Best British Short Stories 2020

^{ANDREW HOOK} THE GIRL WITH THE HORIZONTAL WALK

The heart weighs 300 grams. The tricuspid valve measures 10 cm, the pulmonary valve 6.5 cm, mitral valve 9.5 cm and aortic valve 7 cm in circumference.

Nicholas Arden looked over the newspaper at his wife, Ellen, buttering his toast at the opposite end of the breakfast table.

‘How hard can it be, honey?’

‘You haven’t read the script. I’ll need to dumb down.’

‘I always said you were too intellectual.’

Ellen slid the toast across the table, catching the bottom of the paper. The ink was freshly printed and she imagined some of it colouring the butter. Ellen wondered how much it would take to poison someone. Not that she wanted to poison Nick. But she was easily preoccupied.

‘I need an angle,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be led by the studio on this one.’

‘Then put your foot down. Both of them, if you have to.’

She waggled the butter knife. ‘Don’t get smart, wise guy.’

‘I’m trying to catch you up.’

It was a diamond-bright spring morning. They sat on the terrace extending from their white-painted house under clear blue light. Beneath them, the swimming pool caught ripples off the sky. Somewhere in the house their two children were getting ready for school. Ellen loved them, but she was thankful of the maid. There was only so much noise she could take.

Nick folded the paper, wrung out one end with a rueful expression.

‘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 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 longer there.

Another girl entered, humming a tune from Ladies of the Chorus. That musical must be a decade old. The girl lipsticked her mouth, sang ev’ry body needs a da-da-daddy.

Ingrid thought: sometimes they don’t don’t don’t.

She watched the girl make-up. The girl glanced at the camera slung around Ingrid’s shoulder, then at the girl in the cubicle. Smiled. ‘Say,’ she said. ‘You look familiar. Are you the actress, Ellen Arden?’

Ingrid shook her head. She felt strangely dislocated.

She stumbled out of the bathroom and straight into the arms of Cukor.

Cut! he yelled. What were you doing in there?

She looked back.

‘I was trying,’ she said. ‘I was trying to be sick.’

The kidneys together weigh 350 grams.

‘You’ve lost more than 25 pounds, I’ve never seen you so thin.’

She poured herself coffee. They could hear mourning doves from the terrace. She glanced down, saw the maid opening the car for the children. ‘It’s the role, Nick. I’m doing it for the role.’

‘I went down to the lot yesterday. Spoke to Cukor. He says you’re not putting the hours in.’

She raised her eyebrows, her anger: ‘Why would you talk to Cukor?’

He sighed. ‘I’ve seen the rushes. I’ve seen you. You’re not well. You look like a photographer playing an actress as a photographer.’

‘Being smart doesn’t suit you.’

Nick shook his head. ‘Truth is, I’m caught between Ellen and Monroe.’

‘I’m Ingrid, Nick. Ingrid.’

‘Are you kidding me? You can’t pull this off. Something’s got to give.’

She looked out from the terrace. In the distance, the Santa Monica mountains. She took another sip of coffee, then turned a semi-circle taking in their apartment’s wooden backdrop, the props, the cameras, Cukor, the facsimile.

She held up her hand.

‘Can we do this again? One more take? And the script. The script is Goddamn awful.’

…Monroe wasn’t killed. So they used Baker…

Cukor spoke to Schulman: ‘Is this a work of fiction or isn’t it?’

Schulman shuffled his notes, a pencil behind his ear. ‘I’m struggling to remember.’

‘Just write it like it is. We’re never going to finish this picture. We’re ten days behind schedule as it is.’

Cukor looked out through his office window. Baker was leaning against the side of Arden’s trailer, cigarette nonchalant. Arden had yet to arrive. Some mornings she was heavylidded. Who said nights were for sleep? When she did arrive, Baker spent so long preparing her for the set she might have been embalming a corpse. Cukor stroked his chin. Baker had played a good corpse. But there was more to an understudy than a physical resemblance. Not that Baker was an understudy. He wondered if she could be.

‘Let me take a look at that script.’

Schulman handed it over. Watched as Cukor flicked.

It made no sense. Arden was Monroe was Ingrid. Schulman had scored through and rewritten the names so many times that in some places only a hole remained. Baker was written in the margins.

Cukor rubbed his eyes. ‘What do you think to Baker?’

‘Baker? She’s plain, stutters sometimes, is overall drab. What are you thinking about Baker?’

‘Could we transform her into Monroe?’

Schulman shook his head. ‘You could never transform her into Monroe. You couldn’t even transform her into Ellen.’

‘Ellen. That’s what I meant.’

Cukor watched as Ellen’s pink Lincoln Capri swept onto the lot. She saw him at the window and waved before disappearing into her trailer. Cukor looked at Schulman. ‘You see that?’

‘See what?’

‘Ellen just arrived as Monroe.’

‘So what’s she doing now? Transforming back into Baker?’

‘Not Baker, Schulman. Ellen.’

Cukor threw the script to the floor. He left the office and walked across the lot. There was no time for sentimentality. He swung open the door of the trailer. Ellen was surrounded by the cast and crew. Baker held a sheet cake depicting a naked Ellen. Happy Birthday (Suit). Ellen looked Cukor in the eye and smiled. She was undeniably perfect.

In that glance Cukor might have thought he w as t he president.

‘8 mg of chloral hydrate, 4.5 mg of Nembutal.’

There was a hard pain in her stomach. She looked at her hand holding the Bakelite phone which would soon go out of production. She could barely contain herself.

I’m fired? But I’ve destroyed the negatives.

‘The appendix is absent. The gallbladder has been removed.’

Nick!

He looked over the top of his newspaper. The table was set with breakfast things. Fresh coffee. She could smell fresh coffee. Butter was melting into toast.

I paid the huntsman.

‘I’m a role,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you read the script?’

But she had been reading. Chekhov, Conrad, Joyce. There were four hundred and thirty books in her library.

‘The temporal muscles are intact.’

She squeezed her eyes shut. She would count her true friends and everything would be all right. She would count to ten.

One.

‘The urinary bladder contains approximately 150 cc of clear straw-coloured fluid.’

Two.

‘The stomach is almost completely empty.’

Three.

‘No residue of the pills is noted.’

She swung her head around. She’d lost count. Those damn pills. They were supposed to be her salvation.

‘No evidence of trauma.’

No evidence of trauma! Who said that? Who’s there?

Thomas Noguchi, Deputy Medical Examiner, looked up from Monroe’s body.

‘Did you just hear something?’

The man who wasn’t Kennedy shook his head.