Brilliant

by Lark O'Neal

  I swallow the thick lump in my throat as I imagine Kaleb looking at me during the party scene while I’m wearing this blouse. He was so cold in the car. But that’s why it’s acting, right? “I know.”

  “Don’t worry. It’s going to be amazing. And we actually will cover your nips with these.” She holds up little pasties the color of skin. Her smile tilts sideways. “Can’t have her looking like a slut. She is a virgin, after all.”

  I grin back.

  “You’re also doing the pre-dressing scene with Grant today. Ready for that?”

  It gives me something to think about besides Kaleb. A ripple of nerves goes over me, but I’ve been preparing for awhile. I met with Grant yesterday to go over the choreography and he promised to make it as painless as possible. In the scene, the guardian Grant examines the virgin Jules before she goes out to the party. He makes her strip naked, then she stands there while he walks around her. He puts her in a pair of high-heeled shoes and asks her bodyguard to come in. And Jules rebels, covers herself. They are friends and she’s embarrassed.

  The guardian grabs her by the hair and puts his hand on her breasts. “You will do exactly as I say,” and then kisses her. It’s the naked kiss in high heels that’s kind of freaking me out.

  Not to mention being naked in front of people I don’t know.

  But it’s real stuff, this book. I have started to believe that Mercedes has gone through some very bad stuff, and whatever can be written into a book is nothing in comparison to what she’s experienced, so for her, I’m doing it.

  “Do you want me to leave?” Mercedes asks.

  I shake my head. “I used to wonder when I saw models on Project Runway how they could walk around naked in front of all those people, but I guess I need to get used to it.”

  She grins her sideways grin.

  “Do girls really get sold into this kind of situation?” I ask as the stylist starts the process of getting my body ready for all of this.

  The shutters come down in her eyes. “That and more, trust me,” she says, and takes refuge in her phone.

  The first scene will be filmed with Grant, filmed upstairs, and then the party scene, filmed in the main rooms. The stylist dry scrubs my skin with a soft brush, front and back, legs and back and arms and even my chest, which she does gently. Then she rubs a luxurious lotion into my skin. “This moisturizes deeply and will make your skin look even more luminous than it is,” she explains. Finally, she rubs a second potion into my body. “And this has tiny grains in it that catch the light.”

  My hair is left easy for the first scene, as is my make-up. The scene calls for a thick robe over a champagne colored teddy, and the thing is so beautiful I want to eat it. It’s also very, very sexy. If Kaleb saw me in this, I bet he wouldn’t be so aloof.

  Tears sting the back of my throat and I push the thought away. If I’m going to get through this day, I have to put it aside for now.

  Focus.

  “Are you ready?”

  The set is closed to everyone except the main actors, the director, and the cameras, two only. I’m very nervous as we assemble. The stylist powders my nose and chest again, then winks. “Kiss him for me.”

  I’m settled at my dressing table, painting my nails, when my guardian comes in. In the mirror, I see the actor I’ve watched in a hundred scenes arrive in my world looking clean and wealthy and aloof.

  And in that second, I am not Jess and he is not Grant. He is Montague and I’m Jules, who desperately wants to escape this world and has no resources or money or family to make it happen. Her only hope in the novel was that John Paris might be kind to her, or at least not cruel, and she could collect enough resources to get out on her own and start a little business.

  It always killed me that she wanted to bake cupcakes. Such a simple thing to want. I think of how I yearned for the greenhouse—and just like that, I’m in her skin. I’m Jules. I look at him with trepidation, my hands shaking just enough that I get a little nail polish on my thumb and have to wipe it away with a tissue.

  “Stand up,” he says to me. “Undress.”

  I let the robe fall, revealing the silk underneath. He purses his lips approvingly. “Beautiful, but tonight, I want nothing under the clothes you are wearing.”

  “But—!”

  “You’ve learned to listen by now, surely.”

  Jules/me nods, lowers her head as he comes closer and pushes the chemise off her shoulders. I keep my eyes downcast as we talked about, and in truth, the movements look more violent than they are. I wince as he sticks his hand between my legs, also as rehearsed, even though he skillfully doesn’t touch me.

