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cease and desist
cease and desist Read online
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I: Cease
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
II: Desist
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
III: Jeanne
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
IV: Denouement
Chapter 74
Acknowledgements
About the Author
www.riverbrookbooks.com
Cease & Desist
Copyright © 2016 by Stephen David Hurley
ISBN: 978-0-9977381-1-7
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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First Edition
Formatting: Champagne Formats
This book is dedicated to young people who must survive the battlefield of sex and violence our world has become, and to their parents who must do everything they can to end the war.
I’m Cease de Menich. It’s OK if you don’t know me—but you will. That’s what my agent keeps telling me to tell people, and judging from the throng of mostly stage-moms waiting beneath a marquee that reads “Good Morning, New York City,” maybe he’s right. I’m the actress who plays Jeanne d’Arc (please don’t call her Joan; that was never her name) the virgin, the warrior, the Catholic saint in a reality show that’s going to be a blockbuster. I’m supposed to say that, too. But don’t worry, I’m not over-the-top full of myself the way the others in the final three are.
I’m not beautiful, for starters. I’ve got a big nose—a French nose, as my Aunt Nina insists—but if it weren’t for my wide-set eyes it would be a real honker. I want to have it fixed but my Nina won’t let me. She says it gives me character. But the real reason is that we haven’t got the money, so that’s another thing you don’t have to worry about. I’m not rich, not like the girls from the Upper East Side who sat beside me at Juilliard. What I am is tough and smart, and I have something all the unrich, unbeautiful girls have: I have absolutely nothing to lose.
I look out the window of the car as I take off the last of my body armor; at the faded crepe in a liquor store window—the long shadows lumbering over subway grates on Broadway—and back to the faces of the wannabes waiting in the cold. All those wet noses and eager looks—all those eager fingers I hope will soon be pressing the letters of my name into their home screens. It’s only been four months since I was standing outside in the cold—an unknown, a wannabe, just licking my lips hoping to sink my teeth into a plum role.
For all you people who’ve been watching me on the WebTV trailers, I know what you’re thinking—that I just got lucky. I don’t deserve to be here. And you know what? I think that, too. (Is there an unrich, unbeautiful, sixteen-year-old girl anywhere who wouldn’t think that?) But fame never landed on my doorstep like a perfectly wrapped gift. I’ve paid my dues in ways you’ll never know… and for those of you who’ve been watching the installments the producers have been showing on WebTV every night—and are wondering just what this show is, I can offer you an explanation in a few simple steps.
First. This isn’t just a reality show; in other words, this isn’t just a show about a bunch of girls and boys who fall in love or beat each other to death—it’s a drama. I’m an actress playing an historic character who lived almost six hundred years ago. Try to think of my character, Jeanne d’Arc, as a real-life superhero, because she was. The three finalists who must compete for the boys are Jeanne d’Arc, Catherine the Great, and Susan B. Anthony. The boys do not play historic characters—they’re just hunks who flex their pecs and preen a lot. You probably know by now, that the conflicts we face are pretty modern—as in, things that girls and boys must face every day at home and school.
Second. The plotlines of each episode are closely guarded secrets. Dialogue is released the night before we shoot, and I’m given only my lines and a brief outline of the action. There were rumors in the beginning that actors would bribe the writers to get their lines early or to find out what was being written about the other characters. I don’t doubt it.
Third. Francis MacDonald, the director, is crazy—hopefully crazy the way that Hollywood geniuses are—an auteur, I try to convince Nina, but she keeps insisting he’s an imbecile.
I comb my fingers through my hair and need another minute before I get out of the car. I’m tired. Before arriving here I was locked in a straw-filled cage for three hours, and now I’d rather be back home in Tudor City with my Nina having my brownies and milk because even a martyr about to be burned at the stake deserves her brownies and milk. I open the window.
“We’ve been waiting all morning,” a girl in the crowd says.
I offer up a wholesome smile.
