Sylvia Sinclair
The Star
I’ve run a bath in the beautiful tub beneath the windows.
From here I can see the very top of the mountain silvered by moonlight and I suppose if you were somehow looking down from the peaks you would see little naked me, dropping my robe, stepping into the tub and – whoops!
– there goes a little of my martini. Oh well.
Plenty more where that came from. Still, I lick some of the spill off my forearm.
The martinis don’t help with that, of course …
the remembering. Nor does the lovely, scrummy, sparkly pick-me-up dust I keep in my little silver compact.
At the same time, they’ve been just about the only thing keeping me stitched together over the years.
I’ve thrown the windows open to the night, to let the clean cold mountain air inside.
Haven’t smelled air like it since I was a girl.
I shiver a little at the cold and also at the zing as the stuff I’ve taken – whiter and finer than any powder outside – hits. Makes me feel alive.
And this martini, too. I take another slug. The slick salty slipperiness of it: sex in liquid form. Who am I kidding? It’s superior, baby. Better than most, anyhow. Although I’ve had it better of late.
I lower myself into the tub without spilling a drop from the glass, sink down into the scented bubbles.
Right on time: the knock on the door. ‘I’m in the tub!’ I call.
Pretty well everything I’ve ever achieved or taken for myself has been through men, it’s had to be.
That’s how I’ve got here. Or there, because there is a little higher than here.
There’s been a little bit of a backslide of late.
Men are the ones with the power in this world.
They’ve all been pimps or johns, sometimes a little of both.
And it’s worked for me. I had the goods, they were selling and buying.
Until said goods started to approach their expiration date.
And oh Lordy, there’s nothing like the contempt of a man for a woman he no longer finds desirable.
So the last few years, things have been a little more dicey.
New girls on the block. That clock a tick-tock.
Bank balance on the drop. You wouldn’t think it, of course, from the suite in the Alps, the vintage champagne on the dressing table in its ice bucket (I started on that before the martinis).
But I’ve always been good at playing a part.
Thing is, I can only play it for so long.
Can only afford to play it for so long, in all senses.
But I’m saved, now. Saved by falling in love, can you believe it?
It’s changed everything. I can see the way ahead now.
As if on cue, Anthony opens the door and steps inside. I see his mouth go slack at the sight of me, all squeaky shiny clean in the tub.
‘How the hell did you get a key?’ I ask, mock horrified.
(I told them to give him one if he asked.
They must know the man’s here with his wife but they’re good and discreet in these fancy hotels.) I smile to let him know I’m teasing.
He doesn’t smile back. Instead he closes the door and strides across to me.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Sylvia?’ he hisses.
‘You know,’ I say, leaning my chin on my hand, ‘I was wondering when you’d come, baby. I’ve been waiting and waiting. Have you put her to bed yet? Children get so tired at altitude, I heard.’
He frowns. ‘Sylvia—’
‘Sorry,’ I press a finger to my lips. ‘Naughty, I know. I’m just so excited to see you!
Come over here,’ I say, low and velvet, ‘and help me with the parts I can’t reach.
’ Funny: I see his little flinch of revulsion.
It’s in his breeding, I guess. Even while he wants me, he’s still kind of appalled by me.
Women of good character – ladies – don’t speak like me.
I know his wife doesn’t. But if he wanted to be spoken to only in the proper and decorous way then he wouldn’t have come calling, would he?
‘I told you not to come,’ he says. ‘I told you there was a change of plan: that it wasn’t a good idea.’
I shrug, sink back into the bath. ‘Must not have got the message! The globe-trotting, you know. I’m all over the place, baby.’ I pout. ‘And it seemed like such a fabulous spot! Can’t a gal have a holiday? I work so very hard.’
Actually, I haven’t been working all that hard lately. I’m being asked to play the mother now, and I’ve refused so far. Once you do it’s pretty much a hop-skip-and-jump to Old Hollywood Hag territory.
‘I sent several messages, that I had to come with my wife instead.’
‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘The wife. Sweet little thing, isn’t she?
So that’s your type … in wives. Could’ve guessed, I suppose.
Looks like butter wouldn’t melt. Whereas me,’ I let my mouth fall open just a little, ‘that butter wouldn’t stand a second’s chance.
Everything melts with me.’ Subtlety has never been expected of me.
Good thing too; it’s not my strong suit.
And just for emphasis I rise up out of the bubbles enough just to remind him of what he’s been missing.
I’ve still got it, haven’t I? I’m like that painting of the goddess coming out of the waves, except you betcha that little slip of a thing isn’t a 35-22-35. Sex incarnate, that’s what the papers call me. And those critics (most of them, anyway) haven’t even experienced me in the flesh.
‘So interesting,’ I purr, ‘to learn your taste in wives and how it differs from your taste in mistresses.’
‘Stop it.’ His mouth is a tight line. Quite a cruel mouth when it isn’t smiling, with that hard-moulded cleft chin not helping matters any.
‘What, baby? I mean it. She really is like a delicate little English flower. One that blooms prettily for a season, then fades.’
I remember that voice on the other end of the line when I called his apartment that day.
Those tight-clipped little British vowels.
‘Ken I esk hew is korling?’ Giving nothing away.
Or not at first. But she knew from the moment she heard my voice on the line who – what – I was, right enough.
