It
was morning now and the hospital was clamorously abuzz with activity. Dust
motes danced deliriously in the bright light that shone clean and clear through
the high barred window of Angelika’s room. Athena stared in mute horror as
Angelika finished the story.
“My
God.” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
Angelika’s face was dark with the memory.
“What
happened to the girls?” asked Athena.
“Jenna
thankfully didn’t remember much, but Tiffany did. She tried to press charges,
but Simon’s behemoth of a family lawyer bought them off and cheaply.”
Angelika’s stomach spasmed in pain and residual disgust.
“Well
that must have changed you.” said Athena.
Angelika
nodded, “Suddenly I felt about a hundred years old. The mantra that kept
spinning through my mind in disbelief was ‘These are my friends, these are
my friends.’ I stopped everything right then. I
never contacted any of them again, I destroyed their phone numbers and I
deleted their phone messages. I stopped going out entirely in case I bumped
into any of them.I spent a few weeks seriously detoxing, which wasn’t hard
given the circumstance. All I wanted was to be washed clean of that night and
all those memories.
“I
auditioned for a play at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and against all the odds, I got the role and
from that, wonderful things started to happen. I received my first good review
in the trades and my stock suddenly went up. I wasn’t exactly on the A-List,
but I was getting there.
“Then Debbie, my manager decided to become a director. I couldn’t blame her for her
ambition, but I did find it more than a little amusing as she had the emotional
sensitivity of a rampaging rhinocerous. I quickly was approached by another manager
called Shelly who desperately wanted to represent me. It was OK, she got me
leading roles in B movies, and the pay was really good. I should have known
better, but I was so happy to be working and starring in films that I tended to
convince myself that they had more artistic merit than they did. As you know, I
was always quite brilliant at self-delusion.”
“Yes
you were, my darling. But what of your lust for adventure, was that completely
gone?” Athena looked at Angelika who smiled, mysteriously.
“No.
Apparently it had been lying dormant, darkly waiting for its optimum moment to
pounce.”
“And
did it pounce?” nudged Athena.
“Oh
yes. It pounced alright.”
Los Angeles: 1991
Angelika sat on her bed
and stared transfixed at the television screen as Operation Desert Storm unfolded live on CNN. She looked fresh and scrubbed and her bedroom
was now a testament to healthy living and an organized mind. An annotated
script lay open at her side, at which she occasionally threw the odd distracted
glance.
The
phone suddenly rang and she reached and picked up the receiver, with her eyes
never leaving the TV screen. “Hello?”
It
was Athena. “Are you watching this?”
“Yeah,
for days, now,” replied Angelika, “freaky.” On screen, another smart bomb
succinctly impacted it’s fluorescent night-vision target.
“How's
the film going?” asked Athena who couldn’t remember the title of her sister’s
latest project, but she knew that Angelika was playing yet another slinky,
husky-voiced femme fatale. It
had definitely become her milieu
of late, which was pretty bloody amusing considering what a scrawny,
bespectacled and bookish geek her baby sister had once been.
“Not
bad,” replied Angelika laconically, ”a couple more weeks of battling with the
director to keep my clothes on and my tits covered and I should be done.”
Athena
laughed, “Nothing new there, then.”
“Nope.
Business as usual. How's hubby?” Angelika turned down the volume slightly as
she couldn’t concentrate on Athena, what with all the explosions and the
helicopters and everything.
“He's
great.” Athena sounded really happy, and Angelika adored hearing that honeyed
contentment in her sister’s voice. “How's your love life?”
Angelika
snorted, “Again, business as usual. Not a sniff.”
“Darling,
who are you waiting for?” laughed Athena, incredulously, ”Kevin Costner? It'll
heal up, you know.”
Angelika
replied as nonchalently as possible, given that she was desperately horny and
felt about to erupt, “I never meet anyone, Athena. Only really bad actors.
Can't go there.”
“I
suppose you're right.” said Athena grudgingly, as she really wanted Angelika to
meet someone amazing, “So what else is new?” Angelika, clambered off of the bed
with phone in hand and went into the kitchen.
