away as my legs turned tomato red under the water. I breathed out slowly, slipping the rest of my body under the water, feeling the scorching heat turn to comforting warmth. I pulled my arm up out of the water and considered how the bottom half had already gone fully lobster, while the top was still pale pink. And that was as about as intellectual as I felt like being.
After the third failed attempt at turning the cold tap on with my left foot, I realized the insistent chirping coming from the bedroom was my phone. I let it ring through three times, before I realized whoever was calling was not giving up easily. Sloshing out of the bath, I padded through the bedroom, to see who wanted to speak to me so desperately. Three missed calls: two from Mary, one from a strange 818 number but no messages. Before I could take a look at the 818 number again, the phone buzzed into life in my hands. Mary again.
‘Hi, Mary.’ I had to bite the bullet sooner or later so it might as well be while I was dripping wet and naked.
‘Why the hell aren’t you answering your hotel phone?’ she yelled. I glanced over to see the receiver hanging off the bedside table. Clearly a casualty of my night of passion. ‘Or the ten thousand emails I’ve sent you?’
‘Sorry.’ I looked around for my handbag. Had I taken it with me to the bar? ‘Slightly mad night.’ All I wanted to ask was whether or not I was fired, but I was so scared that she’d say yes.
‘You had a mad night? Were you on a conference call until eleven with the publishers, trying to convince them to hold your James Jacobs story? They’re convinced it’s going to leak before we publish next week. Tell me you’ve got him sitting tight?’
‘Well he’s hardly going to go and brag about me elsewhere, is he?’ I grumbled, looking around for something to wear. The air-con in The Hollywood was not conducive to solo nudity.
‘Angela, I don’t think you understand,’ Mary carried on. ‘Once someone’s made a decision like this, there’s usually not a lot of time to capitalize on it. The last thing we want is for him to change his mind or, even worse, decide that he’s so happy with the world knowing he’s gay that he runs around the city making out with God knows who before the issue breaks.’
I froze on my hands and knees, pulling open the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. ‘What?’
‘What do you mean what?’ Mary sounded as confused as I was. ‘Tell me you’ve booked in the new interview time?’
‘New interview?’
‘With James and his boyfriend?’
I sat back on my knees. ‘You know?’
‘Of course I know. Are you OK? Have you been drinking?’ She started talking very slowly. ‘I spoke to James yesterday. He said it was all organized, that you were going to do the interview and that he wanted it to run in this week’s Icon. Angela, I need your copy by tomorrow. We’re booking the photo shoot for Sunday but you don’t need to be there for that, I need you back here. Tell me you’re going to pull this off.’
‘He told you?’ I asked, dazed. ‘He told you everything?’
‘He told me he prefers kissing boys to girls if that’s what you mean?’
I felt as if the room was shaking beneath me and peered over the bed like a meercat, checking that Los Angeles wasn’t being swallowed up by The Big One outside.
‘Angela, this is not a game,’ Mary said. ‘And if you thought the publishers didn’t want you on original interview, you can’t even imagine what they think about you covering this. I need your copy filed by tomorrow lunchtime – one p.m. your time – for subbing and then I need you back here. We’ll have to release the story Monday before the magazine comes out Tuesday. Cici is booking your flight back Sunday afternoon.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I stared into the glass, not even out at the hills, just at the glass. ‘I actually don’t.’
‘You’d better have something worked out for first thing Monday morning,’ she said. ‘Because I want the whole story in my office at nine a.m.’
Putting the phone down, I finally came to my senses long enough to pull on a pair of knickers and a T-shirt and sat with my back against the bedside table, my legs stretched out in front of me. James had called Mary. He was going to do the interview. I pulled my feet upwards, feeling the stretch in my calves. Why hadn’t he called me to tell me? I fumbled behind me for the hotel phone receiver.
‘Hi, this is Angela Clark in room six-oh-eight … do I have any messages?’
I heard the breathy girl on the front desk click on a keyboard. ‘Good morning Miss Clark, I think we do. Actually, you have quite a few. Should I send someone up or would you like me to read them to you now?’
I paused. ‘Could you get them sent up? Thanks so much.’ Probably best not to get them read out loud. I scrambled to my feet and attempted to make myself presentable. My mother would die if she thought I was opening the door to – well, anyone, looking like this. It was the same logic as cleaning the house from top to toe before she went on holiday in case she had burglars. Hair in a ponytail, teeth very quickly and not at all thoroughly cleaned, followed by mascara and lip balm. I was scouting for an appropriate bottom half to my inappropriately short T-shirt and stripy pink pants ensemble when I heard the knock at the door. Damn, they were fast in this hotel.
‘Come in,’ I called from the wardrobe but, instead of hearing the door click and sweep open, there was another knock. Fine, they would just have to see my pants. Again. Figuring half the hotel had seen me in my underwear already, and what difference did one more bellboy make?, I opened the door.
‘Hi.’
It wasn’t a bellboy.
It was Alex.
‘I know LA is a little more dressed down than New York but, Angela, that’s ridiculous.’ He tucked a pair of tiny white earphones down the front of his T-shirt and shook his head.
I hung onto the door for fear of falling over. It was really him.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked, his long dark fringe dropping into tired-looking eyes. I nodded and moved backwards with the door to make room for him and his rucksack. ‘So you trashed the room already?’
I nodded again, still not letting go of the door. It was really him. Standing in front of me, in my hotel room in his creased-to-death jeans, holey green T-shirt and battered black Cons, looking so ridiculously anti-LA that my mind refused to compute the image of him against the window, against the backdrop of the Hollywood sign.
‘Angela, please say something,’ he said after another minute of silence. ‘Or at least close the door?’
I prised my fingers from the wood and allowed the door to swing itself shut but I couldn’t cross the room. What if I touched him and he disappeared? What if I said the wrong thing and he walked out for ever?
‘OK, one thing at a time.’ Alex set his bag down on the table by my laptop. ‘I have to use the bathroom and then maybe we can talk?’ He walked towards me but I couldn’t read his face as he slipped by into the bathroom. He looked tired, that was for sure, but tired because he’d just got off a plane, tired because he hadn’t been sleeping? And he definitely didn’t look happy.
When the bathroom door opened, I was still frozen to the spot. Alex looked at me, looked down at the pile of bottles Jenny had moved from the floor into the bin and then back up at me. His face was damp and slightly pink from where he’d splashed it with water and a few strands of his long fringe clung to his cheek. I reached out slowly to brush them away but Alex caught my hand and held it to his cheek.
‘Hi,’ he said softly.
‘Hi,’ I replied.
‘Should I go out and come back in again?’
I shook my head slowly. He really was here. I was touching him and everything.
‘I am so