LEO
“You really know you’ve been screwed when your girlfriend gives an exclusive to the L.A. Times about her love for another guy.”
The sick thing about money is, if you’ve ever had it and then you lose it again you’ve got to readjust to being poor, and that’s not as easy second time around.
Here’s the thing: when you’re shit broke, and begging spare change just to get by, there’s a sense of security in knowing that you can’t get any more broke. There are no bailiffs at the door, no red letters flying through your letter-box, just poverty—and after a while you relax into the comfort of that poverty. Actually, after a while you start feeling kind of smug in your impenetrable fortress of nothingness.
Getting back in the swing of sharing a sofa with a guy who doesn’t change his socks was hell. The upside was that Snore had been given his marching orders by Tifanie, so at least it was only Kev I was kipping down with now. The downside was it was Kev I was kipping down with.
Tifanie was over the moon. She’d got her part in the series and a deodorant commercial—it was streamers and margaritas in Apartment 96. As she no longer needed the financial help, she decided that it was time to get rid of her “baggage.”
She said she’d only let Kev stay on because he’d agreed to paint the apartment for her.
“Kev? Paint an apartment?”
“I know. Dumb, huh?”
I think you’ve probably gathered by now that the work ethic gene was absent in Kev’s DNA.
“So now you want me to—?”
“Would you, Leo?”
It was a bastard of a job. The palm trees on the Las Vegas wall were specters that refused to die. And to think I used to love this wall and the promise it held of hot sweaty nights in casinos on the blackjack table. My very own Ocean’s Eleven fantasy.
Nine coats later and the trees were still giving me the finger.
“You still fucking around with that wall?” Kev remarked one day after coming in from an afternoon on the crack. It was a week before my flight to London.
“Yeah, you bastard, I’m still at it.”
“I can still see a tree or two.”
“Thanks for that, Kev.”
“No problem. What’s the time? I just came back to catch South Park.”
Kev never had got round to selling the Rolex because he’d lost it. My guess was Snore had pinched it, but I didn’t like to say.
“It’ll turn up,” Kev would insist whenever there was a lull in conversation—he could tell it was on my mind. “I know I put it somewhere safe. Definite.”
For some weird reason I had started to worry about Kev and what he was going to do when I was gone. I couldn’t imagine Tif wanting him around forever now she’d scored her dream job in a reality series. When I talked to Kev about my concerns he went mental.
“Fuck off—don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. I’ll find a riot somewhere. I hear things are well kicking down South Central. I reckon there’s a G7 coming up in Canada soon and all. Don’t you worry about me, Monroe, you worry about yourself. I’ll make some new mates at the riot.”
I told him I’d send him the fare back to England once I got some money myself, but he said he never wanted to go back. “I’m like a shark, me. Always swimming forward, never backward.” He mimed a fin with his hand and demonstrated the sort of thing he meant.
There was no doubt about it. I was going to miss Kev because no one else could say stuff like that and not get laughed at.
He settled himself on the sofa with a beer. “Saw another of them billboards on Melrose when I was on the crack just now, didn’t I?”
I’d been staying with Tif for three days when the billboards and the bus stop advertisements had started appearing all around town. The first one showed up on the bus stop where I’d first met Holly.
I woke up, went out for a coffee, and there it was—wham—in my face.
All About The New Man In Holly Klein’s Life!
Exclusive In This Friday’s L.A. Times.
It cut me up a lot more than it should have. I imagined Holly in her garden, perhaps on the rope swing, chatting intimately with the interviewer about her profound love for Ted. You really know you’ve been screwed when your girlfriend gives an exclusive to the L.A. Times about her love for another guy.
Kev didn’t say anything. Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He can’t read. But Tif had quite a bit to say on the matter.
“You can’t leave without saying goodbye to her.”
I acted all casual, as if I hadn’t given the matter any thought. I was doing my eleventh coat over Las Vegas at the time, so I just kept pulling the roller over the wall so she couldn’t see my expression, which would have given me away for sure.
“Come on, Leo, give her a call. She’s nice. She paid for Nile, remember?”
Tif was over the moon with Nile. She saw him at his studio in Beverly Hills, so I didn’t have to come into contact with him, which was one consolation, but she was always going on about him like he’d invented the latest new fad diet or something.
“You don’t even know her, Tifanie.”
“You did shag her, though, didn’t you, man?” Kev waded in.
We both ignored him.
“She didn’t know me from Eve, Leo. She didn’t have to pay for Nile. She must be nice. Come on, have a heart. She’s meant to be a friend. So what if she’s met someone else? Get over yourself. She’s still a powerful player, Leo.”
“A powerful player?”
Tifanie stared at the floor sullenly, realizing she’d struck the wrong note with me—the last word in unpowerful players. “Yeah.”
“And this is meant to make a difference to me?” I sneered, rolling over the fronds yet again. “What do I want with a powerful player?”
Kev did the fin thing with his hand in front of my face. “Be like the shark, man. That’s my advice. Forward, never backward.”
“Fucking palm trees,” I swore. “It’ll be such a relief to be back in London so I don’t have to look at these bollocky fucking palm trees again!”
Tif shook her head. “Leo, listen to yourself. You’re in classic denial.”
Kev crunched the beer can in his hands and headbutted it into the kitchen. He was watching our argument the way he always watched strangers arguing in the street. Like we were there solely for his entertainment.
“Look, she’s with some wanker big shot now,” I told Tifanie. “She doesn’t want to see me. I was just a shag, a bit of rough she picked up off the street.”
“Yes!” Kev punched the air with his fist. “I knew you were shagging her, man. Didn’t I say? I said you was—”
“Oh, shut up, Kev!” I threw the roller at the wall and stormed out.
The Holly story came out the day before I was due to fly out. I saw the paper everywhere but I didn’t buy it. Just the same, I walked past the newspaper stands a hundred times more than I needed to.
She was with Ted now, and if I was really big-hearted I’d wish her the best. But I wasn’t big-hearted; I was bitter and sick with self-pity.
Ted was walking around town, holding Holly’s hand in public.
Ted was kissing her the way I’d never been allowed to—in public.
He was giving interviews and talking openly about their love life.
Their relationship was something to be proud of, something fluent and real to celebrate. What Holly and I had was a dirty secret we couldn’t tell anyone.
Tifanie came home late that day, waving the L.A. Times. “Did you get it? Did you see it?”
Kev and I were spread out on the sofa, staring at the last remaining albino palm tree on the wall. I was hot, and defeated by the paint job.
“I did all I could,” I told her, pointing at the wall. “But that last palm is not going to shift.” There was no way I was going to acknowledge her question.
Tifanie wasn’t going to be defeated either. “Check it out,” she said, flicking through to find the relevant page. I stared at the palm tree, taunting me from the other side of the room, and ignored her.
“I think you’re going to want to look at this, Leo.” She nudged me, holding out the newspaper, and I looked and there it was.
A full-page picture of me, holding Holly’s hand, leading her into the charity bash at the Mondrian. I scanned the article, which speculated that maybe I was the reason Holly Klein was pulling out of MakeMeOver.