Almost instantly, a trim, brown-skinned woman with twinkling dark eyes and wearing the uniform of a professional caretaker, comes to the door and swings it open. She looks to be from India or Pakistan. Masking any shock at my gruesome appearance, she leads me through the entryway to the coved-ceiling living room. It’s exactly as I remember it. Filled with worn vintage velvet furnishings draped with fringed silk shawls, oriental rugs scattered on dark hardwood floors, and whimsical bronze lamps with hand-painted glass shades that bathe the rose-colored walls in a warm amber glow. Scented candles are everywhere and soft classical music fills the air.
No, the house hasn’t changed a bit, but she has. My bleary eyes drink her in. She was always twenty-five-years older than me, but then her beauty negated the age difference. Though still stunning, she now looks older than her years. She’s let her long ebony hair turn silver and her thinness has given way to gauntness. Crinkly gray eyes set off her high cheekbones, which against the hollows of her cheeks look like apples. The woman, who would be bent over the couch, naked with her gorgeous ass in the air, always ready for me, is now hunched in a wheelchair. A blanket covers her withered legs. She shakes. And upon seeing me, her tremors become more pronounced. She has Parkinson’s.
“Divya,” she says in her still breathy, deep theatrical voice, “please bring me some first aid, an ice pack, and a glass of water with some Advil.”
“Right away, Miss Stadler.” The exotic caretaker scuttles off.
“Brandon, come here,” she orders, her voice softer.
Battling fatigue and pain, I take one small shaky step after another in her direction, each step more agonizing than the one before. It feels like an eternity until I reach her and when I do, I fall to my knees and bury my face in her lap. I do something I’ve done only once—when my parents died—I cry.
A melodic “shh” sounds in my ears. Her fingertips caress my scalp while I heave quietly and shed tears into her soft cashmere blanket. I seek solace with the extraordinary woman who taught me to master my craft and master my sexuality. The teacher who introduced me to the world of BDSM and taught me to be a Dom.
The lifestyle she introduced me to felt so right. So out of control after my parents’ demise, the control I got from sexual domination filled a need, a void. She was the perfect teacher. The perfect submissive. Strong but compliant. Vulnerable but fearless. A willing sub to indulge in the pain I inflicted and the pleasure I gave her. She showed me all kinds of kinks and fetishes, and opened my mind and body to fantasies and desires, blurring the line between acting out our fantasies and satisfying our real needs. A classically trained pianist, she compared our sexploits to Mozart. Just the way he included unexpected little notes and trills in his music to make the piece twinkle and feel more fun, our trills were composed of spankings, candle wax, sex toys, and much more. We had boundaries and she had a safe word, Shakespeare, but her hard limits were limited. She opened my eyes; she opened my world. As much as I needed to be a Dom, she needed to be a sub and relinquish the control she exerted in her everyday life over her academy and students. Shut down her brain and let me make the choices. Surrender. It was the perfect Dom-sub relationship. And then she got sick.
I don’t know how long I stay in this position when I hear her voice again.
“Mr. Taylor, look up at me.”
Wordlessly, I lift my head and meet her gaze.
“What happened?” Her husky submissive voice is soft.
“I fucked up. I crashed my car.”
Her prescient eyes penetrate mine. “What really happened?”
Before I can answer, Divya returns with a silver tray full of first aid and a bag of ice.
“Divya, please set the tray down on the end table and give us some time alone together.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says the obliging caretaker.
“And would you please make us some tea.”
Divya quietly departs.
With her frail, trembling hands, Bella opens the bottle of peroxide and moistens a cotton ball. She dabs it on my gash. Still in a kneeling position, I wince.
“Shit. That hurts.”
A small smile lifts her lips. “You, better than anyone, know that pain comes with healing.”
And then pleasure.
“Press this against the wound,” she commands after cleaning up my blood-caked cheeks.
