Bret Vincent is Dead

by Tanith Morse

  Bret hesitated when he reached my inner thighs, prolonging the moment of suspense. God, yes pleaseeee!

  He lay down on his stomach, positioned his head between my legs. Tentatively, he started to lick my privates, gently at first, then graduating to deep, sweeping thrusts, constantly taking me to the pitch of ecstasy. I couldn’t believe it. Bret Vincent was going down on me! Breathe girl, breathe.

  God, what that man could do with his tongue!

  After what seemed like an eternity, Bret raised his head and flashed a devilish smile. ‘Do you want to fuck?’ he breathed.

  I couldn’t answer him. I was too blown away to speak.

  He took my silence as a come-on for him to take the lead. Untying my wrists, he parted my legs and lay back on top of me. It was like a tornado hit me. When he first entered me, I thought I’d cry from the pain, but then quickly, the discomfort transformed into a wildly pleasurable experience. After several frenzied minutes, he dragged me up with my legs still wrapped around his waist and fucked me against the wardrobe door. Then he did me from behind, standing up, on the floor, me on top, and then him on top, until we had exhausted every position conceivable (and some I didn’t think were possible). I groaned, I screamed, I bawled. By the end of what seemed like a two hour marathon, I couldn’t take any more. I was completely exhausted with pleasure. My mind still hungered for him, craved him, but my body just wasn’t up to it. I was so out of practise, I had no choice but to admit defeat.

  ‘I’ve come now,’ I lied. My body was stinging from carpet burns.

  Bret drew away from me, studied my face. Then, he put his mouth very close to mine, licked my earlobe and whispered, ‘No you haven’t. Don’t you think I know when I’ve satisfied a woman?’

  These words sent shivers through me.

  He carried me back over to the bed and entered me again, this time with slow, sensuous thrusts, working his hips with consummate artistry. I dug my heels into his back, gripped his hair. I felt as if nothing else existed in the world but him and me and this marvellous, marvellous feeling. Very soon, my hips convulsed, I cried out, threw my head back in the throes of an explosive orgasm. We yelled in unison.

  Afterwards, we lay together entangled in each other’s arms, basking in the euphoria of it all. I closed my eyes with a smile on my lips. Everything was right with the world.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We slept until seven o’clock that evening. When I woke up, the bedroom was shrouded in darkness. A milky shard of light from the street lamp outside filtered through the blinds, casting strange, exotic shapes across Bret’s sleeping form. I studied him for a few minutes, still trying to convince myself that I wasn’t dreaming. For a reality check, I leaned over and gently stroked his cheek. I loved everything about this man: his face, his body, his wonky teeth (minus the veneers), his personality, his sexual prowess. Everything.

  Suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked at me. Then a slow, lazy smile spread across his face. With a stifled yawn, he raised himself up on his elbows and looked round the room. His face appeared disorientated.

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Late, I guess.’

  He threw back the covers and rushed out to take a pee. When he returned, he was still stark naked. I looked away. He laughed heartily at my discomfort. Not David’s loveable Kenneth Williams laugh, but a low, throaty one, that was equally as captivating. What a brilliant actor he was – even David’s trademark laugh had been a fabrication.

  ‘Why can’t you look at me, Madeline?’ he said softly. ‘After what we did earlier, you needn’t be shy around me.’

  I remained silently crimson, holding the duvet around me to cover my modesty. With another laugh, Bret turned and left the room. I heard the sound of lights going on, cupboards opening and closing.

  ‘I’m starving. Have you got anything to eat?’

  ‘Um, I think there’s some burgers in the freezer, or, or a pizza. Sorry, I was supposed to have gone shopping this morning but . . .’ My voice trailed off.

  Eventually he returned clutching a bowl of Cheerio’s. There was a look of lazy watchfulness on his face as he perched himself at the edge of the bed. This was followed by a silence that was broken only by the intermittent sounds of crunching cereal. My uneasiness made me mute. I had now reverted back to a star struck fan, lost in the glow of make-believe exuding from him.

