Kiss Heaven Goodbye (53 page)

‘Well, good luck with the language barrier,’ she said, spotting the wife of a high-ranking politician across the room.‘I’ve got to mingle.’

Two hours later, the show was over and Sasha was glowing with a social and business triumph. Rivera’s Russian PR Karla had already warned her that they might have to reorder stock before the Rivera store had even opened – already a handful of women had proclaimed that they wanted ‘everything’, and neither Sasha nor Karla thought they were joking. Slipping on her russet-red fox fur, Sasha headed out into the chilly Moscow night air. She was the last to leave Café Pushkin and she was left alone on Pushkin Square.

Where’s my bloody car?
she thought anxiously. The last thing she wanted was to get stuck in the middle of nowhere, not even knowing the word for ‘hotel’. The white boxy shape of a Muscovite taxi turned the corner. Cold, tired and desperate to get back to her hotel, she put her hand out to stop it.

‘Hey, missus,’ called an amused voice. ‘You don’t want to be getting into taxis all alone at night.’ Josh Steel was leaning out of the window of a black Mercedes, his blue eyes twinkling.

‘I’m screwed then, aren’t I?’ she said.

‘Too early to tell.’ He grinned, popping the passenger door open.

She walked across and got in.

‘What hotel are you at?’

‘Park Hyatt.’

‘Splendid, so am I,’ he said, gunning the engine.

‘I hope you’re going to stick to the speed limit, Mr Steel,’ she said in mock alarm.

He smiled. ‘I’m fast but I’m safe.’

‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

Back at the hotel, Sasha pretended to hesitate when he asked her for a drink. They took the elevator up to the tenth floor bar, overlooking the city, packed with businessmen and blondes wearing jewels as big as ice cubes.

‘Bloody hell, the drinks are expensive,’ said Josh, flipping through the menu.

‘I didn’t realise you were looking for a cheap date,’ said Sasha.

‘Just social observation. Down the street you can get vodka for fifty roubles.’

‘The Russian way. Everything is either very cheap or very expensive. They’re still caught between communism and capitalism.’

They slipped into easy conversation, swapping stories about their lives and people they knew in common. Josh was easy-going and fun, ‘the only way you can deal with such a stressful job’, he reasoned. It felt like a long time since Sasha had really laughed, and not talked about business, just fun throwaway things like people, parties and gossip. She loved that they were in such an exotic, alien environment and yet she could feel so familiar and relaxed with this stranger.

‘How do you think it went tonight?’ said Josh, swirling the vodka around the bottom of his glass.

‘Very well,’ said Sasha. ‘Which is a relief, as Rivera’s investors were divided over whether we should even have the party. They were worried we might devalue the brand if we were too aligned with new Russian money. It’s preposterous! I mean, where does that logic lead? We don’t sell to the Chinese because of their human rights track record?’

He held his hands up and laughed. ‘OK, OK, I’m on your side. Maybe we shouldn’t talk about business.’

‘Sorry.’ Sasha winced. ‘Was I ranting?’

He held up his thumb and forefinger. ‘Just a little.’

They sipped their drinks and fell into an amiable silence.

‘Hey, you know I have seen you before,’ he said after a pause. ‘At that party at Somerset House recently. I was going to come to speak to you but someone told me not to bother.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘They told me you batted for the other team.’

‘No!’ she gasped, truly amazed.

‘They said you never have a boyfriend.’

She drew herself up in the chair. ‘What a ridiculous thing to say, just because I don’t flaunt my love life all over the papers. Actually I dated my finance director for four years. Then there was someone else . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Someone I shouldn’t have been seeing.’

‘What happened? Wife find out?’

‘He died,’ she said, knocking back her vodka.

‘I’m sorry.’ He put his hand over hers and she felt her anger simmer down. She glanced up and he was looking at her with his Paul Newman eyes.

‘I’ll walk you back to your room,’ he said, signing the bill. ‘You never know who might be lurking behind the plants.’

They rode the lift down in silence and stopped outside her room. As she reached into her clutch for her key-card, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. He tasted sweet and sour, the vodka and his lips, and suddenly she wanted him. She popped the door open and, without turning on the light, he pushed her up against the wall, his mouth hot on hers, desire running from her navel to her groin. Then, just as suddenly, she pulled away from him.

