Something Strange Happened Here -- Alison Bergeron
Editor's Note: This was the winner of the Valentine's Day Contest.
Among the adages that directors and producers had mumbled under their breath, she can recall one about the countryside being Nirvana for actors. Long after the soundstage had numbed her mind and eaten her heart, she was supposed to breathe. She was supposed to live again.
Perhaps it’s different for child stars though.
The sun has arms like a courthouse, exposing all of their flaws and all of their regrets. Jesse stopped breathing a few days ago and she can’t remember if she followed in suit. Mother had always said her corpse would be talkative.
Light goes running through the fields, washing over her skin. Her bones are too weak to move, stomach caving in, eyes tracing circles around themselves, head bursting with the smell of poppies.
If she’s not already dead, she’s going to die here while she still owns the sun.
When they first caught word of the film, the entire 1950’s seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. It was high time to put those two on the silver screen together. The rest of the Golden Age was just wasted time.
Jesse Bentz had ten or so years on her. When she blew out eighteen candles, he was already flipping through his scrapbooks and laughing at the taste of his mid to late twenties. He had a young face, though, as if the youth was still trapped in his veins.
He was Hollywood’s bad boy, just like he had been for all of the years after his short lived days of wearing the sun on his face in late thirties television. Some days the world forgot about him, other days they swooned.
Meanwhile, the human race was obsessed with her. Pretty face, cheeky smile, purity running from cherry-red lips, teeth whitened by youth. Hollywood’s sweetheart, darling, princess, anything to keep her sensationalized.
The picture was called ‘Strange Happenings’ and perhaps it was written as an excuse to finally have Jesse Bentz and Bunny Bradshaw in the same frame with it’s hackneyed plot and tired tropes. Footage of them simply standing in the same room would have made millions either way.
They first met in the smoky back room of the producers’ greenlight party, where the cameras never left her face and her agent had a tight grip on her arm the entire time.
“Go talk to each other.” She couldn’t tell if it was him or his cigar speaking. “Go.”
She was pushed into a circle of cameras, wide brown eyes, dressed in white. There he was, gazing back over a cigarette, just like in the magazines.
“I’m looking forward to working with you.” She stammered. He said something to the same effect before disappearing into the crowd again, mysterious and aloof as always.
That had been it, the moment Hollywood had been waiting for for years.
The grass cries in the morning because perhaps it loves the night. Slowly it soaks into her clothing so that her whole body feels it’s pain, soft but cold on her back. Her shoes went missing somewhere along the line.
She wasn’t born Bunny Bradshaw. Mother gave her a different name that in the end wasn’t fit for pretty faces or the tongues of the red carpet.
The grass doesn’t know that, though. She could be anyone. Short bleached curls and dimples mean nothing. In her dying or already dead state she is no one but the dew.
Jesse fell into another type cast, a thief washing up on the shores of the Seine in a stolen boat and posing as a sailor. Bunny played an artistic French woman despite her American accent and her lack of artistic talent.
Their conversation was limited. She was intimidated by his voice, his experience, his bones.
“Hold this.” He said on a night when they were asked to appear at a gathering of the Screen Actor’s Guild’s most prominent names. His cigarette was already lit, held out to her nose.
“I don’t smoke.” She replied.
“Just hold it.” His eyes held hers with intensity for the first time. “They’re going to laugh at you.”
Bunny spent the night laughing at jokes she’d missed, not drinking, barely speaking, arm locked in her newfound cigarette grip. She was the youngest person in the room with the least to say. This was fear.
Outside, as they walked back to their driver, Jesse spoke to her again, noticing that the cigarette he’d given her was still perfectly intact, voice jarring her from a state of introspection.
“You really don’t smoke?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“Everybody smokes.”
“Not me.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“I don’t know how.”
He stopped in place, looking forward at the driver holding his doors open.
“Go once around the block.” He motioned with his hand. “Please.”
The driver nodded and was gone, leaving Bunny confused, heart in her throat. Jesse turned to her, revealing his Lucky Strike box.
“What are you-”
“I’m gonna teach you how to smoke.”
“I don’t need to-”
“In this business, you’re gonna need it.” He placed one in her mouth and lit it for you. “Everyone is going to own you if you’re easy to love.” She had nothing to say, choking on her first puff of cigarette smoke. “Besides. I need to get rid of the evidence. I stole these from the director.”
The insects like her face just as much as the director had, landing on her eyelashes and running from the corners of her mouth. It’s a strange sensation that she’s never been a part of.
Their wings buzz. She’s not sure what kind of bugs these are but they’re addicted to the warmth of her ears and take refuge in her eyes’ newly acquired dark circles.
This is glamour. This is beauty.
