“Do you like to hunt?” she said, sitting in one of his director’s chairs. She toed one of her jellies off her heel and, with her toe still in the shoe, flapped it.
“Nah, that was there when I moved in,” he said.
“I’m glad you don’t like to hunt,” she said. “I think hunting’s gross.”
“Yeah,” he said. “People come to the inn with deers dripping down their vans and stuff. Sometimes the parking lot looks like a slaughterhouse.”
“That’s really sick,” she said.
“They say if you don’t kill ‘em, they starve to death,” he said. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and held it toward her.
“No thanks,” she said.
“Mind if I do?” he said.
“Go ahead,” she said.
He lit the cigarette and sat in the other director’s chair. There was a white plastic table between the two chairs. He threw the pack of cigarettes on the table.
“So you must really think it’s weird and all, my having all this stuff in my room.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What do you like so much about Stephanie Sykes?”
He blushed. He looked at the table and tapped his cigarette ash into an ashtray.
“You don’t smoke?” he said.
She shook her head no. She picked up the pack and flipped the top open and closed. Her shoe fell off her foot.
“So you must really think you’re in the boonies,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “You meet interesting people everywhere, you know?”
“Where all have you been?” he said.
“Paris,” she lied.
“Yeah?” he said. “Are they real nasty to Americans, like I heard?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I stayed with a friend.”
“Yeah?” he said. “They call streets over there boulevards. I know that.”
“Yeah. Paris is really exciting.”
“You speak French?”
“No,” she said. “But it worked out okay, because the guy I stayed with spoke French.”
“Yeah?” he said. “There’s a lot of Oriental tourists at the inn this year.”
They sat in silence. She put the cigarette pack back on the table and ran the tip of her second finger up and down the edge of the arm on the director’s chair.
“You must think it’s pretty odd sittin’ here,” he said.
She shrugged. “The guy in Paris has got a lot more pictures than you do,” she said. “I put up pictures sometimes.”
“Yeah? Whose pictures have you got up?”
“People I’ve met,” she said.
“Yeah? You must know a lot of stars.”
“I guess so.”
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a lot of pictures with you and Bobby Blue.”
“We’re just friends.”
“You ever meet Brooke Shields?”
“Sure,” Nicole said. “We’re with the same agency.”
“Yeah?” he said. “What’s she like?”
“Well, you know,” Nicole said. “There’s nothing between her and Michael Jackson.”
“I read where there’s nothing between Michael Jackson and anybody.”
“Yeah. I think he’s messed up.”
“You know Michael Jackson?”
“Not very well.”
“Yeah?” he said, with more interest. “You’ve met him?”
“A couple of times,” she said. “He’s real reclusive and everything.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s really a great performer and all, though.”
“Yeah,” he said.
She took off her other shoe and slid a little lower in the chair, crossing her feet at the ankles. She wished she had touched up the polish on her toes. St. Francis had run up to her and licked her foot when the nail polish wasn’t quite dry; the smeared polish made her big toe look bloody. She put her heel over her toes. There was a big pink mosquito bite on her shin. Nothing she could do about that.
“So what’s it like being an actress?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not hard. It’s hard standing around the set while you do scenes over and over. Kind of boring.” That didn’t sound right. “Kind of exciting,” she said.
“I bet,” he said.
Another thought came to her. “Some days I feel like Jonah in the belly of the whale,” she said.
“Swallowed up,” he said.
“Yeah. So it’s nice to be in the country and all.”
He nodded. He took another cigarette out of the pack and lit it. “Hey, you don’t drink, do you?” he said.
“Oh, sure,” she said.
He got up. Across the room was a small refrigerator sitting on the floor, with a jade plant on top and a pile of paperbacks. He opened the door and took out a beer. “Beer or vodka?” he said.
“Vodka, please.”
He went into the bathroom. “This is clean,” he said, coming out, holding a glass. “The shelf’s just in the b-r.”
She nodded. She had had vodka before, in fruit juice, and it wasn’t bad.
“I’ve got some orange juice,” he said.
“That’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s all I like: vodka and beer. I drink Coke too. Real Coke, not diet stuff.”
“You’ve got a great body,” she said. “You don’t need to diet.”
He blushed again. The orange juice was in a bowl with a plastic top. He took off the top and poured the juice into the glass, which he had put on the floor. He poured some vodka in, then put both the orange juice and vodka back in the refrigerator.
“Sorry I don’t have any ice,” he said.
“It’s good and cold,” she said, taking a sip. It tasted almost like regular orange juice.
“I drank fifteen of them last month,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“I mean in the same night.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve done that.”
“It’s not legal for you to drink, is it?”
“Sure,” she said.
“You’re fourteen, aren’t you?”
“Nah, that’s what the studio says. It’s sort of embarrassing that they always lie and everything.”
“How old are you?”
“How old do I look?”
He blushed. “I don’t know,” he said.
“How old are you?” she said.
“Twenty-one.”
He took a sip of beer. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Yeah?” he said, taking another sip of beer. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah,” she said. “They lie about everything.”
“What do they lie about?”
“Oh, everything.”
He continued to look at her.
“The P.R. people say whatever they think they ought to say. You know, most of the dates are put-ups, for instance. Guys who don’t go with girls and stuff.”
“Yeah? You ever go out with one of those guys?”
“I like straight guys,” she said. “I guess business is business, though.”
He nodded.
“You know what they call Bobby Blue?” she said.
“What?”
“Bobby Blueballs, because he’s a mama’s boy.”
“Jeez,” he said. His face turned red. He took another swig of beer. “I stopped hanging around my mother when I went to kindergarten.”