‘What’s the matter?’ he whispered.

‘It’s ... it’s just been a while, that’s all,’ she said honestly. ‘Bit nervous.’

‘You’re kidding me?’ he said, chuckling.

It was true. There had been nobody since Robert, and she felt so closed off, so resistant to the desire that was searing round her body, she felt a physical ache as he touched her.

‘We’ll take it slowly,’ he whispered, sliding his hand behind her, unzipping her dress.‘You just relax. I’m going to remind you exactly what you’ve been missing.’

51

May 2006

‘Will you stop looking at me like that?’ said Melissa as Alex drove their 4x4 up Highway One towards Pacific Palisades.

‘Like what?’ asked Alex, glancing towards the passenger seat.

‘You’re looking at me weirdly,’ she said with a disapproving pout. ‘Like I’m a stranger or something.’

Alex chuckled and squeezed her knee. ‘Maybe it’s because you do look like a stranger. My wife left for the hairdresser’s at nine o’clock this morning and she hasn’t come back.’

Even members of Melissa’s fan club would be hard pressed to spot her tonight. Her face was nearly make-up-free, her usually red lips muted with a pale beige stain. A four-hour session at Guido, Beverly Hills’ most sought-after hairdresser, had turned her glossy blond mane chocolate brown, while her knee-length navy tea-dress hadn’t quite extinguished her sex appeal but had made her less available, more serious.

‘I want this part, Alex. Tonight I’m going to show him I
am
Danielle.’

Alex chuckled to himself. They were on their way to dinner with Christopher Hayes, the maverick director and screenwriter whose latest project was adapting
Next Door But One
, a Pulitzer-prize-winning book about sexual tension in 1950s suburbia. Melissa had already been offered the role of Nancy, the young temptress who seduces a Madison Avenue advertising executive away from his wife. But she didn’t want to be Nancy; she wanted the smaller but more pivotal role of Danielle, the wife.

‘Nancy gets you the front cover of
GQ
,’ she’d told Alex while reading the script in bed. ‘But Danielle wins you an Oscar.’

Most of the time Alex tried to avoid Hollywood’s power-broking party circuit, but he’d agreed to come along tonight because he was a huge fan of Christopher Hayes. The director had spent the eighties and early nineties making deeply intelligent and often quite weird films – studies of small-town paranoia, many of which Alex had seen with Emma at the Cornerhouse, the little art-house cinema in Manchester. Every actor in Hollywood wanted to work for him, and judging by the huge Spanish-style mansion overlooking the ocean, his off-the-wall movies were big business.

A maid in grey uniform answered the door and led them through to an open living area facing the Pacific, which was fading from view as the sun sank behind dusky clouds. Alex couldn’t help but grin inanely when Christopher came over and shook their hands and introduced them to the other dinner guests.

‘Al, Melissa, you both know Justin Coe?’ he said.

‘We’ve met,’ simpered Melissa. ‘And of course I’m a huge fan.’

‘Oh, I can’t think why,’ said Justin, flashing his perfect white teeth.

Justin Coe was one of Hollywood’s biggest and most bankable stars. He had signed up to play the role of Ray, the advertising executive in the movie.

‘So what do you do, Al?’ he asked.

‘Oh, Al’s just a singer,’ said Melissa.

‘Really?’ said Justin, his smile dimming slightly. ‘You done anything I might have heard?’

‘Nothing much yet,’ said Alex. ‘Made a few demos, hoping to get a few gigs in the valley.’

‘Yeah, good luck with that,’ said Justin, steering Melissa away. ‘You really have to meet Daniel over here . . .’

At dinner, Melissa was seated between Christopher and Justin, while Alex was relegated to the other end, next to Christopher’s wife Jennifer, an impressive and rather intimidating woman wearing a camel-coloured trouser suit. Alex sat quietly, just absorbing the Hollywood shop talk – who was making what, who was screwing who, who had a terrible coke problem, who was in rehab – swinging between boredom and awkwardness. By the time the dessert was brought out, he had taken to playing a game with himself, counting the times the word ‘awesome’ was used in conversation. He watched as Melissa and Justin stood up, heading out towards the swimming pool ‘for a smoke’. He was just about to follow when Jennifer touched his arm.

