by Nicole Conn
Copyright © 1993 by Nicole Conn
Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Originally published by Naiad Press 1993
First Bella Books Edition: 2012
Editor: Katherine V. Forrest
Cover Designer: Judy Fellows
ISBN 13: 978-1-59493-327-1
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
The lyrics of the song “Would It Hurt” which appear on pages 129 and 130 are reprinted with the kind permission of the lyricist and composer, Teresa Trull, who created this song for the movie Claire of the Moon.
Other Bella Books by Nicole Conn
Elena Undone
When I was in third grade I wrote a short story about pigs. My father thought it held so much promise that he drew up a contract, which I diligently copied in my best handwriting, and he became my agent. Over the years we had many a debate about the realities of being a writer, and on one occasion a battle of wills. Through it all, he had cast his own dreams aside, but never let that stop him from giving me encouragement, approval when I needed it most, and love. This novel, 26 years later, is a testament to our unique bond.
Dedicated to
Daddo
who believed I had talent
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my family, extended and otherwise, Momo, Beaner, Kate, lil Pookerdoodle, my new niece Lauren, Jennifer, my “number one fan,” (and quite the little editor), for keeping me sane while I continue to be a crazy lesbo in LA.
Katherine V. Forrest for her unflagging support, her wise kindness in SF, and her empathy during the “B” factor.
Audra, the woman of my dreams.
I would very much like to acknowledge my wonderful aunt, Carol, who has continued to support me with warmth, sweetness and unconditional love as I continue to follow my unconditional dreams, who let me “live, live, live.”
Nicole Conn – Writer/Director/Mother
Nicole Conn has been a die-hard romantic and black and white film fan from the age of ten.
Her penchant for adult and dramatic story telling is evident in her latest feature film, Elena Undone, touted as “sexy and smart and smoldering.” This classic romance with a twist, also hosts the Longest Kiss in Cinema History, a claim veteran lesbian writer Nicole Conn’s (Claire of the Moon, little man) is thrilled to be held by two women.
Conn’s previous venture, little man, is a documentary she wrote, directed and produced about her own premature son born 100 days early and only weighing one pound. The feature documentary went on to win 12 Best Documentary Awards, along with the prestigious Cedar Sinai’s Courageous Beginnings Award and Family Pride’s Family Tree Award. The film made three TOP TEN FILMS OF 2005 list and Showtime picked up the feature and ran an Emmy campaign on this hard-hitting story about Conn’s son’s premature birth and subsequent 5-month hospital stay in a Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit.
In efforts to continue her support of other parents who find themselves thrust into the insanity of the NICU, Ms. Conn collaborated with Preemie Magazine Founder Deborah Discenza in creating the The Preemie Parent’s NICU Survival Guide: How to Maintain Your Sanity and Create a New Normal published in January, 2010.
Conn’s passion for film carried her through her first feature in which she raised the money, wrote, directed and produced Claire of the Moon, the maverick film about a woman’s journey to her sexual identity. The film garnered rave reviews and paved the way for lesbian themed cinema in 1991. Conn also created a FIRST for lesbian cinema: ancillary in the form of a novelization (in its 15th reprint and 10 Year Anniversary Republish) a making-of documentary MOMENTS (best-selling lesbian documentary ever made), soundtracks, posters, t-shirts, etc. She followed these projects with the award winning short film, Cynara...Poetry in Motion.
A two book deal with Simon Schuster produced the novels, Passion’s Shadow (1995) & Angel Wings (1997), a new age love story. The script adaptation for Angel Wings won the 2001 Telluride Film Festival’s Best Screenplay Award. In another pioneering effort, The Wedding Dress was chosen by AOL Time Warner for its new internet endeavor ipublish, which debuted in June 2001. She Walks in Beauty was published in September, 2001 and is currently in development as a feature film along with several other original screenplays Conn has penned.
Conn achieved industry recognition with her film s and was a finalist in the prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. She believes in giving back to the community and sponsored the Claire of the Moon Scholarship in 1998, awarding second time novelists through the ASTRAEA Foundation.
Well known for her speed, quality and prolific ability to write in many genres, Conn has written five novels, a parent’s guide, two teleplays, eleven screenplays, and has produced four soundtracks.
She is currently in post production on “A Perfect Ending,” her next feature which she wrote, directed and edited through the film company Soul Kiss Films (Empowering Women One Film at a Time) co-founded by she and her life and film partner, Marina Rice Bader. Ms. Conn resides with her life partner, Marina and their family of six (wonderful if precocious) children in Los Angeles.
