cease and desist

by stephen david hurley

  “That’s a pretty stupid come-on line, Craig. You use that line on The Illegals, just to pick up girls like me?” Craig raises his hands in surrender.

  “Cease, we’re both from the same place, the other side of the tracks. I know why you’re so upset now.”

  “No, you don’t, Craig. Some detective scared my Aunt Nina and I’m off the show. So, I guess the little games Francis has been playing backfired, because he won’t get to see me have sex for the first time or have a meltdown about my past.” I’m suddenly fed up with all guys and how they work. “Goodbye, Craig. You definitely have the chops to make a crossover.” I head for the door and, with my hand on the knob, I say, “But with all the shit white people pull, why do you want to cross over into our world, anyway?”

  I have the door halfway open when he says, “Oh, Cease, that girl your social worker is worried about—the one your brother brought home, who everyone thought you murdered—my PI found her. She’s alive and well and finishing her senior year at a high school upstate.”

  Still inside, I close the door; but turning around feels impossible, like I’ve fallen into a vat of glue. I’m going down. And then Craig’s strong arms are pulling me in, turning me to face him. Those gorgeous eyes are looking down at me, assuring me. He’s a strange Aztec god, chiseled, street-smart, filled with compassion.

  “If Francis tries to fuck with you again, I’ll sic my lawyers on him and he’ll be directing dog-food commercials for the rest of his life.”

  My knees go limp. My head swims. A man has saved my life. He’s taken a risk with an unknown and that must mean only one thing…

  Oh, please, just take me away. I don’t need to be the last girl standing. Let’s just ride off into the sunset.

  “You’re sure? You’re not trying to…”

  “My PI is gonna send all the papers home for your aunt to inspect. Her real name is Chandra. Chandra Michaels. We’ve got her Social, and the address in Manhattan matches her father’s; he’s the one who reported her missing.”

  “Francis got him to do it?” I offer.

  “Probably.”

  I take another step to Craig. He loves me. He’s a man who needs to cross over, and I’m a girl who needs…I’m falling, not the way an actor fakes it; I’m going down. He catches me, pulls me up, our lips meet.

  “Why are you doing this for me? You could’ve used her to mind-fuck me, you could’ve done what everyone else is trying to do.”

  “You can help me, too,” he whispers. “Making a successful crossover is a lot harder than it sounds. I need someone I can trust—someone who can adapt quickly, because I feel a big plot shift coming on.”

  “Of course you do, Craig.” I study his face. The laugh-lines around his eyes are distinguished, alluring in the same way kissing him was. But Hollywood might not think so.

  But to hell with Hollywood. To hell with Eve’s Valkyrie chest. You saved me and now I’ve got your back. I’ve got your back for life. I can tell by the careful way you’re choosing you’re words what you’re afraid of. A perfect love scene with the right girl would save you. And I’m gonna be that lover. Isn’t that what lovers do? Watch each other’s back?

  “You need me, Craig.” He turns his head to the flat screen.

  Is he searching for the remote? Why does he keep looking at that thing? Is it a challenge? Does he want me to take off my top? I will. This man has saved my life and together we’re going to take on Francis, Hollywood, the whole East Coast…the universe, because I love you…I love you…

  “What?” I ask. “I’m sorry. What were you saying? Yes. I—”

  “Trust. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes. It’s about…trust.” I study his lips and those almond-shaped green eyes.

  My head’s swimming through a tranquil sea of trust…my lips brush that silken triangle patch peeking out of the V-neck sweater. Did I put on my black bra this morning? Wasn’t I just in a scene with Susan? Didn’t she just call me…

  As I turn my head, our lips meet; I give a wistful look to the couch in front of the flat-screen. I’m pulling off the preppie sweater. I’m tearing off my plain brown cotton shirt. He kisses my cheekbone. I brush off Mollie’s makeup with my thumb. I feel his thumb and forefinger against my belt loop, unbuckling, as if with just the right turn of his perfect hands the bolt of grief just might come loose. He caresses the scapular between his thumb and forefinger.

