It was
Oscar night - the Hollywood equivalent of New Year’s
Eve, The Fourth of July and Christmas Day all rolled into one. A chance for
self-satisfied studio executives to don rented Armani tuxedos and to pat each other on the back for
having had the consummate brilliance to have hired someone vaguely literate who
had actually bothered to read a screenplay and to have deemed it worthy of
‘development’.
It was
also the one night when starlets with silicone tits and Restylane lips congratulated themselves on finally picking
the right cock to suck as God knows, that was always a gamble. Forget kissing
frogs, it was blowjobs that were the real currency of male / female
interpersonal relationships in this town. Angelika wondered how these girls did
it as she couldn’t imagine putting any dick into her mouth that didn’t belong
to a body she loved or was at the very least intensely attracted to.
As she
evidently hadn’t sucked the right cock, Angelika wasn’t invited to any of the A-List
parties. There’d be no Vanity Fair
shindig or Governor’s Ball love-fest for her. She was more than a little bit
peeved at this, as she secretly would have loved to have been invited, but she
wanted to see her own name in calligraphy on the gold-edged invitation, not as
some bi-polar schmoozer’s
plus one.
But
Angelika had been invited to one of the lesser events by Simon, one of her
habitual coke buddies. Simon was the cadaverous scion of one of Hollywood’s
classier film dynasties, but Simon himself just concentrated on developing a
gargantuan drug habit and amassing a large and seedy phalanx of rich-kid
coke-fiend pals. Angelika did like Simon as he was amusing and sophisticated
and could always be relied upon for a virtually bottomless pit of cocaine with
which he was more than generous; and he’d always give credit, if required. His
inherited mid-century modern house in the hills above Sunset Plaza was party
central, a 24 hour maelstrom
of chemical depravity. Angelika had never seen any physical evidence that Simon
actually ate or slept at all, and even in her less than balanced state, she
harboured a few motherly concerns for his future health and well-being.
Angelika had agreed to pick Simon up in her car, as his was a vintage Cadillac
Coupe de Ville which was
perpetually in the shop. He rarely drove it anyway as everybody always came to
his place, such is the pervasive power of the drug holder. Angelika was wearing
one of her favorite gowns, a silver strapless Antony Price number which she’d bought when she’d first
started making big modeling bucks and she looked very beautiful, pale and
elegant, in spite of the fact that she could have definitely used another ten
pounds on her skinny, white frame.
Angelika sped up the winding roads to Simon’s house anticipating her
first, juicy line in three days. Simon always had good shit and she was dying
for that initial, delicious taste. The first hit was always the best, as one’s
brain instantaneously clicked from fuzzy boredom into crystalline confidence
and a loquacious clarity. After that, it was simply a matter of trying to
recreate that original, all-powerful buzz. This is the reason coke users keep
snorting and snorting until there is nothing left; they’re hopelessly chasing
that first unrequited love.
Angelika’s body responded with a Pavlovian reflex of needing the
bathroom, as she mentally pictured the pure pink-white cocaine that Simon had
promised her and that he was probably right now in the process of distributing
into tiny brown glass vials for their delectation over the course of the
evening ahead.
Angelika pressed her silver-sandaled foot down hard on the gas pedal as
she dangerously sped around a tight corner which abutted the steep driveway
which then led inexorably up to Simon’s front door and the illicit pleasures
that lay waiting within.
The Academy
Awards party was held at a
newish West Hollywood restaurant called Atlas which was generally considered to be a hot,
happening venue, but at which on this night of nights, only C-List celebrities
would be in attendance. Angelika tried to force away this harsh truism as she
entered the dining room with Simon. Although she had come to the realization
that fame was not her particular drug of choice, she still dreaded being
considered a has-been; and she harbored a sneaking suspicion that that was
exactly how her head-shot and resume were currently being mentally filed by
those in the Hollywood know.
