The hurricane blonde, p.11
The Hurricane Blonde, page 11
The trailer was a gas-guzzling monster, a large piece of paper with the hurricane blonde taped to its side. Maybe Cal expected his leading ladies to have a high turnover rate, so why bother with actors’ names.
Or maybe it was one more of his Method expectations.
I took the steps two at a time, my hand raised to knock, and then I stopped. Listened.
I could hear voices inside—Melany’s lilting soprano, then a deeper voice—Roger? Cal?—and finally, a third female voice.
It sounded like . . .
I shoved the door open without knocking.
The trailer layout was what I remembered. A small kitchenette. Bookshelves and a Murphy bed pressed against one of the walls. A bathroom in the back. Melany and Cal were hunched over a laptop at the kitchenette table. I couldn’t see what was on the screen, but then I didn’t need to. I knew the sound of my own sister’s voice.
“She drops her T’s,” Melany murmured, jotting something on a notepad.
Cal’s hand was on the back of Melany’s chair, close enough to stroke the back of her neck. I stared at it, remembering the squeeze of Tawney’s throat.
“What are you watching?”
At the sound of my voice, they both turned. Cal’s hand dropped.
“Reviewing footage with the Hurricane Blonde here,” Cal said. He smiled at Melany.
I’d hated that nickname while my sister was alive. It was so much worse to hear it now. “She has a name,” I snapped.
“It’s all right,” Melany said, blushing. “It’ll help me get in character. I have big shoes to fill.”
I didn’t know if she meant Tawney or Ankine.
Cal nodded toward me. “Did you enjoy the table read?” His face was polite, like I was a new acquaintance and he was genuinely interested in my experience.
Like he hadn’t fucked me the day they put my sister in the ground.
“Yes, thank you,” I said, finding myself meeting his formal tone. I searched for something to say, remembered the dark-haired ingenue who’d sat opposite Melany at the table read. Cal’s Salma had cried twice on cue. “The Little Sister is well cast. I understand why you went in a different direction.”
Cal’s lip curled, just the hint of a laugh. “Funny, Salmon,” he said. “You always were funny.”
Melany’s attention bounced back and forth between us. I saw her mouth, Salmon, as he said it.
I ignored the traitorous frisson I felt, hearing my nickname from his mouth again.
“I’ll let you two visit,” Cal said, darting smoothly around me, placing a hand over a leather portfolio file open in front of him, blocking my view. As he got up, he tugged on Melany’s braid. “Wear it down tomorrow,” he said, and Melany blushed harder, nodding. She practically scalped herself yanking out the hair tie.
I craned my neck to glance at the portfolio. Glossy paper—photographs were my best guess. Cal was meticulous about framing his shots perfectly; it was his past as a director of photography. He closed the file, then squeezed by me, taking as much care not to touch me as if I’d been radioactive.
“Before I forget.” From the portfolio, Cal pulled a small white sheet of paper. “Homework.”
He passed it to Melany, who practically kissed it, before putting it in her pocket.
Cal stopped at the door. “Actually, Salma, do you have five minutes?” He checked his watch. “I’d love to pick your brain.”
“P-pick my brain?” I’d have been less shocked if he hit me.
“Yes,” he said in that patient tone. So unlike the Cal I’d known. “In my office.”
I looked at Melany as I tried to think of a plausibly polite refusal—no way was I going alone to his office. But Melany was no help. If anything, she looked jealous.
Cal’s walkie-talkie lit up, crackling. “Cal, they need you at set dec.”
Sweet relief. “Pity,” Cal said. “Another time.”
As Cal left, Melany plunked herself in front of the mirror, pulling up her long blonde hair into a ponytail. She had a picture of Tawney tacked to the mirror, the same headshot that graced Cherry’s book. She smiled at me in the reflection, turning so her chin was propped up by the back of the chair.
“So,” Melany said, her eyes glittering. “What was she like? What should I use for my performance?”
I dodged it. “What’s your homework?”
