Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day. So the song goes and it’s playing quietly in the background as I pull up a barstool and signal my intent to the already busy barman of the Dog and Frog. Just as you think you have finally found somewhere to spend a few hours getting thoroughly pissed out of your mind, there inevitably will be someone checking you out. Perhaps I should be more grateful of the company. A faint voice to my right asks where I am from and, as I am about to respond I turn to see who is addressing me. I recognise her instantly but try to not let it show by not looking directly into her eyes, despite their beauty.
“Are you from this place?” She continues to speak softly.
“I used to be, but not anymore.”
“So are you an outsider looking in or an insider trying to get out?.”
“That's a good question, I'm working on both actually.”
The woman sitting next to me is, in my eyes, barely older than a girl. She has been in movies since she was a child and now she is in her mid twenties it is a shock to see that she is so young. I can feel her gaze on me as I stare straight ahead.
“So you back for a reason, things not work out?” She smokes her question.
“No. In my previous life, I was an albatross and I used to fly over the seven seas, settling on ships and pissing off sailors and fishermen, until one shot me down. How about you?”
She laughs and stubs out her cigarette.
“Ah I see. In my previous life,” she fans her arms behind herself, “I was a beautiful peacock and I would strut around the grounds of one of your old English country houses, until the tourists came and stole my wonderful feathers, one by one. I froze to death.”
I smile, introduce myself and reach out my hand, which she briefly and gently shakes. There is a pause as if she is trying to establish whether I recognise her or not. She makes the assumption that I do not.
“I’m Millie, nice to meet you.” My pretence is maintained.
“Hello Millie, would you like another drink?”
“Why not? I’ll have a beer with you Mr Albatross.”
Before I go on I will say that I do not mean to be anything other than pleasant to Millie. I know we all have had conversations with our male friends at one time or another about who would do what in a situation like this. Most of us would, more than likely, either be too shy to flirt outrageously or try too hard. All agree that these chances do not come round very often so you have got to have a go, surely? I’m not saying that this has not entered my mind but I have read about some of Millie’s problems that she has endured throughout her short life. Raised in the South by a father who beat her black then blacker until she ran away at the age of ten to California. She was picked up and raised by a new age gay couple who liked nothing more than the odd heroin party. Fortunately they encouraged her education and her acting career and by the age of twelve she had appeared in her first movie. The movie grossed $100 million and she would never have to work again. Being out of her mind on booze and coke she didn’t, not until she was 22. Alongside two trips to the altar there have been the trips to rehab, the trips to various police precincts, the narcotic trips, and the trips to the therapist. So please forgive my reservations at this point in my relationship with Millie for not wanting to get involved.
She tries the, “Have we met?” line and I insist that we have not. She asks me what I do and I tell her that I tell her that I am a writer, but not a journalist."
“Thank you Jesus.”
“What do you do then Millie?” Let’s get it out of the way.
“I’m an actress or should I say act-or.”
“Really, stages, bright lights, greasepaint and all that?”
“No, not really, movies mostly. You might have seen some of then?” Millie reels off a few of her lesser-known titles, all of which I have seen incidentally, but I shake my head and turn my lip. I try to appear neither impressed nor or overly interested.
“I’m not really a film enthusiast to be honest. Books and radio is more my thing.” I tell her and she seems amazed that people like me still exist.
“You mean you don’t watch movies?”
“Not often, may be at Christmas with the family. Someone has to write all the books that become your movies I’m afraid.”
She laughs and says that she has never thought of it like that. As she talks about her life, it’s apparent that the differences between my world and hers are enormous. Her naivety is as charming as it is difficult to converse with and my instinct is to take this alien child by the hand and show her what is real, what is good, what is bad, what is artificial, and how much a quart of milk costs. We are several beers through several of her lousy movie plots and by now I want to give in and tell her that I know who she is and what I think of her work but I cannot. Millie has not stopped talking about herself for the last hour and whilst some of it is interesting (I fill in the gaps when she talks of Bruce, George, Jennifer and Brad), frankly she is boring the bollocks off me. Perhaps she senses this between the few breaths she allows herself, but she stops herself and asks me about my books. I proceed to tell her, uneasily at first but with growing enthusiasm and before long I am the one boring the tits of her. I stop dead.
“You’re lonely aren’t you?” There is a long silence and we stare unmoving at each other before she moves from her stool towards me and clasps both hands over mine on the bar.
“So very...”
“Do you want to catch a movie?” I interrupt her.
“Do you think you could catch a falling star?”
“I think I just did.”
I just hope my pockets are big enough.
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