The Millionaires' Death Club Page 7

  When I emerged from the loo, I’d got rid of most of the signs that I’d been crying. It took me ten minutes to get Sam and Jez in a fit state to leave. I didn’t want any stray paparazzi getting a money shot, so I made sure the actors were disguised as well as possible. The manager called a cab for us and we headed back to the hotel. Sam passed out in the back but Jez managed to stay awake.

  We helped Sam to his room and threw him onto his bed. As he hit the mattress, something flew out of one of his pockets.

  ‘What’s this?’ Jez picked up some sort of business card.

  Puzzled, I took it from him. It was a coal-black card embossed with a terrifying holographic skull.

  ‘Congratulations,’ it said in silver writing. ‘You have been selected by the Millionaires’ Death Club.’

  Chapter 8: Star Map

  When I woke the next morning, I was back in my apartment. I wondered why I was so uneasy. God, that card. I hurried to the Sargasso but there was no answer when I knocked on Sam’s door. Jez wasn’t around either. I went down to reception and asked if anyone had left a message for me.

  The receptionist made me produce my credit card to prove who I was then handed over a slim package.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said. ‘I’d give anything to be able to spend time with Sam Lincoln and Jez Easton. They’re such funny guys. You should have heard the jokes they were cracking this morning before they went out.’

  Jokes? I couldn’t understand why they were treating that chilling card so lightly. Then again, perhaps this sort of thing happened to them all the time. Maybe the Millionaires’ Death Club was just a tasteless prank – probably by one of the Madonna or Paris Hilton look-alikes that Sam cruelly rejected.

  So, I chose to worry instead about what I did or didn’t do at the club. Lurid images jumped into my mind. The lap dance Mencken made me do was full on naked, wasn’t it? I’d practised on Jez then tried, pathetically, to do a professional job on Sam. I think I fell off his lap half way through. I seemed to recall that Mencken took pictures. Was he intending to blackmail me if I didn’t do things his way?

  ‘You can view it over there,’ the receptionist said, pointing at a TV.

  ‘View?’

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s a DVD slot. The remote control is on the left.’

  I went over to the TV and unwrapped Mencken’s package. It was a DVD showing Mencken sitting on the upper deck of a tourist bus as it made its way around Hollywood. He was clutching a star map and writing obscenities next to the names of various stars as the bus swept past their luxury homes. Each time, he held up the map to the camera to reveal what he’d written, libellous every time.

  When the tour guide announced they were about to pass Mencken’s own residence, all the tourists booed loudly, gave the finger then twisted round en masse and waved at the camera. Sam and Jez were amongst them. I realised it was probably Mencken’s film crew on their way to a location shoot.

  Mencken’s home was a leafy mansion in a prime location on Mulholland Drive, with a large swimming pool and iron gates patrolled by fierce, lean black dogs. Why didn’t that surprise me?

  ‘You see, Sophie,’ Mencken said, gazing into the camera. ‘I always knew you were one of us.’ He held up a newspaper and pointed at the date. It was four days old – before I’d ever heard of him.

  I winced. I didn’t like thinking my life was being remotely controlled, and I hated being so predictable.

  Mencken glanced at Sam who was concentrating hard on a playstation game.

  ‘It’s a soccer World Cup game,’ Mencken whispered. ‘He knows nothing about soccer but he’ll play the game until he wins, no matter how long it takes. That man just doesn’t know when to give up.’

  What was he suggesting? That Sam had obsessive-compulsive disorder? It seemed you couldn’t be a celebrity nowadays if you didn’t have a trendy affliction to win the sympathy vote.

  Gesturing towards both actors, Mencken said, ‘These guys have partied hard in every big city on earth. They’ve tried everything, so it takes a lot to get them juiced. I’ve promised you’ll show us something extraordinary in London. Don’t disappoint us.’

  Extraordinary? What could I offer these guys that they hadn’t already done ten times better already? Entertaining people was my business, but it suddenly seemed such a difficult thing. How can you entertain the entertainers? It’s like bullshitting the bullshitters. Impossible.

  ‘Forget your normal tourist routine,’ Mencken reiterated. ‘Something way off track, check?’