  “Put the shoes on,” he says, and stands back.

  I slide my feet into a pair of high-heeled black shoes with toe cutouts. I get one second of extreme weirdness that I’m doing this naked, that people are looking at me, but then I’m back into Jules’s skin, shaking a little from fear—he has hurt her/me before—and hoping to get everything right so she/I can get away. The air is cool on my skin and I swallow as I straighten, tossing my hair back a little nervously.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, and reaches in his pants. “Richard, come on in here.”

  “No!” He’s my/her friend, the only person I haven’t felt humiliated by. I fling an arm over my breasts and crotch. “Please no.”

  “What?” Montague erupts and roars across the room, raising a hand, and I wince, but he grabs my hair because he can’t bruise me right now, can he? And pulls my head back. “I’ll call the seventh army in here to jack off if I want to, get it?”

  I nod, my head at a strange angle, and he flings me away. “Walk like you are proud,” he says. “Richard, come in here and watch.”

  So I walk across the room, and the camera follows me, flushing and humiliated as behind me Montague is jacking off.

  “And cut!”

  Grant tosses me a robe and I pull it on, kicking off the shoes, looking toward Peter to see how I’ve done, if we have to do this a million times. He’s giving me a slow, pleased smile. “That was fucking perfect.”

  “Whew!”

  Grant gives me a high five. “Great job, kiddo. I wish I could blush on command.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Get naked in front of a bunch of other people and walk around. I bet it’ll come easy.”

  The crew laughs.

  * * *

  We have to go through a dozen or so takes of one portion of the scene or another, but most of them are a couple of gestures, a movement, a retry of positioning, a second run on the camera.

  At the very end, the director says, “I want to try it with a kiss when he yanks her head.”

  I’ve only done kisses with Kaleb, but I practiced with another actor at Abel Tasman. He was the one to teach me how to pretend kiss. After all the filming, I’m pretty comfortable with Grant, and he’s the ultimate professional. The kiss is exactly as Colin would have told me to orchestrate it, Grant’s hand’s around my throat and in my hair, and it’s violent and repulsive to Jules, so I bring that to the moment, but just as his mouth lands on my mouth, I feel like I might gag.

  We have to take it again, three times. By the end I manage to tamp whatever down long enough to get through it, but I’m shaking inside by the time I get down to my room. Maybe I’m just hungry. It’s been a long morning, and there’s another big scene to get to, and I’m feeling upset over Kaleb’s—

  No. I’m not going to let that in. Not today.

  KALEB

  How do you keep someone at arms length when what you want is to pull them all the way inside your body? How do you stop thinking about the thing you want most in all of life?

  When my dad died, I learned. When I started thinking about his body in that car, like what happened to it, what parts of him bled, I forced myself to think of horses running in a field, like the wild horses that are supposed to live up by the 90-mile beach, free and crazy. I imagined my dad running with them, free.

  Whenever I think about Jess, want
ing her, thinking maybe I’m being a hard-ass, I think of the way the house shook around me and Darcy in the second earthquake and how the falling debris knocked me in the head, not killing me like it probably should have, but cutting my eyebrow in half.

  But as we’re waiting for the afternoon and the call for the masquerade scene, I know they’re upstairs filming the scene in Jules’s bedroom. I know that people are looking at her body, naked, which is the only thing I’ve wanted to do for weeks. Months. And I’ve denied myself, knowing she needed time.

  She used that time to have sex with Tyler. It makes me crazy to think of it, and makes me crazy to think of her upstairs, filming—

  I pace the room, then have to head outside. The snow is falling in thick, heavy flakes that cling to my shoulders and hair, and the stylist comes after me. “Stop! I’ve got the curls just right.”

  So I have to pace the lower level of the house. A cluster of mostly guys are watching Olympic winter trials on television and I skirt around it, take a seat at the curved bar where I imagine a party taking place, the lady of the house offering wine. It helps to avoid thinking of Jess two floors above, naked, with an actor putting his hands on her, but if I let my guard down for a second, it slides back in—Jess naked, an old guy with his hand on her. And I can’t think of anything to put in my mind other than that.

