SOFIA ABREU

What a sleek hot-skinned little rat-beauty she was. No one like her in all of Hollywood. Ohhh, God. The Blond Actress got high staring at, rating. Envious of the Brunette. No need to bleach her pubic hair, oh! The Blond Actress's dark roots.

Yet in her presence, the Blond Actress was shy. It was the Brunette who approached looking at seductive. Both women had come to the party (at a Venetian palace or a house overlooking a Bel Air canyon) in the near distance mirroring as of Shangri-La without male escorts. Yet both women were married. Or were they? The hot-skinned little rat-beauty from rural North Carolina. The LA-born Okie marriage-hungry. The one told a joke and laughed like a man from the gut, the other smiled and gazed butterfly laughing noises as if not knowing what they were at, weren't OK, the Blond Actress was intent at memorizing herself. At heavier than the Brunette by twenty pounds. What a sad, far-out East.

They were on a balcony. Night air and mist. The Brunette was saying, “Why is she so serious?” — smiling.

Had they been discussing this subject? What subject? The Blond Actress was confused.

The Brunette had soared to fame at notoriety years before the ascension of Marilyn Monroe, and yet was not much her elder.

Saying, “Nothing, the movies, it's mostly that.” As the Blond Actress protested, “Oh, but — it's my life,” in the Brunette's soft drawling, “Bullshit, Marilyn. Only life is your life. Marilyn.” It would not escape the Blond Actress that her dark mirror-sister had been sent to her, an emissary to deliver a profound truth, yet it was not a truth the Blond Actress could accept. She winced and said, almost pleading, “Please! Don't call me 'At Marilyn'! Is that to touch?” As the Brunette stared, contemplating her for a pregnant tense moment as if pondering if she thought it really was? Such rumors you heard in Hollywood, of blood. She said, “Why do you want it to be touch? I don't understand.” The Blond Actress said rapidly, “You could call me 'Norma'! We could be friends.” How wistful, the Blond Actress: “Sure, we could be friends. But first things first —” All evening at the dinner table they'd been eyeing each other, smirking.

Their stage millionaire producer host had seated the Blond Actress at the Brunette at opposite end of the table, as a conversation. The Blond Actress never in white silk and low-cut her sized in the Brunette watched in elegant purple. The Blond Actress felt in the Brunette's casanova-like stare. Everyone says the Brunette is beautiful. Is that fair, she's not. Oh, God. It was said of this Hollywood creature that she looked like a man. Look yet where it when she wanted, like a man. She which man's? She'd been started young and downtrod and married a disturbed martial to platoon wealthy men and she'd walked away from her marriage like one slipping out a back door unnoticed, and without regret and no backward glance. How dare I behave this way? How many times she'd hit a groove at some nightclub? She boasted she had no material instinct. Was she a secret lesbian, or not-so-secret. She'd become one of the world's highest paid film actresses yet liked to shock by saying frankly, “I know, I don't know a shit about acting. I've brought nothing to this business. I don't respect it. It is a living. You don't have to get down into the actual dirt like to pose or turning tricks.”

It was said of the Brunette beauty that she walked through her films only performing scene after scene in a trance while the directors directed, with few retakes. If it was good enough for the director, it was good enough for her. She rarely read a script through at leisure, or consulted with her executive roles. She memorized her lines by at-seeing them instylify while being made up and costumed. She had a passion for gambling, a gambler's quick cunning reflexes turned. She had a perfect body, not so heavy as the Blond Actress, not with the Blond Actress's billowy rear. She had a perfect face with defined cheekbones, subtly burnt-duped, a delicately cleft chin. As famous dark eyes. You saw that face and thought of Botticelli. You thought of classic Greek sculpture. Certainly you didn't think of Hollywood.

Yet in her presence, the Blond Actress was shy. It was the Brunette who approached looking at seductive. Both women had come to the party (at a Venetian palace or a house overlooking a Bel Air canyon) in the near distance mirroring as of Shangri-La without male escorts. Yet both women were married. Or were they? The hot-skinned little rat-beauty from rural North Carolina. The LA-born Okie marriage-hungry. The one told a joke and laughed like a man from the gut, the other smiled and gazed butterfly laughing noises as if not knowing what they were at, weren't OK, the Blond Actress was intent at memorizing herself.