knocked back the rest of his coffee and checked his watch. It was four o’clock. Loosening his tie, he prepared for the long night ahead. If Cole Steel wanted to stay married, then that was exactly what was going to happen.
‘Are you Jimmy Hart?’
Across town, Jimmy looked up from beneath the rim of his baseball cap, a sticky array of empty shot glasses on the bar before him. The sudden movement made him feel decidedly woozy. He resolved to determine how pretty she was before answering the question, which was difficult to gauge when the room was swimming. Catching his reflection in a mirror on the opposite wall, he groaned. It was a good disguise at least: gone was the award-winning comedy movie star and in his place some bum drunk with three-day stubble and shadows round his eyes.
He’d been at Joey’s since three, a dimly lit bar off Wilshire that stocked an apparently endless supply of whisky, after yet another argument with his wife. The owner was a jocular Italian who either didn’t recognise Jimmy in his customary combats and cap, or politely pretended not to.
‘What’s it to you?’ he asked the woman, registering long dark hair, too frizzy, and clumpy eye make-up. She wasn’t bad, nice and tall, but today he just couldn’t be bothered. Women were cut from an identical mould – they were all chasing the same things: fame, money and the glory that came with bedding a movie star. Except for Kate–these days all she wanted was his dick on a stick.
‘I’m such a fan,’ she said in an artificial sing-song, slipping uninvited on to the adjacent bar stool. He noticed she was wearing cheap fishnet stockings that were torn over the knee. Maybe she was a hooker.
‘Yeah, well, you’ve got the wrong guy.’ He gestured for a refill.
‘I don’t think so …’ She reached for his leg but he swatted her hand away, vaguely pleased that the alcohol hadn’t deadened his reflexes. Somewhere amid the weak layers of temptation he must have an inbuilt anti-skank mechanism.
She watched him quizzically for a moment before raising a hand and giving him the finger. Her hands were massive.
‘Fuck you, bozo,’ she said gruffly, her voice dropping by an octave.
Glad to have been spared the attention, Jimmy downed another. It wasn’t helping, but tonight he just wanted to forget. And yet the more he drank the more thoughts of Kate wrung him out, like water being squeezed from a sponge. The marriage was in freefall. Since he had last tried to have sex with his wife, communication had all but broken down–the only time they talked to each other was when it concerned the children.
Jimmy put his head in his hands when he thought of the kids–it was because of them that he felt like a real bastard. But what could he do? When he had met Kate she had been a different person. And so, he supposed, had he. Everyone expected a comedian to be a self-loathing arsehole. Why disappoint?
Something buzzed in his pocket. It took a second to realise it was his phone. Had just saved him from liver failure, probably.
It was his agent. Great timing. He was tempted to stuff it back in his pocket but some faint intuition told him to pick it up.
‘Brock, hi.’ He tried to focus-drunk comics were such a cliché.
‘You’re drunk,’ said Brock.
‘I’m not.’ Jimmy nodded as the barman refuelled his glass.
‘Where are you?’ Brock asked suspiciously.
‘At home.’
‘Aha! I just called you there and no answer.’
‘I was taking a dump. What’s this about, Brock?’
‘You’ve got a casting next week.’
Jimmy was confused. ‘Have I?’ It had been ages since he’d been called for anything. His last film was a terrible commercial effort in which he’d had to gussy up as a range of overweight characters, hilarious, of course, because he was naturally so thin. It had bombed–fat wasn’t funny–and now Jimmy had all but given up on an opportunity to redeem himself. He’d been humiliated.
‘I’ll send over the script,’ said Brock.
‘As long as I don’t have to eat fifty chilli dogs or whatever.’
‘No chilli dogs. Or doughnuts.’
‘Fine.’
‘And remember Harriet Foley’s party on Friday. You should go–she likes you.’ Harriet Foley was the quite terrifying US editor of major fashion magazine In. She was extraordinarily well connected.
‘I’ll be there.’
‘Good. I’m bringing Chloe French,’ said Brock, loudly chewing gum. ‘I thought you two might get on–y’know, the Brit thing.’
Jimmy remembered seeing her at the Romans’ wedding. Young, arresting, with all that wonderful hair.
‘I gotta go, Brock. I’ll call about the script.’
‘You got it.’ Then, before he hung up: ‘And, Jimmy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Go home.’
Jimmy closed his phone, downed the final shot and put a fifty on the bar. He could feel the rot of depression sinking in and told himself to climb up out of it.
Something needed to happen. Something good. Something, he decided, called Chloe French.
Chloe awoke early in her Malibu apartment to a beautiful Friday morning. She swam forty lengths in the pool and then fixed herself a breakfast of blueberries, oatmeal and a poached egg white. Since arriving in LA she’d felt well: sunshine, good food and no booze was definitely the way forward.
Brock Wilde had told her that literally everyone in LA had a personal trainer, so after throwing on some clothes she hailed a cab. The other day she’d spotted a fitness club downtown called Bench, which looked smart and the least intimidating–nothing to do with the fact that she thought she’d seen Robert Downey Jr disappearing through the doors.
At Bench she was greeted by a pretty blonde woman with astonishingly toned arms.
‘I’m Bonnie,’ she said, delivering a firm, rather painful handshake. Her teeth were too big for her mouth.
After some quick tests they got down to it with some weights and cardio work. Chloe tried to keep fit but after half an hour she was knackered.
‘Sorry,’ she wheezed beneath the weights, ‘this is harder than I thought! ‘
‘Need to rest up?’ asked Bonnie with a knowing smile.
Chloe nodded. She sat up and downed a litre of water.
‘Are you an actress?’ enquired Bonnie, passing her a towel. Chloe remembered that she wasn’t yet well known over here. It was rather nice.
She nodded and took the towel gratefully.
Surprisingly Bonnie didn’t look that impressed. ‘Come on, then. All the more reason to get back to work.’
What? That was a break?
‘You don’t want to lose any more weight, you know,’ said Bonnie, tweaking the equipment as her client lay back down.
‘I know,’ said Chloe.
‘I’ve gotta say it–I see too many young girls go that way.’
‘It won’t happen to me.’ Chloe decided she liked Bonnie. Even if, she thought as she settled into a series of tough arm reps, she was a hard taskmaster.
‘I’ve got this party on Friday,’ she went on. ‘I want to be ready for it.’ Chloe had read In magazine religiously