by May-Lan Tan
ALEXA
No way—you’re Animal’s kid?
DC
You know, I even met you before? He took me on the set of one of your movies, and I begged him to introduce us. At the time, I wanted to be an actress.
ALEXA
Weird, I don’t remember. I know I met your brothers when they were teenagers. They were gorgeous.
DC
That was me! And my older brother.
ALEXA
(a finger to the lips)
Sorry. My memory’s shot.
DC
No. You’re right.
She looks at me in a hopeful way. I wait for the hidden face to reveal itself, for her to split into two, the way people do when they tell you they used to be someone else. She just looks the same.
DC
I can’t believe you remember.
ALEXA
You had skateboards. You showed me some tricks.
DC
(laughs)
You were really nice to us. We both had mad crushes on you after that.
She sets her bottle down, the glass making a low tone against the flagstone.
ALEXA
Thank you for telling me.
DC
I always thought it was cool that you were out, you know, to the public. It made me feel like there was going to be room in the world for me, too.
ALEXA
Everything happened so fast, it just never occurred to me to lie. But I’d do it the same way again.
A woman’s obnoxious laughter peals across the deck. Theo and Berry are standing under one of the torches, trying to raise the extra four million dollars from the guy who owns this house. He looks like he’s still in high school. If they see me, they’ll want me to go over and say hi.
ALEXA
Feel like getting out of here?
DC
Definitely.
We pull our legs out of the water and I try to dry my feet on the flagstone. I step into my shoes and follow her dark, wet prints across the deck. As she walks she sweeps her hair up on top of her head and palms the gleam off the back of her neck. She lets the hair fall.
EXT. OPEN-TOP SPEEDBOAT – BISCAYNE BAY. NIGHT.
The outboard motor roars. Salt spray mists our faces as the boat chops across the glossy black waves. The lights in the bay glitter like earrings on a carpet, and a closed-top boat shaped like a spacecraft overtakes us, pushing a V through the water.
ALEXA
(shouting)
I mean, you’re welcome to come hang out.
Her mouth moves, the wind eating her words. She smiles and looks away. I breathe the ocean’s tinny scent and look at her hand next to mine on the seat. She has thin fingers and small shiny nails. I want to slip my hand on top of hers, but I don’t remember how to touch people. It’s been a while.
FLASHBACK TO:
LOS ANGELES, THREE YEARS AGO
The last person I dated was my dog walker. She’s smart to the point of being borderline insane, but is funny and knows how to cook. She was writing a spec script about Chinese immigrants working on the Pacific Railroad. To this day, I know more than I’ve ever cared to about the intricacies of carving a rail bed through the Sierra Nevadas. I sat through hours of moldy documentary footage and trudged through ill-lit museums in several states and Canadian provinces. When the script was ready I threw my weight around a little, and Celestials sold outright, to a major. I took her out to celebrate, and she dumped me before I sank my teeth into the appetizer.
I went on a talk show without taking my hay fever pill, and when the host asked me about her, my eyes looked shimmery. Since then I’ve been the poster child for bummed-out single people. I was glad when Celestials got stuck in development hell for a year before getting axed.
INT. HOTEL HALLWAY. NIGHT.
She follows me down the corridor, carrying her shoes. I slide my key card and the lights flash green. I can see my call sheet sticking out from under the door.
INT. HOTEL ROOM. NIGHT
The room is warm and stuffy. I check my call time for tomorrow, toss the sheet in the trash, and turn down the thermostat. The air-conditioning comes on. It makes a swishing sound. We take off our shoes.
ALEXA
Want some wine?
DC
I don’t mind.
ALEXA
(looks for corkscrew)
You can move those clothes off the chair.
DC
Come here.
I turn around. She’s sitting right behind me on the edge of the bed. I push her down and climb on top of her. She’s a soft kisser, hiding her teeth. Her mouth tastes cold and sweet, and I can smell her sunscreen. I put my hands in her hair and kiss her more. She starts grinding against me. I stand up and take off my top. As I take off my shorts, I watch her kneel on the bed and pull her dress up over her head. I see white cotton underpants, a tanned stomach with a tear-shaped navel, and high tits with perfectly centered nipples. My clit’s so hard it hurts. I stand at the foot of the bed and take off my bra. I push up my breasts and start licking one of my nipples, watching her face change. When she reaches for it, I nudge her hand away and keep doing it. She reaches into her underwear and starts touching herself. She does it slowly at first, then she grits her teeth and rubs so hard that her breasts shake. Her eyes are as strong and dark as blood. She comes hard and recovers fast.
She pulls me onto the bed and starts sucking my tits. She makes soft sounds as she does it. My cunt’s throbbing. When she tries to touch it, I push her hand away and shove her into the pillows. I bite and lick her thighs and stomach. They’re covered with the tiniest blond hairs. I twirl her nipples until the tips stick up. I keep twirling them. She clutches the sheets and moves her hips. I stroke the cleft of her cunt through her underpants. Her lips feel puffy and warm through the cotton. I run my finger along the join of her thigh. It’s slick with come. I reach in through the leg elastic and slide two fingers inside her. She works her hips as I move them slowly in and out. She’s slippery and tight. I push them up to the knuckle and press her clit with my thumb. She makes sounds. I pull her underpants down over her legs. I spread her lips and lick her out, my nipples rubbing against the sheet until I come. I moan with my mouth on her and she starts coming too.