And I could picture her right then and there, down to the little pearl studs at her earlobes.
I swear to you I could hear that she was a brunette. Petite. Neat. My total opposite.
‘Hey,’ I say. No, I purr it. ‘I have an idea. Why don’t you join me in here? I’ll wash that frown from your brow.’
‘I want you to leave, Sylvia,’ he says now. ‘I’ll pay anything outstanding on your bill.’
He can’t pay. I know this, now. Didn’t at the beginning, of course.
At the beginning he showered me in fabulous baubles and vintage champagne and lovely little red boxes from Cartier.
Then somewhere along the way it shifted; gradually it started being me who had to pick up the cheque.
And glitz aside, I’m not rich. I’ve made some money in my time but I’m pretty damn good at spending it, too.
I shake my head. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ve spent the last four months freezing my sweet ass off on a Cinecittà set and I deserve this vacation.’
‘I’ll … I’ll pay you. You’re really going to mess things up for me here.’ He tries to go for a softer approach now. ‘I’ll make it up to you, darling. A weekend at the Ritz—’
I wrinkle my nose. ‘London?’
‘Paris! Like we did last autumn. Remember it, Sylvia … wandering through the Tuileries—’
‘Sorry, baby, that all sounds perfectly lovely. But it doesn’t mean I’m leaving this place early.’
He snaps back to mean in an instant. ‘You’d better watch yourself, Sylvia. A man has a right to protect his situation.’
‘And just what in the hell do you mean by that? Were you protecting your situation that night at the Carlyle? Bet your little wife doesn’t offer to li—’
He cuts me off. ‘For God’s sake, Sylvia. Don’t be so crude.’
‘But that’s just what I am, baby. You know that. And I know that that’s exactly what you like. You don’t complain about me being crude when me being crude suits you!’ I smile at him. ‘Perhaps it’s a good thing she’s here,’ I say lightly. ‘Perhaps now everything can at last come to a head!’
He stares at me. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ he says, cold as the ice in the champagne bucket. ‘What on earth do you mean, “come to a head”? I’m sure you haven’t taken leave of your senses but just for a second there it certainly sounded like it …’
I’m quite enjoying this now. Having the power for once. Because I’ve never really had power. Not even at the height of my career. ‘I’m just saying, maybe this is meant to be. Maybe it’s time. It can all come out. I love you, baby. We could be together. No more sneaking around …’
His eyes seem to have darkened: to literally have changed colour. ‘For God’s sake, Sylvia. Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘But—’
‘You think that would play with the voters? The statesman and the showgirl?’
The showgirl. Huh. But I get it. Course I do.
I’m an operator. I’ve only got to where I am by understanding the rules of the game.
Still, sometimes it’s fun – or maybe fun is the wrong word …
more like satisfying in the way you might lance a boil – to prod him like this.
He thinks he has all the power. Sometimes it’s nice to remind him what a big old mess I could make of his life.
‘Well, baby,’ I say, ‘nothing’s immutable. Even marriage. Even your marriage.’
He laughs, but there’s no humour in it.
‘You know this is all getting rather tedious. You’re boring me. Yes. I’ve already got a wife to be bored by. Your role is meant to be something else. You’re meant to be fun, sweetheart. You’re a geisha, my sweet, a courtesan. You’re a twentieth-century Moll Flanders.’
I pick up the big, beautiful, heavy cut glass ashtray from the edge of the tub and weigh it in my hand like a pitcher.
My first husband was a pitcher. Made love like a pitcher too: all hard and fast and expecting to hit the target first time.
Expected wild applause at the end, too. Anyway, you know what?
The ashtray feels good in my hand. Powerful.
I can feel the alcohol swimming through me, mixing with the white stuff.
It feels delicious, you know? And just a little bit dangerous.
Even I don’t know what I’m going to do next.
Except then I do, just a second before I sling it at him.
That feels good too. Sometimes I don’t think before I act.
Like that time I slapped Bogie for real in a screen test and thought that was it, that I was toast, until he laughed and that film, the spark between us, was the thing that made my whole career catch light.
The ashtray seems to hang in the air forever before it smashes into the wall, missing Tony’s head by a couple of feet.
He just stares at me, stunned, for a second or two, mouth opening like a koi carp and looking all gormless – he’s many things, this man, but he ain’t gormless.
Then his face twitches and I think for a moment he might laugh too, like Bogie did.
I didn’t aim it at him, after all. And I think: he’s in on the joke.
But then I see: not a laugh. A snarl. Next thing I know his shadow has fallen across the little shield of bubbles above my stomach.
Next thing after that and I’m underwater.
And all those lovely scented bubbles are in my mouth, my nose, stinging my eyes and I go to scream but of course it just makes me suck in more water.
His fingers clamped about my throat, forcing me down.
And this, this is the thing about men. Even the smaller ones (and he is not one of the smaller ones) are so terrifyingly strong.
So much stronger than me. And so many have such violence in them.
I’m scrabbling at the sides of the tub. As I feel the last little bit of air seep out of my lungs I can see it all: the headlines, the gossip.
I know how this plays. He’s going to drown me right here and maybe all they’ll find is the white powder on the vanity and the empty martini glass and think I’m just another silly little starlet who couldn’t handle losing the limelight and did herself in.
This, then. This is how it ends—