Playing Dead Read Online Free Page A

thespian. ’
    ‘Only in walk-on parts though.’
    ‘Who cares?’
    So Lionel’s résumé now stated that he’d played the lead in King Lear to rave reviews. But even that didn’t get him off the breadline. Nobody wanted an English hero right then, and he was too good-looking to play the part of the hero’s chubby best friend.
    One day he was waiting with around twenty other hopefuls at yet another audition, this time for a small part – a destitute man – in a Warner Brothers movie. It was only a walk-on, but he was desperate and bloody near destitution himself.
    As usual, his bowels turned to liquid at precisely the wrong moment – he was next but one up – and he had to go off to find the toilet. He passed two men fiddling with one of the new smoke machines. A crowd of people hurried past. Was that brilliantly stylish blonde at the centre of them Barbara Stanwyck . . .? He walked on, looking back, entranced by the allure of stardom, the way that cluster of people stuck to her like iron filings around a powerful magnet. He wanted that. But was he going to get it?
    He was starting to seriously doubt himself. Maybe these endless rejections were a sign that he was never going to make it. And Warners were a bunch of slave-drivers anyway. Everyone in the building called the place San Quentin after the notorious prison. Did he want to work for people who drove their staff – even their stars – so hard?
    Well . . . yes. He did. Anything they wanted, he’d do. He had to get there. But this was getting to be the last-chance saloon now. This was his last audition, he’d promised himself. If he didn’t succeed today, then he was going home. Not to his old mum in the East End, sod that ; but back to England, to try his luck again there.
    He missed England. There’d been trouble there, he knew, rumblings from Europe over a jumped-up little German leader – Führer, he called himself – Adolf Hitler. But now Chamberlain had the new Anglo-German accord in his hand, everyone was relieved and peace was guaranteed.
    But maybe – just this once – he’d break the mould, get the part . . .?
    ‘No fucking chance,’ he muttered, and found the john, did what he had to do, and then emerged. He might have missed his place, but if he hurried . . .
    ‘I don’t care what you say, a deal’s a deal,’ said a tearful female voice from further down the corridor.
    Lionel hesitated and peered into the dimness. A vivid blonde was standing there with a man, and for a moment he thought it was Stanwyck herself, but he quickly realized it wasn’t; this was a red-nosed, teary-eyed kid, no shining star.
    ‘And I don’t care what you say.’ The man leaning over her was a big bruiser, dark-haired and red with fury, shouting into her upturned face. ‘There’s no job. There never was.’
    ‘You said there was,’ she insisted.
    ‘You got proof of that?’ He let out a bark of laughter. ‘No? Thought not. So why don’t you just fuck off, sweetheart. Don’t come around my place of work making accusations again or you’ll be sorry.’
    ‘You bastard ,’ she sobbed. ‘You promised . . .’
    ‘I promised nothing.’ Now he was grinning down at her. He slipped one hand inside her blouse and roughly squeezed her tit. The girl let out a yelp of pain. ‘But if you want to try and read through again, be my guest. The last reading was shit, but baby, you were hot .’
    Lionel stepped out from the dimness of the corridor. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ he asked loudly.
    Stupid question. It was clear as day what was happening.
    ‘What’s it to you?’ asked the man, instantly pushing the girl away from him.
    Lionel found himself going forward, even while his brain was saying: The audition, you’ll miss the audition . . .
    Are you all right?’ he asked the girl.
    ‘She’s fine,’ said the man bullishly. ‘Just sore ’cos she didn’t get the part.’
    ‘He promised me a part,’ said the girl. She was pretty, Lionel saw.