Date with a Diva

The phone rings. But it doesn’t sound at all like my telephone. Brrrrring… brrrrrring, it goes, like one of those old Bakelite jobs, and it’s echoing around a distant, dusty office where cobwebs gather far more often than people.

I realise I am dreaming. The thought that it might be Sophie Marceau on the line has me clinging to this dream with a steadfast refusal to wake up. Or it might be Rachel Weisz, asking if I’m free to share sushi and Cristal with her as she’s unexpectedly turned up in town on the pretence of posing in a bikini for Sports Illustrated when everybody knows that it’s simply a ruse to see me again.

Oh, I had better answer it. But, wait, it’s probably Lofty, saying he’s got a cold one lined up for me at Rick’s. Mmmm. Oh, what the hell.

“Hello.”

“Hatman. It’s Ms Cliff Face.”

“Who?” The voice at the other end sounds familiar and delicious, throaty and husky. Seriously sexy. Then it dawns. “Sonia! Haven’t heard from you in yonks. Since you dumped me on Facebook, in fact. What do you want?”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that, you old gimmer. I want you…”

“What? You want me? After everything you…”

“Listen, shut up. It’s your lucky day. And, if you promise to misbehave, it might be your lucky week. I’ve been asked at the last minute to do some shows in your city and I fly in tomorrow. Five pee em. Get your tight tush out to the airport and pick me up. You’ve been chosen from a cast of hundreds to buy me dinner tomorrow evening before the show. Lucky boy.”

“You’re coming tomorrow?”

“Yes, best you get yourself to the liquor store and buy something really potent to calm yourself down. I don’t want you all nervous and pathetic like you’re portrayed in that silly little column you write…”

“Hang on, Sonia, I don’t like…”

“Hey Hathead, I’ll tell you what you like and don’t like. You’ll like picking me up at the airport – make sure you bring a sharp umbrella so that you can get through the paparazzi – and you’ll love taking me for a very expensive dinner and, if you’re a really, really bad boy, you’ll like that I might let you hold my fur coat and stilettos while I blow them away with my show. And, Hatman, not only will you like it, you will frigging well make like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Because it is. Got me?”

“I’ve got you…”

“You wish.” And the diva queen hangs up.

Being Fred, and drawn like a moth to the flame of the devil-may-care diva, I dutifully arrive at the airport and am astonished to find that there is indeed a leech, if that be the correct collective noun, of image-sucking paparazzi. And they are leering at the freshly-grounded flight of Ms Cliff Face’s plane.
By the time the tawdry bird has taxi’d to a halt, the leech has the movable staircase in snap-surround and, caught up by the feeding frenzy, I dig out my dad’s old Kodak Instamatic to record the arrival of La Actrise.

The door is flung open and there she is, a thespian thoroughbred, far more peach than prickly pear, and I feel like an extra in the Peroni ad. She’s playing to the flashguns like a Portuguese Marilyn Monroe and when she catches sight of my red hat bobbing in the sea of snappers, flicks out a mischievous tongue and runs it keenly along her upper lip.

I transmit a rescue remedy to my wobbling knees and take a deep breath. The One Who Must Be Adored descends the stairs and shimmys towards me, dividing Team Nikon as she trips across the tarmac.

“Fred, darling Fred,” purrs Peachy Queen, mwahing me five times for the benefit of the cameras. “How sweet of you to collect me.” And then into my quivering ear, “I hope you’ve been overdosing on the Salusa 45s, Big Boy?”

Carousel capers concluded and umpteen Louis Vuittons squeezed in boot and back seat, I become acutely aware of men rubbernecking at my preening passenger as I drive rather shakily out of the airport. “You’re actually not that bad behind that ridiculous red hat, Freddie,” she says sultrily. “I had no idea that you had such blue eyes. In fact, after you’ve bought me the first bottle of champagne, I might delude myself that you could be a young, um, slightly younger Paul Newman.”

With that, our diva queen gave my leg an encouraging squeeze, an act of amour which had the effect of careering the car into the lane usually reserved for oncoming traffic. I felt cold sweat explode out of my every pore.

“Whoohoo,” she whooped, “and you like to live dangerously too. My very own action hero!”

Rapidly restored to the correct lane, I afixed an anxious smile to my face while hyperfocusing on the road ahead. “Tell you what, Fredrique, take me to your pad, and let’s take our time getting ready for dinner at Caprice.” I felt her delicately-sculpted hand move unerringly up my leg, my hands wet on the wheel, and then heard what was indisputably my phone ring. Dazed and confused, I answered it.

“Hey, Hatter, where have you been?” brayed Lofty. “ I’ve got a cold one waiting for you at Rick’s.”


With thanks to the Weekend Argus