“I’m not sure, it’s— Oh.” Melany pulled it out of her pocket. I watched her face fall as she read it.
“What is it?”
Melany nibbled on the end of her ponytail. “It’s, um, instructions. For tomorrow.”
I frowned. “Instructions?”
“Yeah, just like, um . . .” Melany swallowed. She didn’t want to tell me. “Things to help me get in character.”
“Can I see?”
Reluctantly, Melany handed me the paper. Instructions was generous. To me, it looked like demands.
The Hurricane Blonde must always remain in character on set. No exceptions.
The Hurricane Blonde should seek director approval before meals or snacks. If the Hurricane Blonde is off-set while eating, she must send the director a photo of her proposed meal for permission.
The Hurricane Blonde shall respond to the director’s queries via text or email within thirty minutes. No exceptions.
The Hurricane Blonde must be off-book by the end of the week.
“I’ve got my work cut out for me,” Melany said with an uneasy laugh.
I looked up. “Melany, this is bullshit. He can’t ask you to send him photos of your food before you eat. That’s insane.”
Melany turned back to her mirror, trying a different configuration of her hair, then letting it drop against her shoulders. “If this is what it takes, this is what it takes,” she said, her voice resolute, chipper. She met my eyes in the mirror. “Can you call me the Hurricane Blonde from now on?”
I handed the list back, shaking my head. Melany was already moving on, telling me the notes she’d made about the role, how Cal was helping her envision the Hurricane Blonde, and did it really sound like Tawney? Or was it maybe more like . . .
I tuned her out as I glanced around the trailer again. On Morty’s House, each of us kids had had our own trailer, but we’d all piled into mine to study between takes. Sometimes Tawney would sneak us treats—donuts or bagels—never indulging herself. I never would have guessed, back then, that Emerald would land on the production side of things. Cal Turner’s right-hand woman, of all people.
Emerald had been a good actor, even in the Morty’s House days, more intuitive and reactive than me or Jenny. One moment on set, she’d be smiling, impish, full of life and high spirits. And then the camera would switch off, or the director would move on to someone else, and her face would fall back into neutral, a carefully shuttered mask. In our trailers between takes, the three of us kids had played bullshit—BS when adults were around—and Emerald won nine times out of ten.
That poker face would have evolved over the years.
I gave Melany the occasional hmm, or That sounds like a good idea, as she unspooled her thoughts, still thinking about Cal’s directives. Waiting for her to wind down so I could warn her.
Melany had already started cluttering her trailer with knickknacks: I spotted picture frames on a far console, a stack of papers, a fancy candle. I walked to the console, glancing at the trinkets assembled there. A handwritten card, propped up, a shooting star on the front. I smirked at it, flipped it open.
Ankine! Now that you’re famous, I expect a million-dollar trust fund. I’m not greedy. I will take payments in installments. Love ya, sis. Love, Brian.
My hands shook so badly I dropped the card. A note to Ankine from one of her little brothers.
I bent over, picked it up, re-reading.
No one had come to clean out the trailer yet.
I set the card back onto the console shakily, then looked down at the piles of paper beside it. A blank NDA. Wardrobe measurements. Underneath, a thick brick of script. Magnum Opus. Someone had drawn a tiny heart next to Cal’s name in purple gel ink.
“Salma?” Melany was staring at me in the mirror, frowning. “Are you okay?”
I pointed at the script. “Is this yours?” Miraculously, my voice didn’t quaver.
Melany shook her head. “I think it belonged to”—she lowered her voice, made a theatrical grimace—“you know who.”
I flipped through the pages. Purple gel ink notes covered the margins with increasing frequency. Ankine’s thoughts, a little window into her psyche. Maybe even into her relationship with Cal.
“Do you mind if I take this?”
Melany shot me a funny look, then shrugged. “I guess not.”
I tucked the script under my arm. But I still hadn’t done what I’d come to do. Melany had her head bent over her script, lips mouthing the words as she practiced.
I took a deep breath. “Melany, be careful, okay?”
