Looking for Andrew McCarthy (32 page)

‘I want to throw a piece of paper off the top and see if it will really guillotine someone,’ Colin was saying.

‘Well you can’t,’ said Loxy, who had been impressed by the coolness with which he’d managed to retrieve a newspaper from the oddly shaped box on the
street corner, particularly as he’d had to hold Colin back from taking all of them, and was now buried in it. Then he saw it, stuck on an inside page:

80s Movie Star in Stalker Drama.

Brat Pack star Andrew McCarthy (36) has been targeted by several stalkers, it was revealed today. The one-time teen actor, who has also had several successes on Broadway, was said to be concerned by the fact that he is being obsessively followed by fans from all over the world.

‘Oh my God,’ said Loxy. ‘That guy they’re looking for – it turns out he’s being stalked!’

‘Oh no,’ said Colin. ‘Poor guy.’

‘Speaking from his chic apartment in New York’s trendy SoHo …’

‘Great!’ said Loxy. ‘That’s where he is! Let’s go!’

Colin looked at him wide-eyed and sticky-mouthed.

‘But … the Empire State Building!’

‘What’s more important? The Empire State Building or your friends?’

Colin looked at his plate. ‘What about the Empire State Building and my doughnuts against my friends?’ His face creased until it looked like he might cry.

‘The answer is “your friends”,’ said Loxy, dragging him up. ‘You can eat doughnuts any time.’

‘Yes, but not with maple syrup and figs …’

Loxy pulled him onto the sidewalk.

‘Do you think it’s really there, or is it just going to shimmer in a mirage and we’re never going to hit it?’ asked Ellie. They had spent, they hoped, their last night in a motel, and were up bright and early and ready for action. However the fifty-mile tailback into Manhattan didn’t seem to have moved in any perceptible fashion for the last two hours. ‘I wish I’d brought my own ice-skates.’

‘I’m going to have to drop the car off,’ said Julia moodily, staring at the map. ‘Well. It’s not like we’ll miss it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Arthur. ‘The way the vinyl retains sweat and odour.’

They limped in eventually and crawled under a tunnel which Ellie thought, rather nervously, she’d seen blown up in a movie before. Then suddenly New York burst upon them, and their entire world became vertical.

‘Hey hey!’ said Arthur.

‘Yikes!’ said Julia, as a suicidal bike messenger bore down on her out of nowhere. ‘I thought London couriers were bad.’

‘Not that bad,’ said Arthur. ‘I had one once. Went like the clappers.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, it was great. You could phone him up and order him like pizza.’

‘That’s not good for you, you know,’ said Julia reprovingly.

‘Hey – it wasn’t
real
pizza.’

‘Do you think if you could get married to Colin you would?’ speculated Ellie.

‘Don’t be gross,’ said Arthur, shivering in disgust. ‘Have you ever been to a non-tacky wedding? God no. If I could show him at
Crufts
I would.’

‘I think you’re a bit hard on him.’

‘Oh, stop it – I really miss being hard on him.’

They crawled along the busy street. Snow had fallen in the night, but on the streets it was drizzly and grey. People pushed their way to work, looking angry at the world.

‘If I lived in New York, I’d be happy all the time,’ said Ellie, looking at them in wonderment. ‘With a lovely American boy.’

‘I’m sure it’s just like London,’ said Arthur. ‘With shiny molars.’

‘It’s nothing like London!’ said Ellie scornfully. ‘Nobody and nothing in it is the faintest bit like London.’

‘Oh God,’ said Julia.

‘What?’

‘Nothing. The funniest thing. Must have been away
from home for too long. Only, I could have sworn I saw …’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, no. Just two people that looked a lot like Loxy and Colin, that’s all. Isn’t it weird when that happens?’

The surly man in the courier booth didn’t even look up at them when they turned the car in.

‘Any problems?’ he grunted.

‘Nope.’ said Julia.

‘Ha. If only he knew,’ said Ellie.

‘Huh,’ he grunted, and kept reading his magazine as they shouldered their bags and walked out, heavily burdened, into the freezing afternoon.

