Sylvia Sinclair
The Star
It was supposed to be simple. Come here to be with my lover. Just the small issue of holy matrimony standing in the way. And the small issue of money, too … but it was all to be sorted out, here. Things are never quite as simple as they seem though, are they?
Tony is dead. And now this place stinks of death. Stained by it. I’m going to go crazy here, stuck inside sitting around. Things start to catch up with me …
For the moment I lie back on the couch and let the little black moths brush me with their wings.
See, those moths, they’re the ghosts I carry around with me.
My dead mama when the drink finally took her, making us orphans (we never had a daddy, maybe that’s why I spent so many years of my life going after the paterfamilias type).
My poor dear sweet little brother, lost in the South Pacific fighting a war he didn’t even really understand. Only a boy. That loss was the one that really orphaned me, because Mama was never much of a parent to start with.
Then the little baby I lost at not-so-sweet sixteen, who I thought I didn’t want because of how I got her … until I saw her face and for the few hours that she lived she became my world.
The other kinds of ghosts. The things people do to you if you’re green and shy and scared and starting out with a hick accent and a body that’s grown too fast for the rest of you, and you don’t have anybody looking out for you in the Wild West, otherwise known as Tinsel Town.
The ghost of the girl who came before the myth of Sylvia Sinclair. Little Sally Simmons. I carry her around inside me somewhere. Half a lifetime of pretending to be someone else. It’s not good for the soul.
And now a new ghost to join all the others.
I need liquor, strong and clear as it comes.
But I also need to stay on my game. Ugh, the claustrophobia of it.
And all these awful people. I long for the smoky risky sex appeal of some dive bar …
or Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip with the dancing girls and stars at every table and the razzle-dazzle so bright it scorches away the darkness for a couple of hours.
I reach under my pillow and pull out the little bar Tony gave me, weigh it in my palm.
So dinky and slim and yet such a good weight.
Such a pretty, pretty colour. Is that why men lose their heads over it?
Just like they do over some broads, I suppose.
It’s no accident that my hair is the palest gold.
I think of Tony’s words as he handed it to me: It’s you.
It is always you. I think you know that.
But I need you to be a good girl for me and keep schtum until all of this is over.
Here’s a little … present, to make it up to you. There’ll be more where this came from.
I long to pick up the phone and call my love. But of course, I cannot – it is no longer possible. I sink forward into the cushions on the bed and scream into the goose-down.