Laura Cassidy's Walk of Fame by Alan McMonagle

Author:Alan McMonagle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

That night I can’t sleep. And once I know nobody else is still up, I get out of bed and go downstairs and occupy myself in the kitchen, then take what I make to eat into the sitting room where I manage to get through all of Nightmare Alley, Kiss Me Deadly, Detour and as far as the scene in The Big Heat where Lee Marvin hurls a pot of boiling coffee into Gloria Grahame’s face, at which point I hear the others rousing themselves upstairs and make myself scarce.

21

Day before my audition and I’ve arranged to meet Fleming in Barna Woods. I want to go over my scene one last time. Not for the first time he is keeping me waiting. Even after I send forth a little giddy-up come and get me big boy enticement.

I lie down among the trees. Reach out my arms, caress windblown leaves either side of me without them getting the wrong idea. Pretend-scream at the laughing branches. Share a gory secret with the nearby stump. Listen to me, stump, I begin, I am only going to say this once. Aha! I have its attention now.

Maybe I should stay like this forever, close my eyes and let time fritter silently along. Maybe I will one day. Maybe I will fall into a deep sleep. Maybe I won’t wake up for a hundred years. Maybe when I do, everything will be different. I won’t look the way I used to. I will have acquired a reputation for being a remarkable person. All manner of people will crave time in my company. In their eagerness they will bump, jostle, knock, clamber over each other to get to me. And I will confer with my loyal sycamores and decide who among the clamouring hordes is deserving of this special time.

And still no sign of my leading man. Who does he think he is? And more to the point what part of his brain has him thinking I have nothing else to do with my time other than wait for him to show up? Once again, I reach for my phone. Last chance, big boy.

I’ve gobbled down a half-bag of Chocolate Emeralds and am about to share one of my best secrets with the stump I am developing a soft spot for when I hear him. All huff and puff and completely over-the-top swearwords for the tree root that never fails to trip him up.

‘We really need to find another spot,’ he says, removing with a flamboyant sweep of his hand a stray bramble from his fleecy hair. He’s not averse to a little theatre, is Fleming. Aids-and-abets his lofty notion of himself, I suppose.

This time we go further in, where the trees are thickest, the roots visible. We wrap ourselves around each other within the remains of a makeshift campground others have left after them. I kick off my boots and pull down my jeans and we grind and heave for the two or three minutes we are good for.

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