Monsters

by Liz Kay

  “You must be Stacey.” The voice comes from the left, and I turn to see a man walking toward me, hand extended. He looks about fifty. His head is shaved and the top is pink from the sun. He’s got a full, round face, thin lips. His graying eyebrows are obscured by the black frames of his glasses. His hand, when he grabs mine, is soft and firm.

  “I’m Alan. Welcome. Welcome,” he says. “Can I get you a drink?” He turns to the driver behind me and says, “Put those bags in her room.” He looks back at me. “Ready to get started?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Yeah.” I’m not ready at all. I need to catch my breath, to look around.

  “I’m just kidding. We’ll let you settle in first. We’ll start tomorrow. Joe got here this morning. He’s the screenwriter. Great guy. I’ve worked with him a ton. He’s got a working draft. Just a sketch really. Needs a lot of work.” I realize he’s leading me slowly into the room as he talks. “So you want that drink?”

  I shake my head. “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  “And you call yourself a writer?” He pours himself a smallish splash of something—bourbon, maybe—and puts the bottle back. He pats the bar. “Tommy’s got a hell of a bar here, so help yourself. This is his house, by the way, but you probably knew that. He gets in tomorrow.”

  I have no idea who Tommy is, so I just nod.

  • • •

  I wake up to the sound of the ocean. I barely slept all night. I just lay there staring at the ceiling, the walls, but then sometime around five, I closed my eyes. Now it’s light out, and I’m not sure where I am for a second.

  My hair is curling from the humidity, but it doesn’t look bad. It’s always curly, though not quite this full. I pull my fingers through, half untangling it, half checking for grays. I don’t feel like I’m old enough, but stress can do that. I found one last week, a little wisp of silver against the brown.

  I pull on a clingy white tank and a pair of shorts. They’re looser than they were last year, kind of hanging off my hips. I don’t mind this part at all. Grief is terrible, but it looks amazing on me. If Michael were here, he’d grab my ass and try to pull me back into bed. He’s not here though, and I need coffee. It must be nine o’clock, but no one seems to be up. I know there’s staff here. Someone unpacked my bags and cleaned up from dinner last night, but now there’s no one around. There’s a cappuccino machine that I don’t know how to work, but I find a regular coffeemaker too. I brew a full pot and take a mug out to the terrace.

  I sit cross-legged on a sofa holding the coffee in my lap, and I close my eyes. I’d forgotten how good the sun can feel. I think, This is what happy feels like, and I think about how people say you should just let the good feelings wash over you. But then I think, No, and I open my eyes. The coffee tastes kind of stale and bitter, and I wonder why this Tommy doesn’t keep better coffee in his house when he has such an amazingly stocked bar.

  • • •

  I hear footsteps behind me.

  “Well, don’t you look gorgeous, all sun-kissed and fresh?” When I turn to look, it’s someone new. He’s young, maybe late twenties, skinny, his short black hair swept to one side. He holds his hand out. “I’m Daniel. Tommy’s assistant. I do everything. Well not everything … ooh, coffee.” He grabs my mug and takes a sip. “Jesus, who stocked this?” He looks around like there should be someone there to answer him. “I’ll get you something else, honey. Don’t drink that shit.” He sits down in the chair across from me and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “So you’re Stacey?”

  “I’m Stacey, yeah.” I smile.

  “Tommy’s in the shower. He’s a mess as usual. I got him on the plane at four, and other than crashing out on the flight, he hasn’t had much sleep.” He makes an exaggerated face. “Models. At the hotel last night. It was not a good scene.” He shakes his head. “I was like, ‘You know we have an early flight,’ and he was all, ‘Shut the fuck up,’ and I was like, ‘Whatever, as long as you sign my paychecks.’” He sighs. “Actually, I sign my own paychecks, so it’s a good thing I’m honest. I mean, I should give myself a bonus anytime I have to drag his ass out of some strange bed that smells like morning-after pussy.”

  I laugh, but it’s more fucked-up than funny. Daniel raises his eyes above my head. “Well, there you are, sunshine.”

