Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes [96]
‘OK, you can wear them,’ Mandii conceded.
‘But they have to be ironed,’ Vanessa said quickly. She wanted to see him standing in his socks and underpants just one more time. She’d never seen a man so unspeakably beautiful. His legs long and muscled, his waist tiny, his back broad, his chest hard. And his skin a smooth, taut gold that just begged to be touched.
Finally, two hours after his arrival, Lorcan was almost ready. For the final touch, he swept his hair back off his beautiful forehead. The hand that held the hairdresser’s comb twitched involuntarily.
‘Worth Butter, take one,’ the director shouted. The clapperboard went down and the cameraman sprang into action.
A sitting room had been mocked up and sat, like a carpeted, spotlit island, in the vastness of the concrete floor. The ad began with Lorcan draping his lean, powerful body on a purple velvet sofa, one foot on the other knee, a plate of toast on his lap. The camera panned over him and the idea was that he’d look up, arch an eyebrow, smile and say, ‘Real butter?’ Then take a crunchy bite from the slice of toast, followed by a knowing, sexy pause. Before he continued, with a soul-intimate smile, ‘Because I’m worth it.’
He’d been fantastic in the audition. Absolutely blinding. If there were Oscars for butter appreciation Lorcan would have got one. The people who cast him weren’t to know that he hadn’t eaten for over a day and that his genuine hunger had given great conviction to his performance.
But things were different now. He’d got a part in a proper play, he was a serious actor and he didn’t want anyone to be in any doubt about it. So he overacted wildly, still in pompous, boomy, Shakespearean mode from his audition the day before.
‘Action. And, Lorcan…’
Projecting from his diaphragm to the back rows, Lorcan bellowed out, ‘REAL BUTTER?’ like it was the start of Hamlet’s soliloquy. People at the furthermost reaches of the room winced and the cameraman was almost deafened. No one would have been surprised if Lorcan had continued, ‘Real butter? That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Flora…’
‘Cut, cut,’ Mikhail, the director, shouted. ‘OK, take two, let’s make it a tad quieter this time, shall we?’
Just as the cameras began to roll for take two, Lorcan yelled, ‘Just a minute. Is this butter on the toast?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Melissa, who was in charge of toast-making.
‘Yuk,’ Lorcan declared dramatically, throwing the plate on to the couch. ‘Yuk, yuk, yuk. Are you trying to kill me? That stuff clogs your arteries.’
Mr Jackson from the Butter Board looked stricken.
‘Get me some low-fat spread,’ Lorcan ordered. So while Melissa ran to the nearest grocery shop Jeremy, the casting agent, spoke in soothing tones to Mr Jackson, assuring him warmly that no one would know it wasn’t butter on the toast and that Lorcan would do a great job even though he didn’t believe in the product. But even with polyunsaturated spread, the Shakespeare continued unabated.
‘Take ten. And, Lorcan…’
‘REAL BUTTER?’ he declaimed once more, this time sounding like he was ready to do Lady Macbeth’s speech. Everyone expected him to continue, ‘Is this REAL BUTTER which I see before me, the butter-knife toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not and yet I see thee still.’
‘Cut, cut, cut!’ Mikhail called. ‘Please, Lorcan…’
‘Who is this clown?’ Mr Jackson looked around for the young man from the advertising agency to sort things out. ‘Have a word with him,’ he urged. ‘Mikhail and Jeremy are getting nowhere.’
Lorcan was having a whale of a time and was delighted to see Mr Expensive Suit from the ad agency approach him. Another opportunity for caprice.
‘How about keeping it more conversational?’ he suggested to Lorcan. ‘More chatty?’
‘What’s your name?’ Lorcan demanded imperiously, even though they’d been introduced when Lorcan first arrived.
‘Joe. Joe Roth.’
‘OK, Joe Joe Roth,