Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

“Jake…”

“What you’re talking about is fucking. Fuck my daughter, Koranda, so she won’t blow her movie career. Fuck her so she won’t blow my career.”

“It’s not like that!” she cried. “You make it sound so ugly.”

“Then make it pretty for me.”

“You have to be attracted to her. She’s one of the most beautiful women in the world. And she’s in love with you.” Of course, she was, Belinda thought. Fleur had always been a creature of grand passions. She had to love Jake.

His contempt turned to disgust. “Have you forgotten that morning in Iowa?”

“Nothing happened. It doesn’t count.”

“It counts in my mind.”

“Fleur wants you, Jake. And her feelings for you are all that stand in the way of finishing this film exactly the way you want it to be. Only you can break through her reserve.” Belinda had waited her whole life for this, and she wouldn’t let his squeamishness dissuade her. “What’s the harm?” She ignored her uneasiness and looked him straight in the eye. “It’s not like she’s never been with a man.”

Jake flinched.

Belinda hurried on. “She hasn’t been promiscuous, don’t think that. I sheltered her as much as I could. But a mother can only do so much. And this way her feelings for you will be able to run their natural course. She’ll be better for it. The movie will be better. Everybody wins.”

“You don’t win, Belinda.” He gazed down at her with eyes so cold they chilled her to the bone. “You’re the biggest loser I’ve ever met.”

He climbed in his truck, and the engine growled to life. The tires screamed as he whipped out of his parking place. She watched until the taillights disappeared.

When she got home, she slipped inside Fleur’s dark bedroom. Her daughter was asleep. Tenderly she brushed away a long lock of blond hair that curled over her cheek.

Fleur stirred. “Belinda?”

“It’s all right, darling. Go back to sleep.”

“Smelled your perfume,” Fleur murmured, and then she was quiet.

Belinda sat awake for the rest of the night. She’d never been more right about anything than she was about this. Fleur and Jake could become one of Hollywood’s great couples, like Gable and Lombard, or Liz Taylor and Mike Todd. Jake needed a woman who was larger than life, just like him.

The more she thought about it, the more she understood how right this was. Of course Fleur had frozen up during the filming today. She’d been mortified to have everyone watching what should have been their first private moment-the first time she shared herself with him. Once Fleur had worked through that, she’d do the scene brilliantly. But Fleur needed to be intimate with Jake before she could set herself free.

As Belinda smoked one cigarette after another, she wrote a script in her head. The scenario was so simple it was almost transparent. Still, that’s what made it appealing. Wasn’t this Hollywood, where disbelief was suspended every day?

She practiced on a pad of unlined stationery, using handwritten notes Jake had made on Fleur’s script as her guide. The end product wouldn’t bear close scrutiny, but it was good enough. She’d put the rest in place tomorrow.

Fleur spent most of Saturday on horseback, but it didn’t make her forget what had happened. People were depending on her, and she’d failed them. Monday would be even worse. What would she do after the undressing part was over and she had to make love to Jake?

When she got home, she found Belinda sunbathing by the pool. Her mother had to know by now what had happened on Friday, and she braced herself for a cross-examination, but Belinda merely smiled. “I have the most fabulous idea. Cool off with a swim, then let’s both get dressed up and go out to dinner. Just the two of us. Someplace fabulously expensive.”

Fleur had no appetite, but she didn’t want to spend Saturday night wallowing, either. Besides, she and Belinda needed to do something together that didn’t involve work. “I’d like that.”

She changed into her suit, swam for a while, and took a shower. When she came out, Belinda was sitting on the side of her bed waiting for her. Her mother’s blond hair gleamed against her coral knit suit. “I went shopping today,” she said. “Look what I found for you.”

A very short crocheted dress made of oatmeal-colored string lay on the bed along with a flesh-colored slip and a pair of lace panties. No chance of going unnoticed in that. She’d be all legs, and the flesh slip under that wide-open knit would make her look naked. But she couldn’t refuse Belinda’s peace offering. “Thanks. It’s great.”

“And look at these.” Belinda opened a shoebox and pulled out a pair of candy-striped wedged sandals with ribbon ties at the ankles. “This is going to be such fun.”

Fleur got dressed, and, just as she suspected, she was all flesh and legs. Belinda piled her hair on top of her head, fastened big gold hoops in her ears, and added a dab of perfume. Her eyes filled with tears as she gazed at Fleur’s reflection in the mirror. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.”

They went downstairs. Belinda retrieved her purse from the table in the hallway. “Oh…I forgot.” She picked up an envelope. “This is so odd. I found it in the mailbox. It’s addressed to you, but there’s no stamp on it. Someone must have personally delivered it.”

Fleur took the envelope. Only her name was printed on front. She tore it open and pulled out two sheets of white stationery. Untidy handwriting covered the top sheet.

Dear Flower,

It’s after midnight and I can’t see any lights, so I’ll leave this in your mailbox and hope you find it first thing Saturday morning. I have to see you now. Please, Flower, if you care about me, drive up to my place in Morro Bay as soon as you get this. It’ll take you about three hours. Here’s a map. Don’t disappoint me, kiddo. I need you.

Love,

Jake

P.S. Don’t tell anyone about this. Not even Belinda.

Fleur stared at the note. She was supposed to have found this hours ago. What if something horrible had happened? Her heart pounded. He needed her.

“What is it?” Belinda asked.

Fleur stared at the last line. “This is…from Lynn. Something’s wrong. I have to go to her right away.”