  The vast promise of a morning on the beach…a taste: my favorite flavor of ice cream, jasmine chocolate heath bar…a vision of a man crossing over a chasm…

  “Can you take this off?”

  “What? No. I feel naked without it.” It’s then I look down and realize I am naked. Except for my panties I’ve got nothing on. Craig hadn’t torn off my jeans the way Rex tried to; his eyes, those almond-shaped, emerald-green eyes had put me in a trance. His thumb gently traces the rim of my aureole and I see the vast expanse of beach again, as I had with our first kiss—pinkness of morning, and the promise of a whole new life with a man I could trust. This is what it feels like to become a woman. His lips gently brush mine; his fingers move up my thigh.

  “Let’s lie on the couch,” I offer.

  “No.”

  Why does he keep positioning me in front of the flat screen? There’s nothing on. The lights grow brighter. This must be what love feels like. No. The lights really are getting brighter, and Craig isn’t the one who’s doing it.

  I pull back and look around. The room’s empty. Are we back on the set? Maybe one of the crew is adjusting the lights. Craig’s tongue is in my mouth. My head’s swimming—no, not swimming; I feel like I’m drowning and his strong arms are rescuing me.

  Slow down, Cease. He’s a boy, not your dinner…he’s not a vampire, but not a boy, either.

  With each thrust of his tongue his pecs flex against my breasts…harder, if only he can reach the bolt of grief and I can be free of my past…This is what real love feels like. This is what it feels like to become a woman. I feel a burning in my side and pull back.

  “What are we doing, Craig?”

  “You need to trust me,” he says. He pulls me in.

  “No. Are we really ready to do this?” I look down at my feet. “Where’s my shirt?” I know I put it on the couch…I look down and it’s missing. I see a sleeve of the sweater beneath the couch where it must’ve fallen.

  He pulls me back in. “I love you.”

  I shake my head, slowly. “Yes, Craig. I’m feeling something with you. It could be love, but I need to…” I put the sweater on, walk to the door, have my hand on the knob, turn.

  “I understand,” Craig says, accusingly. “The only love you understand is the kind of love you got from your brother.”

  Another step. It feels as if I’ve fallen off a stage, or I’m being pushed off a stage, and no one pushes Cease de Menich off the stage. I slam the door, spin around to face him.

  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Craig opens his mouth but before he can speak, I say, “The only kind of love you know how to play you learned on television.” I take another step toward him. “Maybe you need a lesson from a virgin.” Another step. “A white virgin.” I raise my lips up for a kiss, and when he drops his head I slap him across the mouth.

  “Suck on that, Mister Heartthrob.”

  “Now you’re making some real choices, white girl.” He grabs me by the shoulders. I rake my nails across his chest, tear through his shirt.

  He presses his lips against my ear. “But what if we raised the stakes even higher?” he says.

  I tilt my head back, expecting a kiss. He shakes me, savagely.

  “What if I were your brother?” I try to pull away, but his arms are around me. “What if we’d been through hell as children? What if we decided the world was a scary place and we couldn’t trust anyone but each other, couldn’t love anyone but each other? But I’m your brother and can’t love you like that, so I make up a game. I decide the only way we can continue like this wo
uld be for us to pretend we are totally different people, characters up on the stage, playing a role. Only we get so into our roles that we don’t want to leave the stage, we start to get upset when we have to go back into the real world.”

  “It sounds like I’ve met my match.”

  I tear off his shirt, tug at his belt buckle, and we go down in a tumble on the couch.

  Yousef’s gold tooth flashes in the rearview mirror. I’m singing a chorus from New York, New York…

  The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down.

  Thebes is history, a sick diseased place, like all the crooked lines of our bloodline my brother tried to make straight.

