cease and desist

by stephen david hurley

  “And that’s when he started talking about God and Jesus,” I say accusingly, and want to shout at Nina because she’d seen what happened to him, too. “He ditched all his pink-yellow-and-green preppie wear and put on that brown sackcloth he found outside some church on 57th Street. He carried that book about the pilgrim who begs for alms and prays all the time. He was supposed to be at the therapist, but I followed him, watched him dart through traffic on the West Side like a stray dog, and then he’d wander the streets collecting junk from the gutter and bringing it home, arranging it on his bed as if he was trying to divine the future from matchbooks, playbills, and used condoms…”

  I shake my head. “We’re not the Glass family, Nina.” I feel the words come out as if I’m slowly releasing the pressure of a horribly overinflated thing, a balloon I’d hoped would burst on its own. “Unlike all the scenes we rehearsed, all the characters we became, James couldn’t accept that at the end of the day we had to go back to being who we really were…and when all the characters we played finally couldn’t cover his hurt, he turned to Franny and Zooey Glass, our last line of defense against real life. James kept insisting they were real people, not some characters like all the other characters we’d played.”

  “Your ancestors were real,” The de Meniches were real and normal and loving They played the game—some became larger than life, like the character you’re trying to become—some lead normal lives, like the de Meniches. But they all loved in the same way. That’s what James was really trying to show you on the last night of his life.” Another tear descends the beautiful cheekbone of my Nina’s tired face. Her eyes are expectant. I feel as if I’m bathed in the light I saw as I began my free-fall from the crane. I bury my head in her hands and cry.

  I feel the screw come loose on the bolt of grief.

  “Yes. That’s a good speech, Nina. But how the hell am I going to play that—”

  “What did you wear?” Nina asks mischievously, before I can finish. She knows we need a break…

  “What?”

  “What did you wear to the Met that night you pranked the Van der Ebbs?”

  “That little black dress you got me for the opening of Vampire Grrls.”

  “What about the purse?”

  “It was the Coach bag James got me after my rave in Juliet,” I say in my best Upper East Side la-di-da voice. “I’d be naked without it. Nina, you should’ve seen the way he played Phil that night. And you would’ve sworn I was a rich princess.”

  She looks back to her book on Saint Paul and says, “We’re a noble, theatrical family.”

  “Good night, Nina. I have to say goodbye to one of my online friends.”

  “Let’s see how you feel in the morning, my humble maid.” She smiles, demurely; her voice fades, succumbing to the hurt and the fear she’s managed to hide for so long. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  But we both know I’ve made up my mind. It’s not Francis and his sick followers. It’s not what Eve and Stephanie stand for. If I get to give a speech tomorrow, I won’t say it’s because of everything James did to help me. But there is one person from my past who refuses to go away.

  Her face, turning the wheel, those lips sealing my fate.

  Jeanne,

  How did you look? Were you beautiful? I always imagined that you were.

  C,

  I wasn’t much to look at, Cease. I feel complimented that you were chosen to play me. The hardest part about being a young person in your age is that you’ve got to struggle with appearance. How do I look? How am I supposed to look? I only saw myself two times in my short life. Once, when I gazed in the pond beside the faerie tree—and the last day of my life, as I peered into the water the Benedictine used in my final confession. I had a glow. I was ready for my auto-da-fe. I was ready to meet that thing you call fate. And that brings us to something painful we have to discuss.

  You feel guilty about what you said to James on that last night, and some of the things you did. You were chosen to share these things with other young people who are hurting, who don’t know what real love feels like. But I have to warn you—no saint can save you from the choices you make tomorrow. The weapons will be real, and you know already how Stephanie and Eve intend to play things out. Why not just write a long email to all your fans and tell them that you’ve quit?

  J,

  You could’ve done the same thing. I read all about how you’d signed the document—that abjuration—and were ready to walk away a free girl. And then you changed your mind…you refused to put on that peasant dress the nuns had waiting for you back in your cell.

  Why?

  C,

  Something happened. Yes, I got pissed off, the kind of righteous anger you’ve shown, too. I didn’t want to put on that dress. It sounds like such a trivial choice not to go back and dress like a little girl, but yes, I should’ve given some great dramatic speech about the horrible injustices of my world, the kind of speech you thought you had to give as you tried to play me, as you try to become me.

  One moment I’m nodding my head contritely, a little girl crying in front of a bunch of grown men. They’d been torturing me for weeks, doing sick things to force a confession, and I was broken, but then I looked at Nicolas Midy, the chief interrogator, as he told me all I had to do was go back to my cell and change into a dress…and something inside me snapped. I’m not going to let this old man tell me how to dress. I know it doesn’t sound like the kind of thought a future saint would think, but it’s the truth.

  Jeanne,

  Did you ever love someone the way I loved James? Did you ever lose someone who was your teacher, and your best friend? How do you know what love really feels like?

  C,

  The only way I can answer that is to get you to see what Claude was trying to get you to see when he showed you those stars on the wall. Claude’s right when he said they all lost someone close to them. Claude knows what the star power you’ve got looks like, but he doesn’t know where it comes from; and neither do you, or at least if you do know you’re still afraid to admit it. When you lost your brother James, what happened to you?

