Ann Beattie - Love Always

Nicole cupped her hands over her breasts. She was too afraid to examine them, and although she realized that it was unlikely she would detect anything by placing her hands there, she hoped that somehow, mystically, her wish to keep her breasts would be transmitted through her fingers. While putting on her evening gown, Cora had found the lump in her breast.

“Cut! Cut! That screaming’s not in the script!” the director had said. “If I want an Indian uprising, I’ll say so. When I don’t, I don’t want to hear screaming. Get the camera back to the bubblebath.”

“I think that’s in keeping with what my character would do,” Pauline said.

“Pauline,” the director said, “women don’t scream when they touch their bodies. They don’t even scream when men touch their bodies unless they’re whores in a Bangkok whorehouse, faking it. Get camera two back on those goddamn bubbles.”

Nicole stubbed out the roach in the soap dish. She closed her eyes. It wouldn’t be long before she was back on the show, with Pauline in a state and Henry whispering things under his breath about her uncalled-for hysteria. Nicole would again be staggering and hitting up against walls and unable to get out of bed. It was a lot better than sitting in a chair and hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Nicole got out of the tub and wrapped a towel around herself. She dumped the roach and ashes down the toilet and flushed, then rinsed the shell and put it back on the sink with the little soaps in it. Even though Nicole was probably the first to hear “Here Comes the Sun” on the radio, the prize didn’t seem worth the trouble of running downstairs and dialing the number. Instead, she sang along as she dried off. She opened the bathroom cabinet and decided on powder instead of lotion. A sure sign that Lucy used a diaphragm. No woman over the age of twenty powdered her body — the stuff was only around if there was a baby. She hadn’t found the diaphragm yet. She wondered if Lucy had taken it with her to the waterfall.

Nicole sprinkled powder over herself, feeling relaxed and light-headed. It was really her good luck that Piggy hadn’t sent a tape or called. Tomorrow was the day she was meeting the guy who had … no, that was Frankie Avalon who wrote “Venus.” Or had Piggy said that the guy was a scholar who had written about the real Venus? Venus was some love goddess or something. Since America had the hots for Stephanie Sykes, vamp and victim, it was appropriate that the guy who had written about Venus was now writing about Nicole. Or whatever Piggy had said, babbling away on the last tape.

Her hands were still dusty from the powder when the Federal Express truck pulled into the drive. Did she know Piggy or did she know Piggy? “Oh, gag me,” she said to herself. She hollered “Wait a minute” from the bathroom window, pulled on her bikini pants and dress and began to run down the stairs. Her hair dripped down her back and felt awful. On the stairs, she had the feeling, for a second, that she was on an escalator. Just as she opened the door, a bee buzzed in. She jumped back. The deliveryman jumped to one side.

“Signs of summer,” he said. “Nicole Nelson?”

She signed for the package. The usual blue and white envelope. Piggy’s wit and wisdom inside.

“Do a lot of people tell you that you look like Stephanie Sykes?” the delivery man said.

“I am,” she said.

“You’re her? You can’t be her. You’re in Vermont.”

“It’s a show,” Nicole said. “I’m a real person. I travel.”

“You’re putting me on.”

“Give me a quiz,” Nicole said.

“What happened when … nah, you watch it like me. You’ll just pass the quiz, and that won’t prove anything.”

“Well,” Nicole said, shrugging. “I mean, it’s not important to me if you believe it or not.”

“Hey,” the man said. “Are you really?”

Nicole nodded.

“Nah,” the man said. “People think you’re her all the time, huh?”

“This is from my agent,” Nicole said, slapping the envelope against her palm. “My agent usually sends me cassettes instead of calling me. Then he can nag me if I don’t remember everything he says. He wants me to play them over at night before I go to sleep. No kidding. Want to hear?”

The man was starting to look perplexed. “Well — if you are Stephanie Sykes, you sure are good on that show,” the man said. “My wife Betamaxes it and I watch it at night. Have a couple of beers and check out what’s new, you know? Good show. Sorry it was canceled.”

“It’s going to be back on in the fall,” Nicole said.

“Yeah?” he said. He stood there, not saying anything. “What did you say you were doing here?” he said.

“It’s a secret house where I rendezvous with Michael Jackson,” she said.

“Nah,” the man said, shaking his head. “Now I know you’re putting me on.”

“How do you know?” Nicole said.

“Because he’s on tour.”

“His double is on tour. Michael Jackson is upstairs in the bathtub.”

The man frowned. He looked past her into the empty house. “Have a good day now,” he said, turning to go. “One second,” she said. “Just one second. I’m going to prove it to you.”

She went into the living room and got the cassette player. She went out to the front stoop — the man backed up so far he almost fell down the steps — and put the player on the little table. She opened the package, took out the tape, and clicked it in. “This is my agent, Piggy Proctor,” she said.

He stood on the first step, smiling nervously. The truck was idling in the driveway. The tape started.

“Hello, cream puff,” Piggy said. “I feel as far away from you as cellulite is from Jane Fonda’s thighs. Just a few words of information before the writer gets there … some Piggytalk to psych you into Sykesdom—”

“See?” Nicole said, clicking it off.

“He does this instead of calling you?”

Nicole nodded.

“And Michael Jackson’s upstairs?”

“I was kidding about that.”

“Jesus,” the man said. “I’m glad. My wife’s not gonna believe this as it is.”

“Would she like my autograph?” Nicole said.

“Oh, would she! She was an abused child herself, and she lives and breathes Stephanie Sykes. Her stepfather locked her in closets and threatened to push bees in through the keyhole. Hey, what she doesn’t know from suffering. She worships you. Would she like it? You bet she’d like it.”

Nicole went into the house and ripped a piece of paper out of Lucy’s tablet. There was another Cindi Coeur column. Nicole would have to read it later. Lucy was really pretty funny.

“You know, the other show she really loves is All My Children . She wrote a letter to Phoebe Tyler Wallingford one time, and she wrote her back. You know, in real life her husband was an alkie, and she had to leave him because they had kids.”

“What’s your wife’s name?” Nicole said.

“It’s … jeez, her nickname or her real name?”

“What name does she go by?”

“Well, her name’s Patricia, but everybody calls her Poodle.”

“Maybe she’d like it if it was informal,” Nicole said. She wrote: “To Poodle — may you always be top dog. Best wishes, Stephanie Sykes.”

“This is fabulous,” the man said. “This is really fabulous. You just thought of that? Right now?”

“Sure. Actresses have got to think on their feet, right?”

“Hey, that’s amazing,” the man said. “I sure am glad I mentioned that you look like Stephanie Sykes. Man, who’d believe it? I ring the doorbell and there you are. Pretty unbelievable.”

The thought of listening to the rest of the cassette was more than Nicole could bear. “Do you think you could do me a favor?” Nicole said. “My aunt was supposed to give me a lift into town. I don’t know where she is. Are you going that way?”