The Stand-In by Evelyn Piper Read Free Book Online Page A

come back.”
    â€œNow they tell us!”
    â€œThis isn’t the first time she’s been late, Withers said. He thinks there’s some man involved.” British accent again. “The Witherses didn’t feel it their place to tell us.”
    â€œOh, my God! Oh, my God! I mustn’t cry. If someone notices, they’ll try to make us call the cops. Don’t let me cry, Bran!”
    â€œYou’re an actress, Coral. Cool it.”
    â€œYes, yes. We’ve got to get back to the St. Georges. We’ve got to be there when they call again.”
    It wasn’t the Wind deal. It was Cornie. It was his child. He remembered how his mother had felt when he was kidnapped, and the tears came into his throat. What had his mother said she’d done? Passed out. Fainted. But she was just a mother, and Coral was a star so Coral mustn’t faint. They’d be all over Coral if she fainted. There must be some reporters around still and all the papers would carry it.
    â€œI won’t cry. I won’t cry,” she said.
    â€œAttagirl.” “My husband was marvelous,” she would tell the reporters when it was over. “I was about to climb the walls, but he calmed me down. Mastroianni said, ‘When I work with Fellini I’m like a sponge.’ That’s how it was with me. With Bran directing, I was like a sponge. And if he could direct me at a time like that!” “That’s the stuff, darling! Now we go back in, and this time we mind our manners. Yes, we do, Coral. You can do it. Five minutes because, look, we don’t want anyone here to connect our leaving with a phone call from Cornie’s nurse. Yes, I know what I’m doing. I tell you we have to make five minutes’ conversation about anything but Cornie’s nurse and then we can leave. Reason? We movie actors have to be up crack of dawn, that bit. And that’s just what we give Nube, too.”
    â€œFuck Nube.”
    â€œYou’re always telling me he doesn’t miss a trick. You want him sticking his nose in?” If Nube got into it he, Bran, would be out. O-u-t.
    She nodded. “Nube might say the cops. He might.”
    â€œThen you better do some acting.” For a change. “Did you have a drink? When we get back to Lady Whosit, pick it up. Drink it. You could use a drink, anyhow. Don’t gulp. Sip. I’ll do the talking and you be the star who’s out on her feet. I want a glazed look in your eyes that means you’re trying not to yawn in their faces. You know exactly what I want.” He took her arm.
    â€œYou bastard, you’re directing! This is my baby!” But she smiled in a tired way, her lip-lifting smile, barely sustained. “You give me one more direction I’ll spit in your eye.”
    â€œLater,” he said grandly, “now give me the pooped-out star, darling.” She could only hold her glass up; anyone watching could see nothing was going down. He was the real actor. He ad-libbed to Lady St. Shit and the others, and all Coral could do was go along as a supporting player, doing very little supporting at that.
    Then they excused themselves. Now for Nube. Nube was talking to a tall man in military costume but stopped when they approached. Bran gave Nube the Coral-dead-on-her-feet story. Nube, he saw, listened to him but watched Coral.
    â€œYou were asking me about directing, Sir George. Now in this little scene Bran wants Coral to show she’s down to her last red corpuscle, because this scene is supposed to say Nube looks harmless (the quiet man, they call me) but he works his actors to death because actors aren’t human beings to Nube. Dirt!”
    â€œMy dear sir!”
    â€œMr. Branton Collier has purchased the rights to Wild West Wind from under Nube’s nose just so his darling wife won’t be worked to death by a has-been. You may have read about Wild West Wind , Sir George?”
    â€œAfraid