The timid knock came on Jesse’s trailer door in the days when Bunny had just started smoking regularly but secretively and ‘Strange Happenings’ was comfortably in progress. She stood outside, not wearing the dimpled grin of America’s sweetheart, but something like fear, brown irises shifting back and forth. They were something like friends then, simply due to their proximity.
“What’s the matter, Bunny?”
“Can I come in?” She asked, voice hushed. He stepped to the side, as she tripped in over the threshold. She had something hidden under her sweater and dirt in her fingernails. The door closed behind them.
“What did you do?”
In one swift movement, she revealed a bottle of Mouquin from under her shirt.
“I stole this from the director.”
Sitting on the floor, backs pressed to the wall, drinking straight from the bottle they whiles away the hour.
“No one can know about this.” He repeated himself. He went on like a scratched record when he was slightly undone.
“I know. You’ll get in trouble.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“...What are you worried about?”
“Everyone being right.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bunny took another sip. Maybe the alcohol was just getting to him.
“The child star curse.” No reaction from her. “You don’t know what that is?” She shook her head, bleach blonde curls falling over her eyes. “We’re supposed to die.”
Her body freezes and her eyebrow bends upwards.
“...Everybody’s supposed to die.”
“How have you never heard of this? The trend in child stars losing their minds, ruining their lives and then dying?”
“I mean I guess-” He cut her off.
“You and me. That’s where we’re supposed to be headed. And I’m not giving anyone evidence to say that I’m already on my way. Drinking stolen alcohol and whatnot.”
“I stole it.” Bunny shrugged. “It’s my trouble.”
“Like anyone would believe that.” He leaned back, blue eyes finding the ceiling. “You’re already too easy to love. You should be afraid too.”
Mother used to feed the birds stale bread when she went on her walks. They lived in Minnesota before she only existed in cinemascope.
Now the birds feast on her face and hands and she can’t help but wonder if they’re the same birds that Mother fed, now so stuffed with her misgivings about the world that they’ve come after her wayward daughter.
They like her lips best. In fact, they love them so dearly that they must be red with blood over Max Factor. This kiss is strange, though it feels much less like dying.
Some days, Bunny’s face just wasn’t good enough for the director. He’d said her eyes had lost their light, her curls wouldn’t stay, filming wouldn’t resume until she lost five more pounds, despite the fact that she hadn’t gained any since they’d started. He thought something about her was different, something was broken. She’d never thought of herself that way.
They had to film the big kiss scene sooner or later. Her stomach wouldn’t settle, though. The takes were shaky, robotic, her eyes were beginning to look frantic.
“Cut!”
“Oh my God.” She breathed, covering her face. They’d only ever given her simple directions and yet she struggled as if she were walking on coals.
Jesse took her shoulders, bringing her eyes to his. Since she’d known him, his face had softened.
“Bunny, you’re okay, you can do this.”
“He’s angry.” She whispered, watching as the director lit another cigar and stormed in their direction.
“It’s going to be okay-”
“What the hell are you doing, huh!?” His voice boomed across the room. Bunny’s face felt hot. “Did anyone ever tell you that time is money? You’re wasting a lot of both.”
“Just give her a moment.” Jesse kept his voice low, not wanting to cause a scene.
“I’ll give her a moment. I’ll give her a moment alright. I’m done with her today! We’re done everybody! I’ll see you all tomorrow when Bunny gets it together!” The crew began to uncomfortably disassemble while the director roughly took Bunny’s face in his hands, scanning her face. “You used to be the best damned gal in the business. And now look at you. You’re falling apart early.” And with that he released her, leaving her with glassy, downcast eyes.
She rushed away to her trailer before Jesse could stop her, purging her eyes of the oceans her irises held back. The knocks on the door came quickly and frantically, accompanied by a call of her name.
She eventually opened the door, letting Jesse in and attempting to dry her eyes.
“Look, don’t listen to him. He’s- He’s-” He got lost in his words, scowling and shaking his head.
“I’m trying. I’m really trying.” She sniffed. “But I can’t-”
“You can-”
“I can’t!” The tears fell again. “Before this it was all easy. Smiling and dancing and...Suddenly they want me to be the adult.”
“I know. I’ve been there.”
“This is scary.”
“It’s not scary, Bunny.” He sat her down on the floor, just to coax her into breathing again.
“What do I do?”
“Just keep going, let him yell his brains out, and then move on to the next film.” Jesse shrugged. Bunny wasn’t sold, though. “No?”
“Nobody’s gonna want me after this.”
“It’s really not that bad to have no one want you for a bit.” He persisted. “It’s nice to not exist for a while. You’re still young, you’ll make a comeback, everyone does unless they choose not to.”
“There’s got to be some way to-”
“Please breathe.”