Simon
immediately scored two champagne cocktails from the open bar and they drank
them thirstily as they stalked the parameters of the elegantly glitzy yet
modern dining room. The crowd was most definitely C-List; there were some
glamourous Heidi Fleiss girls, a gaggle of lesser talent agents, several
washed-up TV actors and a cadre of
Simon and Angelika’s late night, trust-funded fellow drug abusers. They soon
located their allocated dining table and they presently sat down with their
cohorts. Angelika looked around at their demonically glittering eyes and at
their fiendishly grinding jaws and reflected that it was highly unlikely that
anyone at this particular table would be partaking of tonight’s lavishly
catered repast.
Angelika air-kissed her neighbour, Antonius - a pretty, aristocratic
English boy with a very expensive and imaginatively varied drug habit; Antonius
was already twitching and they hadn’t yet announced the Best Supporting Actress
nominees. Angelika wondered how this particular phenomenon continued on such an
overtly grand scale. Didn’t the parents find it strange that they would send
their expensively-schooled golden youth off to a big, bright future in the land
of opportunity only to have them return six months later with at best, horridly
bad skin, a virulent dose of herpes and a heavily depleted bank account? There
would swiftly follow the inevitable trip to Clouds, The Farm or The Priory, where
they’d be sluiced out, brain-washed and then sent back to Los Angeles or up to
London for some more of the same. At least I buy my own drugs, thought Angelika
proudly, my Daddy’s not supporting my dirty little habit.
The
evening progressed in a frenzied blur. Simon had come through as promised and
Angelika was holding in her quilted Chanel purse a vial of some of the purest Peruvian Flake
that she’d ever
ingested. Antonius and the others became exponentially more fascinating as her
trips to the bathroom increased in regularity. Somewhere along the line, Dustin
Hoffman won the best actor statue, but nobody paid his obsequious speech much
mind, apart from the agents, who were frothing at the mouth in their
desperation to convince Heidi’s hookers that they were close, personal friends
of “Dusty.” The girls didn’t
much care as they were all getting paid anyway, they just had to pretend to be
enthralled, which was a piece of cake with Colombia’s finest being shoveled
incessantly up their perfectly sculpted nostrils.
New
people started showing up and joining Simon and Angelika’s table. It was a
speeding merry-go-round of chemical fun as they swapped seats, went to the
bathroom, ordered more vodka, bitched about their friends, slagged off the
winning movies and almost as an afterthought, tried half-heartedly to get laid.
Simon had by now met two nurses from Orange
County who were so spookily out of place that they might have been beamed down
from Mars. Jenna and Tiffany couldn’t have been more Orange County if they’d
worn fluorescent cardboard signs stating the fact pinned to their garish,
tiered prom dresses. Lee Press-On Nails, huge frosted hair and way too much purple eye-makeup? Angelika
couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d seen anyone dressed like that,
outside of a bad B movie. Didn’t Conde Nast deliver to Orange County? Actually, where the
fuck was Orange County? Angelika made herself a silent promise never to visit
the wretched place.
Simon
was obviously charming the two girls, and they gazed back at him with bovine
adoration. He was undoubtedly impressing them with his family’s extensive
resume. It worked every time, admitted Angelika grudgingly. By now he’d
probably promised them screen tests, or at the very least the chance to meet
Steven Seagal. Whatever works, thought Angelika, knowing that people tend to
believe what they want, and if they’re stupid enough to buy into that bullshit,
then they deserve everything that they get in return; which is generally an
embarrassed morning-breath kiss, a hasty fumbling for cab-fare and a transparently
insincere promise to call really, really soon.
The
party was winding down now, but not for Simon, Angelika and their two new best
friends. The plan was all back to Simon’s as usual, where they could imbibe their drugs openly. The public
bathroom ritual did hold a certain clandestine charm, but waiting in line for a
stall was sometimes interminable and most of the better clubs and restaurants now employed minimum wage attendents who were definitely watching you, if not
passing on lurid personal information to the tabloids. One never really knew
what these peons were up to and God forbid one didn’t have change for a tip,
when their resulting scowls could freeze the blood. Angelika wasn’t cheap, but
she resented this practise, as she was now and always had been perfectly
capable of extracting her own paper hand towel from the dispenser.