She lifts my hand to my face, and nursing my open cut, I watch as she soaks another ball with the antiseptic liquid. One more dab, this one not as stingy, and then she lightly kisses the wound. Not so much as a lover, but rather as a mother kissing a child’s scraped knee. I close my eyes and let out a grateful moan. Reopening them, my gaze stays on her as she struggles to open the box of Band-Aids with her trembling fingers. I have the burning urge to help her but know that small gesture will humiliate her. Despite being my sub, she relished her independence. After a few tries, she opens the lid and then fishes for the right size bandage with her long slender fingers, still so elegant though now withered and quivering. They remind me so much of Zoey’s.
“Don’t move,” she tells me. She peels off the wrapping and places the bandage over my wound. She admires her handiwork.
“Well, Brandon, I must say you look a lot like a battered Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront—although a hell of a lot more handsome.” She pauses to smile. “Now put the ice pack to your face.”
I reach for the ice pack and press it against my forehead. Ahh! Pain followed by pleasure. The coldness of the compress soothes my raw skin. With my free hand, I reach for the Advil and flush a couple tablets down my throat with a few sips of water.
Divya returns with another silver tray, this one holding a floral tea service. Setting the tray down on the glass coffee table, she pours two cups of tea. One for Bella, one for me. I stand and then sit on the edge of the couch, close to her wheelchair.
“Divya dear, please put two lumps of sugar into Mr. Taylor’s tea and one into mine.” She remembers how I like it. I put the hot, fragrant brew to my mouth with my free hand, and as I take a small sip, memories flood my mind. It was fittingly over the play, Tea and Sympathy, the story of a forbidden teacher-student romance, that our relationship transcended the normal teacher-student bond. It turned sexual. She, the older, wiser, more experienced teacher of a lifestyle that transformed my life. We couldn’t get enough of each other.
Once, ice packs and hot tea bags brought us to orgasmic heights, the dual sensations of each playing off one another until she could no longer bear it and I couldn’t wait for her to come. While memories abound of our outrageous sexcapades, my eyes stay fixed on her as she slowly lifts her porcelain cup to her lips with her shaky hand. Still always pinky out. Erect as a cock. She blows on the steamy greenish liquid before taking a sip. Her still sensuous pursed lips remind me of how many times they kissed me everywhere, lighting the fire and desires of a fucked-up eighteen-year-old kid who almost overdosed on heroin. I owe her my career. I owe her my life.
“Thank you for the tea,” I say after taking another soothing sip.
She smiles at me warmly again. “It’s a special Ayurvedic blend from India composed of magical herbs that help balance one’s doshas and hence keep the body and mind in harmony. It restores your body’s natural ability to heal itself.”
The tea is exactly what I need, but I doubt it can heal the hole in my heart. Nothing can, except one unattainable human being.
After another sip, she sets the cup down on its saucer. She strokes my face. “You know, I watch your show every week.”
“You do?” I never knew that. “What do you think?”
“Of the show? Or of you?”
I quirk a nervous smile, knowing she never holds back. “Both.”
“You deserved to win the Golden Globe. And so did the series.”
“You watched?”
“Of course. Thank you for acknowledging me.”
Silently grateful that Zoey reminded me to include her in my acceptance speech, I smile a g
enuine smile—the first since she ran away from me in Cannes. “Bella, you made me both the actor and man I am.”
“That was my job. You’re the best student I ever had.” She pauses to take another sip of tea. “And the best lover.”
Never married, Bella had many. But to the best of my knowledge, she never took on another after me. She eyes me warmly.
“And thank you for the generous donation to my school. It allowed me to give a scholarship to a lovely young woman whose talent rivals yours. I have high hopes for her.”
While she now only occasionally shows up for auditions or a guest lecture because of her debilitating degenerative disease, she still runs the academy with an iron fist. Over the years, I’ve contributed several million dollars that’s enabled her to open other branches around the country, maintain the facilities, and offer scholarships to talented kids, like the girl she mentioned, who can’t afford the tuition.
“The money comes from my heart.”
