The Unwilling Actress

by Bella Dietrich

  Well, just wait till the cast party. She'd show Rosemary. And Celia. And Bullock. Especially Celia. Hilda smiled to herself in anticipation. Garrett was a bastard too, but there was no denying he was a smart one. She knew that handling the arrangements for the cast party was only a consolation prize, but what he didn't know was that she was going to wind up with the part, too.

  * * *

  Celia toyed with her cheese souffle and salad. The bright sun pouring into the corner booth hurt her eyes, and her heart felt like a concrete rock in her breast. She knew her humiliation would be final and complete if she pressed Web further, but she couldn't stop herself.

  "I thought we... I... mean... it's usual..." She faltered, swallowing the huge lump in her throat and looking down at her food to hide the tears that trembled on her lashes.

  "You thought we'd get married. But you knew all along that I'm trying to open my own business. You knew I had no intention of marrying yet." He threw down his napkin in irritation. The silence was so thick and cloying he couldn't breathe. He grabbed a cigarette and lit it, looking out over the restaurant at the lunch crowd.

  "I guess... I thought... circumstances could...sometimes change... that maybe you'd want..." Celia stopped, turning her head to look out the window as though she were intent on something in the parking lot. Her hand covered her eyes from Web, and the shining hair swung forward to cover her cheek.

  "Look... what we had was something you wanted, too. I wasn't the only beneficiary, you know. And I'm perfectly willing for things to continue as they are... but I'm not ready to be tied yet. And I don't think you're ready for it, either. Live a little. Have some experiences."

  Celia slid her huge dark glasses on and blew her nose discretely. She looked up at him then with the darkened glass obscuring her eyes completely. She tried to smile, but her mouth trembled and her lips would not function. "I think I've had all the experience I need."

  Before he could stop her, she slid from the booth and made her way swiftly out the restaurant door and into the bright Texas sun. When the door swung shut behind her to hold in the cool air, he could still see her retreating figure behind his eyes. He ground out his cigarette savagely, and only then did he see she'd tucked a dollar bill under her plate. Web left it for a startled waitress and walked quickly up to the cashier and placed the right amount with the check. He slammed through the door into the hot muggy interior of his car, gunned it into action, and squealed the tires as he turned out of the parking lot to go back to work.

  Celia had no real memory of how she got through the afternoon at the shop, waiting on customers, checking invoices, doing the unit control books from yesterday's sales slips, changing the window display. It was all a blur, and her stomach was a knot of pain.

  By the time she got home after work her head was splitting and her insides still churning. Nausea was sweeping her. She fell into the smaller bedroom that was hers, threw her bag on the marble-topped bureau, and collapsed on the heavy white bedspread. Over and over the scenes played behind her closed eyes, rolling and changing, superimposing and montaging.

  Was it only yesterday that she had been Celia Brown, budding young actress, good daughter, diligent student, working girl? Her world had collapsed, her body changed, her heart broken, and her hopes gone forever. She sobbed then, and the tears poured out in sheets. She wanted to die.

  Celia woke to a pounding that echoed in her head. Wearily, she struggled from the bed and opened the door, leaning on it for support.

  "Celia, baby!" Patrick held his arms wide as his Irish grin. "Have you forgotten the tryouts tonight?"

  "I'm not going," she mumbled.

  "But you have to. You're sure to get the part... Hey, baby-what's the matter?" He took her by the shoulders and bent a little to peer into her face. It was tear-streaked and the lipstick was gone. Her eyes were puffed and swollen, her hair uncombed.

  She shook her head. "I'm just tired," she sighed. "And don't call me baby."

  "Well... never mind, Tender." He held her chin in his hand and looked over her face. "All that pretty face needs is a quick wash, a dash of lipstick, a comb through your shining crown, and we'll be off."

  She felt her throat close again. Patrick was being so kind. He'd dubbed her "Tender" almost from the day she arrived but, she realized, he only called her that when she seemed to be in distress. "I can't, Patrick... I'm sorry... you go on."

  "I'll do no such thing." He pushed her before him down the hall to the bathroom. "Now, if you want me to wash your face for you, I can do that, too." She shook her head and tried to smile, and he bowed out the door.

  Celia still didn't see how she could possibly manage to go, but she washed her face anyway and that felt a little better. Slowly she brushed her hair and, fingers shaking, stroked on pale lipstick. The mirror showed her the same Celia she'd always seen, except for the puffiness and some fatigue smudges under the eyes. How could she look the same? How was it possible to look the same as she had yesterday... when so much had happened, so much ruined, so much felt and thought, so much gone? She could never ever be the same again... that Celia was gone forever. "Mirror, mirror on the wall..." she murmured, and she saw herself in the mirrored room with Web's hands sliding over her naked flesh.

  The words hung in her head like some awful dooming banner proclaiming her hopelessness.

  Patrick was pounding on the door and yelling. She opened it.

  Despite her protests, Patrick took her to a small restaurant near the rehearsal hall for chili. It tasted good, for her lunch had been left almost untouched. The tortillas were hot and buttered, and the chili left stinging bites on the tongue. Patrick, with his mimic's charm and inexhaustible fund of stories, soon had her laughing in spite of herself.