She looked up at me, her nose crinkled, a goofy little smile on her face. “What do you mean?”
There was too much to tell her, and not enough to say. “Film sets are . . .” I searched for the words. On the third season of Morty’s House—I was thirteen—my producer, Carla, wandered into my trailer during a fitting, pinched a roll of my stomach between two fingers. We’ll fix this for you, okay? Trust me. You don’t even have to worry. Diet pills cut with amphetamines, uppers for the red carpet, champagne lunches—endless access to danger disguised as a good time.
“Just, um. If anybody ever says or does anything that makes you uncomfortable, come talk to me, okay? We can figure out how to handle it together.” Melany stared at me blankly in her mirror. But that wasn’t far enough. I was chickening out. “And be careful around Cal especially. He’s got a volatile reputation for a reason.”
Melany stared at me, then gave a little tinkling laugh. She pushed herself away from the vanity, throwing her arms around me. “Salma, you’re a doll, you know that?”
I stared at myself in the mirror, her golden head notched to my shoulder. She wasn’t hearing me. But then, if I were her—on the verge of my big break, hungry for stardom, about to become the person I’d always dreamed I’d be—well. I wouldn’t have listened, either.
It was on me to keep her safe—from Cal, from Hollywood, from herself.
Chapter
14
Ankine Petrosyan had been surprisingly funny.
On the stage directions that introduced the Hurricane Blonde (early twenties, proportions that get a girl in trouble) Ankine had scratched out girl and written, in all caps purple, WOMAN. I could almost feel her rolling her eyes as she read. I wondered if, under different circumstances, we would have been friends.
Then I remembered the picture of her dressed up as Tawney a year before Cal’s film. Maybe not.
I’d driven back to Glassell Park with the script on my passenger seat, stealing glances at it like it was a baby I hadn’t properly buckled. I barely made it to the bungalow court before I was buried in it.
I skimmed through to the end, focusing on Ankine’s notes. One caught my eye. On page fifty-three, the Hurricane Blonde broke it off with Brandon Saturn. She didn’t offer an explanation. In the margins, Ankine had scribbled notes. Does she haunt him because she left, or because she died?
It was a good question. Tawney had clammed up whenever I’d asked her why she’d left Cal so abruptly. I’d been enamored of their relationship, mistaking the volatility for passion—I was fifteen. And then there’d been the co-star Eric Wainwright. The rumors. I pushed those disloyal thoughts out of my head. I was no better than a tabloid, speculating.
Maybe that was how Cal remembered his breakup with Tawney, a big question mark never answered. Maybe he answered that question himself, a little voice whispered.
On another page, near a description of the Jacaranda House, Ankine had scribbled the name Elizabeth Wennick. It rang a bell, and I frowned at the page, wishing it would give up its secrets. Wennick—where did I know that name?
I closed my eyes, picturing a photocopy of an official-looking document. MacLeish’s police report. The owner of the Jacaranda House was listed as an E. F. Wennick. I chewed my lip. Ankine had done her research. Maybe it was a part of Method acting. But the film was about the past, not the present. I didn’t like all the connections she was turning up close to my family. It felt like a noose drawing in tight.
I flipped forward to look again at the three different death scenes for the Hurricane Blonde in Ankine’s script. It was an interesting technical choice, I thought, not giving the audience the resolution they wanted, the definitive proof.
It was also a chance for Cal to watch my sister die, over and over and over.
A word on page seventy stopped me. I paused, read slowly. I flipped forward, then back. The first and third deaths remained the same—a car accident, and then a representation of her real-life death, strangulation, culprit unknown.
But in Ankine’s script, the second death scene had been changed.
I scrambled for my own version of the script, comparing. In my copy, the Hurricane Blonde in her second death simply disappeared, wandering away from Brandon into a darkened landscape, never to be seen again.