Her
father and a flamboyantly sexy young woman were kissing, while cooking dinner
together. They giggled with childish embarrassment while Angelika poured herself
a glass of water. She then pointed to the receiver. “It's Athena.”
Her
Dad cooed gooily down the phone to Athena, “Hi baby!”
Angelika
then rolled her eyes, grapped the phone back from her father and said “Get a
room...” Her father and the young woman laughed as Angelika tossed her head and
exited dramatically to her bedroom shutting the door behind her. Angelika
continued to Athena, “God, they're at it like rabbits.”
“I
think it's sweet.” responded Athena, knowing full well that only someone who’s
actually in love can stomach that kind of gut churning public display of
affection from another couple.
“She's
my age, you know.” said Angelika, in mock disapproval, although it didn’t
really faze her at all.
“So?”
replied Athena, “I'm glad he's happy.”
“Yeah,
me too.” said Angelika, who with a start realized that she actually meant it.
Suddenly, another call beeped in and Angelika excused herself and clicked over.
“Hello?”
“Superstar?”
It was Shelly, her manager.
Angelika
grinned, quietly relishing the Hollywood toadying, “That would be me.”
“Amazing
news.” gushed Shelly. What other
kind of news would a Hollywood manager impart?
“Spill...”
Shelly
could barely contain herself, ‘Night at the Red Lantern’ is
going to Cannes!”
Angelika
nearly fell off the bed from shock and excitement, “No shit!”
Shelly
then continued without drawing breath, “Yes, darling. It's not an official
selection or anything, but there'll be a press screening and they'll pay all
your expenses so you’d better start shopping!” Those must be the most beautiful
four words in the English language, thought Angelika.
“Fuckin'
A! Brilliant news, Shelly. I'll call you tomorrow, OK?” Angelika clicked off
and did a spastic victory lap around the room. Suddenly she remembered that her
sister was waiting patiently on the other line, and she clicked back to her.
“Athena?
Guess what, I'm going to the Cannes Fucking Film Festival!” This last bit was
shouted at top volume. They squealed at each other like a couple of helium
drunk imbeciles for several minutes and then finally, Angelika rang off. She
then immediately started rooting through her wardrobe like a creature
possessed.
This
was it, her big moment had arrived and she was going to have to be just
perfect.
Cannes: May 1991
Angelika,
swathed in Gucci’s iconic white,
liquid-jersey column, sat on the scratchy, worn-velvet seat with her hands
firmly over her eyes as the movie played on a dusty cinema screen in an
antiquated, flea-bitten movie theatre that was unfashionably situated to the
far north of the Croisette.
Angelika had rarely observed her own face and heard her own voice magnified to
that superannuated degree and she found that the experience was not an entirely
comfortable one. Christ, did she have to keep raising her eyebrows like that?
They were like two horny caterpillars let loose on prom night on the Colossus
rollercoaster at Magic Mountain;
up and down they went, then up and down some more. It was excruciating.
Angelika tried to tear her focus away from the offending creatures, but then
her shoulders captured her attention. Her posture was really fucking terrible,
she should have listened to her aunt after all.
Samantha, who was now heavily pregnant,
sat to one side of Angelika while Shelly, Angelika’s manager sat on the
other. Samantha had been pissed off at her husband, Jon for having the audacity
to go on tour with his new band during her pregnancy and she had decided to
come to Cannes to support her friend and also to spite her husband, who was
currently stuck in a malodorous tour bus somewhere in the mid-west of America.
But Samantha, who even if she had been about to give birth would never have
missed the opportunity of a possible celebrity encounter, had cannily booked
herself into the rather upscale Hotel Majestic which was right in the fabulous thick of things on the Croisette.
Angelika on the other hand, was
sharing a tiny twin-bedded room with Shelly, a skinny, plummy-voiced English
woman, in a rather unfashionable, insect-ridden and relentlessly noisy pension that the producers of the movie had so generously
booked for them. Even optimistic Angelika knew that this was a less than
stellar accommodation for their so-called leading lady but she had blithely put
her gripes to one side and had decided to go along for the ride. It’s not every
day that a girl gets to go to her own screening at Cannes, after all. She could
sleep when she got back to LA, she rationalized as there wasn’t much else to do
there these days, anyway.
