Namedropper (22 page)

I was furious with Treena for not getting more worked up about it. I didn't care about her sleeping with Ray, I just wanted her to chomp a french fry between her big white teeth and squeal, “Um, good!” I bet she'd do it for him. If she thought it would turn him on. I looked at her arms. He liked her because her body was entirely hairless. For the rest of the meal I tried to look at her face, but I could not drag my eyes away from her freakishly hairless arms.

We went back to the hotel and met up with Ray in the bar. He was perched on a high stool with some record executives and American management minions. He introduced Treena as his girlfriend. Wow. I excused myself to powder my nose,
thinking about dusting it with gunpowder and then blowing them all up. On my way through the dimly lit bar, I passed Dillon. He had replaced the three-quarter-length shorts with a pair of skateboarder's trousers. But he still had on the anorak. It was still zipped up to the top. It actually seemed to be zipped further than the top, running on a track of its own. He was chatting up some six-foot amazon with a Dolce & Gabbana catsuit and dyed red hair. The highness of his top was matched by the lowness of her neckline, which almost reached her navel. When he spotted me, he quite literally pushed her to one side and sprinted to grab my arm. As the girl dusted herself down, he clung to my sleeve. He was so drunk that his right eye was twitching.

“Go back to your lady friend, Dillon. Don't even bother talking to me because—hey—I'm not going to sleep with you.”

“That's what you think.” He reeked of vodka, which isn't even supposed to smell of anything.

He gripped me tighter and whispered in my ear, “Take your clothes off.”

I leaped away from him. “
What
?”

He said it louder. “Take your clothes off.”

“What, here in the middle of the bar? No, I don't think so somehow.”

He took this very well, backing off and nodding his head. “Okay, you're absolutely right.” He rearranged his hair. “Take your knickers off.”

For the second time that day, Dillon from Skyline made me double over with laughter. “Stop it. Oh, please stop it.” I
was laughing so hard tears were running down my cheeks and I had to grip his anorak for support. He readily held me up, with his hands around my waist.

“What's so funny, baby doll?”

“Oh, don't baby-doll me. Don't try and get off with me. You're embarrassing yourself. I don't like to see a man of your talent embarrassed like that.” He chose to ignore me and tried to force his tongue into my mouth.

“Dillon, please stop it. You're just doing this to be polite, because I'm a girl and you're a big pop star and you think I'd be insulted if you didn't try and get off with me. You're not doing it because you fancy me. And that's more insulting for a girl like me.”

He breathed a flame of vodka in my face and wailed, “I do fancy you.”

Ray dragged himself away from Treena and the executives (“Treena and the Executives”—what a great name for a band). “Uh, what's going on?”

“Nothing, mate. Nothing. We were just talking about getting another drink.” He put on an upper-class twit voice. “Join us, Raymond, in a glass of champagne. It's on me.”

Nervously, Ray agreed, beckoning Treena over. The Dolce & Gabbana girl tried to sit down at our booth, but Dillon shooed her away, like she was a kitten with fleas, not an LA über-babe. We drank a magnum of champagne and then another one. Dillon and Ray went to the toilets together and, for five minutes, Treena and I were alone. I held her hand.

“Are you happy?”

“Yes.” She smiled a hard, tight smile. I couldn't see her teeth.

“Good. So long as you're happy, then it isn't all in vain.”

She looked over my shoulder into the middle distance, like I was a crazy lady. I let go of her hand. When they came back, Dillon and Ray seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. They had their arms around each other and kept singing bursts from each other's hits. Dillon even kissed Ray's forehead. They arm-wrestled for a bit, and then Dillon tried to play footsie with me under the table, but I kicked his foot away a bit too viciously and he cried out. Treena and Ray, who had been making gooey faces at each other, turned to stare, but Dillon just called the cocktail waitress over and started flirting with her and trying to look down her top. All of a sudden, I wanted him to look down my top. I wished I had kicked him a little more playfully.

