The Last Deep Breath

15

Back at the apartment she wanted him to help her run lines. She had an audition in the morning. He sat on the couch with the script of Killing Time open on his lap.

“You know, this screenwriter just got out of prison,” she said. “His brother killed a dealer who’d sold meth to his son and he helped the brother while he was on the run.”

“I know, I read about it in the papers.”

“That’s why you chose this script, right?”

“Mostly. I spotted a couple of good scenes for you while I was paging through it in Monty’s office.”

It was a crime thriller about an older woman who’s in the Witness Protection Program after seeing a mob hit. She gets married to the FBI agent who’s helped her out along the way. Then the agent starts having an affair with a trampy waitress who gets him to betray the wife so they can collect a big payday from the mob. A young hit man shows up to kill the wife but they fall in love instead and set in motion a plan to get revenge on the husband, the tramp, and the mob boss.

Tie the story in with the real life crimes of the writer and his brother, and you had something that had legs. There were a few nude scenes where Kendra got to show off her body, some good action thrills, a couple of big confrontations. She got to cry on screen, be seductive, and act the total bitch with a gun who shoots her husband’s balls off.

“Monty should hire you,” Kendra said. “You’ve got a good eye.”

They ran her lines for a couple of hours. Grey enjoyed playing different parts and started to really get into the roles. When it was time for her to seduce the young syndicate shooter she climbed into Grey’s lap and they tossed the scripts over their shoulders and fell onto the floor.

Afterwards, while she lay panting, she said, “I don’t know. I got more hot rehearsing opposite you than I did watching the orgy.”

“It was a pretty stupid orgy. Fucking on top of silverware.”

“It was more raw with you. More honest.”

It was raw, Grey admitted, but it was anything but honest.

“In the morning I need you to call Monty for me,” he said. “See if he’ll cough up John Raymond’s address.”

“My audition’s at nine a.m.”

“After that. After you nail it.”

She rolled over and crawled back on top of him. Salt was smeared at the corners of her eyes, and the flecks of gold pinned him. She was doing it again, trying to go deep into him, see into his soul.

“You fill me with confidence,” she said.

“That’s not all.”

“I don’t know what it is about you. But there’s something. It drives me a little crazy. Maybe it’s because you don’t give a shit about anything.”

“I care about something.”

“The woman.”

“My sister.”

“Is that what she is?”

“Yes.”

She rode him hard and chewed his chest and mewled in his ear and later, as they were falling off together, the room turning cold with the wet breeze from a sudden shower, she murmured in his arms and called him a fucking liar.