonio Banderas came up and asked which one of us was Viva. His eyes were so shimmery they looked gold. His skin was so gold it looked shimmery.

“Me,” I stammered, swishing my hair like Stevie Nicks swishes her skirts.

“You're a smart girl. That was a smart note you sent over. I'll do an interview if I get a break in filming. You're staying at the Chateau? I'll ring you there. I'll send Melanie your love.”

I completely stopped breathing for the walk through the terminal. In fact, I don't recall inhaling at all until someone rolled a trolley over my foot as I waited by the luggage
carousel. Treena seemed angry at me. All through Customs she sighed and tutted and moaned about the wait for our baggage. Like it was my fault. She only mellowed when we hooked up with Ray, who was waiting with a big sign that said “Los Angeles welcomes Treena and Viva!!” Exclamation marks, I thought to myself. He must be happy. Hey, it worked for Antonio. Still, nothing remotely Dostoevskyan about that message.

I could tell this trip was destined to be the exclamation express. Good: I don't understand the correct use of all the other punctuation symbols. Here's a colon, have an apostrophe—take them, they're only cluttering up my room. An exclamation mark is a good bet and a kind friend, if one that you can never bring yourself to inform that she has been wearing, for the past eleven years, an eye shadow entirely unsuitable for her complexion.

Ray gave us both a big hug. He looked great, I have to say. In Los Angeles, his woman's hair was positively macho. The stubble on his chin was an inch past itchy and a centimetre before beard. His nose looked fine and aquiline. The last time I saw him it looked like it had got bored of being a nose and opted to become a root vegetable halfway through and without getting planning permission. He was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt and combat trousers. His broad, hirsute arms gave him the appearance of a tamed ape. He had a pleasant bouncy air about him, as if he were a space-hopper from the seventies and we should feel free to climb on his shoulders whenever we felt the urge.

He took our bags and led us to an enormous stretch limo with tinted windows. I asked if I could sit in the front. The
seats were soft grey leather and there were two mobile phones. The chauffeur told us we could listen to any station we wanted and we chose Classic Rock. The first song we heard as we roared along the freeway was “Jump” by Van Halen and I felt desperately, stomach-churningly joyful. In London the streets are paved with gold. In Los Angeles the right songs play at the right moments. I looked in the rearview mirror. Treena had nodded off with her head on Ray's shoulder. He absent mindedly stroked her corkscrew curls. They have such gleaming hair, I thought dreamily. They should get married and have gleaming-haired children.

Van Halen turned into Aerosmith, Aerosmith into Oasis, Oasis into the Rolling Stones, the Stones into Aretha Franklin, Aretha into Springsteen, and as the Chateau came into view, the first terrible, beautiful chords of “Boys of Summer” cut through the limo like an unstoppable, spherical tear ruining a supermodel's eye makeup. As pleased as I was to be at the hotel, I did not want to get out of that car. I sat there in the front seat, looking at the L-shaped building with its canopies and balconies as Ray woke Treena up and they started carrying our bags into the lobby. Maybe they were being kind, maybe they had forgotten about me, but they just let me sit there. Finally, the driver opened my door. I looked up at him with pleading eyes, desperate to hear the last few notes. He held out his hand and I had to take it.

The Chateau Marmont is the most beautiful hotel in the world, part Greta Garbo, part Edgar Allan Poe. It is fancy, but not aggressively so, not like those hip New York hotels that practically knock you to the ground and kick minimalism in your face. I hate the idea of paying hundreds of dollars for a
room and then not being able to find a light switch. At the Chateau, a light switch is a light switch, but better and more elegant than any light switch you've ever seen before.

It is the last of old Hollywood. Harry Cohn told William Holden, “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.” Shelley Winters honeymooned there. It was also the place her new husband began an affair with Anna Magnani. Manny Hawks used to rent a room with views directly over the pool so he could ogle the bathing belles. You still see loads of starlets lounging by the pool. They have pale skin, pink sunglasses, small, pert breasts, and dainty tattoos on their ankles. You get a better class of B-movie aspirant at the Chateau.

The Chateau Marmont was the main reason I wanted to go to L.A. Manny had given me a book on its history and I'd slept with it under my pillow until I got a stiff neck. There's photos of Robert Mitchum doing the washing up and of Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper slumped in leather chairs, looking like they are made out of wax. The Chateau has a luscious garden where you can eat breakfast, an enormous gym, a creaky little elevator, and a swimming pool surrounded by bungalows. The best room is a little house that sits at the top of a flight of stairs cut into the rockery. It is so meditative and relaxing to sit at the top of the stairs. Imagine how it must feel to sit at the top of the stairs, in a house at the top of the stairs. If I could stay there, I would be able to plan the rest of my life. One day it will be mine.

This was all stored in my head long before I even got to the airport. So there I was and I found I was reluctant to go in, in case it didn't live up to my expectations. I needn't have worried.
The first thing I saw was a beautiful wooden magazine rack, stacked with
Interview
and imported copies of
The Face
and, even better,
Daily Variety
and the
Hollywood Reporter
. The magazine rack was beautiful. The magazines were beautiful. The plush lounge seated funny-looking best-supporting actors and women studio executives, talking in deep voices, drinking tea and looking glamorous. I was in heaven. If we are all made in God's image, I think the fair swap should be that heaven be made to our design. Tommy Belucci would spend the hereafter living in Pete Townshend's nose. Manny would spend it nestled in Elizabeth Taylor's cleavage. I would pluck my harp from the top of that magazine rack.