“Kiss me.” The room froze over. Jesse’s gaze was fixed on hers, taken aback.
“...Kiss you.”
“Yes.”
“...Do you want me to do my lines leading up to-” She shook her head, something wild in her eyes.
“No, I mean kiss me...in real life. Kiss me like real people do.” He went to say something but she refused to let blank space exist between them. “You are the only one here who understands what it’s like to be me and I am the only one who understands you. I don’t care if you were some happy-go-lucky kid for half an hour every thursday in the forties. I don’t care about the past and I don’t want you to care about mine. I want you to kiss me as you right now.”
Silence existed for an electric moment, eyes searching for some semblance of stability in one another. He reached out and touched her face.
There were no cameras to bear witness to their first kiss.
The foxes’ visit is short lived. They have time to waste around midday and so it seems like a fine moment to visit their personal Hollywood boulevard.
Once she would have screamed and begged the sheepdog to chase them off, but now she’s happy to share her skin. There’s no need for it anymore.
She can’t see what they do to Jesse, in fact she can’t see much of anything. It’s hazy and none of it matters. If they enjoy the taste of her shoulder, then she enjoys the company.
When the Christmas break sat on the horizon, she made up the worst of her lies. Mother called and asked when she’d be home to which she replied ‘Never.’ From her tongue spilled an elaborate story of how they had to stay on location over the holiday or else they’d miss the snow and the atmosphere of Paris around christmastime.
In reality though, she slept on a mattress on Jesse’s floor back in New York city, trying to recover from the headache that filming on location gave her.
The sheets were always tangled, it always smelled like coffee and her brain was never clear. She walked down the stairs in the dark, touching her face to be sure that it was still there. The date and time of day had all escaped her, in fact neither of them noticed when Christmas came.
In the kitchen, she sat cross-legged opposite him, drinking gin in her coffee and laughing about how she used to bury their bottles of Mouquin around her trailer back on set so not to get caught, giving all of the dirt she wore on her hands reason.
The days whipped by like the flurries outside his window. They barely left the house, for if someone saw them, it would all be over. That would have been a blow neither of them could recover from. Every movement carried just a pinprick of fear.
Still, the time passed like music, for they were both too easy to fall in love with and death felt so far off.
The cattle used to coexist with them, eating the grass by their heads. The sheep used to chew on her hair and talk to them when it was too quiet.
Any company is nice, for Jesse doesn’t speak and Bunny has nothing to say anymore. If they’re her only conversation, then she’ll become well-versed in the language of sheep.
Now, though, they don’t come out to this part of the fields, too afraid of what used to be their friends and have since run to the other side of the farm.
She smiled up at him, head in his lap in her trailer as he read the most superficial sections of her Seventeen Magazine out loud, voice laughter-laced. He only smiled like that in her company she nearly counted it among their secrets. Her joy overwhelmed her at the sight and she playfully stole a kiss from his lips. He took her face in his hands again.
“I love you more than anything.” He spoke through a smile.
The sound of loud voices accompanied by heavy crashing stopped her response, turning their eyes to the door. Jesse stood her up and poked his head outside, unsure of what force could possibly be causing such great sounds.
The crew stood back, looking afraid as the director single handedly destroyed their set, throwing cameras and film rolls to the ground in a fit of blind rage.
“It’s over!” He screamed. “We’re done! It’s all a bust! That’s it!” He held his arms open, laughing wildly. “Hope you all had months to waste because that’s exactly what we just did!”
“What’s going on?” Bunny whispered.
“Shh…” Jesse hushed her, focusing in on the director. “I have no clue what he’s talking about.”
“The film is off. Production is done. We’re done. This whole thing is ruined.” Jesse caught his eye. Bunny stepped out onto the stairs at his side. “And if you’re looking for a couple somebodies to blame, there they are!” All eyes were suddenly on them. The director held up a copy of Confidential Magazine, creased open to a full-page black and white picture. Jesse squinted, stomach sinking when he made out the two figures pictured. There he was in print, lips absentmindedly pressed to Bunny’s head in one of those quiet moments in which they’d thought they were alone.
“No.” Bunny gasped, hand flying to cover her mouth.
“You got caught!” The director shouted. “The film is getting canceled. We’re separating you and then tomorrow, you’re both flying home. This was supposed to be fake. You were supposed to be actors!” He went to rush at them, but was held back by a few members of the crew. “Congrats! You’ve ruined your careers! You’ve lost your minds!”
He was dragged off to gather himself while the rest of the crew got to work cleaning. Jesse and Bunny were escorted to their separate trailers and her doors was locked. For hours, she laid on the ground, crying until she couldn’t breathe and plucking out strands of her hair, ideas exploding in her brain like fireworks.
