cease and desist

by stephen david hurley

  “Just one more world,” he says. “Then I’m taking you to Eden.”

  “You can’t find God with a map,” I say.

  I let it sink in. With Rex you can never tell if a big line is sinking in. But I gently press my hand against his mouth when he dips in for another kiss. I catch sight of a strange man as I turn away from Rex’s lips. A spy?

  “Can you help me?” Rex’s eyes are pleading.

  I take his hand in mine. “What if I told you everything we need to win the favor of the gods is right here, right now, so long as we use the right words?” He pushes me away. He lowers his hand to my belt buckle and after a playful tug, fixes his fingers over the belt loop and pulls me into him.

  “Rex?” I trace my forefinger along his ribs, begin to strum. “You’ll never be able to stop time with just a kiss.” He follows my gaze, looks east toward the river. “Do you know where we’re really going?”

  “After I get us into the portal, I’m taking you to Eden.”

  “Eden doesn’t exist, Rex. Eden is just a place where the grown-ups will watch us make love with all the sick envy of spectators.” I can feel my legs resist the pressure of his body…I can feel the strength of these lines, the strength of my character. Rex isn’t too subtle—but if I can get him to step back and get what I’m trying to say, we just might have a scene here… I feel his hand on my blouse. I wrap my small fingers around his wrist.

  “Imagine a place you’ve never been, a town, on the other side of the globe, but one that looks so strangely familiar you can’t put your finger on where you’ve seen it before. You walk down the main street. You see a girl. You know immediately that she is the one but as she begins to tell you of her family you sense a problem. Maybe you remember a warning from your father that someday you’d encounter a sworn enemy of his and that you must not fall in love with her under any circumstances. Or maybe you find that she’s fallen in love with you and that she has a terrible sickness—a hunger you can’t handle—but no matter what it is you can’t love this girl, at least not completely. She’s from another world. She belongs to another church. But what you feel is love and you know in your heart that’s the most important thing. So you go on loving her, and now you have to face the facts.”

  I step back.

  “That’s what it feels like to fall in love with a boy who can never love you back.”

  We kiss. Rex lifts me up. It’s a nice kiss, I have to admit—a little wet with a hint of tongue. And then he pulls off my belt buckle and tears at my zipper. I don’t look at the camera. I have a feeling he’s just following instructions. I know the only thing Francis can probably see right now through that lens is Rex’s bulge and dollar signs as a huge audience back home is about to watch a sixteen-year-old ingénue be devoured by a hunk. I try to pull him out. I can feel those fingers clawing below my panty line and imagine a lost boy running through a burning forest. I don’t care what his instructions say; no one gropes Jeanne d’Arc without a fight.

  “Let go, Rex. You’re not the one for me.”

  “C’mon. You know you want it.” And then he presses his lips to my ear and whispers, “You’re not really a virgin. Everyone knows what you really are.”

  I slam my boot heel down on the arch of his foot.

  Thanks for remembering those motorcycle boots, Connie. I drive my elbow into his rib cage.

  “I’m a saint and you’re just a dumb boy. You don’t conquer me like a peak.” I kick him in the back of a knee and his legs buckle. His eyes grope for the light, for the camera, hoping to hear the cut. I punch him in the nose. I hear the crunch. Real blood sprays and Rex goes down with a satisfying thud.

  “Cut!”

  I step back. It feels as if no matter how many times Francis yells Cut, these scenes are going to play in my head until I stand up and face my past. I take a step toward Rex and point at his bloody nose.

  “Rex, I think you should know this. You look just like the boy who broke my Romeo’s heart.”

  Francis gives me a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction I’d have craved in the beginning, but I only nod on my way to my trailer. I’d broken Rex’s nose and he screams as the paramedics attend him, shouts that he’s going to sue.