  J,

  I got tough. I got mean. The ingénue in me died.

  C,

  Yes, you crossed a line into what’s always been considered a man’s turf. It made you stand out. You made choices, people took notice. Now, close your eyes, look up to the stars on the trailer wall and see the others. Hepburn became Hepburn when she opened the closet door and found her young brother hanging by a bedsheet. But the leading men changed, too. They took risks, allowed themselves to become vulnerable, to become a little more feminine. Part of becoming a star comes when you realize the line between boy and girl, between man and woman, is drawn by people who’ll never get what it means to be whole.

  J,

  Is he there with you? Can you see him? Please tell me.

  C,

  I can’t answer that. Your brother loved you and he forgave you long ago. Close your eyes and see the magical line connecting all those names…feel the current it carries from one generation to the next, and believe it comes from only one source. A source that has no lines dividing people by sex…the men and women with your gift are Christians, Muslims, Jews—and whatever else is out there these days. But they all have one thing in common. They know they can’t fully own the gift they’ve been given. Nina was right when she said many are called but few are chosen…the ones who survive accept they’re just channels for a power that comes from a place you can only revere.

  The gift you’ve got can’t be kept to yourself, and that’s what fame does to a lot of people. They get addicted—like all those people who’ll be watching tomorrow. Real love isn’t something you can keep to yourself.

  Jeanne,

  Will you be watching me tomorrow?

  Cease,

  Yes, my humble maid. Look closely. I’ll be in the details. They’re coming for you, Cease. Be mindful. There will be no second cha
nces after the lights go green.

  Jeanne d’Arc.

  My tablet rings. They are coming. I get out of Nina’s bed and walk to my room. I collect the items I’m allowed to take onto the set for the final round. Nina gets up, puts on her bathrobe, heads down to the kitchen, fishes for the Le Creuset egg poacher in the drawers beneath the sink, and then takes a seat on her couch. Her eyes have a vacant, mirthless stare as I turn from my duffel bag and face her.

  We still have unfinished business.

  I pick up the genealogy I kept under my pillow last night—throw it down at the glass coffee table and hear the crack. Nina gasps at the splinter I’ve made. I push her hand away as she tries to pick it up.

  “We’re real people, Nina. Not some fucked-up characters in a play. We aren’t the only fame-hungry wannabes to stumble upon the secret of getting noticed. I remember the look on my mother’s face as she turned the wheel and tried to kill us both. And I remember the name she called my brother. She called him her little man. That’s what she used to say when I peeked through the keyhole and saw her massage that wound in his thigh. Her little man, as she grabbed for his…”

  I snarl, “Your sister would whisper in my brother’s ear. And then she’d caress that wound in his thigh she’d made and call him her little man.”

  Nina takes her forehead in her hands and looks down at the coffee table. Her face is puffing out like one of those puffy fish you see in an aquarium—the kind that know how to protect themselves with those sharp claws on their puffed-out faces, only Nina doesn’t have the thick skin or the claws I learned to wear early on in this business.

  “Enough,” she shouts.

  What just happened? It felt so real. Not some speech, but words that didn’t come from any place other than my heart. Nina looks to the cloister windows. I look to the silver monolith. It feels like we’ve just watched a horrible storm destroy a placid spring morning. But as quickly as it erupted, it disappears.

  Nina rubs her eyes. She speaks calmly as if she expects me to speak about her sister, as if she’s Esme but with a helluva lot more love. “James was trying to tell you that if you didn’t find the kind of love the strong girls in your bloodline all shared, that you’d become just like your mother.”

  My throat tightens, as if I’m trying to choke on what I know is true. Nina looks at her feet, her hands. I feel my ribs expand.

  “Did James find that in here?” I hold up the genealogy.

  “No, child. That’s common knowledge that any psychologist would tell you. Children who are abused often become abusers.”

  “But I wasn’t abused,” I say stoically.

  “Yes, you were,” she insists. “The person who was supposed to love you tried to kill you. You lost your best friend in the world, the boy who’d saved your life and taught you the secrets to playing a real superhero. That’s abuse.”

  I feel my legs go limp. My head spins as it did in that room when I saw the photographs of my dead brother. I can’t shake off the angry speech I just gave. Is this what it feels like to be real and normal—at least, as normal as a family can feel that finally lets go of all the make-believe?

  “Nina? I—”

  “Don’t,” she says, and I expect a mean face, a guilt-filled lecture. But I can tell from that smile that emerges, like the sun after a terrible storm, that she feels it too. We both search the coffee table for a script and take a deeper breath when we see there is no script. After a pause that feels like an eternity, she raises her hand.

  “Now you’re ready. It’s time to become Jeanne.”

  I pack the last of my things.

  The countdown clock says, four hours until we go live. The entourage arrives at our door with all the preeminent flourish of the press taking their seat on an opening night; a camera man, two security guards who search my bag and confiscate my electronics, and Yousef standing behind the throng like a wannabe waiting for a shot at a tough-guy role.