“It means a lot to me.” She changes the subject. “So, I hear you’re getting married to that awful woman who thinks she’s America’s It Girl.”
My brows arch. It hurts to lift them. “You’ve met her?”
“Yes. I had the misfortune of meeting her at the hospital when I came to visit you after your horrible hit and run back in January. She and that despicable manager of yours forbid me from seeing you.”
Rage rips through my bloodstream. Fucking Katrina. Fucking Scott. How dare they shoo away the two most important people in my life—my beloved Zoey and my mentor Bella?
My chest tightening, I remove the melting ice pack from my head and set it back on the tray. I suck in a sharp breath. “It’s fucked up. I’m not in love with her. I want to call it off.”
“So, Brandon, why don’t you?”
I inhale deeply again. “She’s threatened to expose my kinks. Actually worse… portray me as a life-threatening sex molester even though there’s never been any sex between us. I supposedly fell in love with her and proposed just before my hit and run accident, but I have no recollection.”
Bella’s inquisitive eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“I suffered amnesia. Lost ten years of my life. Just about everything’s come back to me except my time with her and the actual day of the accident.” Over another sip of the hot tea, I pause. “I’m sick about the whole thing. I don’t want to marry her.”
Looking up at the ceiling, Bella dreamily lowers her eyelids. “For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things…”
Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I remember the lines as if I recited them yesterday. I played Lysander, the foolish young man who deceives his true love, Hermia.
“…the deepest loathing to the stomach brings. Or as the heresies that men do leave are hated most of those they did deceive. So thou, my surfeit and my heresy, of all be hated, but the most of me!”
Nodding, Bella meets my gaze. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
I blink twice. “How do you know?”
“My beloved Brandon, people are an open book. I’m trained to read sensory, physical, and psychological cues. Your emotions are written all over you. They read like a man madly in love.”
“I am.” I swallow the two little words.
“Who might this person be?”
“My assistant. Or should I say former assistant. I love all of her. Everything about her.”
“She loves you?”
“I thought she did. But now I’m not sure. I screwed up big time. She’s shut me out and wants nothing to do with me.”
“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines and oh so fitting. I feel like I’ve been dragged through a raging river, encountering every jagged rock along the way.
“Brandon, would you please wheel me around so I’m facing you.”
Standing, I do as asked. Once again, I feel like her student in the classroom of life.
“Please sit back down.”
I do as bid, and so close to me, she holds my face between her frail, shaking hands. They’re icy cold and feel good on my fiery skin. Her warm breath heats my chilled bones. Our eyes lock.
“Mr. Taylor, you’re not here just for tea and sympathy.”
“Bella, I’m lost. I don’t know what to do.”
“What did I always tell you to do in my classes?”
The words whirl around my head. “Act with your heart.”
“Yes. And what else did I insist on you doing?”
The unforgettable, very first words of my mentor pour out of my mouth. “Don’t follow your dreams. Lead them and land them.”
“Yes. Do it, Brandon. Do it.”
A rush of love for this incredible woman surges inside me. Not like a gush of hot lava the way it used to, but more like a sprinkle of refreshing water wanting to give life to a withering rose. She’s still irresistible. My lips are about to touch down on hers when her caretaker reappears. The chinoiserie grandfather’s clock in the corner starts chiming.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Taylor, you must leave now. It’s Miss Stadler’s bedtime.”
I nod. Bella, still cupping my jaw, submits to my lips, and we both lose ourselves in a soft, tender kiss. Not the kiss of two lovers but rather of two souls connected forever. I know in my heart it’ll be our last. On the final, ninth chime of the clock, we break away. Her soulful eyes hold mine.
“I don’t have much time, Brandon. Make yourself happy. Make me proud.”
Zoey
I was only half-lying to Brandon. I do have a boyfriend. Well, sort of. He’s someone from my acting class who’s been crushing on me. After we performed a scene from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which he played Puck, the bumbling love fairy, to my lead of jilted heroine Hermia, he built up the courage to ask me to lunch at the Greek deli next door. And I said yes.