“Sorry. I was tied up.” And I was. Tied to a stake, in fact, just after the interrogators in Rheims, France (actually it was the Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens) grilled me, Jeanne d’Arc, about the voices I heard from angels and why I chose to wear men’s clothing.
A woman tugs the arm of her girl, maybe eight, with a crooked smile, braces, and black-rimmed glasses with unfashionably large frames. “She’d make a great angel, don’t ja think?”
I know why they’ve come. All those eager fa
ces. All those Louis Vuitton dreams. They want to know how I made it. What it feels like, rising so quickly at such a tender age. What the ingredients are in the potion that raised me up over all the others.
The it-ness of fame.
Be careful what you wish for, is what I should tell them, tell all of you. Fame tastes like a kiss from a stranger—a really hot guy who’s got a dark side you’d better see before it’s too late. Fame will make you do the most horrible things to the people you love. It feels like a bolt of grief in my chest, a lock I’ve felt since the first day I arrived on the set.
But of course I won’t be saying any of that to Manny, the host of Good Morning, New York City. I’m going to tell him how incredibly lucky I am to be chosen as one of the final three girls, how blessed I am to have been cast by Francis MacDonald, the famous director—and that, with the help of all of you, I will take the podium. (OK, I know that sounds pretty stupid…a little too adoring, but I still can’t believe that some of you actually write me emails and tell me how good I am. Thank you.) I take a deep breath and look up to a woman dressed in a purple jacket at the top of the steps beneath the marquee.
“Go, Miss de Menich,” Yousef, my driver, tells me. “Go now and break some legs.”
“It’s break a leg, Yousef. And it means good luck.”
“Yes,” he stammers. “I keep the heat on for your Nina.”
And so I get out, doing my best to hide the fear, and let this honker cut through the sea of wannabes like a cool fin. On the top of the stairs, Jenny gives me a protective hug. Jenny’s my publicist, which means she wears brocade a lot. She also protects me like my body armor.
“Manny’s gonna ask you about your past,” she murmurs. “So remember, you’re just a humble survivor of the Glass family.” I laugh, nervously, because the Glass family isn’t real. They’re just characters in a book.
I take the plastic bottle of water she hands me and make my way onto the stage where Manny greets me. He’s a small man with an impish grin who nods and tells me he’s been watching the trailers and I’ve really got what it takes to go the distance. I give him a humble nod and look out at the girls filing in from the cold. A man behind one of the cameras begins the countdown, and the cameras close in like advancing insects.
“Welcome to Good Morning, New York City. Our first guest should come as no surprise to many of you. Cease de Menich. The rising star who just two years ago got her big break a few blocks from here off-Broadway as a mesmerizing Juliet in the Barry Mendes production of Romeo and Juliet. From that she played the lead vampire…”
He’s reading the prompter, working his way down my short biography. I flex my feet and try to shake the bolt of grief. I silently recite my mantra. This is for the boy who taught me how to play a vampire better than any other girl in New York or Hollywood. It’s not a prayer, because I think God’s a fucking bastard, so I guess that’s another thing you don’t have to worry about. I’m not going to preach to you, and you don’t have to take me seriously when I tell the wannabes how blessed I feel at being chosen by God. What I really mean by God is just Francis MacDonald. Famous Francis, the director.
Manny is finishing up. “Cease is just sixteen years old, the youngest actress ever to be cast as Joan of Arc…”
Jeanne…not Joan…
“We hardly know anything about you, Cease. You trained at Juilliard.” I catch his measuring gaze, as if I’m some porcelain vase he’s holding up to the light searching for a crack—but I stare him down, give him my tight-lipped smile, my Mona Lisa lip-curl until he blinks and I know I’ve won. But then Manny looks serious and says, “Your mother was killed in a car crash in Santa Monica. That must have been hard on you.”
I take a deep breath as the crowd oohs.
“Yes,” I say, chiming in with my well-rehearsed biography. “I was a child model who’d gotten a commercial and we were all headed to the set when there was a terrible accident.” I smile confidently, but Manny swerves again.
