GLASS: A Standalone Novel

by Arianne Richmonde

  She laughed. “What?”

  “Grab the groundhog from the glazed grass. Around the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran.”

  Star tried to say that sentence and failed miserably. We burst out laughing.

  “Red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lolly, yellow lolly,” she blurted out, then laughed again.

  Then I said earnestly, “Look, I didn’t learn to enunciate my consonants, breathe from the diaphragm and learn reams of Shakespeare so I could then whip off all my clothes. It’s not my ambition to be famous for the sake of being famous. I’m a serious actor.”

  “Whatever,” Star said with a hurt look on her face.

  I realize I’d insulted her. Not only was Star not a “trained” actor, but she had taken her clothes off once or twice in movies. But in her case it worked. Me? It would be my debut and something I’d never be able to shake off for the rest of my career.

  “Let’s go, or we’ll be late,” she said, getting up. “I have to collect my kids from their friend’s house. First we need to swing by my place though.”

  Uh-oh, I’d unwittingly snubbed her. “I love your work, by the way,” I said, to try and smooth things over. “Really, you made me cry ugly tears in Skye’s The Limit.”

  WHEN I SET MY GAZE on Star’s home, my nose prickled and my eyes welled up at its beauty. It was like something you’d see in an architectural magazine. She lived in Malibu, right on Pacific Coast Highway, her backyard a wild garden, and the beach her playground. There were olive and orange trees, and tropical grasses that sprung from the sand, climbing jasmine, sweet and aromatic, and a hammock above a wooden deck where you could laze and read books. There was even a pool, the water not bright turquoise but a gunmetal blue. The back of the house was a set of vast, sliding glass doors, leading from the enormous, state-of-the-art kitchen, and living room; the view spectacular. I breathed in the salty breeze. This place was heaven.

  “You like our pad?” Star asked with a wink. “Not bad, huh? For a girl who grew up in a trailer park.”

  “You grew up in a trailer park? I never knew that.”

  “Before I became famous. Before we were financially solvent. You could have a place like this, you know, if you choose to branch out into movies.”

  “You mean, if I take my clothes off?”

  “Hey, I’ve done some work I’m not thrilled with, but it paid the rent. It put food on the table. You can either go and read Miss Julie somewhere and study your craft ‘til you’re blue in the face, or you can get on board and make some real money.”

  I was surprised. I had believed that Star was an actress who held onto her ideals. Now, it seemed, as if she was advocating film, not as a craft, but as a vehicle for making money. But then, she’d been very poor, judging from her background. Poor is something you never forget. My damp apartment that had patches of mold growing on the ceiling came to mind. It was a “steal” by New York standards, even with the mold. I thought of my younger brother, Will, who—intellectually impaired and with mild autism—needed all the aid he could get. I helped him out financially whenever I could. And here was Star offering to give me a leg up, introduce me to her power agent, and make calls to Steven freaking Spielberg! And I was acting like a purist, a green ingénue, fresh out of drama school. I couldn’t ride on my Tony nomination forever, yet at the same time, I didn’t want to let go of my morals, my ideals, about who I was as an actor. At least, the type of actor I had always wanted to be. The sort who, as Daniel said, didn’t sell her soul. I was one, screwed-up, hypocritical mess. Kissing Daniel that way, and at the same time saying I didn’t want to play parts like that. Who was I kidding? I needed to sort out my head. And fast.

  I smiled wanly at Star and came up with, “Well, a girl can dream, right?”

  Star took me by the wrist and looked me in the eye. “Yes, Janie, a girl can dream, but a girl also needs to eat. A girl needs to be practical. If you don’t want this particular part, fine. We can work on getting more auditions, more meetings. I know people, and I like you. I see your talent, I see something rare in you. And I can help you. But unless you are with me on this, I’d be wasting my time.”

  “You want me to meet with your agent?”