  “Wait,” I tell the men. “I have to say goodbye to my Nina.” I close the door. I feel eggshells beneath my Uggs as her bittersweet smile rises victorious through a world of hurt on her face. The bolt of grief tightens. A big cry would help, but I’ve got to save those tears for my climax, my auto-da-fe.

  “Je vous aime,” my Nina says. She cocks her head. “Break a leg.” No matter what secret location I’m heading to, Nina will be there, peering out from behind the rearranged furniture of the pantry—that summer cottage where I discovered my gift—shouting the lines I’d missed—all those hugs and the real tears she wiped away so I could get a shot at being a girl who needs to share her gift with the world. That summer cottage where my brother and I played like two glorious nymphs just waiting to be discovered. I wish we’d never left that place, but as I hug my Nina I know this is what my brother James and my character Jeanne have prepared me for.

  “I can’t afford to lose you, my princess.”

  “You won’t,” I say. “By this time tomorrow we’ll be plotting our vacation to the Cort de Sur—or at least pigging out in that new French bistro in Chelsea.” She holds me tightly against her spongy breasts and I remember how Craig held me during our improvisation—desperately, as if he, too, had a lot to hide. Maybe our imperfect histories will make us the perfect match.

  “Remember, whatever Francis has in store for you, Jeanne will be there to protect you.” She goes to her desk, picks up the mahogany jewelry box that she usually keeps beside her bed. She takes out a small brass ring. We both hold our breath as she places it on my left index finger. It fits.

  “This will keep you safe. I’ll tell you its provenance when you return.”

  As I close the apartment door behind me and walk down the hall, the man with the clipboard says, “Fifteen million.”

  “What?”

  “You wanted to know the numbers on who’ll be watching tonight,” he says, trying to scare me.

  But I stare him down and say, “That’s good—can’t wait to share the fireworks. After all, I’ll be riding with a saint.”

  Sky-lights crisscross the heavens over the Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens. Yousef pulls up beside a TV van with a pole sticking up from its roof wrapped with a cable that looks like a yellow eel. The man who searched my bag escorts me to a trailer where Susan and Cate are already putting on their uniforms; white Mylar jumpsuits—created by Claude, with gold buttons and epaulets, and hiking boots with metal cleats that will help us maneuver on the ice. My fingers desperately search the pockets of my tunic, hoping Claude might have left me another clue on how to survive. But they’re empty.

  “Francis chose white so the whole world will see how real all the blood looks,” Susan says, and flashes a wild look at me. She arches her back. Her eyes have a maniacal glare.

  Welcome to live theater, Eve. Hope you don’t miss any cues.

  She’s Susan, not Eve. She’s not a real person. Just a character who’s going to try and kill me in a few minutes.

  “Bradley was a real mouthful last night,” she says, and puckers her lips the same way she did outside the trailer in the Meadowlands.

  “What? You couldn’t settle for a hand job?” I reply, coolly.

  “Why waste such a nice package?” She thrusts her cannonballs through the Mylar suit. “I’m gonna really enjoy fucking Craig after I finish you off, Little Miss Virgin.”

  Why don’t you just shut your slut mouth, Eve…you would’ve said that yesterday, Cease. But you’re not the same girl who punched her way across battlefields. We’re professionals. Sure, we’re professionals. Professionals who are going to try to kill each other when the lights go green…but it’s more than that. I don’t hate Eve anymore. I just feel sorry for her. I can see that I was becoming her, and I don’t want to be that anymore.

  A dresser I’ve never seen before inspects each of our outfits. We’re allowed five minutes for makeup, a tall girl who’s replaced Mollie informs us. Susan had her makeup done at home. Cate asks for a little base. I do the same. I carefully tuck my
scapular into the folds of my suit. Cate stands behind me in the mirror looking like she wants to talk. Does she want to bargain? Or maybe she wants me to watch her transform. A tingling travels up my arm as I gently twirl the ring Nina gave me. It’s real. Jeanne had worn it. I’d read of its provenance. The girl who replaced Mollie announces the time for makeup and costume has ended.

  We’re escorted from the trailer through a dark tunnel made of plywood into a great hangar of a soundstage that’s been converted into a giant igloo. Curved ice walls rise fifty feet. Giant fans spew flurries beside the locked and bolted studio doors. Men in gray jumpsuits carefully sweep down the ice on each of the ovals we’ll be competing on. What has Francis promised the world about the fates of the last girls standing? A Jumbotron screen is anchored beneath a glass office that hovers on a hydraulic lift about thirty feet above the set. The numbers flashing look like some unreal equation—one of those sequences that starts out simple and then gets exponential and grows into a figure that can’t possibly be correct.

  Only viruses can spread that fast. Viruses and the quest for fame…

  Francis stands between two men dressed in security-guard uniforms. I know as soon as he begins talking that Claude was right. There won’t be any dramatic scenes staged today, just blood and sex and whatever else it takes to be the last girl standing. Francis looks exhausted, but with a smile of sick satisfaction pasted on his face like the lips of a joker. It tells me those numbers are real and he’s about to make history. Behind him is a giant plastic picnic table filled with medieval weapons we’ve used whenever we jump back in time to the 15th century.