More Stories from the Twilight Zone (39 page)

“Yes I do, Sam,” she insisted. “And don't call me Olive.”

Jenny leaned forward and set her wineglass on the bar. “ ‘Great beauty is invariably bloodthirsty,' ” she told Livia gravely.

“And I thought I was dramatic. Where the hell did you get that one?”

“Gary Jennings in
The Journeyer
. The account of Marco Polo's travels in the Far East.”

Livia stared at her blankly. “I give up. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It has
everything
to do with your situation. Look. Marilyn Monroe's death was ruled a suicide, but that's a load of crap—she was murdered!”

“You believe that? That's a total conspiracy theory.”

The bartender, leaning over to wipe down the place next to Livia, interrupted their debate.

“One hundred percent true, m'lady,” Sam rattled in a gravelly voice. “She was whacked.”

“Thank you!” Jenny held up her drink to him. “Sam Giancana's son exposed it all in
Double Cross
: Hit men killed Marilyn in an attempt to expose Bobby Kennedy as her lover, drive him out of the Attorney General's office, and end his crusade against the mob. The author claimed his father—a notorious mob godfather—had a part in it.”

“Same thing today,” Livia said. “Hollywood is a battlefield! Men like Alan Hakim, Malachi Chung, and Lucas Bright are capable of anything, and we women have to be armed to the teeth. Irresistible beauty is the best weapon of all.”

“So Jennings had it right,” Jen said. “Great beauty
is
blood-thirsty.”

“It's the greatest weapon in a woman's arsenal: brutal, bloodthirsty beauty.”

“Forget about those movie assholes,” Sam recommended. “Who wants to work with psychopaths anyway? Remember what happened to Marilyn.”

“But they control everything in Hollywood!” Livia said.

“Tell you the truth, I'd love to meet Lucas,” Jenny confided, “if he weren't such a jackass. I swooned all over him when we saw
Time Bomb
.”

Despite being endlessly sensible, Jenny was a sucker for mancandy,
and Lucas Bright was gourmet, Godiva-caliber man-candy.

“He's sexy,” Livia said, “but his ego isn't.”

“Why do you want a film career so much?” Sam asked. “Hollywood isn't the center of the world.”

But Livia ached for it. “A life of anonymity won't satisfy me,” she said sadly. “And this is the one place where there's fame for the taking. To me, Hollywood's not just the world's center. It
is
the world.”

 

Naturally the elevator in her building was broken again, and Livia's legs grew heavier with each of the six flights of creaky stairs. Yellowed paint peeled from the wall in a patch just before the third-floor landing, and the scent of mold hung in the air. Still, the occasional paychecks from acting gigs and meager supplements from her parents barely covered the rent.

Finally she stumbled into her sad excuse for a one-bedroom apartment and gave it a distressing once-over, taking in the Castro convertible couch with mismatched pillows and her collection of stuffed teddy bears for a back, the busted door she and an old boyfriend had sanded, varnished, and converted into a living room table, the two frayed studio chairs flanking it, the eighteen-inch, twenty-year-old portable TV up against the wall on a former nightstand. She continued into her 5′ × 6′ bedroom and fixed briefly on her grandmother's cherrywood antique vanity, the only piece of furniture she cared about. She smiled at its exquisite beauty and the fond memories of her grandmother it summoned.

She tossed her purse onto the bed, then caught sight of herself in the mirror. The smile dropped from her face like a rock. Normally she looked like your typical dark-haired, fun-loving, healthy-living “girl-next-door” . . . when her spirits were up, her hair done, her makeup on, her clothes matched and pressed.

Now, however, that girl-next-door look wasn't cutting it. She needed to look
hot
. Pouting, she struck a sexy pose. She and the mirror would prove those bastards wrong. Doing a model turnaround, she opened her eyes and stared salaciously into the antique looking glass.

But drained and drunk, her cheeks drawn, eyes hollow and haggard, she looked like . . . well, like Bigfoot on a bad hair day!