  The voice behind me is a low grumble. “Fuck off.” He moves around the couch and drops next to me, bumping my leg. He’s wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt, damp at the collar from his hair, which is dark, very dark, almost black, and it’s combed back from his face, which I can’t really see because his hands are at his temples like he’s trying to hold his head together. Then he drops his left hand to my knee in this apologetic pat, and Jesus Christ, I can’t even think, but it’s fucking Tommy DeMarco. “Sorry,” he mumbles without looking at me. He looks like shit. I mean, gorgeous, of course, but like hell.

  Daniel leans across and hands him my mug. “Have some coffee.”

  Tommy stares at it. “It’s cold.”

  “Just drink it.” Daniel digs through a bag next to him and pulls out a prescription bottle. He shakes a pill into his palm and hands it to Tommy. He looks at me. “Vitamins.”

  Tommy takes it and swallows half the coffee. “This is terrible.”

  “Your life? Yeah, it’s a mess. Just drink the coffee. I’ll get you an espresso in a minute, but only ’cause I’m making one for her.” Daniel nods in my direction as he walks away.

  With that, Tommy looks up at me, and he smiles this amazing little smile, and suddenly, he doesn’t look like some hungover piece of trash. He looks like a movie star. I mean, he is a movie star, but right now he looks like something out of a movie, and he winks and says, “I don’t travel so well.” I laugh, and he holds his hand out and takes mine. “Tommy. And you’re Stacey.” He’s still holding my hand, not so much shaking it as just holding it, and I really, really hope I’m not blushing.

  “I loved your book, by the way. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be here. But really, it’s beautiful. Awful, but beautiful. And it really challenges the whole idea of what monstrous is. What makes a monster? And who or what is responsible? Or are we all? It’s just great. I loved it.”

  “Wow.” I hate it when I don’t know what to say. I mean, I’m a writer. I should be good with words, and instead I’m like, Wow. “I’m flattered. I didn’t realize many people had bothered to read it, much less get that much out of it, so that’s really generous of you.”

  “Oh, a lot more people will read it now. Once the publicity machine starts rolling for the movie, people will get interested in the book. Your sales should pick up quite a bit.”

  Daniel reappears with the espressos and sets one down in front of me. “Here you go, sweetie.” He looks at Tommy. “And you, fucking degenerate.”

  “I should fire you. I swear to god, man.” He takes a sip of the espresso. “That is good though. Really good.” He closes his eyes, leans his head back, and rubs his jaw. “It’s bright out. You have my glasses?” Daniel pulls a leather case out of his bag and hands the dark glasses to Tommy, who puts them on over his closed eyes. “Jesus, I could die. Do we have anything to eat?” He gives my leg the little apology pat again. “Sorry. I’m not usually this bad.”

  Daniel’s already on his way to the kitchen, but he calls back over his shoulder, “It’s true. He’s usually worse.”

  • • •

  The script is much, much worse than not very good. We’re sitting on the terrace, and I’m thumbing through the hard copy in my lap. I’m the only one still reading, though I’m not reading so much as stalling. I’m not sure where to start. “I think one problem is that you’ve sort of taken the poems and turned them into dialogue. I mean, you’ve plucked out all the good lines and given them to different characters.”

  Joe nods. “Obviously, we’ll have to add to it.” He looks older than me, which probably means we’re the same age, mid-thirties. I’m always surprised by my own age. Sometimes I feel older, sometimes y
ounger. I never feel right.

  I glance at Tommy. He’s stretched back on the couch next to me. He has his head tipped back, his glasses on. I mean, he could be asleep.

  Alan is definitely not asleep. He’s watching everyone. I’m not sure how this all works, if he works for Tommy, if Tommy works for him. I do know that I don’t want to piss either of them off, but I don’t want to let them break my book either.

  “Right. But it’s more than that. I mean, this basically reads like kind of a typical Frankenstein movie,” I say, holding up the script.

  “Your book is Frankenstein,” Joe says. “Kinky Frankenstein with this Frederick psycho building himself a girl.”

  Tommy makes this grunting laugh. I guess he is awake.

  “Okay, but this isn’t based on the movies. This is based on the book, the whole nature-of-man discussion?”

  Joe looks at me blankly.

  I feel myself slowing down, pausing between words, waiting for some recognition to show on his face. “So, where Frankenstein’s creature has a fully human soul in a physically corrupted form, my monster has a beautiful exterior, but she’s evil.”

  “I thought the monster was always bad?” Joe looks at Alan and shrugs.

