Naked in LA by Colin Falconer Read Free Book Online Page A

kissed me on the cheek and wished me a happy birthday. Then he sang “There’ll Never Be Another You,” and dedicated it to me.
    Angel sat there beaming.
    After the show he asked me if I still wanted to be an actress. “It’s my dream,” I said.
    “Maybe I can help you with that.”
    I thought that perhaps he was going to take me backstage to meet Sinatra, but he said Frank had another show in Fort Lauderdale that night and he had to leave. “But I know a lot of people in the business,” he said. “Not just Sinatra.”
    “You think you can get me a screen test?”
    “Sure I can, just leave it to me.” He poured me another glass of champagne. It was the best night out I had had for three years; it was my only night out in three years.
    Okay, so maybe I was sleeping my way to the top. I wouldn’t be the first girl to do it.
     

     
    Angel told me the film producer’s name was Tony Marcellis. “He’s set up a reading for you,” he said, “at his hotel.”
    I took a cab over to the Algiers Hotel on Miami Beach. Angel told me Marcellis would meet me in the lobby. I was so nervous that I couldn’t think, I had been awake all night practising two monologues, learning them by heart; Katherine Hepburn’s case for the defence from Adam’s Rib and Elizabeth Taylor’s Gloria Wandrous in Butterfield 8 “… Mama. We, we both know what kind of a girl I’ve been, we both know where I’ve been through. Mama, face it. I was the slut of all-time…”
    I gave the desk clerk my name, and while he called upstairs, I sat down to wait. A few minutes later the busboy came over, asked me if I was Miss Fuentes and told me that Mister Marcellis was expecting me upstairs.
    Room 603.
    I rode the elevator and went down the corridor, going over and over the speeches in my head. Mama, we both...Mama, we both...
    Now my big moment had come I could barely remember a single word.
    I stood outside the door to 603, trying to pull myself together, taking deep breaths. I was about to knock when I realized the door was ajar. There was music coming from inside, Sam Cooke, “You Send Me.”
    The door flew open. A girl stood there in her underwear.
    “I’m here to see Tony Marcellis,” I said.
    A middle aged guy with a mat of silver hair on his chest and chunky gold rings on his fingers came in from the balcony, wearing not much more than a towel, and smoking a cigar.
    “I’m here for the audition,” I said.
    He grinned. “Well you come to the right place,” he said and let the towel drop onto the carpet. “What do you think of that?”
    Then he stood there, like he was waiting for an answer.
    “I think it looks like a dick,” I said, “only smaller.”
    I didn’t wait for the elevator, I ran down the fire escape and out of the hotel. I was halfway home before I realized I’d lost one of my shoes on the stairs.
    That night I went to bed, feeling like a cheap whore. I opened my purse and took out the creased newspaper picture I’d found of Reyes and me at the Left Bank all those years ago. I wondered where Reyes Garcia was now. He belonged to another life, but whenever I thought of him I still wished that one day I would somehow find him again…
     
     
     
     

Chapter 11

     
     
    Walking into the Flamingo Lounge was like stepping back in time. It was out in Dade County, just across the road from a second-hand car place. There were a few pick-ups parked out front. The Imperial was discreetly parked out back. It was dark inside, with puce-coloured brick walls and no windows. It used to be a bank.
    Men in guayabera shirts and khakis played dominoes under the ceiling fans. Angel sat with his back to the wall drinking cafe con leche and talking business with three other guys, all wearing silk suits and too much jewellery. His muscle were sitting by the door, as usual. I walked straight past them. Perhaps they didn’t think I was a threat because I was a woman, perhaps they were distracted by the fact that I had stockings but