Read My Lips(30)

He thinks for a moment, brow wrinkled. Then, he creates fists with the thumbs poking out between his fingers and twists them in the air.

It’s the sign for “try”.





“I want you to fuck me. Fuck the doubt out of me. Fuck the ex-boyfriend out of my head. Fuck me until there’s nothing in my mouth but your name, over and over again, in screams.”

Her name is Ariel. Yes, like the stupid mermaid. And she’s beautiful. And all the guys stare at her and she bats her stupid eyelashes and she’s the perfect actress. And even when she says a word like “fuck”, she makes it sound like poetry. Her hair is a golden, wavy waterfall of wonder and her face is oh-so angelic.

And apparently she and Clayton had a thing a year ago or so. Yeah. That mermaid up there is his type, and that’s a type I will never be.

“Great,” says Nina, the acting professor who never calls anything great or good or lovely, ever. She sits in the audience seats among us, observing Ariel who stands proudly in the acting area awaiting critique. Miss Nina Parisi adds, “You gave just the right amount of care, and just the right amount of nothing to each ‘fuck’. Great.”

If there’s one thing I don’t regret about college acting compared to high school, it’s the sudden permission to read and act from scripts that have an overabundance of the word “fuck” in them. Hell, it’s encouraged. Fuck this. Fuck that. Fuck me and you.

And Fuck Ariel. I’ll never look like that. She has the same pretentious glassy-eyed face as my sister Cece, the one that never seems to change when she steps off the stage. Whether standing before an audience or all by herself, the actress acts, the face lights up, and every word that vomits out of those lips is seasoned with pretense and packaged with the pristine care of three weeks’ meticulous rehearsal.

And Clayton wants that? I roll my eyes and chew grindingly on my thoughts—which may or may not be my teeth—embarrassed that I ever gave that man the time of day. That beautiful, striking, incredible man. That heart-stopping, slab-of-beef, gorgeous-eyed solid demigod of a man.

That beautiful man I signed my name to.

I’m fooling myself, aren’t I?

Nina rises from the seats and crosses half the length of the black box theater we have our acting class in, the heels she wears stabbing the stage floor and echoing off the rafters and the four plain walls. Quietly, she says, “I want you to do that piece again. Bravo.” She faces us, her eyes alight. “Pay attention to the little things she does in this monologue. What she does with her hands. Her eyes, just the story in her eyes alone. The focus she gives to an acting partner who doesn’t even exist. Take notes, people.”

Ariel lifts her tiny chin, stares up at an imaginary beam of heaven-light, then recites her line: “I want you to fuck me.”

Go fuck yourself, Ariel.

When class is dismissed, I gather up my bag as fast as I can and hurry across the black box, only to find Ariel’s tiny figure stopping me at the exit doors. “Desdemona, right?”

My heart races. I blink. What does this bitch want? “Yes, that’s me.”

“Oh, awesome.” Her eyes sparkle. She extends a tiny hand. “Ariel Robbins. I’m the T.A., as you know, and I just wanted to say that I am really enjoying your work in this class. You’re going to blossom with your role in Our Town when rehearsals start next week. You give such remarkable attention to nuance!”

Oh, this is just lovely. The bitch turns out to be all nice and crap after I spent the class despising her. “Thanks.”

“No, really. I don’t say this about many freshmen,” she insists, batting her eyelashes, “but you’ve got a special something, Desdemona. I know real talent when I see it.”

“It’s Dessie, and I’m not a freshman,” I murmur quietly, unable to process her annoying compliments. Really, it’s Chloe’s fault I feel like this; she’s the one who spilled all about the mermaid here. It was Chloe and I in the lobby surrounded by cafeteria snacks and scripts while discussing Clayton’s supposedly long history of girlfriends and flings. I believed about ten percent of what she said, tossing the rest into the rumors-and-embellishment bin.

“Oh! Yes, of course,” says Ariel with a feathery chuckle. “I was told that. I’m so silly. Transfer, yes?”

“Right.”

She smiles warmly. That smile lasts for about four seconds before it turns to ice. “So I heard about the song, Dessie. At the piano bar.”

I swallow, steeling myself for whatever it is she wants to say. “Song?” I prompt her innocently, but knowing exactly what she’s talking about.