Best British Short Stories 2020 by Nicholas Royle (best novels to read for students txt) 📕

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You’re burning to tell.’

Ellen brushed a toast crumb away from the corner of her mouth with her right-hand pinky.

‘I play a photographer, Marilyn Monroe. I get to go platinum. Preferably a wig. Marilyn doesn’t take great pictures, but she’s always in the right place at the right time. Plus she’s pretty – we know how many doors that opens, front and back. She carves out a career for herself, Life, Movieland, Modern Screen, all those covers. She gets invited to all the right parties, then some of the wrong ones. So there’s then a photo of the president, in flagrante. Before you know it, she’s killed.’

‘Sounds meaty to me.’

‘That’s just the half of it. There’s more. But the dialogue, Nick. It’s so corny. I don’t know why they’ve written her this way. It lessens the role.’

‘How?’

Ellen stood. She ran a hand through her brunette hair, placed another on her hip, pouted: ‘When you see some people you say, “Gee!” When you see other people you say, “Ugh!”’

‘I get it. But she’s right.’

‘She doesn’t exist. That’s Schulman.’

‘The guy with the belly?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘And does she talk like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘In the breathy guttural way you delivered that line.’

Ellen sat. ‘She’s such an actress, but she isn’t one, you know what I mean? That’s how I intend to play her.’

‘You’re an actress playing a photographer as an actress?

That doesn’t sound like acting to me, honey.’

Ellen shrugged. ‘It’s all in the method, Nick. All in the method.’

The right lung weighs 465 grams and the left 420 grams. Both lungs are moderately congested with some edema.

She swept onto the lot in her pink Lincoln Capri. A few heads went up. She was running late but they’d factored that in, shooting scenes around her. She twitched her nose, sinuses blocked and hurting. Seeds pollinated the surrounding air. She waved to Cukor then ran to her trailer. Baker was there. She held up a flesh-coloured bodystocking.

‘Have you seen this?’

Ellen shook her head. ‘What is it, a fishing net?’

‘It is if you’re the fish. It’s for the pool scene.’

Ellen laughed. ‘I am not wearing that.’

Cukor entered the trailer: ‘My way or the highway, Ellen.’

She kissed his cheek. ‘Is that why you wanted me in the picture?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a closed set. Only the necessary crew.’

‘How necessary?’

‘It’s a pivotal scene. Entrapment. Monroe has the pictures and she wants something from Kennedy. When he arrives she’s swimming nude. You don’t want to swim nude, do you, Ellen? I know you crave authenticity.’

‘I don’t remember this scene in the script.’

‘Schulman’s rewriting daily.’

‘One hand on the table, one under it.’

Cukor barked a laugh. ‘C’mon, Ellen. This picture will make you.’

‘The Girl With The Horizontal Walk? I’m already made, thank you. Now I’ll be typecast.’

Cukor touched her arm. ‘It is what it is.’ He put one foot on the trailer step. ‘They’ve agreed the wig,’ he said. ‘It’s in the box. On set in an hour.’

Ellen watched the door close. She turned to Baker. ‘Some day we’ll have equal rights.’

Baker nodded. She walked over to the box, sucked open the lid. ‘Here’s the wig.’

‘Here’s the role.’ Ellen took the platinum curls and turned them around in her hands, her fingers becoming entangled in the fabric. ‘Looks authentic, at least.’

Baker nodded, gestured to the chair by the mirror. ‘Are you ready for your transformation?’

Ellen sat. She closed her eyes, searched for the character. Monroe was there somewhere. It was like peeling an onion. You had to discard the layers until all that was left was raw. Baker elongated her eyelashes, red-lipped her pout, stuck on a beauty spot big enough for a picnic, pinned back her hair and then pinned the wig into it. When Ellen emerged from the trailer she was the photographer, Monroe, a Konica Autoreflex T SLR 35mm camera dangling off its strap on one finger, white jacket, white blouse, white skirt, white heels. She walked the way they wanted her to, right across the lot. Cukor nodded approvingly, standing to one side as she approached the set. She didn’t understand his expression, til he yelled Cut! and turning she saw the camera rolling behind her.

‘Cukor. I feel violated. I want to be an artist not an aphrodisiac.’

‘Enough of that. We making a movie or not?’

The liver weighs 1890 grams. The surface is dark brown and smooth.

Light dappled her body as she turned and twisted under the water. She was embraced. She swam to the bottom, touched it with an outstretched finger, then rose upwards, eyes open. Her breasts were in sway with the motion, the water adding fluidity to their movements, something which rarely happened when wearing underwear. She could see Kennedy standing poolside, his left hand holding his right wrist. Breaking the surface she scattered droplets on his black brogues.

‘Hey,’ she breathed.

‘Miss Monroe.’ He bent and gripped her extended right wrist, effortlessly hauled her up, residual water stripped from her body as she left the pool, as though she were sloughing a layer.

She stood exposed in the moonlight. She didn’t want him to take her, and he had to know that, even though she seemed there for the taking. A couple of inches separated them. She watched him unmoving until goosebumps bumped her dry. Eventually he stood aside and let her pass, handing her a towel which barely covered what he’d seen.

‘I thought you might have sent someone.’

His jaw was so chiselled he might have auditioned for Mount Rushmore. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

She walked into the house. Wondered where his bodyguards were. ‘Something to drink?’

Kennedy nodded. Watched her pour a couple of fingers of bourbon. ‘Nothing for yourself?’

‘Maybe when we’re done.’

‘Will we ever be done?’

‘You’ll have it all. The prints, the negatives. I never intended to take those photos. I stumbled into that room.’

Kennedy downed the whiskey. ‘You stumble into blackmail, too?’

Monroe sat down, crossed her legs. ‘There’s a story,’ she said. ‘There’s a pretty girl on the train, not a beauty, but still something to look at. A guy boards