Still, she was determined not to cave in. She was, after all, a professional thespian. Instead she pulled herself together, hit the invisible marks, and dutifully recited her lines, even though her only audience was the monstrous reflection mocking her so remorselessly.

“ 'Tis paltry to be Caesar;

Not being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave.
A minister of her will; and it is great
To do that thing that ends all other deeds.”

But the monster in the mirror would not lie. Livia looked and sounded pathetic. Savage and sadistic as the three psychos were, they were
right.
Furious, she ripped the red stiletto heel from her right foot. Throwing herself down on her bed, she flung the shoe blindly across the room, inadvertently shattering the upright mirror atop her grandmother's vanity. Crashing and clattering, the glass shards scratched, gouged, and scarred the cherished cherrywood antique.

Overcome with grief, convulsing with sobs, Livia buried her face in the overstuffed purple teddy bear her beloved grandmother had given her as a child.

“Buck up, Livia,” a soft female voice intoned. “We can repair your stupid vanity.”

Who was in her apartment? Livia looked up, searching frantically for the disembodied voice.

“Don't be afraid,” the voice said with a foreign accent Livia couldn't identify.

Suddenly Livia saw the woman standing in front of the disfigured vanity. Hips canted, arms akimbo, her honey-hued skin, high flaring cheekbones, and wide voluptuous mouth framed fierce feline eyes, their pupils pale-gray and vertically distended.

Cat's eyes,
Livia thought, staring at them fixedly.

Shaking her head, the woman casually flung her waist-length mane of raven hair over the front of her body. Tall, angularly slim, the sublimely gorgeous creature wore a gossamer-thin, floor-sweeping gown of sheer silk, as luminously black as burnished obsidian.

She wore no jewelry save for the four delicate gold rings that adorned her wrists and ankles.

“Who the hell are
you
?” Livia asked, not in the mood for any more abuse.

“I am Isis, daughter, She of the Throne. Egyptian goddess of wisdom and simplicity, patron of nature and magic. I've heeded your conjurations.”

“My what?”

“Your divine desideratum.”

“Decide what?” Livia said drunkenly.

“I've come to grant your more fervent desires.”

“This is a joke, right?”

“Caesar, Antony, and Octavian didn't think so.”

“You're Cleopatra.”

“I'm incarnating her earthly presence as it was two thousand years ago.”

“Then you're . . .?”

“You've prayed to me often enough. I'm Isis, the patron goddess of great beauty.”

“What's that got to do with a plain-looking, no-talent loser like me?”

Isis raked her up and down with a hard stare. “I don't know about talent. That's some other deity's department. You'll have to ask my boss, Osiris. But the plain-looking loser stuff I can fix.”

“Yeah, you and about ten million dollars' worth of plastic surgery.”

“I can do it for far less than that.”

“Less than what? I couldn't afford a canceled stamp or an expired supermarket coupon.”

Isis's eyes glowed and the corners of her sensuous mouth crept upward. “Then you have the wherewithal.”

“The where with what?” Livia slurred.

“You can afford my services.”

“What's the catch?”

“You'll have to live with the consequences.”

“What consequences?”

“The bloodthirstiness of great beauty.”

“Oh, I get it. Is there some kind of weird sacrifice to the gods involved? I have to cut off a toe or something?”

“A simple touch from my palm to your head will do it.”

“Will do what?”

“Make you blindingly, achingly, dangerously, inescapably desirable. Every man you come into contact with will be instantly smitten.”

“You're going to turn shit into gold?”

Isis winked, and Livia's heart fluttered. “Just watch me,” the goddess whispered.

She leaned forward to touch Livia's head with the palm of her right hand, but pulled back suddenly. “There's just one more thing. In the morning you'll find a tool to aid in correcting today's wrongs. I won't see a daughter of Isis ridiculed.”

Despite all she'd heard, Livia was dubious. “You mean the audition? I can't correct that. They kicked me out of the room. They called me a monster.”

Isis was undeterred. “Sands shift for the gods and goddesses.”

“Well, that's great in ancient Egypt, but we're not there anymore.”