The
festive group eventually managed to reclaim their cars from the over-priced
valet and headed in a convoy back up the hill to Simon’s palace of infinite
delights. Angelika drove, twitchily paranoid as ever as Simon groped Tiffany,
or was it Jenna? in the back seat. The other girl sat in front and launched
into a fascinating discourse as to some of the more visceral aspects of her job
at the hospital. Angelika, though slightly irritated by having this Martian
forced upon her, did find herself rather engrossed by the finer scatological
points. The girl was definitely very high on some whole other level as she kept
sliding off the seat mid-sentence and onto the floor of the Rabbit convertible while bumping her head on the
dashboard. Angelika kicked herself for having kept the car’s soft top down as
her passengers were mounting quite the bizarre and erotic cabaret.
Mercifully, they eventually arrived at Simon’s in one unbusted piece.
Angelika parked the car and helped pull Simon and Jenna/Tiffany physically out
of the back seat. They appeared to have formed quite an attachment to each
other. Lovely, thought Angelika, desperately wanting to get inside the house so
she could snort some more coke in peace. She really wanted to dump this badly
dressed nurse who mistakenly thought that Angelika was to be her new best
friend and glamorous entree’
into exclusive Hollywood nightlife. Now that makeover, thought Angelika, as she
waited impatiently for Simon to locate his fucking key and open his fucking
door, would require a height of resolve which I simply do not possess.
Finally, they were admitted and Angelika immediately sat on the edge of
the brown leather sofa next to the smoked glass coffee table where she
proceeded to intently chop out a couple of long lines. Simon joined her while
the nurses comically staggered about on the shag pile pretending to appreciate
his family’s eclectic post-modern art collection. The two girls were finally
rendered ecstatically speechless when they came upon an expensively framed
photo of a teen-aged Simon with his scrawny arm wrapped firmly around
mega-star, Harrison Ford who was clearly wearing his Indiana Jones costume.
Simon
and Angelika snorted the coke and then she indicated the girls, saying sotto
voce, “Interesting choice,
Simon. Feeling altruistic, were we?”
“Don’t
be a bitch, Angel,” replied Simon, his practised finger pressed hard over one
well-used nostril, “they’re really nice.”
“They’re really wasted,” she spat back, “think they can keep their
mouths shut?” Angelika resented the unwelcome presence of civilian outsiders as
she’d been the victim of unsavory leaks to the press more than once.
Simon
grinned wickedly, “They won’t remember a thing, darling. I gave them each 3
tabs of X.”
Angelika shook her head in horrified disbelief, “Brilliant. You gave
fucking nurses Ecstasy. Three
tabs. Don’t they get tested?”
Simon
looked momentarily abashed, “Never thought of that. Oops!”
Angelika snorted another line and stood. “Fine, on your head be it.” The
doorbell suddenly rang and Simon made his escape. He hated when Angelika gave
him a hard time, she could be so fucking sensible sometimes.
Angelika poured herself a drink from the bottle of Absolut vodka that was floating in a bowl of melted ice
on the wetbar and then she started racking up the coloured balls on the pool
table. She loved the game and she was miraculously good at it considering her
less than stellar eyesight. On all those nights spent wired at Simon’s, one
needed an outlet for all that pent up energy and pool was the perfect antidote.
It constantly changed, offering her endless new challenges; but mostly she just
loved beating the boys at what they thought was their own game. That was a
delicious victory and one of which Angelika never tired.
People
started pouring into Simon’s living room and Angelika knew most of them,
products of some of the most expensive and exclusive public schools that
England and the East Coast had to offer. Their parents must be so proud,
thought Angelika cynically, but at least these rich-kids knew how to party and
they usually paid for their own drugs, except towards the end of the month when
the old allowance was wearing a mite thin. There were also a couple of girls
that she knew and liked, Dina in particular, who although she was from a monied
background and was supported by a father who had made his millions from a
successful TV producing career, Dina was well on the way to doing the same,
only on her own merit. Dina was smart, hard working and entertaining to
converse with, even at five am. They greeted each other warmly as Angelika
handed her a strong cocktail.
“Line,
darling?” inquired Angelika.
“It
would be rude not to.” replied Dina, winking.