‘You really shouldn’t have fucked with him, you know,’ she whispered.

Alex looked at her, startled. ‘Who?’

‘Justin. Or Teeth as I like to call him,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s not the done thing to make the star look stupid, even if he doesn’t realise.’

‘Sorry, he was being a knob.’

Jennifer laughed, a full-throated, fruity chuckle. ‘Knob,’ she repeated with relish. ‘I love the way you speak – and that wasn’t supposed to sound patronising. You wouldn’t believe how much bland shit I have to listen to at these things. It’s nice to meet someone who says what he thinks.’

Alex smiled politely, trying to remember everything Melissa had told him about Jennifer in the car. She was a former columnist for the
New York Times
turned scriptwriter and novelist. That might explain her forthright approach.

‘So with that in mind, why don’t you tell me what you thought of
Firefly
?’

Firefly
was Christopher Hayes’ last movie, a twisted tale of unrequited love set in a remote town in the Midwest.

‘I thought it was brilliant,’ said Alex.‘I loved the homage to French New Wave in the scene at the gas station.’

Jennifer glanced over towards her husband, who was locked in earnest conversation. ‘Crock of pretentious shit if you ask me,’ she muttered, and Alex had to cover his mouth to stop himself from coughing his blueberry tart across the table.

‘I’ll be honest, Jennifer.’ He laughed. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to say that.’

‘I know. The soignée Hollywood wife. Come on. I used to be a journalist. I’m a New Yorker. If I think
Firefly
was just an exercise in artistic masturbation, then I’m going to say so.’

‘You’d love it in my home town,’ said Alex.‘Everyone says exactly what they mean up there. That’s why there are so many fights outside the chippy.’

‘That’s what drives me nuts about the West Coast, Al,’ said Jennifer, pouring him more wine as the dessert was cleared away. ‘You never say what you think out here, you say what you think you should say. It’s one of the reasons I prefer writing books to screenplays. I call the shots. Writing a movie, you’ve got fifteen different people telling you what to do, all trying to outmanoeuvre the other guy. You’re a pawn, not an author.’

She saw Alex glancing towards the door Melissa had left through.

‘You know, LA is full of very smart people who think they have to play stupid,’ she said quietly.

‘Oh, Melissa’s not stupid.’

‘I gathered that the second I saw her. I take it she’s after the part of Danielle and not Nancy?’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘I’ve seen every trick in the book. People will do anything to get the part.’

‘Well, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better check where she’s got to,’ he said, pushing his chair back.

He walked out towards the pool, and for a moment he couldn’t see Melissa anywhere. Then he spotted her, hidden away in a corner, sitting on a teak sunlounger, cosied right up next to Justin. Her tea-dress, that had looked so decorous when they had left the house, had risen several inches up her thigh, which was now covered with Justin Coe’s hand.

As they drove back towards Mulholland, snaking their way up through the hills, Melissa was beaming, her cheeks flushed.

‘Great that you were talking to Jennifer back there,’ she said. ‘Good strategy to get in with the wife.’

‘She was actually the only human in the room,’ he said.

‘What’s got into you?’ She frowned.

Alex glanced at her, then looked back towards the road, fuming.

‘What?’ she said.

‘I don’t know why you bothered with this prom-virgin charade tonight if all along you planned on behaving like a . . . like you did back there.’

‘What are you talking about?’ she said defensively.

‘What am I talking about? From the minute we got there to the minute we left, you were flirting with Justin like a bitch on heat.’

‘We were talking about the movie,’ she said.

‘Oh yes? And did he need to put his hand up your skirt while you chatted?’

‘I wasn’t flirting,’ protested Melissa. ‘I was demonstrating chemistry. ’

‘Of course,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘How naïve of me.’

‘Look, Christopher is one of the most powerful directors in the world, but Justin will still have the final say-so on his co-star.’

‘And that makes it OK, does it?’ snapped Alex. ‘Think about how it feels for me, Melissa. Married to “the sexiest woman in the world”. I know you have to network and connect with future co-stars, but you’re married and there’s a line you don’t cross.’

‘And do you think it’s easy for me? You out on tour, surrounded by screaming girls, never home?’

Suddenly Alex had déjà vu so powerful he shivered. He was almost transported back to the Year Zero days and having almost exactly the same conversations with Emma.