who was a perfect gentleman when he was sober but was never sober. She had discovered at an early age that she had a talent for acting and, as she became a teenager, for turning boys’ heads. At sixteen she had hitchhiked to Los Angeles and waited on tables while waiting for an acting job. She’d been engaged twice – first to her high school sweetheart and then to the guy who directed her first film (the one she didn’t like to talk about) – but right now she was between engagements.
Olivia enjoyed telling her stories as much as I enjoyed listening to them. She played all the roles in each anecdote, switching between accents and characters with the consummate ease you would expect of such an accomplished actress, turning each one into a mini-screenplay any of which would have made a better film than the one we had sat through earlier in the evening. Before I knew it, I had finished my drink and, despite my earlier resolution, found myself calling the waiter over and asking him to refill our glasses.
‘So, Mr Money Man,’ Olivia said as the waiter returned with our fresh drinks and set them down clumsily on the table in front of us, ‘that is quite enough about me for one night. Now I want to hear all about you. I bet you have some fascinating stories to tell. Tell me, did you always want to be an accountant?’
I looked at her closely, trying to find any signs of mockery in her eyes, but there were none. ‘Good God, no!’ I replied. ‘Who would? A career in accountancy isn’t something boys dream of alongside space travel or driving trains. It’s something you fall into – like a hole.’
Olivia laughed out loud, breaking the silence of the room and causing the other bar-dwellers to turn and look at us. ‘You are so funny, Joe. That’s one of the things I really like about you. You know, I’ve always preferred a funny man to a good-looking one …’
‘Gee, thanks,’ I replied, only slightly pretending to be hurt.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that … you know. In fact, I think you are a very attractive man, Joe. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for older men. Apart from my dad. I hated that sonofabitch. You have gorgeous eyes, you know – deep and soulful. Has anyone ever told you that?’
I smiled and blushed. No, no one ever had, least of all one of the most beautiful women in the world.
‘So what did you want to do?’ Olivia continued.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘When you were a kid. We’ve established that you didn’t lie awake at night fantasising about a life as a bean counter – so what was your dream?’
‘Do you promise not to laugh if I tell you?’
‘Try me,’ Olivia replied edging a little closer along the bench seat, intrigued to learn my deepest, darkest secret.
‘OK. I wanted to write. To be a novelist – or perhaps a screenwriter. I remember when I was about nine we drove past a bookmaker’s – you know, a betting shop – and I asked my mum if they would make my book when I was older. I thought it was the same thing as a publisher!’
‘Aw, that’s so sweet,’ said Olivia, edging closer still. ‘So what happened?’
‘To what?’
‘To your dream, Joe. Why did you end up counting things instead of writing about them. I’m glad you did in one way, because otherwise we might never have met. But it seems like a real waste. You have a creative soul – I can see it in your eyes. Why don’t you write? All you need is some paper and a pencil.’
I took a sip of my drink. The intensity of the memory surprised and upset me. ‘When I was fifteen,’ I began, ‘and had to choose which subjects I was going to study at school, I told my parents that I wanted to be an author and so I needed to study English. My dad said “No, son, you mean an auditor,” and told me to do maths. And so, like the good Jewish boy I am, that’s what I did – what my parents told me to do.’
‘But it’s never too late, Joe. You’re nobody’s prisoner now. You can do whatever you want.’
‘Olivia,’ I said, with a mirthless laugh, ‘I have a wife and two kids and a bloody great mortgage, so I’m afraid the writing’s going to have to wait. God, look at the time. I really should be getting to bed.’
Olivia shuffled closer to me still, placed a hand on one of my thighs and kissed me, lightly, on the cheek.
‘I think you’re right, English,’ she said.
She took my hand and led me out of the gloomy bar and to the lift lobby, pressed the call button and asked me my room number. Somewhere, arrested by the alcohol, the tiredness and those extraordinary eyes that fixed mine and pulled me into the depths of her beauty, was a part of me that wanted to tell her to leave me alone, to let me sleep – but it was as if monochrome pictures of my wife and children were being ripped from the walls of my brain and fed into a neurological shredder, while images of Olivia, in glorious, vibrant Technicolor, were put up in their place. And all I actually said as we stepped into the lift and started the slow ascent to paradise and madness were the three little words: ‘Six Twenty-Five’.
The film begins on the screen inside my head. I see a man in early middle age and a much younger woman, walking down a long hotel corridor. They are making a lot of noise in their attempts to stay as quiet as possible. She is incredibly beautiful. He is extraordinarily ordinary. Her skin is smooth and pale; her shoulder-length hair deep blonde; her blue eyes alive with a heady mixture of alcohol, lust and devilment. His face is lined and creased beneath his thinning hair, his grey eyes reflecting only the alcohol and the lust.
He pushes a white plastic card into a slot on the door and presses down on the handle, takes the card out and turns it over and tries the handle again, then takes it out, swears, turns it around and tries a third time. A green light comes on, reflected in his glasses and they tumble into the room through the half-opened door. He presses a switch on the wall and lights on each side of the large double bed – wider than it is long – snap into life. There is a short canopy at one end of the bed beneath which a single wrapped chocolate rests on an ivory pillow. She pushes him up against the wall and presses her lips to his, giving him no option but to kiss her back. Her dress is bright blue with silver flecks and she sparkles like a diving kingfisher as she glides across the room, kicks off her shoes and pours herself onto the bed. His dinner suit is off-the-peg and baggy, the trousers an inch too long. He fumbles with his unfamiliar bow tie, then hops inelegantly on one leg then the other as he tries to disengage his feet from stiff black brogues.
I fast-forward to the next significant action. The couple are now in the no-holds barred wrestling match of fornication. They are naked, apart from the man’s socks: black with a picture of Mr Silly above the words ‘Have a Silly Saturday’ picked out in red letters, a birthday present from his children which, in his indecent haste, he has failed to remove. I am surprised to see how much of a lead the man is taking – orchestrating their movements, calling the shots.
This is hard to watch. I fast-forward again and come back in when it is all over. She is lying to one side of him, an arm wrapped around his chest, a leg interlocked with his. She sleeps blissfully, while he lies awake staring at the ceiling. He looks as if he has just received the worst possible news.
I open my eyes and the film ends. No stirring John Williams score. No endless credits. No pathetic little mentions of pathetic little accountants just above the line that says that no animals were harmed in the making of this movie. No escape. It wasn’t a bizarre erotic dream. It happened. I was there and she was there. The Hollywood superstar and her man: the frightened, treacherous, adulterous, stupid little bastard.
Me.
I must have drifted off because I became suddenly aware of strange noises in the bedroom and sensed the absence of Olivia from the bed. I peered through the darkness at the source of the noise and saw her carefully picking something up and placing it on a chair. A few seconds later, there was a flash of light as the bedroom door opened, followed by the solid thud of it closing again. Then I heard the diminishing click-clack of her heels on the parquet corridor floor as she stilettoed away from my room