“Cease. Do you believe in God? You’re playing a young woman who is quite devout…”
Damn. “Of course. My first memory was my mother standing over me with a cross…”
“Was she blessing you or trying to exorcise demons?”
Laughter.
“No. That came later, when I starred in Vampire Grrl.” More laughter. “My parents were Catholic, and my mother taught me a lot about faith.”
“From Juliet to Vampire Grrl. What a stretch. How did you get into those roles?”
You see, I’m right. Everyone wants the secret to that potion called fame. I clear my throat, give Manny a humble nod.
“These characters are a lot more similar than you might think,” I say. “Juliet is forbidden to love a boy from another family in the same way vampires are forbidden to love humans.”
“How did you get a name like Cease?”
“My real name is Cecile, but I wanted something that would stop the casting directors in their tracks.” A gray-bearded man in the back of the studio is making notes. He looks so familiar. I glance over to Manny and feel a bead of sweat forming on my upper lip. “I think I’m lucky. After all, I could’ve changed my name to Liev Schreiber. Can you imagine hearing casting directors say Liev, Liev when you come for an audition?”
More laughter.
Manny grins for the camera. “It sounds like this spitfire’s really got it. What do you think, ladies and gentlemen?”
I feel relief when the applause sign lights up because it always feels like a summer shower. Jenny’s giving me her thumbs-up from the wings. I sit back and flex my calves. Yes. This is what the wannabes want to hear—what it felt like to be chosen, to get the call—that sudden rush of tears and who you had to thank. (But I know from all those emails that some of you know the score…some of you know what you really have to pay to make it into the finals. You need to hear about the smell of that fat casting director on the couch and all the invisible hands that feed on youth; because fame’s never free.)
“Tell us about Saint Joan. You’re playing her like quite a tomboy.” I catch his wry smile and think Manny knows my secret. I feel the bolt of grief tighten.
Attack. Don’t let him see me sweat.
“Tomboy? That’s putting it mildly.” I brace my shoulders. “I got this part by refusing to become some wilting fleur-de-lis.” And that’s the truth. All the rich girls showed up with their rosaries. They wept contritely and emoted while I crouched restive in the wings with my crossbow.
I raise my right fist. “When I shall have done for which I am sent by God, I will put on women’s clothing.” I glare back at Manny. “That’s Jeanne’s actual response to the clergy when she was put on trial almost six hundred years ago. I read it in the transcripts that have been preserved by the Institute de Politiques in Paris. It was fascinating to read her own words, to study the testimony of an illiterate girl who had never been trained to handle a horse but is suddenly commanding an entire army and standing up to the church.”
I flex my feet and feel the tension in my voice fall away. “Yes, you’re absolutely right, Manny. I knew if I were really going to play this girl I would have to put on some pants and kick some boy butt.”
I can hear the applause rise and think I’ve got Manny when he looks out to the crowd and says, “Well. That may well be, Miss de Menich. But I think the other two finalists are just as prepared. Catherine the Great and Susan B. Anthony have both made it into the next round, and we’ll just have to wait and see what an assortment of hunky boys you have to choose from.”
I feel a twitch in my thigh as the lights fade and Manny tells the audience about the clip from the show, how famous Francis wasn’t content with a Jeanne d’Arc who lived and died in a medieval world. Jeanne was a real-life superhero from the past who would alight upon the battlefields in search of that young man she could marry to create a family that would assure lasting world peace.
This isn’t history; it’s Hollywood. Please don’t forget that.
Much like a boy. And not just any boy. The beautiful boy who molded me like clay and breathed the fire of life into me. The beautiful boy I destroyed.
I feel another bead of sweat on my upper lip as the lights come up. Manny makes a big O with his mouth and applauds in slow claps. I search the stage-moms and their sheep for a sympathetic face. Manny studies my cheekbones, freckled and luminescent, as I search for the exit sign, weigh my options…my Nina waiting for me outside. A quick ride back to Tudor City. Her warm hugs. We’ll have milk and brownies. She’ll talk about blood being thicker than water. We’ll run lines for my big scene tomorrow.