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

and sits opposite. He’s not good-looking either, but he’s not bad. After a while he leans over, and says, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but would you sleep with me for a thousand bucks. The girl does mind, but she doesn’t say anything because the offer has caught her attention. There’s something she’s wanted to buy, for some time now, a pipedream. And he’s polite, not a bruiser. So she says, yes.’ Kennedy watched Monroe’s eyes dart around the room. She continued: ‘So the guy leans back, crosses one leg over the other. How about for twenty? The girl almost shouts, Twenty! What kind of girl do you think I am? And the man, Mr President, the man says, We’ve already established what kind of girl you are. Now we’re just haggling the price.’

Kennedy eased himself onto the opposite sofa. He placed his empty glass on a wooden side table with an audible knock.

‘What security do you have that I won’t kill you?’

She laughed. ‘I’ve paid the huntsman.’

Outside, dark fell in a torrent, a molasses-thick night. All the lights of Hollywood couldn’t penetrate the gloom.

The spleen weighs 190 grams. The surface is dark red and smooth.

‘Keep the wig on.’

‘Oh Nick.’

‘Just keep it on.’

‘Hey, you’re hurting.’

‘Ssh.’

‘Don’t ssh me!’

‘Sorry, losing concentration.’

Ellen put her legs over his shoulders. ‘Fuck her then. Fuck Marilyn.’

Nick slid his cock in and out of her cunt. There was something universal in her expression. She was his wife and yet she wasn’t his wife.

Ellen did the voice: ‘I think sexuality is only attractive when it’s natural and spontaneous.’

‘Is that from the script?’

‘There’s always a script.’ Ellen put a finger in her mouth and bit. She knew it looked seductive, but it was to keep her from laughing. There was something ridiculous in Nick’s ritual determination, something animalistic. She normally loved sex, but getting in Monroe’s head had proved anathema. Her character was all about insinuation, but never the act. It was Ellen who had convinced Cukor that simmering heat was better than fire. The script had Kennedy and Monroe making love, but Ellen suggested it should be the mental emasculation of the president which would lead to Monroe’s death. Not that it was a death, for she had indeed paid the huntsman.

Nick climaxed and fell on top of her. She tucked her legs around his back, then changed her mind and scissored off him at the onset of cramp. Rolling onto her front she reached out to the side table for a cigarette. ‘Want one?’

Nick lay on his back beside her. ‘Let’s share. You can take that wig off now.’

‘Maybe I’ll wear it a while. Freak the kids.’

‘No. Take it off.’

Ellen pouted. ‘What is it now?’

Nick dragged on the cigarette. ‘There should always be some distance between fantasy and reality. How’s the movie going?’

Ellen sighed. ‘The movie doesn’t go anywhere, that implies linear motion. We film it in pieces, you know this. Monroe’s dead, but then she’s already come back, and sometime after she’ll also be dead again.’

‘You never told me what happens after she’s killed.’

‘I was saving some surprises for the premiere.’

Nick handed her the cigarette, blew smoke to one side. ‘Just tell me, Ellen.’

She turned onto her back, pulled the sheet over her body. ‘The president believes Monroe’s dead but just like Snow White she’s escaped into the forest. She dyes her hair brunette, changes into a plain brown wool suit, spends some time in the Pacific. She could spend all her days there, if she wanted. But she misses the glamour. So she comes back, calls herself Ingrid Tic, gives herself an accent. Fools everyone.’

‘Except the president?’

‘Except the president.’

Nick leant on his side. ‘But what was her story? Where was she supposed to have gone?’

‘Purgatory or hell. There was a drug overdose. She’s supposed to be dead, remember.’

‘So who was dead?’

Ellen furrowed her brow. ‘The script doesn’t make that clear. But when we’re filming it’s actually Baker.’

‘Baker? Your make-up girl?’

‘She’s a ringer, don’t you think? They wanted someone who looked like me – like Monroe – but for it not to be me. There has to be a disconnect with the audience, a nudge that maybe Monroe wasn’t killed, until it’s clear that she’s back. So they used Baker. She was right there, after all.’

‘Baker …’ Nick mused. ‘I guess Baker would do it. Did she wear the wig?’

He yelped as Ellen’s elbow dug his ribs.

The brain weighs 1440 grams.

Ingrid Tic knew her way around a camera and a party. She held the viewfinder to her right eye, smiling as she mingled. Everyone wanted to be photographed, their eyes drawn to the lens. So much so that all anyone saw of Ingrid was her upper body and no one paid attention to her walk.

She was a redhead. She had regained the position she had previously held. She’d been reading. The Last Temptation of Christ. Chekhov plays. The Ballad of the Sad Café. The Brothers Karamazov. She had four hundred and thirty books in her library. And for her current role, The Actor Prepares by Konstantin Stanislavsky and To the Actor by a different Chekhov. On her night table was Captain Newman, M.D. by Leo Calvin Rosten. She was making good progress.

Kennedy was there. It had been just over a year. She couldn’t resist.

‘Mr President!’

Snap.

One of the bodyguards came over, checked her pass. Grunted.

‘Oh I know,’ she said, ‘you cannot be too careful.’

She later realised she had caught his eye.

Everything, including the film in the camera, was loaded. Ingrid followed her way to the bathroom. A girl on her hands and knees was heaving bile into a toilet bowl. Ingrid urinated quickly in the adjacent stall, rinsed her hands, and checked the mirror. There was no question as to who was staring back. It proved that people only saw what they wanted to see. Was hair colour really that important? Of course, they believed she was dead. Maybe that was the difference. You couldn’t expect a person to see someone who was no