  Celia looked around at the patrons. They were working people, teenagers, tired housewives, a few lonely old people... the cross section that she supposed Waxahachie was, too, but it had never looked even this interesting to her. It had never seemed to have even this much color and variety... and she realized that probably one way or another she would soon be back there for life. Entombed.

  The night sky was punctured with a few stars. It was warmer than it had been after dark for the last week. Celia leaned against Patrick and was grateful for his arm around her shoulders as they walked along the deserted sidewalk under the old elms. She was so tired... so terribly tired.

  "I still say Garrett was a bastard tonight. A first-class bastard. He didn't make anyone else stay and do one scene fifty times over. He was trying to break you!" Patrick said solicitously.

  "No... I think it was just me. I just couldn't seem to get it right. I knew I shouldn't have come. Too much has happened all at once."

  "Look, Tender. You're the best actress in the city of Dallas, and don't think Garrett doesn't know it. You got the part, all right. It just makes me furious the way you had to get it."

  "I felt like such a fool. Standing there crying. I don't know. I just couldn't seem to stop."

  "Hell, anybody would have cried with the going-over he gave you!"

  Celia looked up at Patrick, and somehow his words made the tears start flowing again. She could still feel the sting of Garrett's tongue-lashing.

  "Hey, it's over now. You don't have to cry now." He squeezed her closer and kissed her hair near the temple. He steered her into the quiet park without her even noticing. Her eyes were on her feet. Patrick found a path that led down to the trickle of river and the dammed-up lily ponds. His favorite bench was there, backed by a walled partition so it formed a private little three-sided cabin with a picnic table in the center.

  He'd known ever since he knocked on her door and dragged her out this evening that something very shaking had happened to Celia Brown. His instinct, the strange intuitive thing that made him know when to press the advantage in a political campaign and when to hold back, told Patrick that now was the time to press Celia Brown. She was as vulnerable now as a snail without a shell, a newbor
n bird without a mother. And during the tryouts Justin Garrett had softened her up even more.

  Patrick sat down on the bench and pulled Celia down, too. With his back braced against the partition and his desert boots on the picnic table, he put her feet up and turned her against his chest as though she were a child.

  "Now, suppose you tell old Father Flanner here what's troubling you."

  Celia lay with her legs along the bench and her head and shoulders tucked against Patrick's chest. For the first time, she began to feel as though someone cared that she was miserable. The intense searing emotions that could only be that shaking to a nineteen-year-old girl came pouring out of her in a great sobbing flood.

  "Oh... Patrick... I'm no good... I've ruined... everything... forever..." The hurt came out in a chest-heaving pain that wracked her. Patrick soothed and rocked her, holding her tight against him as though she were five years old with her small world shattered.

  In the dark she could feel freer to let go, and Patrick let her rave and sob and cry, smoothing his hands down her body gently in monotonous sliding motions. He could feel the tenseness gradually begin to ease from her as he caressed her from shoulderblades and neck to waist and hips and thighs to calves.

  Even before her broken words and phrases and sobs made it clear to him what had actually happened to her, the line he spoke in the play to her every night kept ringing in his head like a message... "Virginity once lost may be ten times found..." He'd help her find it ten times over!

  The smooth sinuous curves of Celia's lovely body under his hands, so close and warm against him in the warm dark, with the frog's croaking so near at the water's edge, sent a hot thrill chasing through Patrick's veins. It was like the power that surged through him when he knew his words were swaying an audience, bending them to his will. His hands were now wielding that hypnotic power over Celia's lovely body.

  Very softly, as her words began to fail and the sobs to ease, he recited poetry to her while his hands continued to work their soothing magic. Snatches of The Rubaiyat, The Prophet, the Sonnets, Rossetti, whatever he could remember.

  Celia lay cradled against Patrick's warm chest, almost soothed to sleep now by his voice and his smoothing hands and his lips kissing her face and hair in the pauses between the words. Lovely words that comforted her, warm kind hands that eased her. They would walk home soon, she told herself, and she could sleep and blot out the last terrible twenty-four hours. Such nice words Patrick spoke... how kind he was...

  It seemed quite natural when his lips found hers and his warm hand slid down her throat and slightly inside the neckline of her dress to her shoulder. He caressed the tender, sensitive skin around her collarbone. Patrick's mouth went from her lips to her cheeks and both eyelids and temples and ears and jaw and throat and back to her mouth. His lips were very gentle and tender. She smiled faintly to herself in the dark, remembering that he called her "Tender."

  It was so dark that she couldn't see his face even when she opened her eyes, so Celia kept them closed and felt the kindness in his voice and warm jaw and chin and cheek and lips and hands. The frog talk in the background and the faint rippling sounds of the water were reassuring in their monotony.

  Patrick eased his hand to the front zipper of Celia's dress, his voice reciting again and his mouth kissing, and he slid it silently down. His hand went back to her throat and started its slow descent to her breast, her full voluptuous breast that he could still see creaming out in round ripeness above her costume last night. He worked very carefully, for he mustn't terrify this soft little unshelled snail. She might melt away.