  “The creature only turns when Frankenstein rejects him. But that book is about the corrupting influence of religion. Mine is about gender ideals and sexual power dynamics.”

  “Great”—Joe smiles a deliberately strained smile—“a feminist manifesto. That’ll make a great flick.”

  • • •

  “How’d you get your book in their hands?” Joe asks as everyone’s heading in for lunch.

  Alan’s already at the bar. He catches my eye and raises a bottle in my direction with a questioning shrug. It’s barely even one. I shake my head.

  “I have no idea, really. I just got an e-mail one day.”

  “You’re kidding me.” Joe says this like he might be kind of pissed.

  “No. Why?”

  “You just ‘got an e-mail’?” He shakes his head. “You are one lucky bitch.”

  • • •

  Tommy opens three bottles of wine over dinner, but I don’t think he finishes more than a glass. Alan has quite a bit. Maybe more. And Joe, Joe has a lot. He seems to be holding on to some anger from the day. Tommy and Alan spent the afternoon holed up somewhere, talking about I don’t know what, which was not so good because Joe and I need a translator. The only language he seems fluent in is asshole, and in the past few hours, we’ve gotten nowhere but pissed off.

  “Well,” Joe says, pushing his plate back and refilling his wine yet again, “I think we’re fucked. Or you are, anyway.” He waves his glass toward Alan and Tommy. “It’s not my money on the line.”

  Alan leans forward and tries to do this calming motion with his hand, but it hardly seems to work. “Whoa, let’s not get carried away. It’s a rocky start is all.”

  Joe looks at me and shakes his head. “She doesn’t get it. Controlling bitch if you ask me.” He sort of sneers drunkenly. “How do you even keep a husband anyway? Seriously, how does he even put up with you?” Because, of course, it’s right there, at the back of the book, my whole life boiled down to a paragraph. It reads, Omaha … husband … two sons, and I don’t even know how to start correcting him. I don’t even know which parts are still true.

  Tommy laughs. “Joe, you’re a handful, man.” He stands up from the table. “Brandy?” He points to Joe, then Alan, then me.

  “Please, yes, I’d love some.” I get up and follow him to the bar.

  Tommy lines up four snifters and pours two fingers in each.

  “Let’s talk outside.” He hands me a glass and gestures toward the terrace. He points me to the couch and then sits across from me. “Don’t worry about Joe,” he says. “He’s an asshole and a drunk, but he’s really, really good. No one would put up with him if he wasn’t. I think he hasn’t quite figured out your vision yet, but he’ll get there. We’ll make him get there. Promise.” He rests his hand on my knee and smiles. I think it’s supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but I just feel hyperaware of his fingers and maybe a little flushed, which is ridiculous because I’m not the sort of woman who gets flushed. “Just don’t let him push you around.”

  “Do I look pushed around?” God, I hope not. I take a sip of the brandy and try really hard not to look rattled. Or look at his hand, which is still just resting there on my leg.

  Tommy laughs and leans back in his chair, taking his hand with him. “I don’t know, honestly. You’re hard to read.”

  • • •

  In the morning, I walk out to the kitchen and find a full pot of coffee and a tray of sliced fruit. I pop a piece of pineapple in my mouth and take a cup of coffee out to the terrace. Tommy is already there. He’s sitting with his feet propped up on the table. My book is in his lap, and he’s writing in the margins. I feel strange standing there, out of place.

  He looks up. “Coffee’s good today,” he says. “Daniel took care of it. There should also be some breakfast in there if you’re hungry.”

  “No,” I say. “Just coffee’s good.”

  “So I’m making notes. I think if we look at these poems in terms of scenes, and then work from there. Who else is present for this scene and what will those characters say and do? Your monster is so fleshed out, so real, the rest of them need to come to life, give her some balance.”

  “Right.” I nod my head a little and stare at my coffee. The steam rises in a slow, looping swirl. “You know, I don’t know if I can do this,” I say finally.

  “Sure you can.”

  I set the coffee on the table and sit on the couch, cross-legged, holding both feet next to my hips, my fingers tight around my ankles. I look out over the water to the point where it merges with the horizon. When I finally turn back, Tommy is looking at me. He must have shaved this morning. They like to picture him with stubble, maybe to scuff up the pretty. That’s really the word for it. Aside from the hard line of his jaw, he has the face of a pretty girl—high cheekbones, wide green eyes. He lets the book fall closed in his lap. I just shake my head.