  Bret scraped up the last Cheerio then, with a loud slurping noise, raised the bowl to his mouth and downed the rest of the leftover milk. It was a habit that had always irritated me. Beth had done that when we were kids, and it had never failed to get my back up. Still, as it was Bret Vincent, I decided to forgive him on this occasion.

  ‘So,’ he grinned, placing the bowl on the dresser, ‘how are you feeling? Good?’

  I nodded my head vigorously.

  ‘How was I?’

  ‘Um . . . what?’

  ‘I mean sexually. Was I good?’

  A trace of a smile played on my lips. ‘Oh yes, yes! You were . . . astonishing. Absolutely!’ I focused my eyes on the purple flower pattern on the duvet cover. Inside, I was cringing.

  He stifled a smirk. That actor’s ego of his was really starting to kick in.

  ‘So has it really been twenty-five years since you last got laid?’

  ‘Er, yes, I’m afraid so.’

  Bret gave a low whistle, shook his head. ‘Man, I don’t know how you coped. I mean, I would have difficulty going twenty-five days without sex, let alone twenty-five years. But, I don’t understand why. I mean, you must have had a lot of offers, an attractive girl like you . . .’

  I shrugged. ‘No, not really.’ I fell silent again. I didn’t know what to say to him.

  Bret smiled indulgently. Then, he reached over and brushed a stray hair from my face. ‘You’ve got such lovely hair. Let me comb it for you.’

  He got up, took a brush from my dresser and climbed into the bed behind me. Positioning me between his thighs, he proceeded to run the comb sensuously through my hair. Deep, hard strokes. I closed my eyes, leaned my head back. I could feel him hardening, pressing against the skin. It felt so good.

  ‘Twenty-five years,’ he murmured again. ‘I would never have guessed from the way you – ‘ Bret checked himself. ‘I have to say that you were pretty astonishing yourself. And I’m not just saying that to flatter you. I really mean it, Madeline. I’ve never met a woman with so much energy before.’

  I blushed profusely. He continued to brush my hair.

  ‘So what’s the deal with Maria?’ I blurted.

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘Esposito.’ I hadn’t meant to be so audacious, but the question had been playing on my mind. I just had to get it out of my system.

  Bret went stiff. Stopped combing. Then, he made a low grimacing noise like he’d just stepped in dog poo or something.

  ‘Oh, her,’ he said with assumed nonchalance. ‘Things with Maria are sort of complicated. She’s very . . . how shall I put this . . . very high maintenance.’

  He then gave me the history of their relationship: he told me they’d been introduced at a party by Leonardo DiCaprio and, following an instant attraction, the two had embarked on a whirlwind romance. After just four weeks, however, the cracks started to show. Bret portrayed Maria as a pretty unstable character - full of crippling insecurities and prone to bouts of insane jealously if he so much as looked at another woman. She constantly needed him to reassure her of her beauty, of her talent and his commitment to her. Given Bret’s past reputation as a Casanova, he said he could sympathise with some of her issues, but after a while, her constant nagging started to wear him down. Nothing was ever good enough for her, he said.

  ‘You know, this one time I bought her a Lamborghini for her birthday and she sent it back to the manufacturer because it was the wrong colour. How ungrateful is that?’

  I shook my head in disbelief. He was talking about something I could not comprehend – a world where a privileged drama queen
could afford to turn down a luxury car worth the price of a house. What fascinated me most though, were Bret’s accounts of Maria’s insecurities. Maria Esposito, the stunner who had twice been voted the world’s sexiest woman by People magazine needed compliments and reassurance of her desirability – surely not?

  ‘The thing is Madeline, I’ve dated so many beautiful women, and the world looks at me and thinks “lucky son of a bitch.” They look at these women and buy into their promise – the promise of sex. They pout at you from the cover of magazines, smoulder at you, make you buy into the hype. But the reality is that they can’t deliver on that promise.’

  This was clearly a thinly veiled dig at Maria.

