not going to be a good influence?
Back at the hotel, I stripped off my new dress and pulled on the ancient Blondie T-shirt I had ‘borrowed’ from Alex before I left. It must have been washed a thousand times but it still smelt of Alex’s apartment, of home. I dialled his number again.
‘Hello?’
‘Alex? It’s me.’ I had never been so happy to hear his voice.
‘I tried to call you earlier.’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ OK, so we weren’t starting with ‘I love you, I miss you, I’m going mad without you’. ‘It’s been such a ridiculous day.’
‘Yeah, I’ve been busy too. We were in the studio until—like—three this morning,’ Alex replied through a yawn. ‘Shouldn’t you be interviewing your movie star?’
‘That all got off to a bit of a dodgy start but it’ll be all right, I think. James is really, really nice,’ I said, smiling at the thought of Alex with his black hair all ruffled on the pillow, my head resting against his chest as he fell asleep, his fingers curled around my wrist. ‘You sound sleepy. Are you OK?’
‘I guess I was asleep,’ he yawned again. ‘And just how nice is this James? Should I be worried?’
‘No,’ I slipped into bed and set my alarm for eight a.m. ‘I think you’ll be OK. Especially since I…’
‘Since you?’
‘Since I just babbled like an idiot. I’m sure he thinks I’m the worst interviewer he’s ever met.’ I decided not to share the shoe puking until I got back to New York. It felt more like an ‘in-person’ story. ‘You should go back to bed. I don’t want to be the reason the world has to go without a new Stills album this year.’
‘You’re the reason there’s going to be another album at all,’ Alex said softly. I curled up against the pillows and smiled. No six-foot sex god could compete with that. ‘So, about that phone sex we talked about?’
I was sure what he really meant to say was ‘I love you and I can’t live with you.’ But he didn’t.
‘Goodnight, Alex. Get some sleep.’
‘What are you wearing?’
‘Goodnight, Alex.’ I hung up and flicked off the lights.
Boys.
When James had said he’d send a car, I really wasn’t expecting a limo. And I really wasn’t expecting him to be inside it. Thankfully, I’d managed to prise myself out of bed at a reasonable hour and was fully prepped. Well, made-up and blow-dried. I had tried to come as far away from yesterday’s vomit incident as possible in a cute inky blue Ella Moss jersey dress, evidence of my credit card abuse in Bloomingdale’s. Nothing pukey about this little number. I just couldn’t bend over at all. Fingers crossed the superstar could be distracted enough by legs so as not to notice my lack of stellar interviewing skills…
‘Good morning, Miss Clark,’ James utched across the back seat of the limo, as though there wasn’t enough room in there. Or possibly because he was confused by my size 12 backside. Given most of the girls I’d seen at Chateau Marmont would struggle to tip the scales at 100 pounds, I could understand why he’d be concerned about my girth. ‘You’re looking very refreshed.’
I took that as code for ‘not about to vomit’.
‘Well, thank you very much, Mr Jacobs,’ I replied with a winning smile. For God’s sake, I’d already puked in front of the man, where was the point in being star-struck?
‘Let me introduce my assistant, Blake.’ James gestured towards a very stressed-looking, but very cute blond sitting in the opposite corner of the limo. For shame, I hadn’t even noticed him; I was way too busy checking out James’s huge thighs in his teeny tiny workout shorts. For my interview, of course. ‘We were just running in the hills. Well, I was, Blake was reading Perez Hilton on his BlackBerry.’
‘Shut up,’ Blake held out his hand. ‘Sorry I missed you yesterday?’
‘Oh, really, don’t be. The fewer people involved in yesterday, the better,’ I said, shaking his hand and my head politely. Blake was actually very good looking, exactly how I would describe a Californian All-American Boy: rumpled blond hair, incredibly tanned and athletic looking in his workout gear. If it weren’t for the fact that he was seriously setting off my gadar, I would have been absolutely warming him up for one Miss Jenny Lopez.
Well, if one Miss Jenny Lopez had actually made it home the night before. A quick peek in her room on the way down to meet James presented a still-made-up-from-the-morning-before bed. I looked down into my (suffering slightly from being on the floor of the toilets in The Ivy) Marc Jacobs handbag to see if she’d replied to my text. Nothing yet.
‘Yeah, anyway, I’m basically here to make sure you stick to the approved topics and if at any time I say stop, we stop and the interview is over, OK?’ Blake barked. ‘You did get the list of approved topics?’
Approved topics…I tried not to pull the ‘was that one of the pieces of paper Cici gave me and I’ve left in the hotel?’ face.
‘Absolutely.’
Absolutely certain it was one of the pieces of paper Cici gave me that I’d left in the hotel.
‘Fantastic,’ Blake continued, as though James wasn’t even in the car. I was trying to pay attention but how can anyone listen to instructions when James Jacobs is sitting just a couple of feet away and pulling a very cute ‘aren’t all these rules so silly?’ face. Concentrate. Concentrate. ‘The idea of the interview is for you to introduce your readers to “the real James Jacobs”. So really we want you to focus on his movies, his hobbies, his ambitions for the future. And you know what we don’t want to focus on.’
‘He’s talking about the sex, drugs and rock and roll,’ James whispered theatrically. Cue my first ridiculously loud and faintly hysterical cackle of the day.
‘Hilarious, James, just hilarious.’ Blake raised a well-groomed eyebrow. ‘Let’s make jokes in front of the reporter. Don’t write that down.’
‘Oh, really, I’m not…’ I paused, took a deep breath and started again. ‘I’m here to work with you, not to try and trip you up or anything.’ Wow. How professional did I sound?
‘We know, Angela,’ James reached over and took my hand. Be still my thumping, thudding heart. ‘Blake is just a little bit over-cautious. Some reporters are just out for as scandalous a story as they can get. I’m just worried that you’ll be a little bit let down—if only my life was exciting as it looks in the papers.’
Blake smiled tensely at me and nodded to James. Hmm. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that this might be hard work. How much media training had this man had? If James wasn’t going to give me anything, then what was I going to write about?
‘I’m sure it’ll be great,’ I said, pulling my all-new superstar interviewing