  Celia sighed, so close to sleep now that it was an effort to keep the consciousness from drifting away inside her head. As Patrick's lips found hers again, his hand closed over her breast so softly that at first she was hardly aware of it. There was only a comforting warmth where there had been none. A soothing comforting warmth that flowed through her veins when she was so close to sleep and when she was so tired and...

  "Poor little Celia," he crooned in a whisper against her opened mouth. Then he slid his lips down her throat as his hand rounded and cupped and caressed her breasts through the thin net bra. Growing bolder, his hand dipped deeper inside her opened dress to slide down her rib cage and over her naked belly above her bikini pantyhose. The firm young skin on the bowl of her little belly was warm satin under his exploring palm and fingers. His hand communicated to his excited brain by touch what she looked like, and he could see her white silken curves in his head.

  Celia's mouth opened under Patrick's as he kissed her more firmly and insistently. She was warm and snug and comforted until his warm hand slid under her bra and touched her naked nipple that popped instantly alive and rigid with anticipation. Suddenly she was aware of what he was doing... of what he had been doing!

  "No... Patrick... no!" Instantly she was alive and conscious and protesting as she tore her mouth away and tried to sit upright. Celia felt herself being pressed down again under his now hard hands that restrained her and held her. Oh my God! He'd been seducing her the way Web had... and her traitorous body had responded!

  Celia strained and fought to get away, but his mouth held hers with his tongue now forced between her teeth deep in her throat. His hard muscular arms pinned her flailing arms and legs, and he held her like a slippery writhing fish. No! No! But he locked her to him in the vise of his arms, and she began to whimper deep in her throat.

  Despite her fighting and struggling, Patrick knew he would catch the fish, for he had the advantage now and he was going to force it. Still holding her down in his lap with his arm and hand and mouth, he slid his hand up her dress to catch the top of the bikini pantyhose. She slithered and writhed, moaning as he tried to strip them down.

  Celia could feel what he was doing and knew his strength far exceeded hers. She was almost choking on his hard tongue that fucked relentlessly into her mouth, and her breath was coming in painful sobs through her nostrils. She knew in the very marrow of her being that he was going to win, that he would have his way, would do with her whatever he wanted, and she would be helpless to stop him. Oh God. She remembered how kind he'd been, and she'd been such a fool to trust him. It was true! Men only wanted one thing of a woman... and one thing only! They'd do anything to get it... any dirty underhanded, deceitful thing!

  Even as she raged and fumed inwardly, she also knew deep within her that her body responded, wanted it, participated... that it was not totally the male responsibility. Her own lusting flesh helped the rutting male. Her despair was overwhelming. She was ruined forever and would be buried alive in the mediocrity of Waxahachie, Texas. Suddenly, there seemed no point to anything. If Celia Brown died now or further besmirched herself, it could not matter. The damage had been done.

  Patrick was still working at her writhing hips, and he pulled his mouth away to catch her heaving breast with the bra slipped up above it. He could see it now, for the moon had escaped from the cloud cover. That beautiful white full life-giving breast shuddering in the moonlight. With a deep groan, he bent his head to it and tasted her silken flesh in his mouth.

  Celia felt his wet hot mouth close on her breast as he drew the nipple into his sucking throat. It was that blessed degradation that sent a deep interior ambrosia flowing through her and out into his drawing mouth. Oh God. What did it matter now? She was crying hopelessly, for she could feel her nipple hard and quivering in his mouth and she wanted it there.

  A sudden rage swept through Celia that shook her even harder than the crying and the sobbing. She caught his head somehow in her hands, pressed it to her flaming breast for a long moment, and then tore it away. "Let me up... just let me up for a moment." Celia managed to struggle out of his grasp and stand, feeling the fury harden her like molten lava cooling.

  She leaped up on the picnic table and began tearing her dress off and her bra and her pantyhose that were already hanging on her thighs. The rage had seized her, and she sobbed and cried and
tore off her clothes like a madwoman. A shaft of moonlight came through the trees and bathed her in its golden spotlight.

  At last Celia stood naked in the soft light. Patrick swallowed and choked! He had never seen anything more beautiful as she stood in the eerie light like a vision of some unearthly beauty, and he was frozen in awe for a long moment. The convex and the concave, the hillocks and the valleys, the secret hollows. She stood on that improvised stage, carved by the light like a living breathing goddess!

  Patrick could see the amazing complexity of arms rounding into shoulders that gradually rounded and swelled into the full heaviness of her ripened breasts. They were rose-tipped and proud, upright on the slender stem of her ribs, that narrowed to her fragile waist and then swelled so gradually to rounded hips and long perfect thighs that swept down to beautifully boned knees and on to rounding calves and delicate ankles and feet. He knew now what being stunned meant, for he was stunned, excited, and a terrible urgency was building in his already fully aroused loins.

  If it was a role she played on her stage in the spot of the moon, she could never have a better audience. Patrick knew too well how he could be affected by a truly great performance. It was what was going to make him a public figure to be reckoned with. He was going to change the whole damn crazy world by just such tactics... giving the people some drama, some emotion, some conflict that raised the blood in their sluggish veins.