Free Beaches by Iris Rainer Dart Page A

Oh, yes. Fuck you.
    She followed Perry into the warmth of a beautifully furnished living room.
    “Y’okay?”
    “N’huh!”
    “Sure?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Wine?”
    “No.”
    “Sit down?”
    “Okay.”
    Oh, God. Now she’d done it. He was waiting for her to speak. To tell him what it was that got her to walk here at two in the morning in her caftan and wake him up, for God’s sake. How long could she stall?
    “Cee Cee. What is it?” Perry said, stifling a yawn.
    Now he was bored, Cee Cee thought miserably. What was she doing here? Her foot hurt. Maybe she’d gotten glass in it walking barefoot. Why didn’t she run? Not to the cast house. To the bus station.
    “Cee Cee darling.” There, he said it. “What in God’s name do you want from my life at this hour? Hmmm?”
    Cee Cee took a deep breath. This was it.
    “I want to get laid,” she said.
    Why didn’t it sound funny like the other day when Bertie said it, and they laughed so much? Why did it sound like begging? Why had she blurted it out so quickly when she meant to be really seductive and mysterious and just tell him at first she wanted a little nightcap, like people said in movies. And would he want her? Want to go to bed with a virgin who at nineteen was finally giving up “the golden crotch”? (That’s what Marsha Edelman, a girl in Cee Cee’s high school, had called hers, which she finally gave to her doctor fiance.) Cee Cee realized she was crying.
    Perry still hadn’t said a word, and Cee Cee wished he would speak because the only sound in the room was the sound of her sobs. Outside, the ocean pounded against the beach; she had a subliminal flash of A Star Is Born, where Norman Maine walked out into the water, leaving his robe on the shore while Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester sang. Maybe Cee Cee would keep her caftan on when she walked into the water instead of leaving it. At night that water probably felt very, very cold.
    Perry moved toward the sofa where Cee Cee had seated herself and sat down beside her.
    “Cee Cee,” he said. “Cee Cee, please stop crying. For now and forever more, if there is one person who doesn’t have to cry, it’s you. Do you hear me?”
    Oh, yes, she heard him and she saw him and she felt him in that white (Norman Maine) terry-cloth robe next to her, with those adorable furry legs and . . .
    “Yes,” she said. “I hear you.”
    “Cee Cee,” he said. “Cee Cee. If I have stopped myself once from telling you what I am about to tell you, I have stopped myself ten thousand times. I swear to you on everything that is holy. But you’ve pushed me, forced me, and now I will do it-prudence, caution, and good sense be damned.”
    Oh, my God. He loves me, Cee Cee thought. She steeled herself. Could it be? Oh, my God. Of course. Of
    course. That’s why he ignored me. Afraid he’d be exposed in front of the others. They won’t understand, and we-
    “Cee Cee. You don’t want to go to bed with me. You want my attention, that’s all. And I’ve known it from the first day you got here. But frankly, baby” (oh, yes) “I’m a little afraid of you, and that’s why I’ve held back.”
    “Huh?”
    “Cee Cee. You’re a star. You have the voice of an angel. The timing of Jack Benny. Confidence that any other actor would kill for. Cee Cee, you are it. I knew it the day I saw you. I told Jay Miller and Marilyn. They knew it, too. You see, my love, although I hate to admit it, you’re wasting time in my stinking little theater. You’re major stuff. Virtuoso. And you’re right. I have ignored you. Deliberately. I haven’t directed you because you don’t need me. You are beyond me. You know intuitively what I could spend years studying and still wouldn’t learn. Do you hear me, Cee Cee? Do you know what I’m saying? I mean, by all means, stay out the season with us … but, sweetheart, you will be, I predict, on Broadway next year. One good vehicle and good-by. Straight to the top.”
    Cee Cee was shocked.