  “Aren’t we headed crosstown?” I ask. I know Nina will be waiting for me at the door, pulling the belt of her robe in her worried-sick way. What’s she gonna say when I tell her what Craig told me? When she finds out that girl is alive and well? We’ll be free of the shame. I’ll make some hot chocolate. We’ll have brownies and strategize how I’m going to beat Stephanie. I’m on a cloud…standing on the vast expanse of beach…I’m in love. A man’s in love with me and soon I’ll be a woman. I’m not floating on a cloud, but it sure feels like my Bean boots have fluffy soles.

  I race past the doorman. I can’t wait to see my Nina’s face when I give her the news.

  “The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down,” I sing, as I open the door and don’t see Nina until I walk into the living room, and then I see Esme first. Nina rises from the swivel wooden chair beside the roll-top desk. She’s wearing a black dress that is vaguely familiar. Esme, the social worker, is sitting in my chair at the dining room table, her metal clipboard on my place mat. Esme gives me this infantile wave like she’s some groupie who’s stolen backstage and invaded my dressing room. I give Aunt Nina a look of betrayal. And then I hear a cough, rising from the end of the table where my brother used to sit. It’s the detective in his Burberry knockoff trench coat.

  “What the hell—Aunt Nina?”

  “These people are here to help you, Cease.” It comes out like a couple of guards have arrived to take me back to a loony bin.

  “Well,” I say. “I’m glad you’re here. Welcome to the house of de Menich. Sorry. Is this a who-done-it? I’ve stumbled into the wrong family drama?” Esme rises, with another phony smile. The detective pretends to be examining scribbles on a pad.

  “It was the butler with the candlestick in the bedroom,” I laugh. Nina grunts. The detective looks at me, accusingly. Esme looks down to her cheap, suede boots. “Well, I’ve got some good news, so I’m actually glad you stopped by. The girl you think I murdered is alive and well and living in Westchester. That means her father filed a false police report.” I walk up to the detective. “Tell me—sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  He stands. “My name’s Detective Brown.”

  “Well, Mister Detective Brown, how does it feel to be played by Hollywood? Francis, our director, probably paid off the father of that girl to file a false police report. Isn’t that a crime or something?”

  “Yes, I believe it is…I think it would be best for me to wait…” he walks past me and looks down the hall… “outside.”

  “Didn’t anyone hear what I just said?” I shout.

  Detective Brown doesn’t stop. Nina picks up a folder and says, “I’ll be in my room.” I recognize the dress now. She wore it at my brother’s funeral, and she’s wearing those ancient cracked-leather shoes that make her look like a French schoolmarm.

  “Nina? Didn’t you hear what I said? Lighten up. I’m in love…” But she’s gone.

  “Why don’t you come over and have a seat,” Esme says.

  “You’re in my seat.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I pull up the chair Nina usually sits in.

  Esmeralda introduces herself, again in that phony way adults do before they interrogate a child.

  “You can call me Esme; all my friends do.” She’s got a big smile and a steady gaze, the same overly caring look the first social worker had after I woke up in the hospital in California. “I just wanted to check in with you and see how you’re getting along.” She opens her metal clipboard. I feel a lump in my throat. She riffles through papers on her lap and I think of Jeanne’s interrogators—all the tricks they used while they questioned the humble maid about the source of her power.

  “I’m so sorry about what happened to your brother.”

  I nod. “Is that what you were talking to Francis about?”

  Esme just rests her hands on her thighs in a disarming way. “Yes. Francis and I have been working together to help understand how you’ve been feeling since your brother died.”

  “You want to know what happened to that girl we had over, don’t you?”

  “Well—uh…no, Cease. This girl you’re talking about is not why I’ve come.”

  I steal a glance at her clipboard as Esme steals a glance at the photo of Nina and James I keep on the roll-top desk.

  “Cease,” Esme pronounces. “This girl is not the reason I stopped—”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Cease. Let’s just take a big breath together, OK? I’m here to talk to you about James, your brother. I’m sorry—”

  “Why are you talking about my brother?”

  “I understand you were close.”

  “So what?” I jerk my head back and my swollen cheek stings. “The first social worker said that was normal, given the situation.”