Best Feature – “Elena Undone” -Audience Award, Reel Pride, Fresno
Best Feature – “Elena Undone” Tampa GLFF
Best Documentary Audience Award, Los Angeles Outfest – “little man”
Best Documentary Jury Award, New York NewFest –“little man”
Best Documentary Audience Award, San Diego Film Festival –“little man”
Best Documentary Jury Award, Chicago Indiefest –“little man”
Best Feature HBO Audience Award, Miami GLFF – “little man”
Best Documentary Jury Award, Philadelphia Int’l GLFF Film Festival – “little man”
Best of the Fest Award, Indianapolis G&L Film Festival – “little man”
Best Documentary – Jury Award Chicago Reeling Film Festival – “little man”
Best Documentary – Glitter Award – LA – “little man”
Best Documentary – Long Island G&L Film Festival – “little man”
Best Documentary - WA DC – Reel Affirmations – “little man”
Palme D’Or – Reel Pride – “little man”
Telluride Film Festival’s Best Screenplay Award – “Angel Wings”
Courageous Beginnings Award – Cedars Sinai, Los Angeles
Santa Barbara Social Justice Award Nominee
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting.
LOS ANGELES
She stood naked at the window. Her body was strong, athletic, what one might almost refer to as masculine in its straightforward approach to the world, but graced with soft curves, full breasts, sprinter’s limbs. A full mane of golden brown hair cascaded about her shoulders, down the subtle ridge of her back to the edge of a sheet, draped just above her supple buttocks, wrapped casually about her body as if she were a Greek goddess, out of time, out of place. She was not a generically beautiful woman. But always striking; she was more than a head turner. She drew people in, then oft
en forgot they were there. Her wide-boned face hinted at an Indian heritage, her deeply tanned complexion gave a swarthy and wild appearance when her gray blue eyes courted danger. But when they were still, they cut through ice.
They were deadly at the moment as she surveyed the vast grey brown expanse of a city consumed by car exhaust and human decay. L.A. Hooray for Hollywood.
She lit a cigarette. A man’s sinewy form joined her; his hand seductively rubbed the small of her back as he gently extracted the cigarette from her hand and took a drag. She did not turn around or even glance at him as his hand crept up the side of her thigh and traced a line to the swell of her breast. She merely pushed him aside and retrieved her cigarette.
Later she packed. Listlessly. She wasn’t sure she really wanted to go to this Writer’s Retreat “thang.”
“Hey...it’ll do you good.” She and Ben sat in their normal booth, third down at Kate Mantillini’s on Wilshire. Her agent’s mouth was full as usual.
“No. It’ll do you good.”
“Babe!” He sported pain like a character out of a bad sitcom. “Don’t I always make it right by you?”
“What about Levar?” She watched him inhale his salmon.
“No-o-o-ot.”
“Ben!”
“What? I gotta tell ya he’s been black-balled? I gotta tell ya no one wants to work with the guy. He’s a pain in the frikkin’ ass!” He emphasized this last as a piece of spinach salad flew across the table.
“Why, because he’s serious? Has some integrity.” She poked at her food.
“I told ya. Thinks he’s Spike Lee. Sayles. Independent, that’s goin’ nowhere. Studios wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire.” Ben indicated her chicken salad. As his fork swooped in like a bird diving for herring she noticed the stale yellow stains on his thread-worn sleeveless shirt. For an instant a jingle for ring-around-the-collar swept through her mind and she wondered how his wife, Ginny, a wannabe day-timer who could never get anything more than “under-five-lines” no matter how good her last “titter” job had been, as Ben so endearingly referred to it, could tolerate eating opposite this cretin every night, much less go to bed with him. “No money in it, babe. Just leave it to me. Get outta here. L.A.’s so frikkin’ hot in the summer anyway.” He started in on her bread. “I hear it’s pretty nice up there. Relax... find yourself...work on the screenplay—”
“I don’t want to work with Ebstein.”
“Hey.” Ben shrugged defensively. “Babe, you don’t wanna work with Levar either. I don’t gotta tell ya, ya only climb inta bed with someone who’s bigger and bettern’ you are.”
“You know Ben—” She put down her fork. “That kind of logic is what I love about this whole frikkin’ town.”
She finished packing. She could always come back. Sure. She could always come back.
OREGON
The Jaguar sped dangerously around the winding coastal curves of the Oregon coastline. The further north she drove, the more rugged the 101 became, the freer she felt. The muscle in her thigh tensed as she pressed the accelerator and whipped around another switchback. She flipped an unlabeled cassette into the stereo and cranked the volume until her body could feel the vibration of the music.
Jazz. Soothe the soul, cleanse the mind. Not the heavy metal rumbling that disturbed her sleep every other night, her rocker neighbor’s incessant need to “express himself.” “White boy’s music,” her friend Tawny called it. They’d been having drinks at The Polo Lounge. Tawny was up for a part in what so many people were gratuitously referring to as “a small personal film,” read low-budget, with the austere working title Frantic Illusion, and they were celebrating prematurely.
“Look, it’s a win-win situation. If I get the part, I can pay the rent. And if I don’t get the part, at least I don’t have to be embarrassed out of this town.” Tawny gulped her wine and motioned the waiter for another round.
“No...I’m fine—”
“Fine my ass. You’ve been moping around like the fuckin’ plague the last three times I’ve seen you.” Tawny twisted her straw. “Kevin?”
