He's So Shy

by Linda Cajio

  She sighed. “I missed you too. But I have a feeling Ezekiel went over the cliff again.”

  “Nope. He’s been sitting in a hut with ten men, planning for the fort’s survival.”

  “The body fumes must have overwhelmed your brains.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “Okay.” He turned his whole body toward her and put his hand on her stomach, feeling the soft feminine muscles tense slightly at his touch. He kissed her arm. “There’s only one way I know for us to be quiet.” He kissed her shoulder, her collarbone, her throat, tasting the satin flesh exposed by the curve of her top. The scent of her, clean and sweet, pervaded his being, making him mindless to everything else.

  “Richard.” Her voice was slightly breathy. “We can’t.”

  “It’d be interesting to see if two people could make love without making a sound.” The thought of him making love to her while a houseful of people were downstairs was only all the more exciting.

  “Without a single sound?” she asked, reaching up to toy with his hair. Her fingers threaded through the strands, tugging slightly and nearly undoing his control.

  “Mmmm … think of it as a science experiment.” He kissed the corner of her mouth. “We’ll have to have a lot of tests.”

  “A lot.”

  She pulled his mouth down to hers.

  Richard lay half atop Pen, contentedly reveling in the feel of her skin, soft yet vibrant, against his. One of his legs was between hers.

  She was awake and playing with his hair, braiding the strands, then pressing her fingertips into them to undo the braids. “I love playing with your hair. It was a big mistake when short hair came back into fashion.”

  “I love playing with you,” he said, pressing his hips into the side of her thigh.

  “Ah, is this experiment number two?” she whispered, amusement in her tone.

  “Eventually.”

  He liked this, lying with her in a cocoon of their own making. The voices from downstairs were faint, just on the edge of awareness. He smiled, thinking about what they would say if they knew what was going on right over their heads. The thought should make him panic, but it didn’t.

  “What?” Pen asked. “What’s so funny?”

  He raised his head. “How did you know I was amused?”

  “I could feel you grinning against my shoulder.”

  “Oh. I was thinking about what everyone downstairs would say if they knew what was going on up here.”

  “No big deal,” she replied, trailing her fingers along his shoulder blade. His skin twitched at the sensations she left behind. “We’d tell them it’s a science experiment that failed.”

  “It was only the first test.” He chuckled and lifted himself fully on top of her. “We’ll improve with practice.”

  “Promise?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Much later, after the voices had long stopped, a soft tapping sounded on the door. Libby called out, “They’re gone.”

  “Good! Go ’way,” Richard shouted, then gasped as Pen wrapped her legs around him, pulling him into her so deeply that he had to grit his teeth against crying out at the pleasure of it.

  Pen did cry out, taking her with him over the brink, everything forgotten but the two of them together.

  When Richard woke the next morning, the sun was well up in the sky. He knew he was late.

  “Damn!” he cursed, flinging back the sheets and reaching around the floor for his briefs.

  “What?” Pen mumbled sleepily. She looked all tousled, and he couldn’t resist taking a moment to kiss her cheek. She smelled of perfume and the musky scent of her skin and his mingled together.

  “It’s after seven, and I’m supposed to be on the set at eight,” he said, forcing himself to straighten.

  She sat up. “After seven! Richard, you should have left ages ago.”

  He grinned wryly. “I fell asleep. What can I tell you? It must have been the company.”

  “Well, why didn’t Libby wake us? She’s up early, usually well before six.”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll damn well find out.”

  He hustled into his clothes while she threw on a robe, and they went downstairs together. Libby was gone. A note was propped on the kitchen table.

  I tried to wake you earlier, about five—not to mention trying to get you out last night—but nobody was moving in there. Did you take Mickey Finns or something? Hope you had a … delightful visit and are feeling very pleased with yourselves. Richard, don’t be late for work. AND DON’T SCREW UP LIKE THIS AGAIN!