Angelika shook some more coke
from out of her vial onto the table. The last, lone chalky rock fell out and
she said, "Shit."
“We
can always get more, darling.” soothed Dina, while rolling up a fifty with the
dexterity of an origami expert. “I’m sure Simon’s good for it.”
“That’s not the point,” replied Angelika, carefully crushing the rock
with the bowl of a tiny silver teaspoon that lived in a lucite box on the
coffee table precisely for this purpose, “this was half full. I gave it to
fucking Antonius at dinner.”
“Well
that was your first mistake, wasn’t it?”
responded Dina, after snorting the coke with gusto. The girls smiled at
each other.
There
were at least thirty people in the house by now. Simon had amped up the stereo,
filling the room with his signature heinous classic rock din. Under normal
circumstances, Angelika would have commandeered the sound system, as she was
extremely serious about her music, but with Simon it was a losing battle. He
didn’t even own any music other than Seventies hair rock. Angelika tried to
focus on something else, but shot Simon a filthy look anyway, for old times’
sake. He always took a perverse joy in winding her up.
Dina
and Angelika then started playing pool and many hours passed as more coke was
bought and consumed, couples attempted to take them on, pouty posh boys lost,
grown men crumbled and the girls were invincible. Angelika did occasionally
resort to underhanded tactics like leaning suggestively over the table so her
opponent would get a distracting eyefull of cleverly cantilevered cleavage, but
mostly they won on skill alone.
Exhausted and puffed up with triumph, Angelika finally squinted at her
watch. It was six am by now and she desperately needed to go to the bathroom.
Angelika excused herself from the game and passed her cue to a Harley-riding hairdresser who earlier, had leeringly
promised her a free trim. She then glanced around the living room which was
looking more than usually sordid in the early morning gloom; cigarette smoke
hung heavily in the stale air, fag butts littered the tables and floor and half
empty glasses seeped liquid into the thick carpet. Same old, same old, thought
Angelika, pitying Simon’s poor maids, but where was everybody? She’d been so
engrossed in her game, that she hadn’t noticed that Simon, the nurses and most
of the guys had mysteriously disappeared. Angelika found a vacant bathroom and
opened the door.
The
wastepaper basket was overflowing with paper napkins, broken plastic glasses
and crushed Marlboro Lights
packets and there was something gross floating in the toilet bowl that was just
begging to be flushed. Simon’s monogrammed linen hand towels were all soiled
and had been balled up and left on the bathroom floor. Angelika pushed down the
handle on the lavatory, while studiously looking away from the offending object
and then she sat on the toilet seat and tried to pee. Her bladder was fit to
burst, but she was so numb from the coke that it was taking a concerted effort
just to make herself urinate. Angelika sat there a long time, shakily snorting
coke from her long pinkie fingernail that she’d dipped into the vial. Her heart
was beating really fast now that she had nothing else to concentrate upon and
she tried to breathe deeply, but her nostrils were clogged and painful.
Finally, the pee mercifully started to trickle out and Angelika relaxed a
little.
Suddenly, the door sprang open and one of the nurses, her dress half
undone, stumbled into the bathroom.
“Excuse me! Ever heard of knocking?” said Angelika, who felt that all
ablutions should be, by their very nature, private affairs. The girl just stared numbly at
Angelika, mouthed ‘sorry’ and then she hurled herself at the sink and started
vomiting violently.
Lightweight, thought Angelika, while discretely wiping
herself on the last square of clean toilet paper. But the poor girl was still
vomiting and she did not look good. Angelika, who although thrououghly
disgusted by the rookie display, managed to find an unbroken glass that was
sitting on the side of the tub, rinsed it under the faucet and then filled it
with water and offered it to the sick girl.
“Here
sit down, Jenna.” said Angelika gently and the girl blinked up at her through
smudged mascara’d eyes. Her black pupils were enormous, with no areola of colored iris visible. The girl then collapsed
onto the closed toilet seat and gratefully took a tiny sip of water from the
proffered glass.