I pin down her thighs and keep licking and sucking. She keeps coming. Each time I swallow, she floods my mouth. Flicking her clit with my tongue, I start to fuck her with two fingers, fast and hard enough to make her tits bounce. When I add my thumb and slow it down, she starts to moan and talk and touch them. I stop licking and fingerfuck her for a while, so I can watch. I switch to four fingers, no thumb, speeding up and slowing down. When I put my thumb in her asshole she comes, and when I pull it out she comes again. I spread her apart and start eating her out. When I look up, I see sloping stomach and the peachy undersides of her tits. I reach up and touch them. I suck and bite her clit, pinching and twisting the tips of her nipples. She bucks and screams, filling my mouth.
DISSOLVE TO:
POV (CEILING)
The air-conditioning cools our skin. She turns her head, a lock of hair falling across her eyes. I tuck it behind her ear.
ALEXA
You seeing anyone?
DC
Dating isn’t really a big thing for me. I think I develop more through my friendships.
ALEXA
Oh.
(beat)
Can I ask you something? How did you find out you were actually a woman?
DC
I used to stay at the stunt ranch in the summers. There was nothing to do at my house. At the ranch I could train and there were car ramps and half-pipes for me to skate on. I had a crush on one of my girl cousins. The summer she got her driver’s license, she was never home. I snuck into her room one afternoon.
There was a light blue Polo shirt-dress lying on the floor, and I picked it up and stuck my nose in it. Breathing in the smell of perfume and cotton and girl sweat, I felt this rush of re
ally strong energy. It was like the feeling you got when you were a kid and you uncovered some mystery of the adult world, and you knew you’d discovered something you shouldn’t have, but you didn’t know exactly what it was. That mixture of excitement and power and fear.
I took the dress to my room and locked the door. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. I laid it on the bed and looked at it for a while before deciding to put it on. As the material slipped over my body, I began to feel lit up. I looked in the mirror and something switched on—a sense of rightness, but so distant, it felt like sadness.
ALEXA
(breathless)
You’re beautiful.
DC
(smiles)
Let’s do this again sometime.
ALEXA
I’d like that. I get back from rushes around midnight or one, usually.
She pulls the blanket up to her ear. I turn off the light and listen to her breathing getting slower and deeper. I think about all the things she’s told me tonight. I picture the great-grandfather jumping into a hay wagon, and a teenage boy in a t-shirt dress, looking into a mirror and seeing a new life.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. STAR ISLAND MANSION – MASTER BEDROOM. DAY.
Makeup cuts a hole in my top and starts making a bullet entry wound on my chest. She builds a crater out of eyelash glue and bits of cotton before painting the hole black. While the paint dries, she puts the finishing touches on the exit wound on my back. The other girl did my normal makeup before starting on the cuts and scrapes. Right now she’s making a deep gash on my thigh.
Makeup comes back around to the front of me and applies concealer onto the cotton. She uses a paintbrush to stipple rust-red paint on top and blends it a bit with her finger. She pinches all around the crater to make the ridge sharper, and daubs fake blood over the black-painted hole until it forms a rivulet. A drop lands on my arm. I lick it off. It tastes like icing. It’s made of food coloring and liquid glucose. When I filmed out in Hong Kong, their fake blood tasted like cough syrup. Makeup says she’ll add some more right before we shoot.
CAMERA MOVES WITH HER
I put on my shoes and go out into the hall, catching a glimpse of my bloody reflection in the mirror by the door. I take out my ponytail and push the hair band onto my wrist, passing Theo on the stairs. He’s eating yogurt from a tub and talking on a headset. I point to an imaginary watch and mime smoking a cigarette. He nods, and I go downstairs.
When I reach the foyer, a woman walks out of the kitchen in a t-shirt that says MEDIC. She does a double take when she sees me, and then she laughs. I cut through the living room, where crew are setting up cameras and lights and sliding a breakaway wall in front of the real wall. Someone is taping small explosive devices to the back of a painting. Two men push a tall display cabinet against the fake wall. They start unpacking glassware from a box, dropping squibs into the glasses and vases before placing them in the cabinet.
EXT. DECK. DAY.
Wardrobe walks up to me and checks the Polaroid in her hand before taking the band off my wrist. She runs her finger along the indentation on my skin and tells me to rub it to make it spring back faster. I mooch a cigarette from her. DC is sitting at the picnic table with her father. They’re busy planning something with Matchbox cars, so I don’t go over. I didn’t know Animal had a prosthetic leg until a few years ago, when I saw it fly off in a stunt explosion. Someone told me he’d had a car accident on the way to work.
As they head inside, DC sees me and waves, making a face to acknowledge my gruesome makeup. It’s late afternoon and the sun has dropped behind the clouds. I go over and sit at the table and roll one of the toy cars back and forth. The glass wall of the house reflects me with the pool and the ocean behind me. When the lights come on inside, the reflection disappears.