His name is Albert Schwimmer. Maybe because he’s on the chubby side, I can’t help thinking of Fat Albert. That cartoon series.
“Why did your parents name you Albert?” I asked right after our order was delivered to the table.
After biting into his overstuffed, greasy gyro sandwich, he responded, “They thought it would make me smart. Like Albert Einstein.”
I almost choked on my low-cal veggie burger. “That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard.”
He laughed back and then asked me out on a real date…
Tonight of all nights, right after my emotionally devastating encounter with Brandon. Sick to my stomach, I’ve thought about canceling it. Saying I have Ebola. Which, with the way I feel, is almost true. But after much deliberation, I decide not to. A new person in my life might be the best medicine to cure me of my real, potentially fatal disease. The disease that’s ravaging both my body and my heart. Brandonitis.
Still tasting him and wearing the intoxicating scent of him, I eschew a shower, unable to wash him away. I hastily throw on an outfit. Albert is taking me bowling at a nearby bowling alley in Hollywood. So jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt—my Kurt Kussler one—will suffice.
While I haven’t done it in ages, I love to bowl. Pops is in a league and he started me out at an early age. Bowling helped me funnel my anger toward Mama’s murderer. When I hurled that big ball down the long, narrow lane, I fantasized striking him down. It really helped me with my game.
At seven p.m. sharp, a horn honks outside my window. Taking a final glimpse of my pathetic self in the mirror, I trudge downstairs from my second-floor apartment. Albert’s gray Toyota Corolla is waiting for me outside. I hop in.
Bowling should be fun, but tonight it’s not and I’m off my game. Distracted, I can’t get my mind off Brandon. He totally unraveled me and reactivated every physical and emotional feeling I have for him. It was bad enough just seeing him, but when he kissed me, that’s all it took for me to succumb. The touch of his lips on mine melted me, turned every bone in my body into molten liquid. If he hadn’t pinned me a
gainst a wall, I would have crumbled. And then I let him ravish me on the massage table until somehow I found the strength inside me to make him stop before he made me fall apart again. It was bad enough putting the pieces of myself back together the first time and I knew I could never do it again. Yet, here I am once again, a total train wreck.
With a forceful swing, I hurl my last bowling ball down the glistening lane. My eyes stay fixed on it as it rolls smack down the middle at a dizzying speed. KABOOM! The ball rams into the pins, knocking all but one down.
While I wait for the ball to return, I narrow my eyes at the sole pin that’s standing at the very far right. The erect pin challenges me. And suddenly it has a face. Brandon’s! Fuck you, asshole! My purple bowling ball comes back to me. Curling my fingers into the three holes, I toss it down the alley with as much force as I can muster. My gaze never wavers from it as it speeds down the lane and knocks down the lone pin with a POW. A spare.
“Wow! You’re amazing!” says Albert. “You won! How’d you learn to bowl like that?”
One of Pops’s mottos comes to mind. “Practice makes perfect,” I say glumly as I realize my victory. Final score: One hundred fifty to Albert’s gutter-driven ninety.
I should be elated, but I’m not. My heart’s way heavier than my lucky ball.
After a quick bite—chilidogs which I barely touched—we’re back at my Beachwood Canyon apartment complex. Albert parks his car in front of it. We share a short awkward silence and then he breaks it.
“Can I come up?’ His bespectacled eyes stayed glued on me.
Another tense moment. After much deliberation, I say, “Sure.” Regret immediately sets in.
“Cool digs,” he says, taking in my small apartment five minutes later.
“It’s okay.” I shrug. “Want a glass of wine? Or a beer?”
“You got milk?”
Milk? “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back.”
When I return to the living room with a glass of milk in hand, Albert’s nowhere to be found. Maybe he’s split. No such luck.
Unforgettable 3 (Hollywood Love Story #3) Page 8
