Susan Phillips - Glitter Baby

The playground was at the end of a street littered with trash and broken dreams. The jungle gym had lost its horizontal bars, and the swing set had no swings. A single floodlight shone over a backboard holding a rusted rim and the fragments of what once had been a net. He parked his car and reached in the back for his basketball. Only a kid would be dumb enough to trust as she did. A kid who hadn’t been knocked around enough by life to smarten up.

But she sure as hell had been knocked around now. He stepped through a muddy pothole on his way across the street to the empty playground. She’d been so knocked around, she’d never be dumb again.

He reached the cracked asphalt and began to dribble the ball. It hit the asphalt, slapped his hand, felt good, like something he understood. He didn’t want to remember her lying in his bathtub encircled by candles. Beautiful, wet, dreamy-eyed. He didn’t want to think about what he’d done to her.

He drove for the basket and slammed the ball home. The rim quivered and his hand stung, but the crowd began to roar. He had to pull out all the stops-show the crowd his stuff-make them scream so loud he couldn’t hear anything else, especially not the taunting voices inside him.

He spun past an opponent and took the ball to center court. He faked to the right, to the left, then came off the dribble for a quick jump shot. The crowd went wild, screaming out for him. Doc! Doc! Doc!

He grabbed the ball and spotted Kareem just ahead waiting for him, a cold killing machine. Kareem, superhuman, the face of his nightmares. Fake him. He started to swing left, but Kareem was a machine who read minds. Quick, before he sees it in your eyes, before he feels it through his pores, before he knows all your darkest secrets. Now.

He wheeled to the right lightning fast, jumped, flew through the air…Man can’t fly, but I can… Past Kareem…into the stratosphere…SLAM!

Doc! They were on their feet. Doc! They screamed.

Kareem looked at him, and they silently acknowledged each other with the perfect respect that passed between legends. Then the moment was gone and they were enemies again.

The ball was alive beneath his fingertips. He thought only of the ball. It was a perfect world. A world where a man could walk like a giant and never feel shame. A world with referees who clearly signaled right and wrong. A world without tender babies and broken hearts.

Jake Koranda. Actor. Playwright. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He wanted to give it all up and live his fantasy. He wanted to be Julius Erving running down the court on feet with wings, leaping into the clouds, flying higher, farther, freer than any man. Slamming the ball to glory. Yes.

The screams of the crowd faded, and he stood alone in a pool of rusty light exactly at the end of nowhere.

Fleur tried to sleep on the plane to Paris, but every time she shut her eyes, she heard Jake and Belinda. Fuck my daughter, Koranda, so she can save her career.

“Mademoiselle Savagar?” A liveried chauffeur approached her as she stood by the baggage carousel at Orly. “Your father is waiting for you.”

She followed the chauffeur through the crowded terminal to a limousine parked at the curb. He held the door open for her, and she slipped inside, into Alexi’s arms. “Papa.”

He pulled her close. “So, chérie, you have finally decided to come home to me.”

She buried her face in the expensive fabric of his suit coat and began to cry. “It’s been so awful. I’ve been so stupid.”

“There, there, enfant. Rest now. Everything will be fine.”

He began to stroke her, and it felt so comforting that she closed her eyes.

When they reached the house, Alexi helped her to her room. She asked him to sit by her side until she fell asleep, and he did.

It was late when she awakened the next morning. A maid served her coffee in the dining room along with two croissants, which she pushed away. She couldn’t imagine ever putting food into her mouth again.

Alexi came in, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. He frowned as he noticed the jeans and pullover she’d slipped into after her shower. “Did you bring no other clothes with you, chérie? We will have to get you some today.”

“I have other things. I just didn’t have the energy to put them on.” She could see that he was displeased, and she wished she’d made an effort to look better.

He surveyed her critically. “How could you do such a thing to your hair? You look like a boy.”

“It was a good-bye present for my mother.”

“I see. Then we will have it taken care of today.”

He gestured for the maid to pour him coffee, then pulled a cigarette from the silver case he carried in the breast pocket of his suit coat. “Tell me what happened.”

“Has Belinda called you?”

“Several times. She’s quite frantic. I told her you were on your way to the Greek islands, but you wouldn’t tell me which one. I also told her to leave you alone.”

“Which means she’s on her way to Greece.”

“Naturellement.”

They were silent for a moment and then Alexi asked, “Does all this have anything to do with a certain actor?”

“How did you know?”

“I make it my business to know everything that affects those who belong to me.”

She looked down into her coffee, trying to hide the fact that her eyes were once again filling with tears. She was tired of crying, tired of the wrenching pain inside her. “I fell in love with him,” she said. “We went to bed together.”

“Inevitable.”

She couldn’t contain her bitterness. “My mother had been there first.”

Two narrow ribbons of smoke curled from Alexi’s nostrils. “Also inevitable, I’m afraid. Your mother is a woman of little willpower where movie stars are concerned.”

“They struck a deal.”

“Suppose you tell me.”

Alexi listened as Fleur repeated the conversation she’d overheard between Jake and Belinda. When she was done, he said, “Your mother’s motivations seem clear, but what about your lover’s?”

She flinched at his choice of words. “His motivations were crystal-clear. This movie meant everything to him. The love scene had to work. When I froze, he saw the whole project bombing.”