  Mercedes hops up on a barstool beside me. “It’s only a movie,” she says in her throaty voice. “Nothing real.”

  I hate it that she is so direct, all up in your face American, never respecting anybody’s privacy. “Bugger off.”

  “You could just get over your pride fest, dude.”

  “You don’t know anything, Mercedes. Butt out.”

  She pokes me, just one finger into the side of my arm and it’s so infuriating that I have the blistering urge to backhand her. I stand up abruptly. “Leave me alone.”

  Her leg is swinging as I walk around her, an ankle at the end of an impossibly long leg. Her cleavage is hidden, as usual, but she has a rack like a porn star, enormous and round and any guy with a half a cock would have had some thoughts about seeing it naked.

  Except me. Not even a wiggle of interest from Mr. I Want To Stick It Anywhere.

  From behind me on the TV comes the sound of somebody doing the Haka, and I turn curiously. There’s a guy, dark Maori like me, dressed to the eyes in winter gear, and he’s calling out the words fiercely. His gestures are muffled by all the clothes, but it’s okay. He cries out and sticks out his tongue, and I half smile, tap my chest with my fist. Bro.

  “What is that?” Mercedes says.

  “Haka,” one of the bit actors says. “Haven’t you seen it before? The All Black rugby team does it before every game.”

  “It’s not a sports thing,” I say. “It’s old, a tradition, war dance.”

  Mercedes is leaning on the counter, that foot swinging. “Why do they stick out their tongues like that?”

  “To be intimidating.”

  “I kinda know most of it,” one guy says, standing up. He’s a muscle head, maybe Hawaiian. “You know it?”

  “Bro, we learned in school.”

  “You call, then.” He stands beside me, a big guy, and hauls his shirt over his head, leaving him bare-chested, tattooed with native forms, and I follow suit, flinging off my shirt and then my shoes to feel the cold tiles on the souls of my feet. I nod and cry out in a loud, fierce voice,

  “Ringa pakia, uma tiraha, whatia hope whai ake wae wae takahia ki kino,” and we slam our fists to our waist, sticking out our tongues, and all the ferocity and heat and anger that’s been building in me comes up, and I feel the space around my body grow huge, getting bigger and bigger as I slap my thighs, rhythmically, and Bro joins me, and we start chanting together:

  “Ka mate Ka mate

  (It is death It is death),

  Ka ora Ka ora

  (It is life It is life),

  Ka mate Ka mate

  Ka ora Ka ora.”

  We slap our thighs, our chests, our elbows, stomping heels against the earth, making eyes big and terrifying. His voice is big and powerful and I make mine louder, too.

  “Tenei Te Tangata Puhuruhuru

  (This is the hairy man)

  Nana i tiki mai whakawhiti te ra

  (Who caused the sun to shine again for me)

  Upane Upane

  (Up the ladder Up the ladder)

  Upane Kaupane

  Whiti te ra.”

  At the end, we stick out our tongues, roaring in the way of a warrior, eyes huge, and I feel the power in my chest, in my legs, like I could take the heads off monsters.

  “Do it again,” one of the guys says and jumps up to join us.

  Three times we go through it, and it solidifies something in my chest, in my legs. I am a warrior, we are warriors. Will I let another man take my woman from me?

  It’s macho. I feel the heat of it as I put my shirt back on, clasp hands in respect with the Hawaiian. Mercedes is watching, that crossed leg swinging, her face impassive. Bro puffs out his chest. “I’m Dave.”

  “Hi, Dave.” She swings her gaze down his body with approval. “Mercedes.”

  He’s smart enough to walk away at that point, and I glance at her. She’s speculating, a serpent with great patience. “So that’s a Haka.”

  Jess is there, to one side, dressed in the new costume, a simple short black skirt and a classy white blouse that’s very thin. Silk, maybe, not that I know fabrics. Her legs are bare and she’s wearing a pair of high black heels with a cutout at the toe. Red nails show, and there’s something wildly erotic about it.