When the bar closed, Dillon insisted that we all go back to his room to empty the minibar. He was booked into a suite on the top floor. We had to admit that it was even more impressive than our bungalows. It had a huge front room with a balcony, green velvet curtains, and views over the swimming pool. There were two desks, two brass hook telephones, and two luxuriously upholstered sofas. The kitchen had a cooker, a sink, and a tumble-drier. There were two bedrooms with two tall oak closets. This was all for Dillon, in case he got bored by one bedroom and had to get up and change in the middle of the night.

“Why aren't there two kitchens?” I asked, but no one was listening to me.

They were drinking red wine and tequila and snorting coke. I think the lovebirds were snorting tequila because, eventually, Ray passed out cold and Treena lay motionless on
the floor. Dillon kept snorting away at his white powder. I didn't have any. I don't like things that look so pure when they're really so evil. If I wanted that, I'd just go out and snort Mia Farrow.

I stared out of the kitchen window, down onto the fifty-foot Marlboro Man sign. Music was blaring in the front room. I was sure we were going to get kicked out by management, so I sat, cross-legged, on the tumble-drier and admired the view before we got in trouble. I reached out a leg and flipped open the fridge with my foot, then bent down and grabbed a Coke. A piece of perfect gymnastics, and no one had seen it. I cocked my head. The Marlboro Man looks like Tom Selleck.

I must have been there for ten minutes when the music abruptly stopped and Dillon came stumbling into the kitchen. His anorak was finally unzipped. He had a white polo-neck T-shirt underneath. I was going to ask him how he could stand to dress like that in this heat, but instead I snapped, “Why are you called Dillon?”

He jumped back, bleary-eyed. “Well, uh, it's not my real name. My real name's Patrick. But I don't like it. Too Irishy-peasanty. I changed it to Dillon because of, well, you know …” He looked at his shoes.

“Because of Bob Dylan?”

“Yes.” He ruffled his hair, which was starting to form kiss curls.

I put my hand clumsily on his shoulder. “I think that's lovely. Hey, I would change my name to Elizabeth Springsteen if I had the nerve. But why don't your songs sound like Bob Dylan?”

“Don't they?” He looked devastated.

“Um, not really. You sound Beatlesy and Stonesy, even Who-y. But not Dylany. Sorry. Hey, do you want to hear me sing ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-box Hat'?”

He clapped politely.

He told me that Dylan was his big love, that he had intended to be a folk singer, but all his mates had laughed at him. The way he told it, it was less that he succumbed to some Valley Girl notion of peer pressure than that he felt he had a duty by his friends. If they wanted him to play football and be in their band, he would.

“They must have known what was best for me because it paid off, didn't it?” He walked in a tiny circle, as big as a cheddar-cheese cracker. “I just play the music, sing what they want. They don't like folk. They don't even like Bob anymore. Someone like Ray can get away with talking about being inspired by this mad fucker or that mad fucker, but not me. I'm just some daft scouse chancer.”

I could still taste the Carney's burger in the back of my throat. “If that's what they think, then you be the best daft scouse chancer you can. Don't be like Ray. You don't have to tell the world's media about your favourite films. Ray goes on and fucking on about Woody Allen and I don't think anyone believes him. Keep Bob for yourself. It makes it more special. Why waste your breath on those bozos?” I paused. “I'm hungry.”

We toasted S'mores, which are the purest form of junk food there is, in that they take some skill to make. This entails holding marshmallows over the stove until they dribble, but not until they burn, and then placing them between a slab of Hershey's chocolate and a Graham cracker. I made them
silently, thinking, “I hope he doesn't think I'm acting like a wife,” and “If I ever do become a wife, I hope I never have to make anything but S'mores.” Dillon stuffed the canapé in his mouth and pink marshmallow crept down his chin. I asked him if he was going to be sick, and he said he wasn't planning on it.

“You're a good kid. I like you. I either hate people, don't notice them, or get obsessed by them. I never just plain like someone.” He swallowed the last mouthful of goo. “Who are you obsessed by?”

I pushed myself back onto the tumble-drier and took a deep breath. “Drew. He had that band, The Kindness of Strangers.”

Dillon licked his fingers. “Never 'eard of them.”

“No, they weren't really famous. They weren't even very good. But he had something.” I reconsidered this. “He had everything.”

Dillon took his anorak off and hung it on the chair. “Do you want to crash here?”