  “I know that you can.” He puts this emphasis on the word know. Like it makes a difference. Like a person can know anything. Like knowing helps.

  “I don’t have room in my head for the others. Hers is the only voice I hear.”

  “That’s bullshit.” He stands up and grabs his cup. “I need a refill. You?”

  “No,” I say. “Thanks.”

  He turns toward the house and then turns back. “I can hear them in there. Right in the book. There are snippets of them, moments. You just keep them on too tight a leash. You’ve got to let them loose. You’ve got to give in to the chaos.”

  I try to laugh. “I don’t like chaos.”

  “No shit?” He steps closer and leans down until we’re face-to-face. I feel myself shifting backwards, trying to make space. “Jesus. You are wound so tight you’re gonna break something. But you are not”—he raises his hand to point in the direction of the book where it sits on the table—“you are not gonna break this.” He stands up and walks into the kitchen, and I turn my head back out to face the ocean and close my eyes as tight as I can and hold my breath.

  • • •

  It’s getting later, and the sky is slowly darkening. It doesn’t gray like back in Nebraska, it just turns a deeper blue. It’s been a long day, with not much progress to show for it. See, I thought about saying to Tommy at one point, I can’t do it.

  Alan and Joe took off half an hour ago, headed out for burgers.

  “Thanks, no, I’m a vegetarian,” I said when Alan asked, and Joe just looked relieved.

  I snap my laptop closed and lean back into the couch.

  Tommy comes out to the terrace with a bottle and two short glasses. “Scotch,” he says, setting the bottle on the table. I wrinkle my nose, but he says, “You’ll like it.” He sits down on the couch next to me and pours a little in each glass, hands one to me. “To
finding chaos.”

  I roll my eyes, but I take a sip. “Jesus. This tastes like lighter fluid.”

  He laughs. “That’s a four-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch.”

  “It’s awful.”

  “Keep drinking. It’ll grow on you.”

  It does. By the time the sky’s completely dark, I feel like I could melt right into the couch. Tommy’s telling me a story about his favorite uncle. He’s telling it like there’s a lesson in it somewhere, but I’m having trouble concentrating.

  “Where’d you grow up?” I ask.

  “Texas. Didn’t I say that?”

  “Maybe.” I shrug. “Did you like it?”

  “No.” He shakes his head and takes a sip of the scotch. “No one likes their childhood. At least, no one likes their childhood and then ends up here.”

  “Really?” I turn to face him, adjusting my body so I’m sitting sideways. “Why not?”

  “Isn’t that what drives us? Getting away?”

  “Not me,” I say. “I loved my childhood.”

  “Tell me about it,” he says.

  “It was great.” I pull my right leg up and hug it into me, resting my chin on my knee. “My parents both taught at USF.”

  He makes a face because he’s obviously never heard of it.

  “University of San Francisco. I did my undergrad there. Free tuition.” I shrug. “Anyway, we lived a few blocks away. We didn’t really have a yard, so my dad would take us down to the campus on the weekends, and my sister and I would roller-skate. My dad would say, ‘Sunny, don’t dig up the grass with those skates.’”

  “Your dad called you Sonny? Like Sonny and Cher?”

  “Sunny, like sunshine.”

  “Right. Because of your sunny disposition,” he says.

  “My older sister was Boo. Pale. White-blond hair.”

  “Like a ghost?”

  “Like Boo Radley,” I say, and Tommy laughs.

  I’m smiling now. Just smiling. Then Tommy smiles, and then he leans forward and kisses me. It’s this soft, slow kiss, just his lips on my lips, and he’s got one finger under my chin tugging me closer and then his hands are on either side of my jaw, and he’s pulling me toward him. I scoot my left leg across his lap, and then I’m kneeling over him, and his head’s tipped all the way back. I’ve got his bottom lip in my teeth. He runs his hands up under my shirt and along my back all the way to my neck, and he presses his fingers into my hair and pulls his mouth away from mine, brushing his lips against my chin, and it feels like an electric shock, and I suck in my breath and scramble backwards as fast as I can and walk in the house.