But in Ankine’s script, there it was—in the stage notes. Ext. The Hurricane Blonde, wearing a white bikini, walks down the steps of the pool, Brandon Saturn behind her. She looks peaceful; Saturn places his hands on her shoulders. Slowly, she submerges into the water. From underneath the water, we can see the outline of Saturn—watching. Watching.
I blinked at the paper, not believing my eyes. I read the scene, then re-read it.
Cal had changed the script. He’d killed one of his Hurricane Blondes in a pool, and then Ankine died in that same pool.
I sat at my kitchen table in Glassell Park, but I was looking across town, to the Jacaranda House. Two women dead in the same spot, twenty years apart. Cal the biggest link between them.
I was glad I didn’t keep any alcohol in the house. When I closed my eyes, I could imagine the velvet finish of a Gamay Rouge on my tongue, the heat of it in my throat. How easy it would be to use the alcohol to forget for a little while.
I snapped my eyes open. Cal fucking Turner and his goddamn Method acting, uncorking my thirst. But I wasn’t that person anymore. I wouldn’t let myself be.
I put Ankine’s script away and pulled up her Instagram. A new post announced a memorial. Public welcome. I scanned the details—Forest Lawn cemetery, Sunday, October 8.
I was about to click out of her profile when something stopped me. I squinted down at the screen.
The last time I’d checked, she had about four thousand followers. Now, after her death, that number had shot up to nearly three hundred thousand. More comments had been left on her posts, many of them urging her to rest in peace, professing their admiration.
I couldn’t believe it—but then, I could. In death, she’d found the fame she’d wanted while she was alive, I thought.
Hollywood loves a dead girl. She’s always photogenic.
* * *
• • •
Two days later, I had my first real run-in with Cherry.
By the end of the week, we’d moved from table reads to blocking shots, practice run-throughs on the semicompleted sets. With each rehearsal, Melany—the Hurricane Blonde—gained a little more confidence. And as she did, Cal beamed more approval her way.
More than once, I’d spotted them together, whispering and laughing in some private corner of the set.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t trust it. I caught myself staring at him for long swaths of the blocking, looking for any sign of a guilty conscience. He’d written a death for one of his characters that had come true, and then erased the evidence from his script.
Once or twice, he caught me staring. I flinched when he met my gaze, but I didn’t blink. His face was closed to me now; I couldn’t read his expression. Then, as if nothing had happened, he looked away.
For all my suspicions, Cal did appear to be a changed person. He was still intense, focused to a fault, and not particularly patient when either the cast or crew made a mistake. But he had learned to hold his temper better, even to joke between scenes. Nobody walked on eggshells around him the way they once had.
The only time the façade fell was when Cherry butted in.
During the first blocking pass, Cherry found ways to comment on every artistic choice Cal made. Most of it was subtle: tapping her nails on the arm of her chair, clicking the top of her pen, shifting creakily when Cal posed something just so. Just enough to grab attention.
Cal ignored Cherry, keeping his focus on his actors. But I could see his shoulders tighten with each micro-interruption.
Cal was blocking the Little Sister’s meltdown in the chapel—my favorite scene—when Cherry spoke up.
“Oh dear,” Cherry said. I looked up from my script. When Cal didn’t react, she repeated it louder. “Oh. Dear.”
Cal had his hands on Lea’s, the Little Sister’s, shoulders as he walked her through the motions of the scene when Cherry interrupted. Cal’s jaw clenched. He took a long beat before he turned to face her. “Okay, Cherry, I hear you.”
Cherry leaned back in her folding chair, recrossing her legs to show them off. She had the slim thighs of a teenager still and she knew it, twitching them to draw attention. Below her skirt, I could see sunspots dotting her legs like polka dots. “Sorry, darling, but I believe you’ve got that line wrong. Read it again for me?”
Lea looked at Cal for permission before complying. “I can’t be in here with my sister in a box—”
“There,” Cherry said, jabbing the air with one triumphant coral-painted finger. “See? Page one eighty-six.” She held up her copy of The Hurricane Blonde. “The line should be, ‘I can’t stand to be in a room where my sister is dead in a box.’ ”