Thus it took him about ten minutes to identify the figures when the cops came in half an hour later, chasing the car.

‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘Hardly noticed them. But hey – if they’re vicious murderers, I’ll be expecting a cheque from the NYPD for the cleaning bill.’

‘Yeah, right … sue your own ass,’ said the cop, noting the amount of litter in the back of the car. They weren’t going to get too far leaving this much evidence kicking around the place. No rope though. Plus, they were limeys, so he didn’t think they’d be carrying guns. He checked back into his radio, told
them to look out for two Caucasian females, one male. Christ. That should narrow it down in a town of ten million.

They dumped their bags somewhere which appeared to be a very small hotel room or a broom cupboard, but by the price of it was actually a semi-detached house in Hounslow.

‘Okay,’ said Arthur. ‘The parade is just starting. So I say we go see that, then ice skating in Central Park like in
Splash
, then Bloomingdales like in
Mannequin
, then plan to end up absolutely anywhere from
Bright Lights, Big City
.’

Ellie sat rather disconsolately on the tiny bed.

‘I guess,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Julia, sitting down beside her. ‘Isn’t this what we decided?’

‘Look at the alternatives,’ said Arthur. ‘Are you really just going to go piling out into …’ he indicated the freezing cold and the wind outside. ‘I thought we were all going to stick together here.’

‘This is it, isn’t it?’ said Julia, in an encouraging tone of voice. ‘Didn’t we decide that? That us all being together was all that mattered?’

‘Yes,’ said Ellie staring at the floor. The last thing she felt like doing now was abandoning all the Andrews in her life and going out to the world’s
biggest transvestite awards. Then she thought again of what she’d decided in the aftermath of the crash and remembered her new found commitment to duty, even if it was duty fun. She shook herself briskly. ‘Yes, it is. I bloody owe you guys a good time!’

‘Not in the sexual sense I hope,’ said Arthur.

‘Nope!’ said Ellie stalwartly. ‘Come on! I am putting on my ra-ra skirt and we are HITTING THIS TOWN.’

New York crackled with icicles and excitement. Ellie linked one arm through Julia’s and one through Arthur’s and they shivered their way north along Lexington Avenue. The streets were very busy, and every so often they would see a feather head-dress or a man in stilts over the top of the crowd, which would make Arthur hop with excitement and Julia exclaim. Ellie held onto both of them tightly and pretended the wind was making her face as sad as it was.

‘Quick, this way,’ said Julia, pulling out the map. They craned over it to try and work out where they were. ‘We cross Sixth and turn into 48th Street.’ Arthur poked his head up.

‘Over here!’ he said. ‘Oops. Walk or Don’t walk; there doesn’t seem to be a flashing man option. Shame.’

‘It is
freezing
,’ said Julia.

They reached the cross street and turned the corner, then Ellie really did freeze with her mouth hanging open.

The street was entirely full up. Yellow cabs were stopped in the middle of the road. Somewhere, someone had set up a gigantic stereo system that was pumping out pop music, and the whole street was dancing – transvestites of all shapes and sizes together with quite a lot of ordinary-looking kids.

‘Oh my God,’ said Ellie, extending her finger slowly. Set in the stone behind the dancers was a fine old Manhattan building proudly proclaiming ‘High School For Professional Performing Arts’.

Two people jumped on top of one of the yellow taxis and started frugging furiously. The cab driver only laughed and shouted at someone to turn the music up.

Arthur and Julia stared at the scene, smiling broadly at the silliness of it.

Ellie wasn’t smiling.

‘It’s a sign,’ said Ellie suddenly. ‘It’s a SIGN!’

And she took off at a run and disappeared into the crowd.

‘HEY!’ shouted Julia and Arthur. They took off after
her, but before they’d gone two yards, Julia was nearly felled by a huge hug from a seven-foot black Marilyn Monroe.

‘
HON!
’ said Holly Wood. ‘I KNEW you’d come. How did you manage to change your messy friend into something so cute?’ She shot Arthur a look.

Julia scanned the crowds, but Ellie had gone.

