Rhino What You Did Last Summer Read online

  I tell her I can’t believe she’s reading this muck. She definitely shouldn’t leave it lying around.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she goes, ‘it’s definitely her best yet. Your mum is such an inspiration, Ross – to all women. Emmy’s only met her, like, once and she’s already thinking of going back to UCLA to do gender studies.’

  ‘Emmy?’ I go. ‘With the tennis orms?’

  She’s there, ‘Yeah, she was asking all about you, by the way. I told you she had a thing for you.’

  ‘But when did she meet my old dear?’

  ‘Well, you know she’s in LA now?’

  ‘I heard. I’ve no focking interest in seeing her.’

  Sorcha blows on a forkful of chicken. ‘Well, we all went out for dinner – me, Emmy, Analyn, Elodine, your mum. They’re all, like, huge fans, Ross.’

  ‘You’ve got to be shitting me…’

  She puts it in her mouth. ‘We went to, like, Cut, this – oh my God – amazing steakhouse in the Beverly Wilshire, where Tom and Katie go all the time. Then we went to, like, Kress. Oh my God, your mum was, like, bopping away with the best of them.’

  ‘Spare me.’

  ‘She was wearing this amazing Galliano babydoll dress. It was, like, lace? And, oh my God, she totally pulled it off…’

  I shrug as if to say, I don’t actually give a fock?

  ‘She glitzed it up with, like, Lorraine Schwartz crystals…’

  I stort playing the bumble-bee game with Honor, where you pretend that the tip of your finger is, like, a bee and you get it to, like, land on her nose. She actually loves it.

  Sorcha’s there, ‘And she paid for, like, everything – which I was so mad at her for.’

  ‘Ah, let her,’ I go. ‘She can do with all the friends she can get – even if she has to buy them…’

  Sorcha finishes her dinner and pushes the little corton away.

  I ask her, just randomly, how she’d feel about me getting together with Emmy, but she doesn’t answer. It’s like she hasn’t heard me? I immediately cop that there’s something on her mind. I know her almost too well?

  ‘Go on,’ I go. ‘Spill it.’

  She sort of, like, smiles – but not in a happy way. ‘It’s nothing,’ she goes.

  I’m there, ‘Sorcha,’ and I put my hand on top of hers, ‘we’ve known each other a long, long time – and I’d like to think we’re still friends…’

  She takes, like, a deep breath, then goes, ‘It’s Cillian.’

  ‘Cillian?’ I go. I can feel my fists immediately tighten.

  ‘No, it’s nothing bad,’ she goes. ‘I’m just, I don’t know, worried about him… Since he came back from heliskiing, he’s been… different.’

  ‘Different, as in?’

  ‘Well, the night he came back, I was sitting down to watch Nip/Tuck. He walked in, muted the TV and said he was getting rid of the Lamborghini.’

  I laugh. ‘I wondered how long it would take,’ I go. ‘I knew it was too much cor for a goy like him.’

  ‘Then he started talking about the subprime mortgage crisis…’

  ‘Again? Can he not let it go?’

  ‘That’s what I said. But he’s, like, totally changed his tune, Ross. He kept saying that the world economy was on the verge of collapse…’

  Even I have to laugh at that.

  ‘He said that the irresponsible lending practices of the banks, as well as the trading of risky debt obligations on the financial markets, meant that the entire world economy was built on sand.’

  ‘So? What’s that got to do with any of us?’

  She’s there, ‘I don’t know.’ She looks like she’s about to burst into tears. ‘But then he started asking me how many credit cards I had and how much I owed on them.’

  ‘Whoa – that’s out of order.’

  ‘He said we were all in the throes of a consumer binge that simply can’t be sustained…’

  ‘Bang out of order.’

  ‘And he didn’t mean just me, Ross – he meant, like, the whole world?’

  ‘Did he snot himself while he was heliskiing or something?’

  She nods. ‘He had, like, a fall? Josh and Kyle said he had, like, a minor concussion? The doctor told him to just sleep it off. He got up the next morning and that’s when it started. He’s already cancelled our joint MasterCard.’

  I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying I told you so. This is what happens when you get mixed up with financial services heads.

  ‘It’ll probably pass,’ I go.