  “Great!” Pen said. “My cousin would break down the President’s door if she thought he’d be late for the Oval Office. But today she gives up and strolls off to work.”

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Richard said. He kissed her soundly, then strode for the back door. His hand was actually turning the knob when he caught sight of the next-door neighbor watering her side garden. He cursed under his breath. “I can’t go out that way.”

  “And you certainly can’t go out the front,” Pen told him.

  “I know that!” He felt helpless, not able to come up with any solution on how to get out without being spotted and causing questions. A wild idea came to mind. “I need a dress.”

  Pen gaped at him.

  “I need a dress,” he said firmly, taking her hand and dragging her back up the stairs. “Only women live here, so only a woman can walk out without arousing suspicion. I need a dress. I only hope there’s one that fits me.”

  “Richard …” She started laughing. “This is the most bizarre morning after we’ve had yet.”

  “Think of it as a tradition.”

  “I’m thinking of your masculinity if anyone catches on.”

  “That’s not funny.” He shrugged. “My masculinity will have to lump it. Got anything in a calf-length? I don’t think I could get away with a mini. And I’ll be damned to hell and back before I shave my legs!”

  Pen burst into laughter.

  Fifteen minutes later tears of mirth were streaming down her face as she planted a wide-brimmed straw hat on his head. “You never looked lovelier, Richard.”

  “Ha, ha, very funny.” He made a face as he examined himself in the mirror. The long dress they’d found was like an iron lung at the chest, while the skirt flared out around his legs, leaving plenty of room for his rolled-up jeans underneath. “You don’t think it’s too tight across the top?”

  Pen snorted in amusement. “You don’t have a choice.”

  “True. Good thing Libby had one hat at least.” He pulled the hat down low over his eyes. They’d left his hair unbound, Pen saying it looked “womanly.” It had the advantage of hiding most of his face. His male ego was taking more than a beating, he admitted. A major death wish was more like it. “I look exactly like what I am. A guy in a dress.”

  “Keep your shoulders hunched over and your head down,” Pen advised. “You only have to walk to the corner, only two houses down, and then to your car. You’re an actor, so act. Jack Lemmon was great in Some Like It Hot.”

  “Marilyn was better.” He chuckled. “I’ll act, don’t worry. For someone who didn’t think this would work, you’re certainly for it now.”

  “I’m thinking positive.”

  He looked back at himself in the mirror, then shuddered. “I’m the Cretin all over again, only worse.”

  Pen wrapped her arms around him. “You’ve never been the Cretin, Richard. That was the other kids’ problem, not yours. You look … sexy.”

  “How kind of you … really.” He was grateful to her. “This had better work, otherwise I’ll never live this down.”

  “If you think something will fail, you will help it along to doom,” Pen said sternly, coming out of his embrace. “You are going to walk right out of here under everybody’s nose and get away with it.”

  “I’ll need an Academy Award performance,” Richard said, and pulled her back into his arms.
He kissed her lingeringly.

  “I’ve never been kissed by a man in a dress before,” Pen murmured when he finally lifted his head.

  “Another first. And last.” He examined himself one final time in the mirror, shuddered, then took a deep breath. “Okay, it’s showtime.”

  The moment he opened the front door, he tried to put himself in Pen’s shoes to make himself physically and emotionally into the woman he had to play. He visualized how she would walk down the porch steps and along the streets, what her expression would be, how she would be feeling inside. He didn’t rush the process, keeping himself to a natural pace, not striding or clumping, but walking with the grace he admired in her. They had rounded out his outfit with a sweater to cover his arms and a shoulder bag with his shirt stuffed into it. The shoes he could do nothing about, Pen’s and Libby’s feet being too small, but his Docksiders were fine. He knew he looked very much like an Annie Hall yuppie, and in an upscale college town that was a common enough sight. He even waved to a woman across the street who had emerged to get her morning paper. She smiled and waved back.