  “She’s very influential. She has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. Your agent is good for theater, yes, but not much more. Maybe they could work out a deal so you don’t need to actually fire yours. Look, this world is tough, dog eat dog. You’re young and beautiful, but that won’t last forever. You have to strike while the iron’s hot. Right now, you are pretty hot because your performance is still fresh in people’s memories, but they suffer from amnesia in this town . . . before long you’ll just be another actress vaguely ringing a bell in their subconscious somewhere. I know I sound like a bitch, but what I’m saying is true, believe me.”

  “I do believe you.”

  “You have a cute, sexy little body. So what if your breasts flash on screen for a few seconds! That’s the European way. It didn’t bother Keira Knightley or Kate Winslet. The American way is to have a boob job, then hypocritically encase those sexy boobs in a bra and boast about how you ‘don’t do nudity.’ How fucked up is that? In Europe, kids frolic naked on beaches, women go topless. Nudity there is no big deal. If it’s done in a classy way, what’s the harm? That’s my point of view, anyway. But if you really feel strongly about it you can get a body double. Julia did that for Pretty Woman. You can stipulate that in your contract. Work is work, stop being so precious about it. Do you want a house like mine, or not? Or do you want to wait tables in New York for the rest of your life?”

  Wow, Star was like a mind reader.

  “The last time I waited tables I got fired,” I admitted.

  “Well there you have it. Mull over what I’ve said. Think about it hard because the here and now is your chance. Not tomorrow, not the next day, not some hazy day in the future. Your decisions today will affect the rest of your life. Think, Janie, about what you actually want.”

  5

  THAT NIGHT I TOSSED and turned like a wild animal in a cage. I could hear the waves slapping against the sand and seagulls crying out like cats in the night. After Star’s pep talk all I could do was ask myself, over and over, what is it you want, Janie? And my pathetic answer came back to me: Daniel Glass. I wanted him more than anything else. More than a career. More than life itself. Seeing him again had undone me. I was a pathetic wreck. I hadn’t been raised that way, to put so much importance in a man. My mother had drummed it into me that I needed to be independent, earn my own living, to never rely on the male species. For anything. She knew. My dad was the unreliable type and she’d spent the best part of their marriage holding the reins. My younger brother, too, needed guidance, protection. “Women are the stronger vessel,” Mom always told me. “Hold onto your independence. Be a brick house, not a house of straw.”

  Yet here I was, back to square one, as if the last year without seeing Daniel had never passed at all. I was still the twenty-one-year-old, impressionable actress in my heart, eager to please. Desperate to earn his approval.

  My mind wandered back to dinner, earlier that evening. Star and Jake were so in love. I craved a relationship like that. They were alive, sparring with each other over who was the better actor, Al or Bobby—The Godfather or Taxi Driver. But they were laughing and joking, her daughter Hero asking silly questions that made us all laugh.

  “By the way,” I had asked, “who’s Rambling Rose?”

  “Laura Dern was Rambling Rose. Great movie,” Jake said. “She got nominated for an Oscar.”

  “Why rambling?”

  “She was innocently promiscuous; mistook sex for love.”

  “She had rambling ways,” added Star.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because Sam Myers decided I was like her,” I told them.

  Rambling Rose . . . I lay in bed thinking again about Daniel’s erection the moment I straddled him. Surely he fe
lt something for me—his hard-on proved it, didn’t it? He couldn’t forever mourn his dead wife.

  I wanted that role in the film after all. What had I been thinking to tell them no? Neither Pearl nor Samuel Myers had telephoned me back. I’d blown it. What an idiot! Lying here, I decided I would give my right arm to work with Daniel again. See his face every day on set . . . discuss my character’s motivation, listen to and follow his direction. I could feel the familiar heat between my legs. I’d pleasured myself so many times in the past I couldn’t count, fantasizing about Daniel fucking me. I hadn’t even dated other guys. Well, I’d tried, but never got past a kiss. Nobody turned me on. Everybody was anemic and insipid compared to Daniel. No, it was sad and pathetic for me to get myself off yet again tonight, always obsessing about Daniel Glass. I refused to allow myself torture my poor humiliated body anymore with someone I couldn’t have.