She knocked on his door at three in the morning. His eyes widened at the sight of her, blood from breaking and climbing out of her window staining her hands and legs, cigarette hanging from her lips. Her eyes were wild. He tossed his own Lucky Strike, taking her in his arms and pulling her to him.
“This is terrible, what are you doing?” He whispered.
“Keep your voice down and follow me.” She replied.
“Bunny what are you-” Her wild gaze turned on him again.
“Keep your voice down and follow me.” She repeated with more intensity.
She lead him to the harbor on the Seine. Part had been sectioned off for filming, the boat used in the picture bobbing at the dock. Bunny hopped in, gesturing for him to follow as she adjusted the sail and readied herself to untie the rope.
“I don’t understand, what are you doing?”
“We’re leaving.” She replied.
“What?” His eyes widened, taking in the way her hair fell recklessly in her eyes.
“We can’t stay here. There’s nothing left for us here. We’re going somewhere else.”
“Bunny, stealing a boat? This is insanity. I’m taking you back.” He grabbed her arm. “We’ll go back and figure something out.” Bunny wrenched herself away, nearly falling back.
“We won’t!” She protested. “We’re going to get sent home, my mother will never let me contact you again, we’ll never get jobs together again, we might never get jobs at all. Everyone thinks I’m crazy and you’re bad. We’re dooming ourselves if we leave.” He said nothing, attempting to ponder a solution but coming up blank. “Jesse.” Bunny continued. “I love you. And if I can’t be with you in this world, I’ll find another.” There was a long pause before he spoke again.
“Let’s go.” He said, movements rushed, untying the boat taking his place at her side. “Just go. Don’t look back.”
It puts her at peace to know that one day she’s going to become a bed of flowers. Mother planted flowers in the spring and it had never crossed her mind that it was the dead who nurtured them until they were beautiful.
She thinks that perhaps people should tell their children more often that death makes you a gardener. Then they might not lose their minds in the long stretch of time spent anticipating dying.
The sea made her sick and she spent their first week smiling over the side at the contents of her stomach. They stopped once before they hit the ocean to stock up on supplies and then left the waking world behind, headed for deeper waters.
The weeks weren’t good to her mind as they stretched on and on and on. She was bone thin all too soon and Jesse was going with her.
They laid out on the deck, under the sail, smiling at the sky, locked in stagnancy, thinking again and again, how wonderful it was to be in love. Though she began to speak nonsense after a month and his eyes made a surreal wasteland of the sea, they were together. Nothing could be better, and nothing ever was.
The director once smacked her for getting a sunburn. She laughs silently now, for her skin must be ash now.
The air is heavy. It feels as if she lives on the sun and the sun is filled with cicadas, maybe the ones that ate up Mother’s flowers. They’re screaming at some horror she can’t see just like they did all summer back home.
Only this time it’s beautiful.
They’d lost all concept of time when they crashed into the island. It may have been months, a year, since anyone had seen them, yet there was no way to see the news that had pronounced them missing. Her stomach had caved in on itself and he now walked like a drunk, smiling and celebrating all he saw as if he were a king.
Fingers interlocked, they stumbled onto the beach and past the surrounding brush until they could see some semblance of civilization in the distance, just on the other side of the sun-soaked farmland.
Neither of them had had any intention of stopping their travels there. This was simply an excuse to eat again, even though it felt like they could live for years without another crumb or drop of water.
This is a beautiful place that they’d never believed could exist on the same globe they’d been living on.
“Oh my god…” Jesse grinned, voice short and staggered. His face, ragged and wild turned to meet hers. “I love you...I love you.”
It wasn’t long before his legs gave out and he was level with the grass. Bunny fell to her knees beside him, begging him to stand again, but knowing deep down that he wouldn’t. He smiled up at the sky in blissful delusion. Her eyes watered, sanity still clinging on enough to register sadness.
“...Jesse did the curse come for us?”
“What?” He asked.
“The curse. Did we ruin our lives? Are we gonna die?” He shook his head, reaching up to touch her face.
“It didn’t get us. I never ruined my life. How lucky was I to have loved Bunny Bradshaw?” And his whole being went still.
She waited days for his consciousness to return, but it never did and soon she couldn’t support herself and she too had to resign herself to lying on her back in the grass. Bunny felt the first sobs rock her body. With something comprised of half laughter and half crippling sadness, she said her last words to him.
“That’s not even my name.”
The farmer’s wife’s cry cuts through the land one day as she runs, screaming about the two corpses that have taken residence on their land.
Bunny laughs to herself, thinking in cinemascope on directors and Mouquin and Nirvana.
“I hope I was hard to love.” Some part of her shouts as suddenly figures and footsteps surround her. It was high time for a change of scenery anyway. The Golden Age is over. “I hope I was hard to love!”