  She’s there, ‘I hope so. I mean, he walked into Bob Soto’s office yesterday morning and said we were eighteen months away from a global financial crisis as grave as the Great Depression. Can you imagine, Ross – he said that to the head of International Risk Assessment in PwC!’

  She’s quiet for maybe thirty seconds. Then she goes, ‘You don’t think he could be right, do you?’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m going to be honest with you,’ I go. ‘I think Bob Soto’s a dick…’

  ‘Don’t say that. He’s been – oh my God – so understanding.’

  ‘I think Josh and Kyle are dicks as well. But this I will say for them – they seem pretty confident of their shit.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Look,’ I go, ‘I’ll tell you my whole, I don’t know, psychology about the whole financial thing. I know fock-all about the economy and blahdy blahdy blah. But sometimes, if I’m flicking through the channels and I end up on the news and I see all those dudes on Wall Street, I just think, well, they obviously know what they’re doing. That’s something else I don’t need to know anything about.’

  She smiles at me. ‘I love talking to you,’ she goes. ‘You make everything alright.’

  Then she gives me an amazing – even if it is just a – peck on the cheek.

  She stands up and puts her corton in the bin. She takes Honor out of my orms and says it’s time a certain little girl was in bed. ‘Say buenas noches to your father,’ she goes. ‘Can you say buenas noches?’

  After a little bit of coaxing, she finally gets her to say the words.

  ‘Buenas noches,’ I go, although I’d much prefer to be saying goodnight.

  As she turns to bring her upstairs, Sorcha mentions that she’s thinking of hosting a fundraiser for the Jolie-Pitt Foundation, and I know immediately that it’s the old dear’s evil influence.

  I’m having, like, a late brekky in the Viceroy when I decide to ring Christian. From the second he answers, he sounds pretty hassled. ‘I take it she has you doing the middle-of-the-night feeds?’ I go. ‘You’re focking worse to do it.’

  Of course, it’s only then that he tells me that I’m on speaker phone and that she’s in the cor with him.

  I’m there, ‘Hey, Lauren, that was an actual joke,’ except of course nothing comes back.

  I carry on making the effort, in fairness to me.

  ‘So how is he?’ I go. ‘They’re focking great at that age, aren’t they?’

  Christian’s like, ‘He’s, er, fine, Ross.’

  I’m there, ‘What are you even calling him?’ half expecting him to say, I don’t know, Jar Jar or probably Chief focking Chirpa.

  ‘Either Edward Thomas,’ he goes, ‘or Thomas Edward. They’re our grandfathers’ names.’

  Then I hear her go, ‘Just hang up, Christian.’

  Except it’ll take a hell of a lot more than a bird to come between me and my best mate.

  I’m quickly like, ‘So where are you two off to?’ recycling and going again. ‘Dirty weekend somewhere?’

  He’s there, ‘We’re actually driving to Vegas. We’re going to just live there on-site until the casino actually opens. There’s so much work to do and, well, none of it’s in California anymore.’

  I’m like, ‘Yeah, you just keep pretending what you’re doing is work.’

  ‘Hang up,’ I hear Lauren go again and Christian’s like, ‘Em, I better go,’ but I’m there, ‘Dude, before you g
o, I just want to tell you some of my shit? I’ve got a port in a movie, doing what I do best – in other words, kicking. I’m also getting, like, a body resculpt. Can you imagine how sick D’Arcy’s going to be when he sees me? And the other big news is that Sorcha’s not taking a court order out against me after all…’

  The next thing, either he hangs up or she hangs up, but the line goes suddenly dead.

  Teenage Kicks is a movie that Disney or one of that crowd are making about an American football team in a junior high school in, well, obviously, the States. The long and the short of it is that the kicker gets an intestinal parasite from some bad nigri – they’re pretty focking sophisticated these American kids – and they end up drafting the school nerd onto the team. And of course, because of his knowledge of, like, geometry and astronomy and all that shit, he turns out to be the best kicker anyone’s ever seen.

  Which is why they’re bringing in yours truly to do the actual real work.

  Personally, I would have objections to the storyline – especially the idea that some little dweeb could come in and do what I do. It’s a skill. And reading your schoolbooks has fock-all to do with it. Then again, it is my first break in movies, which is why I’m prepared to let it slide.