“Hmmm.”
“Kevin.” When Tawny didn’t get the response she wanted, “You know, the guy you’ve been doin’ the nasty with—”
“Tawn...that’s over.”
“Hmmm...where have I heard that before.” Tawny’s tone was sarcastic. “You know what your problem is?”
“No. Perhaps you can enlighten me.” She and Tawny were used to playing pseudo-shrink with one another, glib and pretentious. The deal between her and Tawny was to take nothing too seriously so that when they held each other’s hands during the hard stuff they could pretend it didn’t matter.
“You’re just not having any fun anymore.” Tawny’s voice was serious, and that wasn’t playing by the rules. She stared at the infamously awful Polo Lounge drapes that defined the rich and famous, then sipped her martini.
****
The frenetic jazz became tiring. Its scaling freedom combined with her escape from L.A. made her anxious. She ejected the tape with frustration. Strains of Clair de Lune could be heard through fuzzy, broken reception. She tuned it in and listened, captured by something beyond her immediate vexation. There was a time...but the music crept too dangerously close and she turned it off.
She pulled the Jag into a broad overlook expanding several miles of rugged coastline. She got out, mesmerized. A tarnished rust bled over the swelling waves, jagged rocks and dark blue sky. She stood inert for a long time, then lit a cigarette. She could still turn back. Return to a life that had become the perfect backdrop to her latest best seller: satirical, cynical, and as empty as her last review. She prompted herself to think about the people she must care about. Tawny. Pseudo-friendship she’d never given a chance to be real. Ben was survival. Hordes of “love ya, mean it” acquaintances in the industry. Well, she had “been there, done that.” Kevin. A model/waiter from one of her favorite cafes who served double lattes with a smile and charm to go. Great butt. But her heart wasn’t in it. Maybe at first. No. She knew that wasn’t true. Her heart hadn’t been in it for the longest time. Oh, God. She wasn’t about to drag that one out. Self-reflection was for self-help groupies who indulged in whining, as she put her idle moments to better use. Even if her heart wasn’t in it. Inaction bred ennui. And ennui was not her best “thang.”
She threw her cigarette butt to the side, continued to ponder the diminishing blue expanse, then headed for the car.
****
Claire drove through a narrow winding rutted road up to a tarnished cabin surrounded by towering evergreens that, from a hundred years of nor’wester winds, leaned to one side mimicking the Pisa. The relic seemed to sprout from the ground like an enchanted cottage replete with driftwood artifacts, coiling sailor’s rope and a large burnt-lettered sign that read Derriere by the Sea—come sit a spell. How quaint, she thought, as she gathered her purse with final resolve.
****
“Oh, God...baby...oh, fuck me baby...oh, yes, do it there, that’s good—that’s sooooo good...” She stopped. Her blue-gray eyes mirrored the reflection of the dimly lit porch light, sparkling with bemused amusement. She was on the second step of the porch leading to what she assumed was her cabin for the duration of her stay at Arcadia Writer’s Retreat.
“God, yes, YESSSSSSS!” A man’s voice.
“Come for me...Come for me now...show me how much you want it.”
Claire’s mouth twitched a grin. The noises subsided. She looked around, shook her head, ever so self-consciously, and walked up the stairs to the entrance.
An attractive young woman opened the door. Her preppy chic attire and stylishly coutured French braid were wildly coming apart at the seams. Claire wasn’t sure whether to apologize or laugh.
“This is...” Claire began to pull her itinerary from her purse as the young woman waited, somewhat baffled. “Cabin four?”
“Yes.” Still breathless.
“May I?” When she didn�
�t get an answer, Claire entered and handed her the envelope as indication she belonged there, then sauntered to the full-length window that framed the wild and untamed majesty of the Oregon coast. The constant rumble of the breaking surf was so close she could almost feel the spray from the aqua-gray waves that mingled with the mist now settling on the battle-scarred foliage.
“Oh yes...yes...that’s it...that’s the way... right there, now, right there ...” The voices started up from a back room, but they were distinctly two women this time. Claire turned to the woman who seemed as startled by the noises as Claire.
“Am I...interrupting?”
But before she could answer a strong, compelling voice from another room barked, “Amy, I can’t do this by myself you know.”
A tall striking woman, with classic aquiline features that matched her perfectly tailored Heather tweed and crisp maroon oxford shirt, appeared out of the cries of lust. Her short-cropped auburn-brown hair fell softly about her face emphasizing the squareness of her jaw. She had intense brown eyes that would pierce the mundane. She halted when she saw Claire.
“Oh...I’m sorry.” She glanced at Amy. “I didn’t know we had company.”
Amy uncertainly presented Claire. “Dr. Benedict, I believe this is your, uh...roommate.”
The tall woman graciously extended her hand. Claire shook it apprehensively, but immediately extracted her own when the anguished moaning resumed.
“I’ll get it.” Amy rushed by Dr. Benedict, who appeared somewhat at a loss for words, then awkwardly explained, “Research.”