Among the adages that directors and producers had mumbled under their breath, she can recall one about the countryside being Nirvana for actors. Long after the soundstage had numbed her mind and eaten her heart, she was supposed to breathe. She was supposed to live again.
Perhaps it’s different for child stars though.
The sun has arms like a courthouse, exposing all of their flaws and all of their regrets. Jesse stopped breathing a few days ago and she can’t remember if she followed in suit. Mother had always said her corpse would be talkative.
Light goes running through the fields, washing over her skin. Her bones are too weak to move, stomach caving in, eyes tracing circles around themselves, head bursting with the smell of poppies.
If she’s not already dead, she’s going to die here while she still owns the sun.
When they first caught word of the film, the entire 1950’s seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. It was high time to put those two on the silver screen together. The rest of the Golden Age was just wasted time.
Jesse Bentz had ten or so years on her. When she blew out eighteen candles, he was already flipping through his scrapbooks and laughing at the taste of his mid to late twenties. He had a young face, though, as if the youth was still trapped in his veins.
He was Hollywood’s bad boy, just like he had been for all of the years after his short lived days of wearing the sun on his face in late thirties television. Some days the world forgot about him, other days they swooned.
Meanwhile, the human race was obsessed with her. Pretty face, cheeky smile, purity running from cherry-red lips, teeth whitened by youth. Hollywood’s sweetheart, darling, princess, anything to keep her sensationalized.
The picture was called ‘Strange Happenings’ and perhaps it was written as an excuse to finally have Jesse Bentz and Bunny Bradshaw in the same frame with it’s hackneyed plot and tired tropes. Footage of them simply standing in the same room would have made millions either way.
They first met in the smoky back room of the producers’ greenlight party, where the cameras never left her face and her agent had a tight grip on her arm the entire time.
“Go talk to each other.” She couldn’t tell if it was him or his cigar speaking. “Go.”
She was pushed into a circle of cameras, wide brown eyes, dressed in white. There he was, gazing back over a cigarette, just like in the magazines.
“I’m looking forward to working with you.” She stammered. He said something to the same effect before disappearing into the crowd again, mysterious and aloof as always.
That had been it, the moment Hollywood had been waiting for for years.
The grass cries in the morning because perhaps it loves the night. Slowly it soaks into her clothing so that her whole body feels it’s pain, soft but cold on her back. Her shoes went missing somewhere along the line.
She wasn’t born Bunny Bradshaw. Mother gave her a different name that in the end wasn’t fit for pretty faces or the tongues of the red carpet.
The grass doesn’t know that, though. She could be anyone. Short bleached curls and dimples mean nothing. In her dying or already dead state she is no one but the dew.
Jesse fell into another type cast, a thief washing up on the shores of the Seine in a stolen boat and posing as a sailor. Bunny played an artistic French woman despite her American accent and her lack of artistic talent.
Their conversation was limited. She was intimidated by his voice, his experience, his bones.
“Hold this.” He said on a night when they were asked to appear at a gathering of the Screen Actor’s Guild’s most prominent names. His cigarette was already lit, held out to her nose.
“I don’t smoke.” She replied.
“Just hold it.” His eyes held hers with intensity for the first time. “They’re going to laugh at you.”
Bunny spent the night laughing at jokes she’d missed, not drinking, barely speaking, arm locked in her newfound cigarette grip. She was the youngest person in the room with the least to say. This was fear.
Outside, as they walked back to their driver, Jesse spoke to her again, noticing that the cigarette he’d given her was still perfectly intact, voice jarring her from a state of introspection.
“You really don’t smoke?”
“No.” She shook her head.
“Everybody smokes.”
“Not me.”
“Are you afraid of it?”
“I don’t know how.”
He stopped in place, looking forward at the driver holding his doors open.
“Go once around the block.” He motioned with his hand. “Please.”
The driver nodded and was gone, leaving Bunny confused, heart in her throat. Jesse turned to her, revealing his Lucky Strike box.
“What are you-”
“I’m gonna teach you how to smoke.”
“I don’t need to-”
“In this business, you’re gonna need it.” He placed one in her mouth and lit it for you. “Everyone is going to own you if you’re easy to love.” She had nothing to say, choking on her first puff of cigarette smoke. “Besides. I need to get rid of the evidence. I stole these from the director.”
The insects like her face just as much as the director had, landing on her eyelashes and running from the corners of her mouth. It’s a strange sensation that she’s never been a part of.
Their wings buzz. She’s not sure what kind of bugs these are but they’re addicted to the warmth of her ears and take refuge in her eyes’ newly acquired dark circles.
This is glamour. This is beauty.