  “Given the situation,” Esme repeats, and takes another big breath. “Yes. I understand there was a question of competency regarding your mother.”

  Competency? She raped my brother and tried to kill me…what was the question?

  Esme smiles. “Cease, have you ever just stopped and acknowledged that smart as you are and strong as you are, you just can’t take this kind of heartache alone?”

  “I have my Nina,” I say, trying to sound confident.

  “Well, you can always come and talk to me. Detective Brown is here because he has some questions about the statements you gave the coroner after you found James in the closet, when you lived uptown.” There’s a spot on the floor where the carpet meets the hardwood beside the coffee table. I fix my gaze on it—actually, I grab it with my eyes as if it’s a rope tied to a tree on the edge of a cliff I’m hanging off from.

  “So what? You work for the police, Miss Esme?”

  “No. If talking about Detective Brown makes you feel uneasy, I’ll stop. We’re only interested in what you might be feeling right now.”

  What I’m feeling?…now? Or what happened between James and me that night…

  “Thank you.” The spot on the floor is slipping from my gaze as I try to focus on what Esme’s trying to tell me.

  “Cease. I know you’re under a lot of pressure with this show you’ve been cast in. Your Aunt Nina has her concerns, and I have mine. We—”

  “If my aunt has concerns, Miss Esme, she’ll talk to me,” I snap. My head is aching.

  Is this real? Where was I?…In love, remember? Was what I did with Craig real? Were we rehearsing?

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and mean it. “I’m just tired. I’m under pressure. But I made a promise to my brother and I’m not going to quit.”

  “I understand.” It comes out sympathetic. My shoulders relax. I wish Craig was behind me gently kneading my shoulders the way he did back in that…

  Are we just rehearsing now? Is Esme an actor? Did Francis hire her?

  Esme’s talking, but through my headache she sounds like a chicken underwater.

  “…there’s just one other thing we need to discuss. It’s probably nothing,” she says in a disarmingly phony way. “But I happened to notice some of the information that the social worker from California sent to me…” She rummages through a metal case filled with papers. “… here it is, the date of birth on the admission form from your hospital stay…and here, the application you completed after getting this part… they dif
fer…” She holds up the paperwork. MacDonald Productions. Cease de Menich DOB: 3/18/01. Esme takes her pen and looks down at a yellow legal pad. “When is your date of birth?”

  “January 9th.”

  “This says March 18th. Is that your signature?”

  I nod.

  “Any idea why you might’ve put that date?” It’s not really a question, more like a statement, and then Esme takes a manila envelope from the bottom of her metal case. She places it on her lap. Her thumb and forefinger nervously press the metal clasp as her face changes, from hopeful to fearful.

  “That was my brother’s date of birth,” I say. It comes out so monotone it sounds like my tablet is talking, telling me the date or reminding me about a call. Should I tell Esme it was an accident? Should I give her some of the gung-ho Cinderella story I gave to the co-executive producer who interrogated me before my final callback? Tell her that I made a promise to my brother before he died, a promise that I’d use everything he taught me to be the last girl standing—all those Hollywood promises a wannabe gives—all the lies and crap that people say when they run from the truth?

  “I took my brother’s birth date because it made me feel closer to him—it reminded me of the promises I made on the last night of his life.” It comes out less phony than what I’d told others, but I can tell by the way Esme raises her pen and holds it over the legal pad that she’s not really buying.

  “What kind of promise was that?” It’s then I know what the manila envelope contains. My brother’s autopsy. It clearly shows his date of birth. It also contains photographs the coroner took of the bruises on his face and neck, injuries that could not have been sustained from the rope he put around his neck.

  When was the last time you saw it, Cease? Four and a half months ago that morning when you found him in the closet? An hour ago? Wake up, Cease. All that drama an hour ago was real…or all that pain months ago was…what? The photos Esme’s itching to show you include the photo Francis placed not so nonchalantly on the coffee table before your scene with Great Cate.

  “You’re getting played, Esme. The same way the detective is getting played.”