  He turned the corner in due course and spotted his Bronco. As he got into the driver’s side, he heard and felt a rip under his outstretched right arm. The dress had had enough of him. More than enough. Still, he sighed in relief that he’d made it.

  This second street was fairly deserted, only one person visible at the top of the hill. He didn’t bother to wave to the man, instead starting the car. He deliberately made a U-turn to go back down Libby’s street, right past the house. He hoped Pen was looking so she’d know he made it okay.

  If anyone ever did a remake of Charley’s Aunt, he was a shoo-in for the part.

  But this nonsense had to stop, he thought. It absolutely had to stop.

  “He really left dressed as a woman?” Libby laughed merrily, swiping at tears of amusement.

  Pen glared at her cousin across the dinner table. “What else was he supposed to do? You didn’t wake him up.”

  “I tried! I knocked on that door several times. You two were dead to the world. He never should have been there in the first place, let alone doing what you were doing. What if someone heard you and decided to investigate? Do you know how hard it was to keep everyone downstairs? I had to tell them the upstairs bathroom was clogged so they wouldn’t use it. Mary Jane wanted to send over one of the set’s techs to fix it. So don’t tell me I was the one playing with fire. You and Richard were. An inferno, for heaven’s sake!”

  Pen could feel the heat saturating her cheeks. She could only wonder what Libby had seen when she’d opened the bedroom door. “Okay. But you don’t have to laugh about it. How … how were things on the set?”

  “Tense.” Libby shook her head. “Mary Jane pretty much lost the argument over costuming, and she’s on a rampage. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d won, though. She’s continually disruptive, and she uses sit-down strikes like a dentist uses a drill—with about the same effect on the victims. I have to say she and Richard are creating the right kind of chemistry on-screen, though.”

  “They are?” Pen echoed, alarm bells going off inside her. “I thought he didn’t like her.”

  “He doesn’t. Oh, outwardly he tolerates her. But I think he’s ready to kill her. That emotional tension translates itself into the kind of sexual tension their characters require.”

  Sexual tension. Something of the panic Pen was feeling must have shown on her face, because Libby said hastily, “He doesn’t feel anything for her in real life, Pen. Except maybe disgust. It’s simply that actors have this ability to turn their real feelings aside or into something that they can use in their acting. There’re lots of incidences where actors who come across as sizzling on-screen really couldn’t stand each other in real life.”

  “There’re also lots of incidences where actors carried the parts too far. Liz and Dick. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.” Pen smiled bleakly. “I don’t think I’m cut out for all this.”

  “Okay, so it happens sometimes. It’s not happening now.” Libby leaned forward. “I think it would be good for you to be on the set again.”

  “Are you crazy?” Pen jumped up and paced the kitchen. “I can’t even move out of your house! I feel like a lion all caged up in a little bitty pen with the door wide open. I see it. I want to go through it. But I know I can’t! So how can I go on the set? Those reporters are still out there.”

  “Nonetheless, I think it would be good for you to be on the set,” Libby said stubbornly. “You’ll shake up Mary Jane.”

  “I don’t want to shake up Mary Jane! You’re the director. You’re the one who should control Mary Jane. If she’s being a bad girl, put her in a corner.”

  Libby shook her head. “My job is to keep the stars happy. Because if the stars aren’t happy, then they walk, and if they walk, the studio loses millions on the movie. The stars know it too. I can be controlling only to a certain point. I’d kill for the old studio contracts that kept people in line.”

  “Spoken like true management.” Pen couldn’t help feeling sympathetic to her cousin, despite her attitude. It was Libby’s responsibility to get the movie made on time and on budget. The job was monumental, so Libby’s twisted concern was understandable. “But no thanks on the subject of Mary Jane. I certainly don’t want to tangle with her. One meeting was more than enough.”

  “Chicken.”

  “You’re a bright woman, Libby.” Pen winked. “Okay, so I’m sucking up. But you can undermine someone like Mary Jane, make her look foolish in subtle ways and take back control of the set. You run this picture. Mary Jane does not.”