The timid knock came on Jesse’s trailer door in the days when Bunny had just started smoking regularly but secretively and ‘Strange Happenings’ was comfortably in progress. She stood outside, not wearing the dimpled grin of America’s sweetheart, but something like fear, brown irises shifting back and forth. They were something like friends then, simply due to their proximity.
“What’s the matter, Bunny?”
“Can I come in?” She asked, voice hushed. He stepped to the side, as she tripped in over the threshold. She had something hidden under her sweater and dirt in her fingernails. The door closed behind them.
“What did you do?”
In one swift movement, she revealed a bottle of Mouquin from under her shirt.
“I stole this from the director.”
Sitting on the floor, backs pressed to the wall, drinking straight from the bottle they whiles away the hour.
“No one can know about this.” He repeated himself. He went on like a scratched record when he was slightly undone.
“I know. You’ll get in trouble.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“...What are you worried about?”
“Everyone being right.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bunny took another sip. Maybe the alcohol was just getting to him.
“The child star curse.” No reaction from her. “You don’t know what that is?” She shook her head, bleach blonde curls falling over her eyes. “We’re supposed to die.”
Her body freezes and her eyebrow bends upwards.
“...Everybody’s supposed to die.”
“How have you never heard of this? The trend in child stars losing their minds, ruining their lives and then dying?”
“I mean I guess-” He cut her off.
“You and me. That’s where we’re supposed to be headed. And I’m not giving anyone evidence to say that I’m already on my way. Drinking stolen alcohol and whatnot.”
“I stole it.” Bunny shrugged. “It’s my trouble.”
“Like anyone would believe that.” He leaned back, blue eyes finding the ceiling. “You’re already too easy to love. You should be afraid too.”
Mother used to feed the birds stale bread when she went on her walks. They lived in Minnesota before she only existed in cinemascope.
Now the birds feast on her face and hands and she can’t help but wonder if they’re the same birds that Mother fed, now so stuffed with her misgivings about the world that they’ve come after her wayward daughter.
They like her lips best. In fact, they love them so dearly that they must be red with blood over Max Factor. This kiss is strange, though it feels much less like dying.
Some days, Bunny’s face just wasn’t good enough for the director. He’d said her eyes had lost their light, her curls wouldn’t stay, filming wouldn’t resume until she lost five more pounds, despite the fact that she hadn’t gained any since they’d started. He thought something about her was different, something was broken. She’d never thought of herself that way.
They had to film the big kiss scene sooner or later. Her stomach wouldn’t settle, though. The takes were shaky, robotic, her eyes were beginning to look frantic.
“Cut!”
“Oh my God.” She breathed, covering her face. They’d only ever given her simple directions and yet she struggled as if she were walking on coals.
Jesse took her shoulders, bringing her eyes to his. Since she’d known him, his face had softened.
“Bunny, you’re okay, you can do this.”
“He’s angry.” She whispered, watching as the director lit another cigar and stormed in their direction.
“It’s going to be okay-”
“What the hell are you doing, huh!?” His voice boomed across the room. Bunny’s face felt hot. “Did anyone ever tell you that time is money? You’re wasting a lot of both.”
“Just give her a moment.” Jesse kept his voice low, not wanting to cause a scene.
“I’ll give her a moment. I’ll give her a moment alright. I’m done with her today! We’re done everybody! I’ll see you all tomorrow when Bunny gets it together!” The crew began to uncomfortably disassemble while the director roughly took Bunny’s face in his hands, scanning her face. “You used to be the best damned gal in the business. And now look at you. You’re falling apart early.” And with that he released her, leaving her with glassy, downcast eyes.
She rushed away to her trailer before Jesse could stop her, purging her eyes of the oceans her irises held back. The knocks on the door came quickly and frantically, accompanied by a call of her name.
She eventually opened the door, letting Jesse in and attempting to dry her eyes.
“Look, don’t listen to him. He’s- He’s-” He got lost in his words, scowling and shaking his head.
“I’m trying. I’m really trying.” She sniffed. “But I can’t-”
“You can-”
“I can’t!” The tears fell again. “Before this it was all easy. Smiling and dancing and...Suddenly they want me to be the adult.”
“I know. I’ve been there.”
“This is scary.”
“It’s not scary, Bunny.” He sat her down on the floor, just to coax her into breathing again.
“What do I do?”
“Just keep going, let him yell his brains out, and then move on to the next film.” Jesse shrugged. Bunny wasn’t sold, though. “No?”
“Nobody’s gonna want me after this.”
“It’s really not that bad to have no one want you for a bit.” He persisted. “It’s nice to not exist for a while. You’re still young, you’ll make a comeback, everyone does unless they choose not to.”
“There’s got to be some way to-”
“Please breathe.”
“Kiss me.” The room froze over. Jesse’s gaze was fixed on hers, taken aback.