  Pass me a lifebelt, someone. I was so out of my depth, I doubted I’d ever see the shore again. I hadn’t even started and already my confidence was evaporating. I felt like a snake charmer lacking both the snake and the charm. Even the way Mencken peered at the camera – into my soul, I thought – made me nervous. Showing these three around London would be the most stressful thing I’d ever done. Normally, I could control my clients. With their personality quadruple bypasses and complete ignorance of the world of glamour, my customary middle-aged bores were easy to fool. Not these three, though. When I was with them, I’d be like brittle glass, one vibration from shattering.

  Mencken said that he’d given the actors a gift of £25,000 each. ‘Walking around money’ he called it. I wished I could walk around with that kind of money. He hoped that the two actors would spend their time in London ‘bonding’ and he wanted them to be on best terms by the time shooting began in earnest on his new blockbuster. It was part of my task to make that happen. I was to be paid my top rate of £1000 per person day, plus expenses, to keep the actors and Mencken entertained during their stay in the capital.

  ‘Meet us tonight at eleven pm in reception,’ Mencken said. ‘Here’s one thing that might get you some bonus points. Jez is looking to be fixed up with a woman whose name begins with the letter Y. Sam’s looking for a Z.’

  He wasn’t talking about what I thought he was talking about, was he?

  ‘Remember that big punch-up they had at the MTV awards?’ Mencken went on. ‘I managed to persuade them to settle their differences by having a special bet to prove once and for all which of them is the numero uno.’ He winked at the camera. ‘Alphabet Love – have you ever played it?’

  Chapter 9: Bad Therapy

  I met Mencken and the actors in reception as arranged. Sam and Jez proceeded to ignore me while Mencken asked a few polite questions about what I’d been up to during the day, then spent the next ten minutes on his mobile phone. Were they deliberately trying to make me uncomfortable?

  Sam wore desert-style combats and a black hoodie. As for Jez, he had on low-slung baggy blue jeans and a white T-shirt, and he was sticking with his combination of black baseball-cap and red shades. Despite their grungy style, both actors still managed to have film-star presence, but I doubted anyone would recognise them, not least because no one would expect to see them within a mile of each other. As for Mencken, with his white designer chinos and a black cashmere jumper, he had an unmistakable aura of success.

  He’d told me in The Gherkin that Sam and Jez look-alikes were coming over from the States. Bogus events had been set up to keep the media occupied while the real Sam and Jez hopefully went around unnoticed. I prayed the trick worked: I didn’t want to be mobbed all day long. I was certainly glad Sam was wearing a hoodie. When he pulled it over his head, he could be a Jedi Knight for all anyone knew.

  Mencken’s limo dropped us off at Leicester Square’s cheesy super-disco, The Moulin Rouge. It was crammed with smiling tourists paying a fortune for an inauthentic London night out involving a fake celebration of nineteenth century Paris amongst hordes of non-Londoners. How ludicrous can you get?

  The nightclub was one of those two-level cavernous monstrosities, the size of an aircraft hangar. I guessed it could hold anything up to 2000 people. Ghastly. It was supremely tacky, with the cheapest of glitter balls hanging from the ceiling, gaudy décor throughout, and appalling Euro muzak blasting out from a bad sound system – a
genuine dump, the sort of place I’d never let my clients stray into, even by accident.

  Mencken led us to a bar on the upper level and, thankfully, it was almost deserted, with only a couple of bemused Spanish tourists lurking around. Mencken announced that he’d buy us all a drink, but there would be no choice – we had to take whatever he put in front of us. Sam and Jez shrugged. They seemed incredibly respectful of Mencken. Maybe they’d had personal experience of a good clean down with his own-brand soap.

  Mencken ordered absinthe. It was my least favourite drink and I thought of telling him to get stuffed, but some masochistic part of me wanted the whole, undiluted experience.

  ‘What now?’ Sam asked as Mencken distributed the drinks.

  Mencken laughed. ‘Why, you have fun, of course.’ He slammed back his absinthe and walked away.