  Bret then became even more candid about his love life– he confessed that Maria was frigid, an ice maiden who couldn’t keep up with his enormous sexual appetite. When they’d first got together, they’d been at it like rabbits, then quickly, she’d gone cold on him, complaining that she was either too busy, too tired to make love, leading Bret to compare her with a McDonald’s Happy Meal: cute and appealing but ultimately insubstantial.

  Mind you, after the sexathon I’d just experienced, I had to admit I had some sympathy with the poor girl. Very few women would be able to keep up with him for long. Then again, who could complain about making love to Bret Vincent? Who wouldn’t kill to be in her shoes? In my opinion, this once again just highlighted her ungratefulness.

  Yet, despite her refusal to sleep with him, Bret said she still expected him to remain faithful, still threatened to commit suicide if he so much as spoke to another woman. It was during one of these aggressive arguments that he had first started to seriously consider retreating from the spotlight – his world had become a troubled place, full of responsibilities he could not handle. So when Pantelli made his proposal, it seemed all the more attractive to him. To get out of the media glare, and ultimately away from Maria, seemed to be the answer to Bret’s prayers.

  ‘Then again, it wasn’t just about the sex,’ he continued, combing my hair into ferocious tufts. ‘Maria’s a lot younger than me and sometimes,

  well . . . let’s just say I found the conversation to be lacking. Sometimes I’d be talking to her about old movies, about Joan Crawford and James Cagney, and she’d be looking past me with this glazed expression, like she was bored. I mean, she doesn’t even know who Orson Welles is! Can you believe it? She thought Citizen Kane starred Gerard Butler.’

  I nodded sympathetically. His words helped to ease my guilt. If it was well and truly over between him and Maria, then what we had done couldn’t technically be classed as cheating. Besides, how could you cheat with a dead man? As far as Maria was concerned he’d gone to Hades.

  Bret stopped combing, leaned over my shoulder and examined my feet critically. ‘I think you’re in need of a top up,’ he grinned, referring to my chipped nail varnish.

  I could have died from embarrassment.

  He got up, started rummaging around in my dresser. I wished he’d put some clothes on. It was terribly distracting!

  ‘Where do you keep your nail polish?’

  ‘Um, it’s in the second drawer, I think.’

  ‘Found it.’ He returned to the bed with a jar of red nail varnish, a bottle of remover and a packet of cotton wool.

  He flashed a killer smile as he positioned himself at my feet and started rubbing the remover into my toes. ‘I love doing this,’ he said quietly.’I find it so relaxing.’ I was extremely flattered, yet at the same time, insane with jealously. I wondered how many other women he had done this to.

  ‘Anyway, enough about Signora Esposito. Let’s talk about you, Madeline.’

  ‘Er, what exactly did you want to talk about?’

  Bret paused, momentarily absorbed by the task at hand – delicately positioning little cotton balls between my toes. ‘That’s it! Right, now, what was I saying? Oh yes . . .’ He looked up at me. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to me Madeline but it’s like . . . it’s kind of like I’m obsessed with you or something.’

  I froze with shock. ‘Obsessed? With me?’

  ‘Yes. You can’t imagine what I’ve been going through. Since that time in my apartment, when I took your pictures . . . I’ve wanted you so bad. It was torture. I mean, I’ve never had such restraint - I knew I couldn’t get close to you in that way, because if I did, I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself. There were times when I really wanted to tell you what I was feeling, you know? But I couldn’t, cos that would have given the game away.’

  My head was reeling.

  He continued, ‘You were not part of the plan, Madeline. This wasn’t supposed to happen . . .’

  ‘What wasn’t?’ I whispered.

  ‘Falling in love with you.’

  My heart almost stopped. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  Bret fell silent again as he began solemnly applying the nail varnish. After each application, he lowered his head, blew on my toes, then smiled up at me for approval. ‘The thing is, I tried so hard to fight it, tried so hard to put you out of my mind, but couldn’t. It was impossible. Remember that guy you saw me with that night at the salsa club?’ I nodded. ‘Well, as you know he’s one of Pani’s people. He’d been following us. He told me I had to give you up. He told me we were getting too close and Pani wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t want me blowing my cover. And do you know, Pani even sent me a one-way ticket to France as a sweetener for me to leave you.’

