Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [32]
“Hello, there!” Kane’s exceedingly recognizable voice booms as he buzzes the door. I push it open and see Kane standing on a porch at the top of a flight of white stairs overlooking a tree-filled garden. A man sits strumming—or maybe tuning—a guitar on the couch on the porch and Kane casually introduces me as I walk up the stairs.
“Greg, Amelia. Amelia, Greg.” Greg gives me a simultaneous nod and smile, managing to wordlessly communicate the fact that he thinks I’m Kane’s plaything for the night and thus not worth shaking hands with, or even acknowledging for more than about half a second. The fact that Kane doesn’t introduce me as “Amelia from Absolutely Fabulous” is also duly noted. Whether Greg is an assistant, guitar tuner, band mate, or roommate is likewise not addressed.
“Would you like tea?” Kane asks as he leads me into his gadget-filled kitchen. He opens a drawer that seems to contain every type of tea known to man, and even some that probably aren’t. People from England are way too damn obsessed with tea.
“Do you have anything a little…stronger?” I ask, feeling corny and like I’m reciting dialogue out of a made-for-TV movie starring Tori Spelling. “A beer? Or a drink-drink?” It hadn’t even crossed my mind that he wouldn’t offer me a real drink, even though this was a follow-up interview and all. Of course, I interview people when I’m stone cold sober—most of the time, anyway—but this situation was already feeling like it was veering into decidedly un-interview-like territory and I was thus feeling like a drink was sounding mighty appealing, if not downright necessary.
“I’m afraid I don’t, Sweetheart,” he says. “But I can make you a strong tea.”
Kane whistles as he throws a tea bag in a ceramic mug and holds it under a boiling water faucet, motioning for me to sit down on the couch in this sort of sitting room off the kitchen. The whole place is loftlike and open, so I can hear Greg playing chords like he’s sitting on the same couch.
“So, we didn’t really get into too much detail about your childhood,” I say, as Kane sits down next to me. He sighs and I don’t really blame him. What he had said had sounded intensely depressing—Dad abandoning the family, Mom drinking heavily, the usual ingredients of a tragic childhood—and I’d been so uncomfortable about having to make him pontificate about these things yesterday that I’d changed the subject altogether. But such details are Absolutely Fabulous’s bread and butter so I know there’s no avoiding them now.
I notice that Kane is glancing at the tape recorder rather incredulously, like he hadn’t actually expected for me to bust it out. Am I the stupidest person alive? Does everyone know that “follow-up interview at my house” is actually code for “come to my fancy house and fuck me”?
Don’t get me wrong. I really don’t have any problem with sleeping with him, at least in theory. But there would be plenty of time for that later, after I’m able to get him to reveal personal, painful secrets in what would go down in history as the preeminent Kane interview.
“Look, Kane, as I told you before, I’m going to need to talk to some of your friends—famous friends, if possible—about you for the story,” I say. Most celebrities are usually fairly quick to offer up the phone number for their sister or Bruce Willis or Andy Dick or some other random celebrity they consider a friend. But Kane had kind of ignored the question when I’d asked him about this yesterday. Now, though, he smiles and says he can get me in touch with Joni Mitchell and some backup musician.
“But you’re being so businesslike now,” he smiles. “I’ll get you those numbers. Call me tomorrow or the next day and I’ll make sure you get in touch with everyone you need to.”
I realize that no digits are going to be forthcoming now, so I get busy asking some of my questions, and Kane answers them—the same sort of stock, unspecific, guarded responses he’d given me the day before—while at the same time