  I got up out of bed and walked toward the big glass doors of my bedroom. There was enough moonlight to see a little without stumbling in the dark. Stars were scattered like tiny jewels in the sky, and I fancied I could make out the Big Dipper—a saucepan in the midst of the deepest blue. I picked up my iPhone and, taking it outside with me, found the astrology app that tells you what the constellations are. I lay down on the sofa and stared up at the sky in a trance.

  A while later, fiddling with my phone and changing the angle, I suddenly realized there was a message. From Daniel.

  Phone me. NOW.

  Without pausing for breath I called, my heart racing. To my astonishment he picked up. What was he doing awake? I had his beautiful features in my mind’s eye. His intense blue eyes, his straight nose, with that very slight bump, and his full, sexy lips that I had imagined a million times licking me all over, electrifying my body into orgasmic bliss.

  “Janie,” he said, in a low seductive voice.

  “Daniel, I’m amazed you’re still up.”

  “I can’t sleep.” He paused. There was a beat of silence and he said, “I’ve been thinking about your kiss. You got me fucking hard, you know that, don’t you? Of course you do. It was embarrassing.”

  An arrow of desire shot to my core, remembering his hard-on. I had always pictured what his cock was like, but feeling it at the meeting against my legs, and seeing its solid ridge wedged against his slacks, I noticed that he was big. Very big.

  “You were between a rock and a hard place,” I joked.

  “Not funny, Janie. It was humiliating.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “We need to talk.”

  “We could meet tomorrow. Star’s got a meeting so I’ll be alone all afternoon, you could pick—”

  “Now. We need to talk now.”

  “Well, I can’t sleep so . . .” Can’t sleep because of you, I wanted to add, but I bit my lip to stop myself.

  “Stop biting your lip and twiddling your hair, it’s—”

  “A bad habit,” I said, finishing off his sentence.

  “I wasn’t going to say that actually.”

  “How did you know I was twiddling my hair?”

  “Because I know you.”

  No, you don’t, you don’t know everything. “What were you going to say then, if it wasn’t to tick me off?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. Where are you?”

  “At Star Davis’s house on Pacific Coast Highway. I’m in her backyard, listening to the crashing waves, staring at the stars in the sky. The real stars, not movie stars.

  “I’m on my way over.”

  “What if I refuse to give you the address?” I taunted.

  “I know the architect who built her house and I went to see it once, and I’m staying with friends who happen to live near you, just up the beach a ways.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Yes, it is. Very.”

  I could hear measured panting. “Why are you breathing heavily? What are you doing?”

  “Jogging along the beach. I’m on my way. Won’t be long.” The phone went dead.

  What did he want to talk about? Never had a person instilled such fear and desire all at once in me. He would berate me, tell me that he didn’t want to work with me ever again, that what I did was cheap and tacky. God, I hated being an actor sometimes. The DNA of insecurity—part of a thankless job. Insecurity manifested itself in a myriad of ways; prickly behavior, promiscuity, bitchiness, cockiness, and often alcohol or drug abuse. I knew that Star once had a drug problem. Twice, three times actually—she kept relapsing. No actor gets off lightly, even when they’re famous.

  I looked back up at the starry void and must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, Daniel was leaning down stroking my hair. I opened my eyes. I knew it was him because I could smell his familiar, masculine scent. His clean musty aroma that made me weak every time he came near me.

  “So beautiful,” he whispered.

  “What?” I wondered if he was referring to the starry sky but he was looking at me directly.

  “You woke a sleeping bear,” he said. “You know that expression, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie? The Swedish talk about bears, not dogs. You should have let me sleep, Janie, but you woke me up.”

  “When I responded to your text message?”

  He chuckled. “No, when you kissed me and gave me a raging hard-on. You woke up my senses.” He took my hand and brought it to his crotch. “Feel how hard you’ve made me again.”

  I breathed into his face, “Oh God!”