  The filming is being done in some random high school in Beverly Hills, which has unbelievable facilities. It’d put Clongowes and Terenure to shame – if they didn’t live in shame already.

  So I’m there at, like, half-eight in the morning, big-time John B. I pork the beast and ask this bird with a clipboard – who’s nothing much to look at, in case you’re wondering – where the actors are supposed to go. She directs me to this, like, trailer in the cor pork and I rock up, feeling – it has to be said – pretty pumped about the whole thing.

  I walk in there, roysh, and I swear to God, I suddenly feel like Daddy focking Daycare. There’s, like, six or seven kids in there, all of them four-foot-nothing, none of them much older than thirteen, maybe fourteen.

  I’m there, ‘How’s it going?’ but none of them answers – probably shy.

  It actually reminds me of when I’d be asked to address the Junior Cup team at school – you’ve got to understand, a lot of these kids would be in, like, awe?

  I give them the usual line I use to break the ice. ‘You know who I am – and you know what I do,’ and suddenly, roysh, this kid, who’s obviously the geek in the movie – big Coca-Cola-bottle specs, the poor focker – stands up and goes, ‘No – who are you?’

  Believe it or not, he reminds me a bit of Fionn at that age. He even has, like, a turtleneck – his old dear obviously dresses him as well.

  ‘Hey,’ I go, ‘I’m the guy who’s here to make you look good.’

  There’s something about kids like that – I have to actually fight the urge to give him a dead leg and a wedgie.

  The next thing, roysh, without saying another word, he whips out his mobile and he phones – get this – what turns out to be his agent? His opening line is, ‘Why is there a fucking extra in my trailer?’ and of course you can picture my face. I’m there going, ‘Extra?’

  He’s like, ‘Get him out of here now or I’m walking the fuck off this set,’ then he just, like, hangs up.

  It doesn’t happen often, roysh, but I end up actually stuck for words.

  That’s the thing about American kids – they’re a lot more arrogant than we ever were. It actually reminds me of the time we were over here on the old J1 for the summer and JP ended up getting a job in some toy shop in New York. Anyway, some spoiled little shit’s ripping the focking stuffing out of, I don’t know, a hippopotamus or one of that lot. Wouldn’t stop, even when he was asked nicely. So JP has a sly look around – like he would have for the ref back in the day – then he belts the kid around the head, introducing him to the discipline of the ruck.

  Saucepans are like that – if they sense weakness, they’ll exploit it. So I let him know who’s the focking daddy here. ‘If you went to my school and you talked about me like that, your underpants would now be hanging from that focking lamp-post outside…’

  He looks at me like a turd that just won’t flush. ‘Are you a fucking mental defective?’ he goes.

  All the other kids laugh. I don’t believe it – I’m being bullied by the focking Disney Club.

  I’m like, ‘What?’ in fairness to me, still a bit stuck for words.

  He goes, ‘You talk to me like you genuinely believe I’m interested in what you have to say.’

  Violence against children is something I wouldn’t believe in as a rule? But this kid’s glasses are going up his hole.

  ‘You know what I made on my last movie?’ he goes. ‘Three million big ones. You know what that means? Means I no longer have to talk to the help…’

  ‘The help?’

  ‘Now get the fuck out of here, before you’re thrown out. On your fat ass…’

  All the other kids crack their orses laughing again.

  It’s at that exact point, roysh, that the door of the trailer flies open and in walks this bouncer – bigger than any bouncer I’ve seen in a lifetime of being thrown out of nightclubs head-first. This focker could scratch Paul O’Connell’s X5 and Paul O’Connell would have to stand there and go, ‘Nice job.’

  And he’s black – I have to throw that in.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ he goes, and, without even waiting for an answer, he’s suddenly talking into his little mouthpiece, going, ‘Yeah, I got him. An extra! Can you believe that?’ and I have to say, roysh, I’m hurt by the way they keep saying that word.

  ‘Out!’ he goes. I don’t need to be told twice. I don’t even need to be told once. I’m on my way before he’s even opened his Von Trapp. And I must look shaken up, roysh, because when we step outside, he asks me if I’m okay. I tell him I’m just not used to being abused like that, especially by a kid. I mean, if I spoke to my old man like that…

  He laughs and says you get used to it. ‘Child stars are the worst,’ he goes. ‘That’s Danny Lintz.’