INT. LIVING ROOM (THROUGH GLASS). DAY.
The painting with the squibs has been mounted on the fake wall. DC runs across the set, brandishing a Glock 23. Mateo’s stunt double chases her, firing blanks, and a trail of tiny explosions tears across the painting and the wall. The glass panes of the cabinet dissolve, and the vases, snifters, and flutes burst one by one. The lights go out, and the window turns into a mirror again.
INT. LIVING ROOM. DAY.
I come in through the side doors, almost tripping over a sheet of glass propped against the wall. Some of the crew are over at the far end of the room, striking the set, while others prepare a new setup at this end. I watch a man carefully dusting the surface of a wooden coffee table with powder. He places a penny at each corner of the table, and tops each penny with a screw. He comes over and glues a squib to the center of the glass pane before picking it up and lowering it onto the table so it rests on the screws.
DC’s standing by the piano in a black bra that shows the tops of her tits, sticking a plate to her chest with medical tape. She tapes a squib to the center of the plate, puts her top back on, and tapes a blood bag on top of her clothes, over the squib. She picks up a pouch of blood and hides it in her hand. Makeup makes me stand on a raincoat while she uses a pipette to drizzle blood on my clothes.
They get everything running, and Theo calls action. Animal counts backwards from five and presses a switch on a remote. The squib on DC’s chest detonates as she leaps backwards, and the blood bag bursts, unleashing a dark, syrupy scribble. The charge on the coffee table explodes and the glass breaks just before she lands, the table bursting apart like a diagram. The candy glass makes a spattering sound instead of tinkling. She writhes on the glass, clutching the pouch of blood to her heart and pumping it so the color pulses through her fingers onto the floor. Berry calls a cut and wrap. DC stands up with her hand over one eye and walks off into the foyer. I want to find out if she’s OK, but Hair is brushing my hair and spraying it. Berry calls for me again. I walk onto the set, stepping over the glass slivers.
INT. HOTEL HALLWAY. NIGHT.
I knock. I hear sounds inside the room. DC opens the door, gauze taped over one eye.
ALEXA
Jesus. Are you OK?
DC
Yeah I’m good. Come in.
She’s wrapped in a blue silk robe embroidered with gold butterflies. It opens a little when she holds the door and I want to touch her, but I brush past.
INT. HOTEL ROOM. NIGHT.
Canned laughter jangles on the TV set. There’s an open suitcase on the bed, filled with books and stretchy workout cords. I put my bag on the chair.
DC
(picks up remote, kills the sound)
I went up to see you earlier.
ALEXA
What happened?
DC
I got some stunt glass in my eye. When I take a fall, I have to keep them open to see where I’m going, and I didn’t get them closed them in time. I think I was tired. They’ve called out another double. She’s not a driver, but they’ll find someone to cover.
ALEXA
Will you be OK?
DC
I need surgery. I have to do it in L.A., it’s something with my insurance. I’m catching the red-eye tonight.
ALEXA
I should let you get back to it.
DC
Call me.
I nod. She smiles. I pick up my bag and walk to the door.
DISSOLVE TO:
DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, TWO WEEKS LATER
EXT. RESTAURANT PATIO. NIGHT.
It’s warm and breezy, and the clinking of cutlery punctuates the smooth jazz oozing from the speakers. DC strides across the terrace, looking tanned and healthy in a tiny sundress and flip-flops, and carrying a balled-up sweater. I stand up and hug her, smelling the sun and wind in her hair. The candle light plays on her face as she drapes her sweater over the back of her chair and sits down. Her eye looks fine, a little bloodshot. She opens the menu and scans the pages quickly before closing it again.
ALEXA
How are you?
DC
I’m good. I’m great.
; WAITER
Would you like to hear about the specials?
DC
I’ll have the steak. Blue, please.
ALEXA
And a Cobb salad for me. Can I have the dressing on the side?
WAITER
(takes the menus)
To drink?
ALEXA
Coffee, black, no sugar.
DC
Water’s fine.
ALEXA
So.
DC
Yeah. What’ve you been up to?
ALEXA
As little as possible, really. I only have another week off. I’ve been swimming every morning and then vegging out for the rest of the day.
DC
What are you doing next?
ALEXA
Playing Levi Geffen’s mother in the new Gabor Benedek project.
DC
Levi? He’s not that much younger than you.
ALEXA
Right? Still, this is the first lesbian character I’ve been offered who isn’t damaged beyond belief.
The waiter brings my coffee. I take a sip.
ALEXA
I’m shooting that for six months, and then I’m heading out to Germany to work with this kid, Sommer Zweig. Young writer-director, fresh out of film school. My cousin was her teacher, and she passed along a script. It was waiting for me when I came back from Miami. Normally I don’t read every random thing people send me, but I’d been thinking I wanted to try something new. I just loved it.
DC
So you’re in touch with your family out there?
ALEXA
Not really, no. Not at all. My parents are, but—that’s kind of a neat thing that’s happening because of it.