“Unfortunate, chérie, that you didn’t make a better choice for your first lover.”

“Obviously I’m not the world’s best judge of character.”

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. On another man the gesture would have looked effeminate, but Alexi made it elegantly masculine. “You are planning to stay with me for some time, I hope. I think it would be best for you.”

“For a while anyway. Until I can get my bearings. That is, if you’ll have me.”

“I’ve waited for this longer than you can imagine, chérie. It would be my pleasure.” He stood. “There’s something I want to show you. I’ve been feeling a bit like a child waiting for Christmas.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.” She followed him through the house and across the gardens toward the museum. He put the key in the lock and turned it. “Close your eyes.”

She did as he asked. He led her through the doorway into the cool, faintly musty interior of the museum. She remembered the last time she’d been here, the day she’d met her brother. She didn’t know whether her father had ever found Michel. She should have asked, but she hadn’t.

“This has been a fortunate time for me,” Alexi said. “I’m seeing all my dreams fulfilled.” She heard him flick a switch. “Open your eyes.”

The museum was dark except for a pair of spotlights in the center. They shone down on the platform that had been empty the last time she was there. Now it held the most magnificent automobile she’d ever seen. It was gleaming black, exquisitely balanced, with an endlessly long hood that looked like a cartoon of a millionaire’s car. She would have recognized it anywhere, and she let out a soft exclamation. “It’s the Royale. You found it!”

“I had not seen it since 1940.” He repeated the story he’d told her so many times. “There were three of us, chérie. We drove it deep into the sewers of Paris and wrapped it in canvas and straw. All through the war, I didn’t go near it for fear I’d be followed. Then, when I went back after the Liberation, the car was gone. The other two men who knew about it were killed in North Africa. I think now that the Germans found it. It has taken me more than thirty years to locate it.”

“But how? What happened?”

“Decades of inquiries, money applied in proper and improper places.” He flicked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped an invisible fleck of dust from the fender. “All that matters is that I now own the most important collection of pur sang Bugattis in the world, and the Royale is the crown jewel.”

Much later, after he’d shown her every feature on the Bugatti, she went to her room where a hairdresser was waiting. The man asked no questions but cut Fleur’s hair close to her head and told her he could do no more until it grew. She looked horrible, like a prisoner-big eyes smudged with dark circles, oversized head, no hair. Still, her ugly reflection gave her a perverse sense of pleasure. Now her exterior matched the way she felt inside.

Alexi frowned when he saw her and sent her back to her room to put on makeup, but it didn’t help much. They went for a walk around the grounds and talked about what they would do when she felt better. She took a nap in the afternoon. At dinner, she picked at breast of veal then went to Alexi’s study to listen to Sibelius. He held her hand, and as the music washed over her, some of the painful knots inside her began to loosen. She’d been stupid to let Belinda keep her apart from her father these past few years, but she’d always let her mother manipulate her. She’d been afraid to rebel in even the smallest way for fear she’d lose Belinda’s love. A love she knew now that she’d never really had.

She leaned her head against Alexi’s shoulder and shut her eyes. She could no longer work up any real anger against him. In her pain, she’d finally found forgiveness. He was the only person in her life with nothing to gain by loving her.

That night she couldn’t sleep. She found an old bottle of Belinda’s sleeping pills, swallowed two capsules, and slumped down on the edge of her bed. The worst part was losing her self-respect. She’d let Belinda lead her around by the nose. She’d panted like a puppy dog as she followed her mother’s every wish. Love me, Mommy. Don’t leave me, Mommy. And then there was Jake. She’d built stupid fantasies around him and tried to make herself believe he loved her back. She concentrated on her pain, picking at it like a scab.

“Are you ill, chérie?”

Alexi stood knotting the sash of his robe in the doorway. She’d never seen him mussed. His thin steel-gray hair was as neat as if he’d just come from his barber. “No, not ill.”

“You look like a young boy with your awful mangled hair. Pauvre enfant. Get in bed, now.”

He tucked her in as if she were a child. “Je t’aime, Papa,” she said softly, squeezing his hand where it lay on top of the covers.

He brushed his lips over hers. They were dry and unexpectedly rough. “Turn over. I will rub your back and help you fall asleep.”

She did as she was told. It felt good. His hands slid under her shirt, and as he massaged her skin, her tension eased. The sleeping pill did its work, and she drifted into a dream of Jake. Jake making love to her. Jake kissing her neck and touching her through the silky fabric of her underpants.

After the first few days in Paris, Fleur’s life began to settle into a semblance of routine. She got up late, then listened to music or thumbed through a magazine. In the afternoon she napped until one of the maids awakened her in time to shower and dress before Alexi came home. Sometimes they walked the grounds together, but walking made her tired, and they didn’t go far. It was hard for her to sleep at night, so Alexi rubbed her back.

She knew she had to stop moping, and she tried to make plans, but she couldn’t go back to the States right away. Looking the way she did, it was doubtful anyone would recognize her, but if that happened, she’d have to face reporters, which was impossible.

August turned into September. Belinda kept calling, and Alexi kept putting her off. He told her Fleur must have changed her mind about Greece and said the detectives he’d hired thought she might be in the Bahamas. He lectured Belinda on her failure as a mother and made her cry.