  Sam shot a puzzled glance at Jez. As for me, I had no idea what was expected. Was I supposed to leap into action to entertain the actors? My nerves already felt as though they’d been slung across the Grand Canyon and a tightrope walker was treading on them, about to do a death-defying headstand. I followed Mencken’s example and drank the absinthe in one. Vile.

  An hour later, I was on my fourth absinthe – ‘the devil in a bottle’ as I think someone once referred to it. My head was spinning and I didn’t feel well. I was standing on my own on the upper balcony, gazing down at the bobbing heads of the clubbers on the crowded dancefloor. I had no idea where the others were.

  When Jez materialised beside me, I was startled and let out an embarrassing squeal.

  ‘So, how will you find NexS?’ he asked.

  The question took me by surprise since I’d never talked about it with him, even though I realised he must have discussed it with Mencken. ‘I have one or two ideas,’ I mumbled, but I didn’t have any.

  ‘If ultimate pleasure’s out there, I want my slice,’ Jez said.

  ‘But someone like you – don’t you have a great time every day?’

  ‘You have no idea. Sometimes I think if a boxer slugged me in the face, I wouldn’t know it. I can’t feel. Sam and I are bored the whole time. NexS isn’t some distraction for us. We’re praying it can make us feel again. Something, anything – it doesn’t matter what.’

  He massaged his temples. ‘We both have recurring dreams. Isn’t that weird? We’re both seeing psychotherapists and neither of us thinks it does any good, but we keep going back.’

  ‘So, what’s your dream?’

  I didn’t expect an answer, but he showed no reluctance.

  ‘I have a harness round my neck, and I’m dragging a boulder behind me. I can never get free of it. My neck, my shoulders, and my whole body ache as I pull this thing around.’

  ‘I bet I know what your therapist says – the boulder is fame.’

  ‘You’re good,’ Jez said, ‘but wrong.’ He shook his head. ‘If I lost my fame, I’d be a nobody. I couldn’t bear that.’

  I didn’t know if I loathed Jez for being so self-pitying or pitied him for being so self-loathing. I wasn’t looking forward to the next few days. It seemed these guys were expecting NexS to bring them back to life.

  Jez nudged me. ‘Hey, watch this.’ He nodded towards the loos.

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at, then I noticed Sam with a production-line gorgeous blonde just outside the men’s loo. She slipped a note into his pocket.

  ‘Did you see?’ Jez said. ‘Happens all the time. Sometimes when I’m taking a dump, women follow me into the toilet and pass their phone number under the cubicle door.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Sex on a plate. It’s so fucking easy.’

  ‘You really are bored, aren’t you?’ I never thought I’d hear myself saying that to an A-lister.

  ‘That’s why I gotta have this NexS.’

  I didn’t think NexS would be providing any answers for Jez and Sam. I suspected it was nothing more than a clever party story by a druggy Oxford student trying to impress rich Americans, but I needed the fifty Gs Mencken promised and that meant I’d try my hardest to find the damned thing. I’d even had a half thought of faking it, using some cocktail of party drugs, but Mencken would no doubt be on the phone to place an emergency order with the local horse-head remover if he found out, so I dropped that plan.

  Sam read the blonde’s note, took her by the hand and pulled her into the toilet.

  ‘He’s in for a surprise.’ Jez was almost gloating. ‘I’ve met that lady before. She was the air hostess on our flight over.’

  I wondered what he was driving at, but he chose not to enlighten me. Seconds later, the toilet door flew open and Sam hurried out, scowling. The airhostess appeared shortly afterwards, apparently bewildered. If they’d been having a liaison, it hadn’t worked out, or had been incredibly premature.

  Jez strolled away, sniggering.

  I went to one of the lounges to sit down and get my head straight. I’d only been there for a couple of minutes when someone ahemmed.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, I didn’t see you.’

  ‘As stealthy as a Ninja.’ Sam plumped himself down beside me. ‘You seem like a nice girl. Why are you hanging around with people like us?’

  My mouth opened but nothing came out.

  ‘You’ll only get hurt, you know. We’re bad news.’

  ‘Uh, didn’t I see you with a blonde a few minutes ago?’ I gibbered.

