Femme Fatale and other stories (2 page)

“It was a movie a few years back. The parts were better than the whole, if I can be so bold as to criticize a genius. The thing is, I'm a filmmaker myself.”

Mona hadn't been to a movie in ten years. The new ones made her sleepy. She fell asleep, woke up when something blew up, fell back asleep again. “Have you—”

“Made anything you've heard of? No. I'm an indie, but, you know, you keep your vision that way. I'm on the festival circuit, do some direct-to-video stuff. Digital has changed the equation, you know?”

Mona nodded as if she did.

“Look, I don't want to get all Schwab's on you—”

Finally, a reference that Mona understood.

“—but I'm working on something right now and you would be so perfect. If you would consider reading for me, or perhaps, even, a screen test … there's not much money in it, but who knows? If you photograph the way I think you will, it could mean a whole new career for you.”

He offered her his card, but she didn't want to put her glasses on to read it, so she just studied it blindly, pretending to make sense of the brown squiggles on the creamy background. The paper was of good stock, heavy and textured.

“In fact, my soundstage isn't far from here, so if you're free right now—”

“I'm on foot,” she said. “I walked here from my apartment.”

“Oh, and you wouldn't want to get in a car with a strange man. Of course.”

Mona hadn't been thinking of Bryon as strange. In fact, she had assumed he was gay. What kind of man spoke so fervently of models and old-time movie stars? But now that he said it—no, she probably shouldn't, part of her mind warned. But another part was shouting her down, telling her such opportunities come along just once. Maybe she looked better than she realized. Maybe Mona's memory of her younger self had blinded her to how attractive she still was to someone meeting her for the first time.

“I'll tell you what. I'll call you a cab, give the driver the address. Tell him to wait, with the meter running, all on me.”

“Don't be silly.” Mona clutched the arms of the so-called easy chair and willed herself to rise as gracefully as possible. Somehow she managed it. “Let's go.”

She was not put off by the fact that Bryon's soundstage was a large locker in one of those storage places. “A filmmaker at my level has to squeeze every nickel until it hollers,” he said, pulling the garage-type door behind them. She wasn't sure how he had gotten power rigged up inside, but there was an array of professional-looking lights. The camera was a battery-powered camcorder, set up on a tripod. He even had a “set”—a three-piece 1930s-style bedroom set, with an old-fashioned vanity and bureau to match the ornately carved bed.

He asked Mona to sit on the padded stool in front of the vanity and address the camera directly, saying whatever came into her head.

“Um, testing one, two, three. Testing.”

“You look great. Talk some more. Tell me about yourself.”

“My name is Mona—” She stumbled for a second, forgetting the order of her surnames. After all, she had five.

“Where did you grow up, Mona?”

“Oh, here, there, and everywhere.” Mona had learned long ago to be stingy with the details. They dated one so.

“What were you like as a young woman?”

“Well, I was the … bee's knees.” An odd expression for her to use, one that pre-dated her own birth by quite a bit. She laughed at its irrelevance and Bryon laughed, too. She felt as if she had been drinking brandy Alexanders instead of venti mochas. Felt, in fact, the way she had that first afternoon with her second husband, when they left the bar at the Drake Hotel and checked into a room. She had been only thirty-five then, and she had let him keep the drapes open, proud of how her body looked in the bright daylight bouncing off Lake Michigan.

“I bet you were. I bet you were. And all the boys were crazy about you.”

“I did okay.”

“Oh, you did more than okay, didn't you, Mona?”

She smiled. “That's not for me to say.”

“What did you wear, Mona, when you were driving those boys crazy? None of those obvious outfits for you, right? You were one of those subtle ones, like Grace Kelly. Pretty dresses, custom fit.”

“Right.” She brightened. Clothing was one of the few things that interested her. “That's what these girls today don't get. I had a bathing suit, a one-piece, strapless. As modest as it could be. But it was beige, just a shade darker than my own skin, and when it got wet …” She laughed, the memory alive to her, the effect of that bathing suit on the young men around the pool at the country club in Atlanta.