  I take a victory lap around the set and wind up at Bradley’s trailer door. Bradley Mann—leader of the resistance movement, and he looks pretty irresistible to me. He’s now the last boy standing, at least until Francis brings in the Latin star he’s supposed to be negotiating with. He must’ve just come from a run around Central Park because his navy blue sweatshirt’s covered in sweat. He’s taller than Rex, a much better actor, too.

  “How’d it go with Rex?” He flashes that aw-shucks lopsided grin that had caught many of his opponents off guard. Brad knows how it went. I give him a hug. When I raise myself to give him a peck on the cheek, he turns and our lips meet. I feel a jolt travel from my thigh up to my heart.

  “Rex needed a lesson in how to treat a girl,” I say.

  Brad looks as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking. He gently touches a constellation of freckles on my neck and says, “Give me my Romeo and when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night.”

  It’s my favorite line, and after Bradley recites it I begin to cry; long, hard sobs with my head held down that tell him I’m not acting. He holds me.

  “You really needed that.”

  I’m sick of punching boys. I just want to fall in love.

  And then he kisses me. For a moment I’m lost. We’re standing on the steps of his trailer in the morning light. I fight the urge to press my face into his wet sweatshirt. Are we rehearsing? I’d never felt a kiss so genuine.

  I close my eyes…the memories of night, broken glass, and that look on my mother’s face as she turned the wheel.

  I pull back.

  “You kiss by the book,” I say. It’s another of my favorite lines. Is this what love feels like? I know at least I could trust Bradley. In our first scene he played a wounded boy in a future war I’d nursed back to health. He loved his mother who’d died of cancer, he confessed to me the day we met. There was something about that confession that troubled me but also assured me we’d be friends.

  Can I trust him? There’s a rumor going round that I just have to ask him about. Deep breath.

  “I guess our next scene together will be a do-or-die,” he says. I’m about to give him my cool may-the-odds-be-ever-in-your-favor line when I stop, because that cunning look in his eyes tells me he knows something. And then the words just fly right out of my mouth.

  “I heard Eve offered you a hand job for some information about your character.”

  He steps back and I can tell by the blush he’d almost been able to stifle that he’s still a virgin. And I know he can tell by the nanosecond I tripped over hand job that I’m a virgin; and together in that indescribable, magical pause that all actors try to create but rarely achieve, I feel we’re meant for each other.

  When I get home Nina’s waiting for me on the couch with a Cheshire cat smile, her sagging cheeks flushed with motherly pride. I take the article that’s sitting atop the latest revisions. It’s a clipping my publicist, Jenny, must’ve forwarded. Nina carefully monitors all those websites I swore off when I got the part. I just don’t have time to find my character and read all the gossip on which girl looks the most promising and which matchups will make the cover of the trades. This is an article from RHI— Rumor Has It, a gossip column with all the authority of Variety.

  Who’s Saint Francis Banking on in His Latest Blockbuster?

  Looks like Francis MacDonald has discovered another unknown in his latest super-secret venture: a wild time-traveling reality show. Cease de Menich, a young Juilliard grad is on the rise after beating out some luminaries on the A-list who auditioned—including Selena, whose handlers downgraded her audition to a go-see and said she wasn’t interested in the project. And RHI has learned
that a certain Latin heartthrob who needs a star-turn is currently in talks about slipping into the third and final spot of the last boys standing to mix things up a bit.

  But does our little saint have the chops to go the distance with a real man? “She’s becoming unglued,” one of the actors who played a love scene with her told RHI. “She has a real problem with anger.”

  I don’t have a problem with anger, Rex. I just didn’t like being raped.

  I lift up the article and look over to Nina and smile. I know what she’s going to say. This is the long awaited scene that every hopeful dreams about, but that Nina and I never got to feel. She looks so proud, and I feel as if that bolt of grief that has gripped my chest since I got the call might just come loose with the right combination of words.

  “He would’ve been so proud.”

  “My Romeo,” I reply as if on cue. I try to take another breath but my ribs are slowly tightening…I look desperately at the line between us—the secret between us, crouched like a wild animal that’s gotten loose. I grope for the lines that will get it back into its cage.