“...Kiss you.”
“Yes.”
“...Do you want me to do my lines leading up to-” She shook her head, something wild in her eyes.
“No, I mean kiss me...in real life. Kiss me like real people do.” He went to say something but she refused to let blank space exist between them. “You are the only one here who understands what it’s like to be me and I am the only one who understands you. I don’t care if you were some happy-go-lucky kid for half an hour every thursday in the forties. I don’t care about the past and I don’t want you to care about mine. I want you to kiss me as you right now.”
Silence existed for an electric moment, eyes searching for some semblance of stability in one another. He reached out and touched her face.
There were no cameras to bear witness to their first kiss.
The foxes’ visit is short lived. They have time to waste around midday and so it seems like a fine moment to visit their personal Hollywood boulevard.
Once she would have screamed and begged the sheepdog to chase them off, but now she’s happy to share her skin. There’s no need for it anymore.
She can’t see what they do to Jesse, in fact she can’t see much of anything. It’s hazy and none of it matters. If they enjoy the taste of her shoulder, then she enjoys the company.
When the Christmas break sat on the horizon, she made up the worst of her lies. Mother called and asked when she’d be home to which she replied ‘Never.’ From her tongue spilled an elaborate story of how they had to stay on location over the holiday or else they’d miss the snow and the atmosphere of Paris around christmastime.
In reality though, she slept on a mattress on Jesse’s floor back in New York city, trying to recover from the headache that filming on location gave her.
The sheets were always tangled, it always smelled like coffee and her brain was never clear. She walked down the stairs in the dark, touching her face to be sure that it was still there. The date and time of day had all escaped her, in fact neither of them noticed when Christmas came.
In the kitchen, she sat cross-legged opposite him, drinking gin in her coffee and laughing about how she used to bury their bottles of Mouquin around her trailer back on set so not to get caught, giving all of the dirt she wore on her hands reason.
The days whipped by like the flurries outside his window. They barely left the house, for if someone saw them, it would all be over. That would have been a blow neither of them could recover from. Every movement carried just a pinprick of fear.
Still, the time passed like music, for they were both too easy to fall in love with and death felt so far off.
The cattle used to coexist with them, eating the grass by their heads. The sheep used to chew on her hair and talk to them when it was too quiet.
Any company is nice, for Jesse doesn’t speak and Bunny has nothing to say anymore. If they’re her only conversation, then she’ll become well-versed in the language of sheep.
Now, though, they don’t come out to this part of the fields, too afraid of what used to be their friends and have since run to the other side of the farm.
She smiled up at him, head in his lap in her trailer as he read the most superficial sections of her Seventeen Magazine out loud, voice laughter-laced. He only smiled like that in her company she nearly counted it among their secrets. Her joy overwhelmed her at the sight and she playfully stole a kiss from his lips. He took her face in his hands again.
“I love you more than anything.” He spoke through a smile.
The sound of loud voices accompanied by heavy crashing stopped her response, turning their eyes to the door. Jesse stood her up and poked his head outside, unsure of what force could possibly be causing such great sounds.
The crew stood back, looking afraid as the director single handedly destroyed their set, throwing cameras and film rolls to the ground in a fit of blind rage.
“It’s over!” He screamed. “We’re done! It’s all a bust! That’s it!” He held his arms open, laughing wildly. “Hope you all had months to waste because that’s exactly what we just did!”
“What’s going on?” Bunny whispered.
“Shh…” Jesse hushed her, focusing in on the director. “I have no clue what he’s talking about.”
“The film is off. Production is done. We’re done. This whole thing is ruined.” Jesse caught his eye. Bunny stepped out onto the stairs at his side. “And if you’re looking for a couple somebodies to blame, there they are!” All eyes were suddenly on them. The director held up a copy of Confidential Magazine, creased open to a full-page black and white picture. Jesse squinted, stomach sinking when he made out the two figures pictured. There he was in print, lips absentmindedly pressed to Bunny’s head in one of those quiet moments in which they’d thought they were alone.
“No.” Bunny gasped, hand flying to cover her mouth.
“You got caught!” The director shouted. “The film is getting canceled. We’re separating you and then tomorrow, you’re both flying home. This was supposed to be fake. You were supposed to be actors!” He went to rush at them, but was held back by a few members of the crew. “Congrats! You’ve ruined your careers! You’ve lost your minds!”
He was dragged off to gather himself while the rest of the crew got to work cleaning. Jesse and Bunny were escorted to their separate trailers and her doors was locked. For hours, she laid on the ground, crying until she couldn’t breathe and plucking out strands of her hair, ideas exploding in her brain like fireworks.
