Page 51 of Hollywood Games
‘Brad is setting up the scene with Zoe now. He—’
Rory ran.
As he took the main stairs three at a time, he could hear the noise echoing out down the corridor; a screeching, hysterical, gulping laugh that lurched over the border into pain. He ran into Brad’s room to see him kneeling naked on top of Zoe, the crack of his arse facing the door. Brad glanced over his shoulder and promptly dived headfirst off the bed, taking cover behind a crew member who was red-faced with the effort of holding back laughter. Rory scooped Zoe into his arms, looking furiously at Brad.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said loudly over Zoe’s hysteria, and walked off, slamming the door behind them. Zoe clung to his neck as he walked down the corridor to the room they shared. She was still struggling to catch her breath. Rory lay her on the bed and passed her a handkerchief. ‘Stay here. I’ll be back.’
He strode off without a reply and stalked back to Brad’s room, throwing open the door, all pretence at politeness gone. Brad was back in his robe, arguing with the camera operator.
‘What the fuck is going on?’ Rory growled, his voice filling the room.
Brad took a defensive position on the other side of the bed and tried to downplay the situation. ‘Hey, brother, it’s cool, we just needed to check the lighting on Zoe’s skin before we bring in Kirsten. It’s in her contract.’
‘Why can’t Kirsten do it?’ Rory snapped back.
‘She doesn’t do setups, and she needs His Holiness to get rid of the spirits first,’ Brad replied as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
Rory walked straight out of the room and along the corridor to Kirsten’s, banging loudly on the door.
‘Come in,’ she sang sweetly.
Rory stood just inside the threshold. Kirsten was sitting in front of the fire wearing a long black lace robe, one perfectly proportioned leg extended out towards him. ‘Can I help you, my lord?’
‘Zoe cannot prepare this scene with Brad. You have to do it.’
Kirsten pouted. ‘But it’s not in my contract. It’sherjob, not mine.’
Rory swallowed. ‘Please?’
‘There’s just a small, itty bitty problem with that…’
‘What?’
‘I can’t enter the room without His Holiness. It’s the spirits.’ She looked up at him. ‘I can only do it if you’re there. You have to stay, make sure the ancestors leave me alone. Then I’ll do it.’ Silence. Kirsten stared at him in challenge. Was Rory about to lose yet another game of chicken to a blonde woman a quarter of his size?
‘So, you’ll do it if I stay in the room?’
‘Yes,’ replied Kirsten, allowing the robe to fall off her other knee.
‘Let’s go,’ he replied, holding his hand out. He frogmarched her out of the room and down the corridor into Brad’s. ‘Give me a minute,’ he said, then left to find Zoe. He found her sitting in bed, wiping her eyes.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was going to happen.’
Rory sat on the side of the bed. ‘It’s sorted. You’ve got the afternoon off. Get out of here. Go see your friends.’
‘How did you sort it?’
Rory sighed. ‘I’m on a zero-hours contract as a ghostbuster.’ She raised her eyebrows questioningly at him. ‘Don’t ask. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later.’ He kissed her and left the room.
Rory pushed open the door to Brad’s room with trepidation. Kirsten was standing, waiting for him in her robe.
‘Oh, my lord, you’re here. Now they’ll leave me in peace,’ she said, gripping the tensed muscles of his upper arm.
‘Okay, Kirsten, we ready to go now?’ asked Brad, his patience appearing to be wearing thin.
‘Yes, I’m ready,’ she replied, looking at Rory, untying her robe and dropping it to the floor. She was naked underneath. Every inch of her perfectly toned body had been buffed and waxed so she looked more plastic than a doll. Rory swallowed and fixed his eyes on the far wall. Kirsten skipped over to the bed and climbed on, angling her bottom towards Rory. He inched his way back into the corner of the room, trying to avoid looking at a naked Kirsten and a practically naked Brad. The room was boiling hot, and he began to sweat. He rubbed his sleeve across his forehead, his heart beating wildly. Of all the dark and terrible situations he’d been in, this trumped the lot. The behaviour of Brad and Kirsten was so far out of his frame of reference it hung in an art gallery on Mars. At the edge of his vision, he could see them entwined, a mass of bronzed limbs, and hear the conversation between Brad and the camera operator about nipples, hands, bottoms and thrusting as if they were discussing the weather.
Kirsten kept looking at his flushed face and smiling. What she didn’t know was that Rory was wondering whether he would need to book another course of the PTSD therapy he’d had after his second tour. He tried to cope by imagining David Attenborough’s soothing tones in his ear, narrating the scene before him as if it were a wildlife documentary. When that trick ran out of steam, he took himself back to his SAS training, stuck in a windowless room being beaten by his trainers and deprived of food, water and sleep as they attempted to break him. He didn’t break then and he’d be buggered if he broke now. A few more days and this would be over. They would be out of his life, away from Zoe and his mother, and he could pretend it had all been a bad dream.
