Page 17 of Star Struck

‘Mmmmm . . .’ Felix ran his hands up and down his body, suggestively. ‘Gethryn, by Braille. Bet he’s a fluent body-reader.’

‘He’d hear nothing from mine.’

‘Do you want some of the Valium? It would help . . . take the edge off.’

I thought about it. ‘No. I don’t really need it, I just panicked. After all, even with the make-up people are going to see the scar, they’re going to think whatever they think whether I’ve taken Valium or not. I’m tired of being dependent, on you, on drugs, on the doctors.’

He stared at me. ‘Grief, one drunken episode with a gorgeous man and you’re swearing off pharmaceuticals? They should put him on the NHS.’

‘I’m tired of feeling out of control. I want a life, Fe. I know it won’t be the old one back again, and I know I’m going to have to work at it, but, now I’m here I think I should try.’ I sat down on the bed. ‘Except . . . I’m not sure trying involves being in a crowded place.’

Felix gave me one of his Looks, and handed me my black trousers. ‘Even if a very large part of that crowd is Gethryn? You want him, you know it. And don’t try to tell me otherwise, when your nipples are sticking up like a couple of brass door handles at the thought of meeting him. Look, if you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.’ Another unreadable look. ‘For Faith. You know if she was here she’d be so excited; she’d have you in one of your old tarty frocks, flaunting it from here to Arkansas. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she, Skye?’

I felt the shiver I always felt when he talked about Faith. As though my skin was trying to get my attention. ‘Yes, she would.’

‘So?’ Felix did a little dance on the spot. ‘Can you at least try? For my sister?’

For Faith. For my beautiful best friend. Could I? ‘Don’t leave me, will you, Fe?’

Felix stood up and held out his arm. ‘I will be stapled to your side all evening. As long as you don’t end up heaving in the Ladies’, of course.’ Cautiously I hooked my arm through his. ‘Right. Let’s get laid!’ Then, seeing my look, ‘Figure of speech, sweetheart, figure of speech.’

* * *

The party was restricted to those convention-goers who were actually staying in the motel, the day-visitors being bussed in from the town an hour’s drive away every morning, so the numbers were far lower than had flooded around in reception earlier. A brave few had come in costume and there was something oddly unsettling about watching a Shadow pilot juggle a plate of nibbles and a glass of red wine alongside his blaster rifle. The two lads dressed as Skeel were labouring around the room under the weight of their cylinders, unable to eat because of the full-face helmets their outfits dictated, playing their parts to the max, while the rest of us who wore street clothes hung around the walls like kids at a school disco, waiting for the Big Boys to arrive. The diner was stripped out, tables stacked to the sides and the buffet laid down the centre on trestles. A projector showed a constant stream of images from the show on a huge screen made by closing off the door at the end furthest from reception and putting a board across it but despite the organisers’ best efforts it still felt like a canteen in fancy dress.

But Felix was right. Having already been faced with most of these people, and particularly when I’d been at my physical lowest, had broken the ice for me a little. Although I felt as though I was travelling inside an egg-shell which might shatter into a million shards at any moment, no-one looked, no-one stared or nudged their neighbour, no-one whispered.

As Felix and I made as unobtrusive an entrance as possible, we were overtaken by two of Gethryn’s co-stars, who immediately started milling around and chatting to people.

‘Who’re they?’ Felix nudged me.

I pointed at the pale, blond lad in the tight blue sari-style costume. ‘Jared White, who plays Defries, Lucas James’s second-in-command, and the girl is Martha Cohen. She’s Defries’s wife. B’Ha, but she’s on their side because her family were wiped out in the war.’

‘Verrrry nice.’ He hustled me up to the tables, picked up a paper plate and began scouting, knowing Felix, for the most phallic-shaped food on offer.

I looked at Martha again. ‘She’s almost impossible to recognise, out of make-up. Wouldn’t have known who she was, except . . .’

‘I meant, him.’ Felix picked up a carrot baton and nibbled the end, suggestively. Left it a moment, then smiled across the room. To my amazement, he got a smile in return. ‘Wheyhey, looks like I’ve still got it, babe.’

‘Felix.’

He jabbed the plate at me, until I took it. ‘Just popping over to introduce myself.’

Don’t leave me, I was too late to say. He was gone, crossing the room, armed with nothing but a smile and a root vegetable. I watched, envying his physical ease and his wit, his absolute certainty that life wouldn’t let him down. I’d been like that once. Hadn’t I? The room rocked with the sudden doubt. What had I been like? I had to search through scrambled memories just to try to pin myself down — a floating collection of thoughts and doubts with islands of complete remembrance jutting from them like little gold nuggets in a coal seam. And that missing year hadn’t even left a smear of memory behind; it had been stolen from me completely. No-one ever really talked about the time before the accident, not Felix, not my briefly visiting parents, nor the occasional passing friend. Maybe they didn’t want to upset me by reminding me of everything I’d lost, maybe they were upset on their own behalves that I couldn’t remember them, or that I’d lost so many memories that they thought I should have treasured. But it meant that my whole identity had to be assumed, I had nothing of my past adult self to build upon. All I had was those typically distant memories of childhood, my fuzzed-over adolescence and then nothing but fragments which could have been dreams. I was like a huge newborn baby, learning everything for the first time.

I looked down at the plate and concentrated on the creases in its cardboard. I felt okay as long as I didn’t think about how full the room was, and I was eating, well, snacking, looking interested — just like a real person. No-one could tell that I couldn’t even remember if I’d grown to like pickles; and if I didn’t think about how many people there were, milling about in that small space, where I couldn’t touch the walls, I’d be fine. Fine, yes, if I didn’t think about the people breathing my air, holding me in place so I couldn’t run, couldn’t get out, get out . . .

I found myself standing in the dusty yard, plate still in hand, unable to remember how I’d got through the crowd and slightly surprised, because I hadn’t consciously felt stressed, until I’d run. And yet, here I was, gasping, dragging the hot air down into my lungs, feeling it scritch and swirl down my throat, knowing that I couldn’t be dying because I was breathing. My heart chiselled away at my ribs and I had to drop the plate because my hands were shaking so much.

It was caught before it hit the ground. ‘Careful, girl. They’re valuable, these plates. Ten dollars per hundred, see?’

Clenching my toes to prevent the incipient faint, I looked up. Gethryn stood beside me, his own plate in his hand and his face wrapped in a smile that I wasn’t sure was for me. I looked over my shoulder, but there was nothing there apart from the scrubby cactuses which had been planted all along the wall. He couldn’t be smiling at a cactus, could he? Cautiously I smiled back.

‘That’s better. Pretty girl like you shouldn’t be frowning. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.’ A hand extended my way. ‘Name’s Gethryn. Unless you knew that, in which case just call me Mr Moron.’

‘I . . . did know.’ Almost afraid to make contact in case he disseminated into a stream of atoms, I touched his hand. Cool and sure it closed around mine. ‘I’m Skye.’ Still trembling.

He didn’t seem to notice the vibration of my fingers. Gave my hand a firm shake. ‘Jesus, I’m glad to meet someone who’s not completely barking.’ A confidentially lowered voice. ‘Most of the women in there? They’d have the boxers off my arse if I stopped moving long enough. Christ, fans are bad when they’re at a distance, never mind being trapped in a room with a hundred of the buggers.’ He tipped his head towards the people standing at the doors to the diner or sitting on the steps that led down, out into the desert, chatting to one another and pretending not to know who he was.

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