  Libby sat back and sighed. “So I tell myself. I suppose I can’t blame you for not wanting a part of it.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. But be careful with Richard! You and he don’t want this blowing up in your faces over a foolish move! You’ve both worked too hard for that.”

  But as Pen cleaned up the dishes, for lack of anything else to do, she wondered if she could be wrong about not brazening things out. Pen dismissed the temptation to follow her advice to Libby to be bold and assertive. She’d stay put for a while longer. Even if she weren’t concerned for her job’s future, she certainly didn’t want her name and picture plastered in the papers. She wished she could talk to Richard, see him, be with him most of the time.

  Well, she thought, with them separated the way they were, she’d at least know if what she felt for him was lasting. This test would batter any relationship, let alone one as new and fragile as theirs.

  “And if our feeling are of the lasting sort, then by damn I’m coming out of the closet!” Pen muttered, stacking the last of the pans in the dishwasher. She shut the lid with a snap of the locking mechanism, then washed her hands off of more than just dishes.

  Libby was at another of her meetings, this time at the director of photography’s rented house. With Pen in residence, Libby was keeping home meetings to a minimum—only those she was forced to have, such as the one she’d had over Mary Jane’s costumes. Pen wondered if her cousin ever got a full night’s sleep while on a movie project. From predawn preparation for the daily filming to late-night meetings that often went well past midnight, the pace was horrendous … and the results sometimes spectacular. Libby’s last movie had been a touching one about star-crossed lovers. Critics had called it simplistic, but moviegoers had come out in droves. Libby found the common denominator of people’s emotions. This was her cousin’s biggest project yet, and she deserved to have it be successful.

  Tired of reading, tired of watching TV, tired of everything, Pen wandered into the living room, touching a vase, a table, a lamp shade. She wanted desperately to go out, run around, scream in delight—experience anything but this cooped-up feeling. But she knew she’d stay in the house. Like a butterfly in a cocoon, she wasn’t ready to emerge yet.

  A pile of tapes on top of the VCR caught her eye, and she flipped through them, pausing at one in particular. Richa
rd’s first movie, the one in which he’d made his mark with a mass audience. She’d never seen the film, but now she was interested, very interested. She popped the tape into the machine and settled on the sofa.

  The picture was good. Richard was really good. More than good, absolutely mesmerizing. He should have gotten an Academy Award, Pen thought. He was brilliant.

  A scene began between Richard and the female lead, a woman partly innocent, partly temptress, an allegory for Eve, who was slowly pulling “Adam” down into the depths of evil. It was a love scene.

  Pen watched the couple, her stomach tightening with each kiss. She knew what she’d seen on the set, but this looked so real. Anger rose within her, pure blind anger that made her sick, as clothes were shed and Richard and his costar were naked from the waist up. They began to …

  When the scene cut away finally, Pen switched off the set and sat there in the growing darkness, unconscious of anything but the images inside her head. This was acting, a part of acting that many people felt enhanced a film. Not gratuitous or hard-core sex, but beautifully filmed lovemaking scenes that were integral to a movie. She and Richard had even had a conversation about it, but she hadn’t been prepared for this.… How did husbands and wives of actors cope with this? Did they feel as she did, that they wanted to scream and tear up every copy of the film? She wanted to, and she had no right to the feeling.

  She’d thought about this, considered it, but it had been so detached from her present that it seemed only a distant worry. But now she had been confronted with it first-hand. Would she be able to handle this?

  She knew the answer instantly.

  She couldn’t.

  NINE

  Along with the disruption of reporters outside the home of Penelope Marsh, teacher at Warren Regional Elementary School, neighbors complained of a suspect creeping through the backyards. David and Michelle Fiarello also reported their dog was let loose from his chain, although he was recovered sometime later wandering on the south side of Blairstown, near the hunt club. Calls and inquiries to Ms. Marsh were not returned as of press time.