  Sam amazed me by actually responding. ‘Yeah, just when we were about to get down to action, she stopped and asked me to sign the back of a photo of her frigging baby. Can you believe it? Did no one ever tell these bitches that showing me a picture of their baby is like showing me a miniature version of one of the jerks who screwed them? Christ, it makes me want to vomit.’

  I tried not to be shocked, but I failed.

  ‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ he said.

  ‘You don’t have dreams about babies, do you?’ I asked, recalling what Jez had said.

  ‘How did you know?’ Instantly, he started telling me the story. I couldn’t believe how anxious these superstars were to share their psychological hang-ups. Had their therapists told them to get it off their chests at every opportunity? They had so much in common. It was easy to understand why they’d been such good friends, and just as easy to appreciate how they’d fallen out so badly. Like brothers.

  ‘In my dream, I’m eighteen years old,’ Sam said. ‘I’m holding a baby and the crazy thing is it’s got my exact face. My therapist says it symbolises that I want to start my life again. Maybe that’s right, but maybe something else is true. None of it changes the fact that I don’t like babies.’

  I tried, feebly, to feign sympathy.

  ‘You don’t have any brats, do you?’ Sam asked fiercely.

  When I shook my head, his hand shot out and rested on my knee. Without thinking, I brushed it away.

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, get over yourself. I’ve seen everything you’ve got. You’re nothing special.’

  The words tore through me like bullets. I tried not to cry. I listed every fault I had. Bum too big, breasts too small, hips too wide, legs not long enough if unaided by heels, hair too lank, first traces of cellulite, tummy sticking out too much. God, I was a walking Gorgon, turning people to stone if they so much as glimpsed me. I must have been insane to think a Hollywood hunk could ever fall for me.

  ‘You’d better find NexS for us,’ Sam spat. Then he stood up and walked away.

  I didn’t know what to say and stared miserably at my absinthe glass. I pathetically raised my eyes to watch Sam as he strode off. He looked fabulous in his low-slung combats, his Calvin Klein boxers tantalisingly peaking out, practically beckoning to me. Whenever I watched his body move, I couldn’t help imagining snuggling up to him in bed. I knew he was a complete git, but, my God – those gorgeous blue eyes when he looked at me. I fancied the arse off him, and it was unbearable. Why was he so mean to me?

  I headed for my one place of refuge – the loo – and went through the mo
tions of re-applying my make-up, and trying to keep my chin up, or at least prevent it dropping through the floor. As I came out, Mencken was emerging from the gents’ toilet.

  ‘Hey! How are you getting on with the guys?’ he asked.

  ‘Things could be better,’ was all I could say, and that was way too much of a positive spin.

  ‘You know, I’ve seen the way you look at Sam.’

  I didn’t reply, but I was sure my face was reddening.

  ‘Maybe you won’t believe me,’ Mencken winked, ‘but there’s a nice guy in there struggling to get out.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ As far as I was concerned, Sam was a complete arse – but what an arse! He made me as horny as hell, but that was just mega depressing since he’d made it insultingly clear he was totally unimpressed by my body and never going to reciprocate. Ever.

  ‘Are you all set to track down NexS?’ Mencken asked.

  ‘I’ll phone round, find out if anyone’s heard anything. Maybe I’ll get lucky.’

  Mencken nodded. ‘OK, tomorrow night, pick the boys up at nine and take them somewhere interesting.’ He explained that he wouldn’t be able to come himself because he had business to take care of.

  ‘Can I ask why you brought us here tonight, Mr Mencken?’

  ‘Don’t be so formal, Sophie. Call me Harry.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘I wanted to show you how desperate Sam and Jez are for something different – a whole new experience. It won’t be easy, but you’re an imaginative girl.’

  *****

  I found Sam at midnight in the lounge overlooking the dance floor. He was on his own, with a bottle of Bud in his hand and his hoodie pulled over his head. When he turned towards me, he seemed surprisingly excited.

  ‘Hello!’ I said. ‘Why so happy?’

  ‘Oh, I have a unique happening lined up.’ He glanced at his watch then made sure I was standing next to him at the edge of the balcony overlooking the dancefloor. He signalled towards the DJ’s booth. The music stopped, prompting a groan from the clubbers.