  Her eyes are bright New Zealand blue-ocean, vast and deep, and her lips are slightly parted, the red lipstick they’ve put on her emphasizing the curve and plumpness. “That was awesome.”

  Hair is falling down on my forehead and I toss it back, pull on my shirt. It takes control to make myself not puff out my chest and swagger over there to claim her. My woman.

  The snow light coming from the window backlights her and I can clearly see the shape of her breasts through the material. Is she even wearing a bra? Is it just skin under that thin material? My mouth is dry. Is that a nipple or just a shadow?

  Mr. I-Want-To-Stick-It-Only-Here is on full throttle ready and I am going to have to kiss her and stay aloof and pretend I don’t want to tear everything right off her.

  Then I think of Tyler with his hands on her, on that skin that I claimed with my mouth, that body I claimed for my own, and the green monster blisters my lungs and gut.

  She must see the change in my face, because her mouth tightens, and she walks close to me.

  With a toss of her head, one that used to send her long, long hair over a shoulder but now just rustles the straight, choppy cut at her shoulders, she looks at me under her eyelashes. In a quiet voice she says, “There’s nothing under it.”

  She walks away and doesn’t look back. I stare after her, watching that sweet round ass moving under the fabric, and try to think of broccoli.

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  JESS

  The masquerade is set up in the great room on the main floor, and there are more people in place than we’ve had to film before. I’m nervous as places are marked out and we run through a rehearsal of the main points—a sort of line dance that mimics medieval dancing, then the doomed youth who loves Jules sees Rome, then there is the classic kiss and dance between Rome and Jules, the start of the tragedy.

  Jules is dressed so elegantly, and dances with John Paris, a handsome youngish actor who whistles under his breath as I approach him in the dance. “Lucky Paris,” he says, and winks, putting me at ease.

  When Kaleb comes on set, he’s wearing a half-tiger mask and a shirt with big white sleeves and tight black pants that show his powerful thighs and narrow waist.

  Mercedes says, “He is totally rocking Rome.” There’s something in her voice and I look up with a sense of warning. Her mouth is soft, her eyes narrowed.

  She feels my g
aze and looks down. “Don’t look like that, waif girl. I don’t want him. But if you do, you’d better seal the deal before much longer.” She gestures around the room at the extras and the actresses and there is not a single one whose eyes are not glued to his graceful movements across the room.

  That Haka he did with the Hawaiian guy riveted everyone in the room. Mercedes had her phone on, capturing the whole thing, and by morning, it will be everywhere. The women who are crushing on Kaleb already will be knocked sideways by that flat brown belly, the curve of his arms, the fierce, sexual power in his chants.

  Just like I was. Am. His thighs are so powerful, so erotic, and only I know about the tattoo on that hip. At least for now.

  All those women. What man, even a good man like Kaleb, can really be true to someone when he is offered the opportunity to get laid ten times a day? Because that’s going to be his life now—as many women as he wants, all day long, every day.

  How could I ever trust him—or rather, them?

  Maybe it’s better that he’s washed his hands of me.

  But my throat flutters as he approaches me, and bows with a flourish, removing his mask. “Greetings, beauty,” he says, the same words as his character, and his eyes are glittering, bright, hot. The color is a deep amber and I see his gaze flicker to my lips. Is he acting, practicing, or is that real? I have no idea.

  “Places!”

  We run through several takes of the dance, shifting players here and there, and then go directly to the dance with Rome and Jules. The dialogue is a tip toward Shakespeare, but modernized, and we run through it without much trouble, though Kaleb loses his American accent halfway through and we start again.

  I force myself to be Jules, not Jess. Rome’s big hands on her sides are hot and arousing, and he is dancing too close, way too close. I smell his skin, and the notes that tell me he’s feeling this, too. Our bellies brush and I look up to see amusement in his eyes. It eases me and I remember that Jules is star-struck, aching with attraction for Rome. I let that show as I look up at him, as we follow the choreography we’ve rehearsed several times.