Free If This Is Paradise, I Want My Money Back by Claudia Carroll

own home, watching a live theatre show being played out in front of me. Watching, and yet distant from it. Then, I’m not joking, James looks directly at me. Right over to where I’m rooted to the spot, standing at the edge of the bed. My side of the bed.
    ‘Fuck,’ he half-whispers.
    He sees me.
    ‘I am so fucking late,’ he mutters under his breath, hauling himself out of bed and pulling himself into a pair of the underpants strewn across the floor, right beside where I am.
    He doesn’t see me.
    Next thing he’s out the door and stumbling down the narrow, uneven stairs, dodging the overhead beams because he’s tall. He heads into our, sorry his , gorgeous living room, with its amazing view right out over Sandymount Strand, providing the traffic’s not too heavy, and you don’t end up looking out at ten-tonne haulage trucks, backed up along the road for miles. Except staring out at gridlock isn’t what’s bothering me right now, it’s the state of the place. I only wish I was joking, it’s messier than Jackson Pollock’s studio. Even worse than a nightclub the morning after the night before, with empty bottles of wine and Jack Daniel’s strewn all over the floor; I’m numbly staring at the mess thinking, who exactly did James have over last night? Metallica?
    The coffee table is piled high with piles of scripts, more scripts, and an empty pizza box, but somehow he manages to unearth a half-empty box of Marlboro and lights up.
    James, outside! You know it’s a non-smoking house!
    Oh, would you listen to me. Trying to nag from the other side of the grave.
    Then his mobile rings, and it almost makes me laugh watching him delving through the mound of crap on his desk trying to find it.
    On top of the fireplace, gobshite.
    He eventually finds it and answers. It’s his business partner, Declan, and although I can only hear one side of the call, I’m guessing it involves a finance meeting which James has just slept it out for. He slumps down on the couch, pulling on the cigarette right down to his feet, nodding mutely as poor old Declan rants on and on.
    Couple of things you should know about James in business.
    1. His production company is called Meridius Movies, named after the lead character, Maximus Meridius, in the movie Gladiator . (Russell Crowe is James’s big role model in life.)
Couldn’t make it up, could you?
2. Actually, he’s not at all bad at what he does, and, in the past, has had a good few hits, mainly because he applies the Madonna principle: i.e., surround yourself at all times with the most talented people working in your industry, and you’re laughing. Declan, for instance, who’s brilliant, and who has quite highbrow taste, always wanting to produce the kind of TV series you nearly feel you deserve a graduation cert after watching. He’s also such a sweetie, I once tried to match him up with Fiona. She rejected him out of hand on account of the following: she thought his skin resembled a topographic map of the Alps, that his man-breasts were bigger than hers, and that she had twice his upper-body strength. Very choosy girl, but fear not, fixing her up is high priority on my list of miracles to perform.
3. James always reckons that being a producer is a bit like being a plumber. Do your job right and no one notices. Do it wrong and everyone ends up covered in shite.
4. When filming, his motto is, ‘If less is more, then think of how much more that more would be.’ No, really. When not filming, his motto is, ‘Live fast, live hard, die young.’ Whereas there I’d be in my furry slippers and PJs, sipping a marshmallow hot chocolate in front of Desperate Housewives , nice and early on a Thursday night; ever the stabilizing influence. And yet I’m the one who dies first. Now do you call that fair?
     
    ‘Dec, just listen to me,’ he’s growling down the phone, spewing out cigarette smoke, then sitting forward and tipping ash into the empty pizza box.
    That is