“I wish you still had that bathing suit, Mona.”

“I'd still fit into it,” she said. It would have been true two months ago, before she discovered Starbucks.

“I bet you would. I bet you would.” Bryon's voice seemed thicker, lower, slower.

“I never let myself go, the way some women do. They say it's metabolism and menopause”—oh, she wished she could take that word back, one should never even allude to such unpleasant facts of life—“but it's just a matter of discipline.”

“I sure wish I could see you in that suit, Mona.”

She laughed. She hadn't had this much fun in ages. He was flirting with her, she was sure of it. Gay or not, he liked her.

“I wish I could see you in your
birthday
suit.”

“Bryon!” She was on a laughing jag now, out of control.

“Why can't I, Mona? Why can't I see you in your birthday suit?”

Suddenly, the only sound in the room was Bryon's breath, ragged and harsh. It was hard to see anything clearly, with the lights shining in her eyes, but Mona could see that he was steadying the camera with just one hand.

“You want to see me naked?” she asked.

Bryon nodded.

“Just … see?”

“That's how we start, usually. Slow like. Everyone has his or her own comfort zone.”

“And the video—is that for your eyes only?”

“I told you, I'm an independent filmmaker. Direct to video. A growing market.”

“People pay?”

Another shy nod. “It's sort of a … niche within the industry.”

“Niche.”

“It's my niche,” he said. “It's what I like. I make other films about, um, things I don't like so much. But I love watching truly seasoned women teach young men about life.”

“And you'd pay for this?”

“Of course.”

“How much?”

“Some. Enough.”

“Just to look? Just to see me, as I am?”

“A little for that. More for … more.”

“How much?” Mona repeated. She was keen to know her worth.

He came around from behind the camera, retrieved a laminated card from the drawer in the vanity table, then sat on the bed and patted the space next to him. Why laminated? Mona decided not to think about that. She moved to the bed and studied the card, not unlike the menu of services and prices at a spa. She could do that. And that. Not that, but definitely that and that. The fact was, she had done most of these things, quite happily.

“Let me make you a star, Mona.”

“Are you my leading man?”

“Our target demographic prefers to see younger men with the women. I just need to get some film of you to take to my partner so he'll underwrite it. I have a very well-connected financial backer.”

“Who?”

“Oh, I'll never say. He's very discreet. Anyway, he likes to know that the actresses are … up to the challenges of their roles. Usually a striptease will do, a little, um, self-stimulation. But it's always good to have extra footage. I make a lot of films, but these are the ones I like best. The ones I watch.”

“Well, then,” Mona said, unbuttoning her blouse. “Let's get busy.”

F
ETISH
,
M
ONA SAID TO HERSELF
as she shopped in the Giant.
Fetish,
she thought as she retrieved her mail from the communal boxes in the lobby.
I am a fetish.
This was the word that Bryon used to describe her “work,” which, two months after their first meeting, comprised four short films. She had recoiled at the word at first, feeling it marked her as a freak, something from a sideshow. “Niche” had been so much nicer. But Bryon assured her that the customers who bought her videos were profoundly affected by her performance. There was no irony, no belittling. She was not the butt of the joke, she was the object of their, um, affection.

“Different people like different things,” he said to her in Starbucks one afternoon. She was feeling a little odd, as she always did when a film was completed. It was so strange to spend an afternoon having sex and not be taken shopping afterward, just given a cashier's check. “Our cultural definitions of sexuality are simply too narrow.”

“But your other films, the other tastes you serve”—Mona by now had familiarized herself with Bryon's catalog, which included the usual whips and chains, but also a surprisingly successful series of films that featured obese women sitting on balloons—“they're sick.”

“There you go, being judgmental,” Bryon said. “Children is wrong, I'll give you that. Because children can't consent. Everything else is fair game.”

“Animals can't consent.”