  Why not just say his name? The boy who taught me to nurture the secret I possess. The boy who molded me like clay, breathed the fire of life into me, and turned me from a stupid-looking wannabe no one wanted to look at into a girl no one could take their eyes off. My tutor. My bodyguard. My script reader. My best friend.

  Say his name, Cease.

  I can’t.

  Another excruciating beat.

  “Why couldn’t we have been a normal family? I mean, who the hell died and made us the Ovids of the East Side.”

  “The Moscowitz family called,” Nina says. “They want to know if you can join them for a matinee of Death Be Not Proud.”

  We both laugh, nervously, anxiously, desperately. It’s not great dialogue. It’s how we warm up for serious conversations in the House of de Menich. It’s the dialogue from our family tragicomedy. If I had to give our saga a title, I’d probably name it something Greek. Definitely pre-Christian, because it just doesn’t have the warm, fuzzy feel of a production that might be set in an old, rent-controlled apartment on East End and 89th Street, where Nina had lived until she moved down here to start over. Where I fought with my Romeo and then discovered his body hanging in the linen closet. Only he wasn’t some character I was rehearsing with. He was real and I loved him. And now he’s dead.

  “James. My brother. He would have been so proud.”

  Nina winces. I take a sharp breath. She’s never once said his name since we moved to Tudor City. James was the empty place mat I’d accidentally set at the table each night in the first weeks after the funeral; the character in the play everyone talks about who never appears. He was the door my Nina closed and tried to bolt after I got off the phone with my agent who told me I’d been chosen, the morning of my brother’s funeral, and Nina said, one door has closed and another has opened. We both turn and look to the door as if James still just might appear. And then I relax my shoulders and say something I should’ve said four months ago. “I couldn’t have made it this far without you, Nan.” But the strange stillness persists. We feel like two actors hopelessly caught on stage—waiting for a character we know is never going to appear. The grandfather clock beside the kitchen door ticks a few minutes before the hour.

  I know what I have to say.

  “Nina. I’m sorry…” I look down at her furry slippers and try to find a way to say what words always get wrong. How do you find a way to tell someone you love them but you hate some of the things they’ve done? I know part of being grown-up means knowing how to say you’re sorry and really mean it. I have a lot to be sorry for.

  “…about what I said yesterday. I don’t believe you really wanted a leading man. But I think you blame me for what happened to James.”

  “I don’t. I’m just afraid. You want to win. I can’t blame you for that. But you can’t see that the gift you have can be dangerous…” Nina cocks her head and looks confused. “You’re from a long line of strong girls,” she says as she fixes her gaze on the genealogies locked away safely behind a gold-mesh screen.

  “Yes. I’m the one chosen to be famous,” I say. Nina cringes. She doesn’t like the word, fame. I know this. But there’s a part of me that has to face the secrets in our family that Nina’s trying to keep in the closet. She thinks my mother went crazy trying to become famous. She knows fame played a part in my brother’s suicide. I need to tell her that fame isn’t going to destroy me, so long as I don’t take it too seriously. We’ve got secrets. All families do. But we aren’t content to keep our secrets hidden away. Maybe this is a good thing. Truth is, we’re a noble, theatrical family with a threadbare coat of arms that probably should’ve stayed in the Old World.

  I remember the first line of my brother’s last letter: Well, sis, if you’re gonna rattle a few chains, might as well wake up the whole crypt.

  And he did. At least, he woke me up. I can understand why my Nina’s afraid. She lost a sister. She lost a nephew. She can’t afford to lose anyone else to some dark, family curse. Tonight she’s probably going to see what I did to Rex on one of the stations that stream the latest scenes, and then I’m going to get more hand-wringing and that I’m-becoming-too-much-like-a-boy monologue. So I’ve got to head her off at the pass.