“It’s
Tiffany.” she whispered as the tears which streaked down her puffy cheeks dug
track marks through her thick orange foundation. Tiffany then started to shake
uncontrollably and Angelika wiped her face with the cleanish corner of one of
the discarded hand towels. Under all that makeup, the girl didn’t look more
than nineteen.
“Are
you okay?” asked Angelika.
Tiffany looked away in what apeared to be shame and then she shook her
head. Angelika then helped the girl to modestly straighten her cheap and poufy
taffeta dress, tenderly pulling up her bra straps over her plump, sweating
shoulders.
“What
happened? Did you get too high?” continued Angelika, “It’s alright, you’ll feel
better soon. Drink this.” Tiffany looked down, her lower lip trembling; it was
also swollen and Tiffany winced as she touched the edge of the glass to her
mouth. Angelika immediately knew that something was very, very wrong.
“Where’s Jenna?” she asked, but the girl just looked terrified at this
and about to black out and she started to slide off the toilet. Angelika
grabbed her and forced her upright. “Tell me, Tiffany, now.”
“Bedroom...” whispered the girl.
“OK.
You have to stay awake,” replied Angelika, “I’m going to find Jenna. Please
Tiffany, don’t go to sleep.”
“Don’t
leave me…” begged Tiffany, clasping at Angelika’s hand.
“Just
for a moment, I’ll get Dina to stay with you, okay?” Angelika then gave her a
soft kiss on the cheek and gently pulled her hand away. She exited the bathroom
as calmly as possible and then she walked stone faced into the living room.
Dina
took one look at Angelika’s expression and rushed over. “What the fuck’s the
matter?” she said, searching Angelika’s glittering, angry eyes.
“Go to
the bathroom, look after the girl.” replied Angelika, her lips were unusually
tight and hard, “Find out where they live, call them a cab and put it on my
credit card. I’ll explain later.” Angelika then handed Dina her cocaine-smeared
Gold American Express card
and walked down the hallway towards the closed door of the master bedroom.
The
sweet, rank smell of crack cocaine hit her first and Angelika tried not to
breathe as she squinted into the near darkness of the room. Jenna the nurse lay
spreadeagled on the bed, her pudgy limbs splayed in inelegant disarray. The
full skirt of her prom dress was hiked up around her waist, and the ruffled top
of the garment was pulled low, exposing her breasts. She didn’t appear to be
conscious. Angelika’s first impulse was that the girl was already dead, but
Jenna’s toes twitched as Simon repeatedly plunged an empty glass bottle of Coca
Cola into her vagina. Nine other
men, most of whom she knew, were lounging around the bed, firing up the crack
pipe and gazing with anthropological fascination at the humiliation of the
Orange County girl, who was most definitely not of their kind.
“Simon.” said Angelika, her voice quietly cold with anger. Simon
continued to be transfixed by his new toy and didn’t look up. None of the other
men had yet registered Angelika's presence
in the dark,
smoke-filled room.
Angelika shouted, “Simon! Leave her alone.”
Simon finally looked up at
Angelika with black eyes that were dilated and somewhat
confused. “What?” he muttered, brattishly
irritated by her intrusion.
Angelika then strode to the bed and pushed Simon off Jenna. She was too
incensed to speak and she finally knew with red-tinged clarity what it felt like to want to kill another human being.
With
shaking hands she covered the girl’s pubis and breasts and then she attempted
to pull her up off the bed.
Nobody moved to help Angelika, they simply stared
in fucked-up torpor at the latest chapter that was unfolding in their squalid
human drama. Jenna’s stoned eyes fluttered open and then she smiled weakly up
at Angelika, who smoothed her damp, dyed-blonde hair back from her face.
“Come
on, Jenna,” she whispered, “time to go home.”
Jenna
struggled to her feet, but her legs gave way beneath her. Angelika pulled her
up once more and then helped her walk away from the bedroom, without once looking back. Jenna stared wild eyed
at Angelika, as they swayed drunkenly down the corridor.
“You
are so lovely. You’re the girl in that commercial aren’t you?”
Angelika then put her arm around Jenna’s waist to steady her and
replied, “No, Jenna. I’m definitely not that girl.”
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