Angelika peeped
through her fingers while simultaneously uncovering her ears. It was brutal. ‘You
could never love me the way Mickey does...’ That was her speaking; her lingerie
clad, Uzi - toting character,
anyway. Also, she really couldn’t remember if this was meant to be the good
twin or the evil one. The lead actor, a once brilliant, but now drug–addled
middle-aged wreck of a closeted homosexual replied,
'Mickey only
loves two things, sweetheart – his '57 Custom 'Vette and his Kalashnikov...’
Angelika
cringed again and after determining that she might actually be developing a
duodenal ulcer, whispered to Shelly. “I can't watch any more, Shel. I'm out of
here.”
Shelly glanced
at her reproachfully. “But, darling...”
Angelika
suddenly realized that Shelly was actually enjoying this unspeakable pap that
was so patently made for a market where nobody spoke any discernable English.
Thailand, maybe? Maybe in Thai it sounded Shakespearean. Angelika sensed that
Shelly might have previously been toking the herb, just a wee bit. Couldn’t
blame her for that, Angelika thought. It made even the most unwatchable shit
just that little bit more bearable, especially if one has access to unlimited
quantities of salty buttery popcorn, cheesy orange Doritos and scrummy Gummy Bears.
Angelika stood
and after pulling a grumpy, but quietly grateful Samantha out of her seat, said
to Shelly, “I'll catch up with you at the party, OK? C'mon Sam...”
The girls
pushed their way past a couple of fat, snoring foreign film correspondents, who
were finally catching up on the many cumulative hours of coke- and
alcohol-induced insomnia, and they tottered out of the theatre.
Outside the
cinema, the streets were thronged with myriad forms of film business lowlife.
Every studio dweeb who claimed never to drink alcohol and who regularly
attended AA and NA meetings on the off-chance that they might make a connection
with a newly vulnerable A-list player, was carousing drunkenly in the cobbled
French streets looking for the next party, hooker or gram of cocaine. It was actually quite refreshing to see
them reveal themselves finally, as grotesque as their true selves might be. At
least it represented a twisted kind of honesty that was rarely apparent back
home in Hollywood.
Angelika immediately slumped in
front of the garish film poster featuring her own sluttishly dressed twin
images, which was emblazoned with the words, ‘Un Nuit de la Lanterne Rouge.’ She hungrily lit a cigarette and then she groaned
heavily.
“It wasn't that bad, love.”
Samantha was trying her best, albeit not very convincingly.
Angelika,
smoking furiously, didn’t respond. Samantha pointed to her belly. “Can you
please not smoke? Well, it wasn't …Lady Macbeth, sweetheart, but you did
a...nice job.”
Angelika looked
daggers at Samantha, “Please. I could die.”
Samantha, who
had never had much talent as a liar or as an assuager of bruised egos,
continued, “Angelika - they're French. They have no idea how bad you were. Now in London, you might have a slight problem."
Angelika
laughed and said, “Fuck you, bitch.”
“That's my girl.” replied Samantha.
Angelika
toyed briefly with the idea of extinguishing her cigarette, but figured that
they were outside, it was France and bloody hell she needed it now more than
ever so she kept smoking, and looked quizzically at her friend, “You guys are happy there, huh?” she asked.
Samantha
decided to let the smoking thing go, just this once, as it was great to see Angelika
again and hey, all relationships are built on compromise, so she responded,
“Yeah, London's really cool. I wish you'd think about coming to stay with us.
There's a great vibe.” Samantha then looked through her elegant Prada purse and pulled out
two colourful laminated
invitations, which she waggled in front of Angelika’s troubled face, “Now. I
have two words for you. Brad Pitt.”
Angelika
delicately sidestepped a clearly inebriated William Morris agent who looked like he was about to hurl on her brand
new silver Robert Clergeries and
groaned, “Don't do this to me again, Sam...”
“Honey, Brad's
a pussy-cat. Trust me.” Even though she was pregnant, Samantha still managed to
look disturbingly libidinous.
“Famous last
words.” replied Angelika, stubbing out her cigarette while trying to orient
herself in the dense swarm of slathering wannabees, “His hair's normal, right?”
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