Read Online Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Fielding - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Helen Fielding
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Olivia. I’m fine. Listen, I’d like to go to LA and do the wannabe story. Straightaway. As soon as you can. Get me on the first plane out.”
As Olivia looked down over Arizona, the sun was setting, turning the desert red. The great gash of the Grand Canyon was already in darkness. She thought of all the deserts she’d flown over before, in Africa, in Arabia. And she wondered: Did Pierre Ferramo know that the ship was going to blow when he kissed me last night?
Chapter 11
Los Angeles
p. 59 A s the taxi rattled and bounced over the potholes towards the hills, Olivia wound down the window, relieved by the sense of freedom and vague lawlessness she always felt in Los Angeles. It was so deliciously shallow. She looked up at the giant billboards lining the road: “Looking for a new career? Be a star! Contact the LA county sheriff’s office.” “We’re back from Rehab and Ready to Party,” said an advert for a TV guide. A bench at a bus stop featured a poster-sized shot of a grinning big-haired Realtor: “Valerie Babajian: your hostess for LA Real Estate.” Another billboard for a radio station said simply, “Jennifer Lopez’s brother, George,” and another, which seemed not to be advertising anything at all, showed an artist’s impression of a platinum blonde in a tight pink dress with a figure like Jessica Rabbit. “Angelyne” was written underneath in giant letters.
“Is Angelyne an actress?” she asked the cabdriver.
“Angelyne? No.” He laughed. “She just pay for these posters of herself and then she do personal appearances, parties, things like that. She been doing that for years.”
As the gray-green hills grew closer, lights pinpricking through the dusk, they passed the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with the Star of David raised on the side.
“I know what Ferramo’s doing here,” she said to herself suddenly. “The wannabe movie is bullshit. They’re going to hit Los Angeles.”
p. 60 Her mind began to whir into a familiar overdrive: missiles launched from the top of the Runyon Canyon dog park, plummeting down into the executive offices at Fox Studios; suicide bombers at the American Idol final; manned torpedoes racing through the sewers. She felt like calling CNN and filing a report. “ He’s handsome, he’s good at kissing, but he’s planning to blow us all sky high: Pierre Ferramo . . . ”
Stop it, she told herself. Calm down. Don’t rush to conclusions. But Olivia was angry and disturbed. If Ferramo had anything to do with what happened in the docks at Miami she was going to find out.
The sign for the Standard Hotel on Sunset, in a declaration of wacky subversiveness, was upside down. The hotel, once a geriatric home, had been recently converted to a temple of Hollywood retro-chic. The contrast with its former clientele was dramatic. Seldom had Olivia seen so many beautiful young people gathered in one place talking on mobile phones. There were girls in camouflage trousers and bikini tops, girls in slippy dresses, girls in jeans so low their thongs were two inches above the waistbands, boys with shaved heads and goatee beards, boys in tight jeans which showed everything they had, boys in baggy jeans with the crotch at knee level. There were plastic podlike chairs suspended from chains. Shag-pile carpet graced the floor, walls and ceiling. A DJ was spinning vinyl at the entrance to the pool deck. On the wall behind the reception desk a girl wearing only plain white underwear was reading a book in a glass box. It made Olivia feel like a seventy-year-old obese academic who would shortly be asked to move on down the road to the Substandard.
The receptionist handed her a message from Melissa welcoming her to LA and saying that the auditions were starting in the morning, and the team would be easy to find around the bar and lobby. Once again, the bellboy insisted on accompanying her to the room, despite her lack of luggage. His head reminded her of a child’s
As Olivia looked down over Arizona, the sun was setting, turning the desert red. The great gash of the Grand Canyon was already in darkness. She thought of all the deserts she’d flown over before, in Africa, in Arabia. And she wondered: Did Pierre Ferramo know that the ship was going to blow when he kissed me last night?
Chapter 11
Los Angeles
p. 59 A s the taxi rattled and bounced over the potholes towards the hills, Olivia wound down the window, relieved by the sense of freedom and vague lawlessness she always felt in Los Angeles. It was so deliciously shallow. She looked up at the giant billboards lining the road: “Looking for a new career? Be a star! Contact the LA county sheriff’s office.” “We’re back from Rehab and Ready to Party,” said an advert for a TV guide. A bench at a bus stop featured a poster-sized shot of a grinning big-haired Realtor: “Valerie Babajian: your hostess for LA Real Estate.” Another billboard for a radio station said simply, “Jennifer Lopez’s brother, George,” and another, which seemed not to be advertising anything at all, showed an artist’s impression of a platinum blonde in a tight pink dress with a figure like Jessica Rabbit. “Angelyne” was written underneath in giant letters.
“Is Angelyne an actress?” she asked the cabdriver.
“Angelyne? No.” He laughed. “She just pay for these posters of herself and then she do personal appearances, parties, things like that. She been doing that for years.”
As the gray-green hills grew closer, lights pinpricking through the dusk, they passed the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center with the Star of David raised on the side.
“I know what Ferramo’s doing here,” she said to herself suddenly. “The wannabe movie is bullshit. They’re going to hit Los Angeles.”
p. 60 Her mind began to whir into a familiar overdrive: missiles launched from the top of the Runyon Canyon dog park, plummeting down into the executive offices at Fox Studios; suicide bombers at the American Idol final; manned torpedoes racing through the sewers. She felt like calling CNN and filing a report. “ He’s handsome, he’s good at kissing, but he’s planning to blow us all sky high: Pierre Ferramo . . . ”
Stop it, she told herself. Calm down. Don’t rush to conclusions. But Olivia was angry and disturbed. If Ferramo had anything to do with what happened in the docks at Miami she was going to find out.
The sign for the Standard Hotel on Sunset, in a declaration of wacky subversiveness, was upside down. The hotel, once a geriatric home, had been recently converted to a temple of Hollywood retro-chic. The contrast with its former clientele was dramatic. Seldom had Olivia seen so many beautiful young people gathered in one place talking on mobile phones. There were girls in camouflage trousers and bikini tops, girls in slippy dresses, girls in jeans so low their thongs were two inches above the waistbands, boys with shaved heads and goatee beards, boys in tight jeans which showed everything they had, boys in baggy jeans with the crotch at knee level. There were plastic podlike chairs suspended from chains. Shag-pile carpet graced the floor, walls and ceiling. A DJ was spinning vinyl at the entrance to the pool deck. On the wall behind the reception desk a girl wearing only plain white underwear was reading a book in a glass box. It made Olivia feel like a seventy-year-old obese academic who would shortly be asked to move on down the road to the Substandard.
The receptionist handed her a message from Melissa welcoming her to LA and saying that the auditions were starting in the morning, and the team would be easy to find around the bar and lobby. Once again, the bellboy insisted on accompanying her to the room, despite her lack of luggage. His head reminded her of a child’s
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