‘That means,’ Emily said, ‘they make intelligent movies.’

‘But not much money,’ Lara laughed.

‘Busy week?’ Emily asked.

‘No. Next coupla weeks I’ll be pulling together the launch party for Doves but right now I’m taking some down time.’

‘I’ve had way too much down time,’ Emily sighed.

I listened attentively. ‘Down time’ – it seemed to mean ‘quietish patch’. One of the things I love about coming to the States is getting the new slang before it comes out in Ireland. To my knowledge, I was the first native of the Blackrock hinterland to use the phrase ‘no-brainer’, acquired on a trip to New York to see Rachel. It’s a bit like seeing all the big films six months before they come out at home.

‘I’ll probably have nothing but down time for the rest of my life.’ Emily was becoming maudlin. ‘Bastard agent.’

‘It’s three days!’ Lara admonished. ‘Give the guy a chance.’

‘Five days. He’s had it since last Friday.’

‘Three working days. It’s nothing. And how’s the new script going?’

‘Badly. Very badly’

‘’Cos your confidence is so low. Hey, here’s Justin.’

Justin wasn’t what you might call a looker. He had glasses, short, tight black curls, and he was sort of plump. Although to be fair, all he was was probably a pound or two over his optimum weight, but because everyone else in LA was so slender he looked tubby by comparison.

‘Sorry I’m late, guys.’ His voice was quite high-pitched for a man. ‘Desiree’s real depressed and I didn’t want to leave her.’

I thought Desiree must be his girlfriend, but it turned out to be his dog.

Emily told me that Justin was an actor.

‘Would I have seen you in anything?’ I asked him.

‘Maybe.’ But he didn’t seem to be taking the question too seriously. I play expendable fat guys. You know when they beam down to a planet and one of the crew gets zapped by an unfriendly native? That’s me. Or a cop who gets killed in a shoot-out.’

‘Don’t knock it,’ Emily said. ‘You’ve got more work than you can cope with.’

‘’Sright! In Planet Movie fat guys needed to be expended a lot.

‘So!’ he said to Emily. ‘What happened with your blind-date dinner party on Saturday?’

‘Oh God,’ Emily groaned. ‘Well, I get there and Al, the guy they’d lined up for me, looked OK.’

‘Always a bad sign,’ said Lara drily.

‘He tells me he works in the organ-donor business, and I decided I had to fall in love with him. This man saves lives, I thought. So I said, “Tell me about your work.”’

‘Big mistake in this town,’ Lara said to me. ‘You ask someone to pass the water jug and you get a ten-minute monologue about how great they are.’

Emily nodded. ‘He has to go to car wrecks to check out the dead people’s organs, so he starts going on about an accident site. The man had been – this is awful – decapitated. “His head was thirty yards away,” Al says. “They didn’t find it until the next day. It was off the highway, in someone’s front yard. The dog found it.”’

‘Ew,’ Lara and Justin shuddered.

‘He enjoyed telling me just that bit too much,’ Emily agreed. ‘I had to go to the bathroom. And when I came back in I heard him telling the entire room, “THE DOG FOUND IT IN THE FRONT YARD”. Mind you, I got on really well with this other guy, Lou. He took my number. But he hasn’t called me.’ Suddenly sobered, she observed tightly, ‘I can’t have a relationship. No one wants my work. I’m the biggest failure I ever met.’

‘No, you’re not,’ I consoled desperately. I swallowed hard and made myself say it. ‘I’m about to get divorced. I can’t think of a worse failure.’

At least you’ve been married,’ Emily said gloomily. ‘Although right now I’d settle for sex. Thanks to Brett’s botch-job penis enlargement I haven’t slept with a man for nearly four months. How about you, Maggie?’

‘Not quite that long.’ I was much too embarrassed to discuss it in front of Lara and Justin. It had been hard enough admitting I was getting divorced.

‘Well,’ Lara beamed, ‘I haven’t slept with a man for eight years.’

She had to be joking. All was still as I waited for the punchline. I mean, this woman was off the scale. And if she couldn’t get a fella, what hope was there for anyone, anywhere?

‘Are you serious?’

‘Sure.’

I’d heard about women like her. Emily had said Los Angeles was full of them – stunningly beautiful, intelligent, nothing too neurotic going on, but they’d been hurt by so many men, who could just take their pick of beautiful women in this town, that they’d decided to throw in the towel and totally shut down emotionally.

‘But why?’

‘I’m gay’

Gay. Lara was a lesbian. I’d never met a real-life lesbian before. Not knowingly, anyway. Plenty of gay men, of course, but this was a new one on me and I had no clue what to say. Congratulations? Get lost, you’re too good-looking?

‘I’m sorry’ Lara roared with laughter. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘So you’re not gay?’ Suddenly I was comfortable again.

‘No, I am.’

9

The following morning dawned bright and sunny. I was beginning to spot a pattern here.

‘How are you today?’ asked Emily, handing me my breakfast smoothie.

How was I? Goofed, knackered, fearful, disoriented… ‘Jet-lagged,’ I settled on.

‘Give it a couple of days, then you’ll be fine.’

I could only hope so.

After breakfast, Emily took me to hire a car, but to my disappointment it wasn’t as foxy as the one in my imagination, because the foxy one transpired to be about ten times as expensive as the non-foxy model.

‘Get it anyway,’ Emily urged.

‘I shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘I’m not earning.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Then the pair of us went to the beach and whiled away several hours, dissecting all sorts of inconsequential stuff, like what a total gobshite Donna’s Robbie was – we got great mileage out of that one – and how Sinead looked much better since she’d gone blonde the previous year.