She knocked on his door at three in the morning. His eyes widened at the sight of her, blood from breaking and climbing out of her window staining her hands and legs, cigarette hanging from her lips. Her eyes were wild. He tossed his own Lucky Strike, taking her in his arms and pulling her to him.
“This is terrible, what are you doing?” He whispered.
“Keep your voice down and follow me.” She replied.
“Bunny what are you-” Her wild gaze turned on him again.
“Keep your voice down and follow me.” She repeated with more intensity.
She lead him to the harbor on the Seine. Part had been sectioned off for filming, the boat used in the picture bobbing at the dock. Bunny hopped in, gesturing for him to follow as she adjusted the sail and readied herself to untie the rope.
“I don’t understand, what are you doing?”
“We’re leaving.” She replied.
“What?” His eyes widened, taking in the way her hair fell recklessly in her eyes.
“We can’t stay here. There’s nothing left for us here. We’re going somewhere else.”
“Bunny, stealing a boat? This is insanity. I’m taking you back.” He grabbed her arm. “We’ll go back and figure something out.” Bunny wrenched herself away, nearly falling back.
“We won’t!” She protested. “We’re going to get sent home, my mother will never let me contact you again, we’ll never get jobs together again, we might never get jobs at all. Everyone thinks I’m crazy and you’re bad. We’re dooming ourselves if we leave.” He said nothing, attempting to ponder a solution but coming up blank. “Jesse.” Bunny continued. “I love you. And if I can’t be with you in this world, I’ll find another.” There was a long pause before he spoke again.
“Let’s go.” He said, movements rushed, untying the boat taking his place at her side. “Just go. Don’t look back.”
It puts her at peace to know that one day she’s going to become a bed of flowers. Mother planted flowers in the spring and it had never crossed her mind that it was the dead who nurtured them until they were beautiful.
She thinks that perhaps people should tell their children more often that death makes you a gardener. Then they might not lose their minds in the long stretch of time spent anticipating dying.
The sea made her sick and she spent their first week smiling over the side at the contents of her stomach. They stopped once before they hit the ocean to stock up on supplies and then left the waking world behind, headed for deeper waters.
The weeks weren’t good to her mind as they stretched on and on and on. She was bone thin all too soon and Jesse was going with her.
They laid out on the deck, under the sail, smiling at the sky, locked in stagnancy, thinking again and again, how wonderful it was to be in love. Though she began to speak nonsense after a month and his eyes made a surreal wasteland of the sea, they were together. Nothing could be better, and nothing ever was.
The director once smacked her for getting a sunburn. She laughs silently now, for her skin must be ash now.
The air is heavy. It feels as if she lives on the sun and the sun is filled with cicadas, maybe the ones that ate up Mother’s flowers. They’re screaming at some horror she can’t see just like they did all summer back home.
Only this time it’s beautiful.
They’d lost all concept of time when they crashed into the island. It may have been months, a year, since anyone had seen them, yet there was no way to see the news that had pronounced them missing. Her stomach had caved in on itself and he now walked like a drunk, smiling and celebrating all he saw as if he were a king.
Fingers interlocked, they stumbled onto the beach and past the surrounding brush until they could see some semblance of civilization in the distance, just on the other side of the sun-soaked farmland.
Neither of them had had any intention of stopping their travels there. This was simply an excuse to eat again, even though it felt like they could live for years without another crumb or drop of water.
This is a beautiful place that they’d never believed could exist on the same globe they’d been living on.
“Oh my god…” Jesse grinned, voice short and staggered. His face, ragged and wild turned to meet hers. “I love you...I love you.”
It wasn’t long before his legs gave out and he was level with the grass. Bunny fell to her knees beside him, begging him to stand again, but knowing deep down that he wouldn’t. He smiled up at the sky in blissful delusion. Her eyes watered, sanity still clinging on enough to register sadness.
“...Jesse did the curse come for us?”
“What?” He asked.
“The curse. Did we ruin our lives? Are we gonna die?” He shook his head, reaching up to touch her face.
“It didn’t get us. I never ruined my life. How lucky was I to have loved Bunny Bradshaw?” And his whole being went still.
She waited days for his consciousness to return, but it never did and soon she couldn’t support herself and she too had to resign herself to lying on her back in the grass. Bunny felt the first sobs rock her body. With something comprised of half laughter and half crippling sadness, she said her last words to him.
“That’s not even my name.”
The farmer’s wife’s cry cuts through the land one day as she runs, screaming about the two corpses that have taken residence on their land.
Bunny laughs to herself, thinking in cinemascope on directors and Mouquin and Nirvana.
“I hope I was hard to love.” Some part of her shouts as suddenly figures and footsteps surround her. It was high time for a change of scenery anyway. The Golden Age is over. “I hope I was hard to love!”