  “I’m going to have to fuck you, because you’ve asked for it. It’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it? To get fucked by me?”

  I could feel his enormous erection through his jeans. It was almost intimidating. Almost. “Yes,” I whimpered. “I’d like to deny it but that’d be a lie.”

  He leaned in closer and planted a light kiss on my forehead. “Not the innocent little girl we all thought now, are we?”

  “No,” I murmured.

  “You’re a fiery little tiger beneath that schoolgirl body, aren’t you? I bet you’re wet just thinking about how hard I am and how much I want you. Are you wet?”

  He pressed his face against mine and kissed me, driving his tongue into my mouth and licking it, biting my lip softly, all the while groaning. His groans sent currents of lust through my body, hardening my nipples.

  “Oh God,”—I breathed into his lips—“Daniel.” I flung my arms around his neck.

  His hand gripped my ankle and then tantalizingly traveled up my calf, igniting every cell, every nerve along my sensitive skin.

  “So soft, Janie.” He let his fingers crawl higher, easing up, up, between the apex of my thighs. I opened them a touch to let his hand in. “Jesus Christ, you’re soaking, baby.” He plunged two fingers inside me and I cried out. This was the most sensual thing that had ever happened to me. I pushed my hips at him so he’d get in further. “So fucking horny for me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  He started to finger fuck me, my juices swirling in celebration as he pumped me, his other hand rubbing my clit. I’d come any second if he carried on like this.

  “I so want to fuck you, Janie. Lie on top of you and drive myself into your hot pussy. So you can feel every hard, thick, pumping inch of me. Make you scream. Make you come.”

  “Oh please!” I flexed my hips up at him as I thrashed frantically against the hand that was rubbing my clit with such expertise. One, two . . . I was going to come any second . . .

  “But I need to know one thing first.” His hand slowed down and so did my pulse. NO! Not now! Keep going, please.

  “What do you need to know?” I panted, “please don’t stop what you’re doing.”

  “Are you in love with me?” His fingers were still inside me.

  “Yes,” I groaned, aching for him to finish off what he started.

  “Then I’m not going to fuck you after all.”

  “What?” I screamed out, pushing my hips at him and pressing my own hands on his so he’d ma
ke me come.

  “I’m in love with my late wife,” he said quietly but not taking his hand away. He was still rubbing me slowly there . . . gently. The tease was driving me crazy. “It’s not fair to you; I’d break your heart. I only fuck women I don’t care about, and I care for you, Janie. I can’t have sex with you, I—”

  “Please, please, just make me come.”

  “Just this once. But it’s the first and last time.” He prized my thighs apart and got down on his knees, then buried his head between my legs. He growled with animal pleasure, his sound stifled by me when I locked my thighs around his head. His tongue licked up and down my clit—“Fuck, Janie you’re so sweet,”—and deep inside my opening, giving me the biggest orgasm of my life. I could feel tears awash on my face as I cried out in ecstasy, in pain—my climax breaking me into thousands of pieces, like shards of glass.

  He continued pressing his tongue inside and then licked me up and down again, flicking and lashing at my clit like a mini whip. Another wave surged through me. This was unbelievable!

  “I’m coming again!” I moaned.

  I opened my eyes as another orgasm pulsed through me. It was light. No stars in the sky. An orange sun was peeping above the horizon. I was lying on my back on the sofa outside, my phone had fallen on the ground. The morning dew soaked my skin and I was damp all over, not just from the dew, but also with my own sweat. My hands were pressed between my sticky legs.

  Daniel was not there.

  I picked up my phone, my fingers fumbling, frantic to find the “phone me now” message he’d sent. It was not there either. I got up and made my way through the garden towards the beach, my gaze manically searching the seascape and the back of the garden.

  Of course Daniel couldn’t have just come up from the beach and found me sleeping. This belonged to movie stars; there was major security! Locked gates sectioning off the beach from Star and Jake’s backyard. Daniel was not here last night!

  Except in my imagination.

  I’d been fucking dreaming again.