  “Rex is history, Nina. He tried to take advantage of me and no one does that to a virgin saint.” Of course it was more than that, and I think she knows it. She gives me a wry smile. A smile that tells me I’ve got something my bloodline didn’t have—that secret that isn’t automatically bequeathed upon the rich and the beautiful.

  Another long beat.

  “Nina? What did you mean yesterday when you said we had to talk about my character?” I raise my hands with my palms upturned. “How does Francis know all this stuff about us? I know I signed a bunch of papers giving him the right to look into my past, but there’s just no way he could’ve…”

  Nina looks over to the big, oak dining room table, the empty seat where my brother used to sit. I look at the brass lock on the bookcase that holds our history.

  “I don’t think either of us told anyone,” she repeats. She folds her arms across her chest and holds a deep breath. She does this when she’s digging for the right words. “Have you noticed that the rules of this reality show have changed since they started shooting?” Nina pulls her chair closer to mine and makes bunny ears when she says “reality show.”

  I nod, slowly. At first I think Nina’s trying to change the subject. This show is about a bunch of teenagers who become a bunch of historic characters trying to save the world—the rules were simple in the beginning; girls fought girls, boys fought boys. The last couple fall in love and get married. It’s not history. It’s Hollywood.

  But now things are getting weird, or at least confusing. I was too lost in that just-be-the-last-girl-standing routine to see what Nina’s trying to get me to see: Francis is trying to get us to share some of our darkest secrets…about love, sex, violence. I feel a jolt through my chest. Nina isn’t trying to change the subject. My personal life has become the subject. Was I chosen because the House of de Menich is chock-full of dark secrets?

  “He’s a strange man…this Francis,” she says. “But something about him troubled me from the start.” She studies the long shadows across the dining room table. She taps her long fingers against her knee. “Why would an artistic genius who won a Golden Boy for a brilliant film about war in the Middle East, stoop to do some reality-drama?”

  “Because he wants to make a lot of money?”

  Nina nods, approvingly. We in the House of de Menich are nothing if not practical. “Yes. But it’s more than that. He’s the kind of visionary who thinks he can reinvent the genre.” And then she gives me that grave, solemn look. “He’s up to something, my precious Maid.” She turns and looks to the computer on her roll-top desk; it has an eerie glow against the windows, like votive candles in a darkened church.

  “Th
e numbers are getting so strange,” she muses.

  The numbers are a breakdown on the demographics of all the viewers who watch the trailers of selected scenes played on the internet. I don’t know if Francis is an auteur or an imbecile, but he sure knows how to generate publicity.

  “It’s not just kids watching you anymore. Thirteen percent who watched last night were over twenty years old. Tell me, my precious, what that comes to if the total was five million, three hundred thousand?”

  I close my eyes, see a collection of numbers flowing across a screen. I let out a sigh of relief. My Nina isn’t trying to stress me out—although being watching by millions of people can stress anyone out. Numbers are my sanctuary, my safety net. I’m good with numbers, most child actors are. They’re precise and have relationships most people miss.

  “Six hundred and eighty-nine thousand.”

  She smiles. Doing the numbers on the viewers with Nina was routine, and I imagine I like it the way other kids like playing video games, but I wonder if the scene of me smashing the hunk’s nose will be played as a teaser on WebTV tonight.

  She takes another long, foreboding breath. “The social worker called today.”

  It sounds like a line from the wrong family drama. There’d actually been two social workers. The first had visited me when I woke up in the hospital after the car accident in California. The second had come out to the cottage Nina had rented for us in Narragansett; Hispanic, tight bun, metal clipboard—talked about how hard it must have been to lose my mother. How wonderful my brother was being about helping me get well.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing. Really. She just wanted to see how you were getting along.” This is Nina-speak for something’s wrong. “We think maybe you should take a break.” Nina fixes her eyes on the furry slippers I bought her for Christmas.

  Take a break? What happened to being the last girl standing? What happened to all those promises I made as I stood over my brother’s grave?