  I bit down on my lip, dizzy with excitement.

  ‘Now, try to stay still, Madeline,’ he said sternly, focusing again on my toes. ‘If you move, this is gonna smudge. And that’d be a shame, as I’m doing such a great job.’

  I laid back, closed my eyes, listened to the sound of his breathing.

  ‘In a way, I think the guy did us a favour. I spent those weeks in Paris just thinking about you. Couldn’t get you out of my head. That was why I had to come back and see you. That was why I had to tell you everything.’

  He looked at me inquisitively, as if expecting a response.

  ‘I-I don’t know what to say, Bret. I-I mean . . .’ I stopped talking, couldn’t meet his gaze. I was babbling like a moron.

  Bret stood. ‘Hey, do you wanna see my David costume?’ He was like an excited school boy promising to show me a new toy.

  ‘Yes of course,’ I smiled, pleased that we’d moved on to a more light hearted topic. He threw on his clothes and left the room. Then in a couple of minutes, he returned from his flat bearing a large cardboard box.

  ‘I used to keep this in the closet for safe-keeping,’ he explained. ‘If you’d stayed in there long enough, you’d have probably seen it.’

  He knelt down and proudly showed me the key components that made up David Powell: a flesh-coloured body suit which gave him the illusion of having a pot belly, a mono-fibre wig, and something that looked like a sophisticated rubber mask. It all reminded me of stuff that Robin Williams might have worn in Mrs Doubtfire.

  I was full of questions: surely the application of the mask/make-up must have taken him hours? Did he have to re-apply it everyday or sleep with it on? Did he ever get hot under it, and had there been any unfortunate accidents while he was out in public?

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I’ve been doing make-up for years, so I’m used to it. Pani’s people made this gear specially for me, with ease and comfort in mind. I’d say the whole transformation takes me about half an hour a day.’

  My eyes were large as saucers. What Hollywood could do with prosthetics in the twenty-first century was amazing. Bret had really had me fooled!

  I picked up the mask and sat on the bed, studying it. It was so life-like, so real. ‘So, what inspired you to create David? I mean, what were your influences for his character?’

  ‘I’m so glad you asked me that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I had him as a cross between Eric Idle and Roger Moore. I don’t know if that ever occured to you?’

  I nodded enthusiastically. Yes it did. I could se
e now that behind David’s debonair flamboyance there was a definate air of Monty Python.

  ‘And the name? Why did you decide to call yourself David Powell?’

  ‘Well, it’s a hybrid between two of my favourite British directors – David Lean and Michael Powell. I don’t know if you’re familiar with their films but -’

  ‘Lawrence of Arabia and A Matter of Life and Death.’

  ‘You know them! That’s amazing. Ah, you see, Maria would never have known something like that. That’s why I love you.’

  After a while, we stopped talking about David and pondered what we were going to have for dinner. Both of us were famished, and it was now well past eight o’clock. In the end, I suggested we call out for a pizza. It was so hilarious when the delivery man arrived and I had to pay for the food with Bret hidden in the bedroom. If only you knew what’s going on, I thought humourously as I took the pizza boxes from him.

  When we had both finished eating, we crashed out in the living room and watched one of Bret’s films. It was so surreal sitting there with him, listening to him giving a running commentary of all the on-set gossip, what actors were a nightmare to work with and which scenes he had most enjoyed shooting. It was like someone had beamed him down into my flat from the Star Trek transporter.

  I made sure I was extremely complimentary of his performance, shamelessly stroked his ego and laughing excessively at the funny bits.

  During one of the breaks between films, I went into the kitchen and fished out a tub of Belgian chocolate Haagen Dasz from the fridge. ‘Do you fancy some ice-cream?’ I asked, snuggling next to him on the sofa. I was in complete Heaven.