‘Oh, hi Holly Wood,’ she said with a sigh. ‘
Weird Science
. Anyway.
You
look fantastic.’

‘Hand sewn,’ said Holly, shaking some decidedly anxious-looking sequins. ‘So, come dance.’

‘We’ve got to look for our friend.’

‘Oh,’ said Arthur, hips already shaking of their own accord. ‘She’ll turn up again when she’s hungry.’ And he shimmied into the throng, dragging Julia with him.

Ninety-nine red balloons went by.

Once past the crowds, Ellie slowed down, panting. No-one was behind her. But she knew now. She had to go looking. She was here. She had to. Otherwise, she’d never know.

She was in a slightly quieter seedier street now, and looked around nervously, wondering where to start. It began to snow. She set her head against the wind and went on.

Okay. Where would actors hang out? Where would he be likely to go? Second-hand bookshops and old black and white movie theatres, that seemed like his style. She kept heading south, away from the parade and the tourist sites, and pushed along the endless blocks down into midtown and from then, freezing, on to SoHo, glancing at every face and in every shop window.

Andrew II stared at the piece of paper with the address Hatsie had given him, and up at the elegant brownstone. Well, depending on their powers of deduction – which, frankly, he didn’t rate that highly – they were going to hopefully make it here sooner or later. Hanging around seemed like a dumb idea, but then every time he remembered Ellie, and the awful news hanging over her, he couldn’t bear the thought of going anywhere else.

‘Hmm,’ said Loxy, looking around. ‘I think we need some strategy here.’

‘Excuse me,’ Colin was asking a bag lady on a bench. ‘Have you seen my friends Arthur and Ellie and Julia?’

The bag lady grunted at him and put out her hand. Loxy pulled him away before he put more than five dollars in it.

‘Okay,’ said Colin. ‘We’re in the right bit. Why don’t we just shout?’

‘What?’

‘Andrew!’ shouted Colin. ‘Andrew!’

‘Maybe he’ll be passing on his way to the shops,’ Colin whispered to Loxy. ‘And he’ll hear us and come over.’

‘Oh,’ said Loxy. He thought it over.

‘Andrew!’ he joined in.

‘Calling all units,’ said the cop on the corner, quietly into his radio.

Four hours later, Ellie was still on the street. All the faces had started to look the same to her. As on the London Underground, the eyes flicked away sharply, apart from those of some of the more dodgy-looking men, which made her feel even more uncomfortable. She wandered in and out of antique shops, of cinemas, of chichi delis. ‘This isn’t even looking for a needle in a haystack,’ she began to think. ‘This is looking for a needle in Wales. A really small needle.’ For the eight billionth time she wondered what Arthur and Julia were up to.

She tripped over a tiny dog.

‘Hey!’ yelled a voice. ‘Get the fuck oudda it!’

‘Sorry!’ She stumbled on, laddering her tights and tripping down into a subway station. The millions of
hard-faced commuters and travellers down there in the semi-darkness seemed to loom in front of her and she became short of breath, realizing the impossibility of picking out one person from the multitude.

Up top again it was more freezing than ever. She pushed against the wind again and went on, but now she was entirely without direction, plodding forward up the endless, endless streets. The thought ‘this is stupid, this is stupid, this is all stupid,’ swirled round and round her head. Tears pricking her eyelids were whisked away by the breeze. Although it was only early afternoon it already felt dark, with the heavy snow-filled clouds touching the tops of the skyscrapers. Her feet were agony.

Finally, feeling miserable and defeated, and soaked through from the tears on her face to her sodden toes, she fell into the first coffee shop she came to.

‘Well, hello y’all,’ said a familiar voice. ‘What happened to your friend? She ran away, di’n’t she? Can’t say I’m surprised.’

Ellie staggered back and clasped onto the back of a chair.

‘Oh. My. God!’

‘Ehm, yeah well, God or whatever,’ said the waitress from LA. ‘I mean, do you want a priest or do you want some pancakes?’

‘Pancakes!’ said Ellie, recovering from her shock and discovering a broad grin plastered across her face.