“Go where? It’s late.”

“I’ll call you.” She grabbed her purse. As she shot through the house to the garage, she wished he’d left his number so she could call him and tell him she was coming.

All the way to Morro Bay, she tried to figure out what had happened. She wanted to believe he’d finally realized he cared about her, and with each mile, her hopes grew. Maybe Friday’s events had forced him to stop looking at her as a kid sister.

It was after eleven by the time she passed through Morro Bay and found the turnoff marked on the map. The road was deserted, and she drove for almost ten minutes before she saw the mailbox that was her next marker. The steep uphill gravel road was treacherously narrow, with pine and chaparral stretching on both sides. Finally she saw lights.

The cantilevered wedge of concrete and glass seemed to grow from the barren hillside. A dimly lit drive curved up to the house. She parked and stepped out of the car. The wind tossed her hair, and the air smelled of salt and rain.

He must have heard the car because the front door opened just as she reached for the bell, and the light behind him outlined his tall, lean body.

“Flower?”

“Hello, Jake.”

Fleur waited for Jake to invite her in, but he just stood there scowling at her. He wore jeans and an inside-out black sweatshirt with the sleeves chopped off. He looked exhausted. The bones of his face were sharper than ever and he hadn’t shaved. But she saw something on his face besides exhaustion, something that reminded her of that first day on the set when she’d watched him beat up Lynn. He looked hard-bitten and mean.

“Can I use the bathroom?” she asked nervously.

For a moment she didn’t think he was going to let her in. Finally he gave a tired shrug and stepped aside. “I never argue with fate.”

“What?”

“Help yourself.”

The interior of the house was like nothing she’d ever seen. Great concrete angles delineated the areas, and ramps took the place of stairs. The glass walls and soaring spaces blurred the boundaries between inside and out. Even its colors were those of the outdoors: the pewter of the ocean, the whites and grays of rock and stone.

“It’s beautiful, Jake.”

“The bathroom’s down that ramp.”

She looked at him nervously. Something was very wrong. As she walked in the direction he’d indicated, she spotted a study with a wall of books and an old library table holding a typewriter. Crumpled balls of paper littered the floor. A few had found their way to the bookshelves.

She shut the door and gazed at the biggest bathroom she’d ever seen, a cavern of black and bronze tile with a glass wall and a vast sunken tub that hung over the edge of the cliff. Everything in the room was oversized: the tub, the shower stall sculpted into the wall, even the twin sinks.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror and hated what she saw. The flesh-colored slip made it seem as if she was naked underneath the string knit dress. But then, as she thought about how forbidding Jake looked, she decided the dress wasn’t that bad. She definitely didn’t look like anybody’s kid sister tonight. The Glitter Baby had come to call on Bird Dog Caliber.

When she came out, Jake was sitting in the living room, a glass in his hand filled with something that looked like straight whiskey.

“I thought you only drank beer,” she said.

“That’s right. Anything else turns me into a bad-tempered drunk.”

“Then why-?”

“What are you doing here?”

She stared at him. He didn’t know. At that moment, it became horrifyingly clear. He hadn’t written the note. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. How could she have been stupid enough to believe he needed her? She’d seen only what she wanted to. She couldn’t think of anything else to do but reach into her purse and hand him the note.

The seconds ticked by as he scanned the pages. Her mind raced. Was this supposed to be some kind of joke? But who would have done such a thing? She immediately thought of Lynn. Her costar was the only person who suspected how Fleur felt about Jake, and Lynn loved to play matchmaker. She’d done this, and Fleur was going to kill her. After she killed herself.

“Frigging door-to-door delivery.” Jake crumpled the note and hurled it toward the empty fireplace. “You were set up. That’s not my handwriting.”

“I’ve just figured that out.” She ran her fingers along the strap of her purse. “It must have been somebody’s idea of a joke. Not a good one.”

Abruptly he drained his glass. His eyes flicked over the little string dress, lingered on her breasts, then took in her legs. He’d never looked at her like this, as if he’d finally figured out she was a woman. She felt a subtle shift in the balance between them, and her embarrassment began to fade.

“What went wrong on Friday?” he said. “I’ve met actresses who don’t like taking off their clothes, but I’ve never seen anything like what happened to you.”

“Not exactly professional, was I?”

“Let’s just say that you blew your chance at a career as a stripper.” He headed for a bar made from wood and stone and refilled his whiskey glass. “Tell me about it.”

She sat on a couch that jutted from the wall and tucked her foot under her hip. The little string dress rode up on her thighs. He noticed. She watched as he took a deep swig from his glass. “There’s nothing much to tell,” she said. “I hate it, that’s all.”

“Taking off your clothes, or life in general?”

“I don’t like this business.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t like acting, and I don’t like making films.”

“Then why are you doing it?” He propped his arm on the bar. If he’d had a dusty trail hat on his head and a polished brass rail to prop his boot heel on, he would have brought Bird Dog to life. “Never mind. That was a stupid question. Belinda uses you.”

She automatically went on the defensive. “Belinda only wants what’s best for me, but lives get tangled up together. She can’t comprehend that people might be looking for different things from life.”

“Do you believe that? Do you really believe she’s only thinking about your welfare?”

“Yes, that’s what I believe.” She wouldn’t let anyone but herself criticize her mother. “I know how important the scene with Matt and Lizzie is. I’m really going to try on Monday. If I really try-”

“You weren’t trying on Friday? Come off it, kiddo. This is Uncle Jake you’re talking to.”