Isis shushed her, holding a slender finger to her lips. “You won't be disappointed.” She placed her cool palm on Livia's forehead and Livia felt a thunderbolt blast flash through her skull, face, and throat. Then she felt Isis's palm press firmly against her chest. A second thunderbolt detonated in her chest, knocking her backward onto her flimsy secondhand mattress.

 

The pounding on the door woke the groggy girl up.

“You made too much noise last night. You're two months behind in your rent. I'm sick and tired of your antics. This has happened for the last time. Open up!”

Livia groaned and pulled the comforter over her tender head. She had a killer hangover.

“Hold
on,
Sayid!” she shouted, hating herself for living in this ratty apartment building with its chronically broken elevator and the crankiest landlord in Los Angeles.

Still wearing her dirty, hideously wrinkled, red cocktail dress, she flung open the door to find the middle-aged, half-bald, eternally angry landlord, Sayid. As usual, he wore a dirty wife-beater tank top, his meaty fist poised for the next door-hammer.

“Maybe I wouldn't have made so much noise if the damned elevator had worked for once!”

Waiting for him to fire back, Livia watched Sayid's expression shift from rage to alarm to shock. His mouth gaped, and his eyes grew wide as saucers.

“Hey, forget about it. I'm sorry I bothered you. Really.”

“And the rent, I—”

“I said forget about it. I know times are tough. Really.” Turning, he limped away. Glancing over his shoulder, he smiled at her sheepishly. “By the way, you're looking marvelous,” he said with a wink.

She gasped. She'd never seen Sayid smile.

Livia closed the door. Judging by the severity of her headache, she'd had far too many cocktails with Jenny. Had she done anything stupid?

God, she looked a mess. That must be why Sayid was so nice. He felt sorry for her. She walked up to the mirror. She was still wearing last night's rumpled dress. Her hair was messy, her lips chapped, her eyeliner smudged. But wasn't her mousy disheveled chestnut hair somehow thicker, shinier, more lustrous? Wasn't her skin brighter?

She backed up to examine her entire body. It was impossible, and yet . . . she could swear her figure had changed overnight. Her breasts had swelled, her waist had shrunken; she was altogether more shapely.

With a start, she remembered the proposition extended to her by a self-proclaimed goddess. In her own bedroom! She laughed at the audacity of her alcohol-induced dream. Yet she was sure that she had broken the mirror above her vanity, and here it was, intact and spotless. And here she was, and she'd be damned if she hadn't come down with a serious case of sex appeal overnight!

Remembering the goddess's words about leaving a gift, she flung open her bathroom door. No golden elixir or beauty potion. Nothing in the kitchen, either. She opened the drawers of her dresser, looking for anything out of place. What kind of gift would a goddess give, anyway? As a last resort, she pulled open the door to her closet. And there it was.

A regal, shimmering, Grecian-style white dress with gold trim.

It lay on top of all the other clothing, suggesting that it outshone all the dresses in her closet—perhaps all dresses everywhere.

And it did.

 

Hot blood coursed through her veins as she waited outside the door to the audition room. No pacing this time, no nerves, no line muttering—just anticipation.

The door opened and a statuesque Middle Eastern girl emerged in the same red dress and heels all the other actresses had been ordered to wear. The girl had the same shell-shocked look that all the others had had upon leaving that den of vipers, but Livia detected in this girl fear as well—fear that grew as she looked over Livia and took in the white Grecian dress Isis had given her.

No one had looked at her that way before, but she'd been its bearer so many times she knew exactly what it meant. Livia's beauty intimidated her.

She smoothed her gorgeous new dress, lifted her chin high, and strode in.

“What the hell is this?” Alan Hakim shouted as she entered. “Did somebody tell you to come back here?”

She walked straight up to the long table and stroked his leathery face. “Mr. Hakim,” she cooed, “you're gonna wish I'd never leave.”

She didn't even wait for his reaction but hopped onto the table. Slinking down the tabletop, she began speaking the lines she would now never forget. Only this time, she was not Livia Mendelssohn; she
was
the legendary Nile Queen.

“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have

Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick.”