  ‘Well, he’s a little focker,’ I go.

  I realize, roysh, that I’m actually shaking and I get this sudden flashback to school, when I used to get the shit kicked out of me by Gary Gest and the odd time a teacher would come and rescue me.

  ‘Nothing anyone can do,’ the bouncer goy goes. ‘You know what his movies gross? The studio loves him.’

  Then he introduces himself. His name’s Kobe and he’s actually sound. In fact, he asks me am I the dude who gave his daughter a double espresso and, when I tell him yeah, he says it’s cool the way I faced up to it. ‘Too many people running away from their personal responsibilities,’ he goes.

  He brings me over to the extras’ trailer, which is far focking shabbier than the actors’ trailer, I can tell you that. But it doesn’t matter, roysh, because I barely get a chance to put the American football clobber on before I get the call to say that I’m up.

  I head over to the actual field and it’s all set up. Everything I need. We’re talking a set of goalposts, a bag of balls, then cameras set up at, like, various angles.

  And there’s obviously loads of people milling about as well. I spot this dude who I immediately presume is Chubby Waghorne. He’s sitting in, like, a director’s chair, smoking a cigar the size of, I don’t know, Belgium – if Belgium’s big – and I tip over and tell him I’ve one or two ideas about how we might do this thing.

  He doesn’t even look at me. He looks around and goes, ‘Why is this guy talking to me?’

  All of a sudden his assistant – who’s a ringer for Gabrielle Union – puts her orm around me and ushers me away, telling me, politely but at the same firmly, that I’m here just to kick the ball and nothing else.

  Which is their loss.

  So they set up the shot. I’m told where to stand. All the cameras are in place and blahdy blahdy blah-blah.

  Then someone shouts, ‘Action!’

  It’s, like, a simple enough kick. Straight in front of the posts, we�
�re talking thirty yords out – done it, like, a million times before. So I do my usual thing – the tried and trusted, four steps backwards, three to the side, rub my hand through my hair…

  Before I even stort my run-up, I hear a voice go, ‘Cut!’

  It’s Chubby. ‘What’s he fucking doing?’ I hear him go. ‘What is that?’

  The assistant comes over and asks me what’s with the steps to the side and the whole dance. I tell her it’s called a routine. I’d be pretty famous for it back home.

  ‘Well, can you not do it?’ she goes. ‘Chubby says it’s spoiling the shot. Can you please just kick the ball through the posts?’ making it sound like the easiest thing in the world.

  I shrug. I’m there, ‘I’ll certainly give it a go,’ never having done it that way.

  So there I am, roysh, standing five or six steps behind the ball, limbering up to go again, when all of a sudden I hear his voice – Danny focking Lintz – go, ‘This guy’s a fucking clown, Chubby. What’d I say to you about working with clowns?’

  Then another voice goes, ‘And… action!’

  Now I’ve faced hostile crowds before. I’ve taken penalties with practically the whole of Donnybrook whistling and booing me, like some focking pantomime villain, and I’ve still always taken the points. But this is different.

  I don’t know why?

  I take, like, a normal run-up and hit the ball head-on. Whether it’s, like, the weight of it, the camera lights or Danny Lintz’s eyes on me, I manage to, like, shank it and it flies a good twenty yords wide of the posts.

  ‘Fucking amateur hour!’ I hear Danny go.

  But Chubby, in fairness to him, goes, ‘Okay, let’s try it again.’

  Which I do.

  I use one or two visualization techniques to try to, like, block out what’s happening around me?

  Same thing.

  I hit the ball dead-on and it wobbles like a shot duck, not only wide of the posts this time but short as well.

  There’s, like, total silence, except for the sound of Danny Lintz cracking his hole laughing. And that’s when I realize – and it actually sends my blood cold – that he has exactly the same laugh as Gary Gest.

  I can suddenly hear my own breathing. It’s all, like, trembly? And people know there’s something wrong. The assistant bird wanders over to me and tells me to just relax. She asks me if I need some water. Or even five minutes.