I was three minutes from my own bed. It wasn't like I was stranded in Tottenham and I couldn't get a cab home. But I thought about the question and concluded that I did want to stay.

“I can sleep in the spare bedroom.”

“Nah.” He didn't explain why. He just calmly dismissed the notion.

“Well, we can at least move Ray and Treena.”

“They can stay on the floor like the dogs they are.”

The minute we got back in the bedroom he became very
polite. The TV was flickering with the sound on low. He snorted the last of the coke.

“Do you mind if I take off my shoes?” I told him I'd mind more if he kept them on. I asked if I could borrow a T-shirt, and he turned away whilst I wriggled out of my shirt and pulled it over my head. Then he turned off the lights and whipped his T-shirt off so he was wearing only his boxer shorts. He leaped under the covers so fast he scratched my arm with his fingernail.

“What's the matter with you?”

“I don't like my body. Too skinny. Like Bob.”

“But you have a lovely body,” I lied. It
was
kind of disgusting, so pale and chickeny. I don't know why I felt the need to boost the ego of a Lothario who regularly cheated on his girlfriend of five years.

We lay flat on our backs for a few minutes, a foot apart. Then he reached out and held my hand. He wasn't turned towards me, so we must have looked like we'd been arranged in a strange burial position. He stroked my fingers and turned them over in his hand, gently brushing each fingernail.

“What scent are you wearing?”

I thought it was really cool that he said “scent” and not “perfume,” and I wouldn't have liked him so much if he hadn't. He leaned over and breathed against my neck. He was supposed to be smelling
me
, but all I could feel was him blowing
out
. He put his tongue in my ear, which sounds like something disgusting from a ZZ Top video, but was actually really nice. He put one hand around the back of my neck and slipped the other under the curve of my back, and pulled
me tight to him. I felt embarrassed because my breasts were squashed against him, but then I opened my eyes and he didn't look like he minded too much.

Then he bit my neck and started licking my chin. He pulled himself on top of me and moved downwards, kissing my tummy.

“Tell me what you like.”

“I like cola-bottle sweets. I still like leggings under miniskirts, even though Madonna hasn't worn them in ten years. I like Bruce Springsteen and Hello Kitty. I like movies made before 1967. What do you like?” He lifted his face from my stomach and I wished I hadn't asked.

“I like Bob Dylan and girls in patent-leather T-bar shoes, smart shoes, not sneakers. I like nail polish and round faces. I like Marmite on toast. My favourite album is
Blood on the Tracks
.” He giggled. “These are a few of my favourite things.”

“Well, look, to be honest, every musician likes Bob Dylan. Who doesn't like Bob Dylan? That doesn't count.”

“Okay, I like John Denver.”

“That's better.” I stroked his face and he kissed me very softly.

“I like that. I like kissing.”

We went to sleep for a few hours. Every so often I would stir and he would kiss my neck. I woke up and he was staring at me.

“I do fancy you. You said I was just trying to get off with you because you were there. Don't think that.”

“Great, fine, whatever. Let me go to sleep.”

Around noon, I woke up with my nose in Dillon's armpit. I delicately rearranged myself and sat up to watch MTV. When
Ray came to, he talked to me quite normally for about three minutes, until I rearranged the covers around me and he said, in a strangulated yelp, “Oh my God. You're wearing your pants.” I replied that of course I was wearing my pants, that they were big pants, and that I also had a bra on. The bra was, admittedly, quite small and seemed to have shrunk in the night. Possibly Dillon had chopped it up and snorted it when I wasn't looking.

I was going to say, “Dillon, I'm in love with you,” which was the truth at the time, whilst he was kissing my tummy and telling me how beautiful I was. Treena would have killed me if I had, but I was kind of sorry I didn't because, soon, the moment had passed and though we clearly liked each other a lot, we weren't in love anymore and never would be again. If I said it, would we have been able to make it last longer? Or would I have had to leave the room then and there?

When we finally slapped Treena awake, gathered up our shoes, and left, Dillon was conked out and snoring. The next time I saw him was at four-thirty that afternoon, as I surfaced for air in the swimming pool. Chlorine stung my eyes, and I saw the glare of his anorak before I saw him.