“I don't do animals, either. Adults and inanimate objects, that's my credo.”

It was an odd conversation to be having in her Starbucks at the LeisureWorld Plaza, that much was sure. Mona looked around nervously, but no one was paying attention. The other customers probably thought Mona and Bryon were a mother and son, although she didn't think she looked old enough to be Bryon's mother.

“By the way”—Byron produced a small stack of envelopes—“we've gotten some letters for you.”

“Letters?”

“Fan mail. Your public.”

“I'm not sure I want to read them.”

“That's up to you. Whatever you do—don't make the mistake of responding to them, okay? The less they know about Sexy Sadie, the better. Keep the mystery.” He left her alone with her public.

Keep the mystery. Mona liked that phrase. It could be her credo, to borrow Bryon's word. Then she began to think about the mysteries that Bryon was keeping. If she had already received—she stopped to count, touching the envelopes gingerly—eleven pieces of fan mail, then how many fans must she have? If eleven people wrote, then hundreds—no, thousands—must watch and enjoy what she did.

So why was she getting paid by the job, with no percentage, no profit-sharing? God willing, her health assured, she could really build on this new career. After all, they actually had to make her look older, dressing her in dowdy dresses, advising her to make her voice sound more quavery than it was. Bryon had the equipment, Bryon had the distribution—but only Mona had Mona. How replaceable was she?

“F
ORGET IT
,” B
RYON SAID
when she broached the topic on the set a few weeks later. “I was up-front with you from the start. I pay you by the act. By the piece, if you will. No participation. You signed a contract, remember?”

Gone was the rapt deference from that first day at Starbucks. True, Mona had long ago figured out that it was an act, but she had thought there was a germ of authenticity in it, a genuine respect for her looks and presence. How long had Bryon been stalking her? she wondered now. Had he approached her because of her almost lavender eyes, or because she looked vulnerable and lonely? Easy, as they used to say.

“But I have fans,” she said. “People who like me, specifically. That ought to be worth a renegotiation.”

“You think so? Then sue me in Montgomery County courts. Your neighbors in LeisureWorld will probably love reading about that in the suburban edition of the
Washington Post.
”

“I'll quit,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Bryon said. “You think you're the only lonely old lady who needs a little attention? I'll put the wig and the dress on some other old bag. My films, my company, my concept.”

“Some concept,” Mona said, trying not to let him see how much the words hurt. So she was just a lonely old lady to him, a mark. “I sit in a room, a young man rings my doorbell, I end up having sex with him. So far, it's been a UPS man, a delivery boy for a florist, a delivery boy for the Chinese restaurant, and a young Mormon on a bicycle. What's next, a Jehovah's Witness peddling the
Watchtower
?”

“That's not bad,” Bryon said, pausing to write a quick note to himself. “Look, this is the deal. I pay you by the act. You don't want to do it, you don't have to. I'm always scouting new talent. Maybe I'll find an Alzheimer's patient, who won't be able to remember from one day to the next what she did, much less try to hold me up for a raise. You old bitches are a dime a dozen.”

It was the “old bitches” part that hurt.

W
HEN
M
ONA'S SECOND HUSBAND'S FORTUNE
had proved to be largely smoke and mirrors, she had learned to be more careful about picking her subsequent husbands. That was in the pre-Internet days, when determining a person's personal fortune was much more labor-intensive. She was pleased to find out from a helpful librarian how easy it was now to compile what was once known as a Dun and Bradstreet on someone, how to track down the silent partner in Bryon White's LLC.

Within a day, she was having lunch with Bernard Weinman, a dignified gentleman about her own age. He hadn't wanted to meet with her, but as Mona detailed sweetly what she knew about Bernie's legitimate business interests—more information gleaned with the assistance of the nice young librarian—and his large contributions to a local synagogue, he decided they could meet after all. He chose a quiet French restaurant in Bethesda, and when he ordered white wine with lunch, Mona followed suit.