TheRapist Read Free

seen two more figures. A man and a woman. Of course, from this height he would not have been able to identify them. Devon. Adrian.
     
    *
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Meringue
     
    Meringue Pavlova was not her real name. The carefully chosen moniker was the name on her SEG, SAG and AFTRA union cards. It was the name she had PKA-ed onto her passport and in her kitten covered check book; the name on her driving license; social security card; library card; Blockbuster card; spa card; gym card. She thought her name sounded scrumptious and she wanted to sound like something everybody wanted to devour. Meringue cared about that, for she liked people to like her. She suffered from the If-You-Like-Me-I’ll-Like-You-Back syndrome. If anybody gave her the slightest compliment, she would be an instant loyal friend. She was tall, pretty and very white. She was also a meat-eater, a lifelong carnivore, a habit which she tried desperately to hide. She did not think that it went along with the image she was trying to cultivate, that of a fresh, healthy, all- American girl. Meringue had come to Los Angeles from a small town tucked away in a north-eastern corner of Florida. She had swapped palm trees for palm trees, sand for sand, an ocean for an ocean and had now been in Los Angeles for seventeen years. Through a variety of different but equally incompetent agents, she had worked on three guest spots on episodic TV (one as a dead bimbo and two under-fives), three commercials (none of which went national), a couple of good, but forgettable scenes in a would-be feature, that ended up on the cutting room floor but went straight to DVD anyway, and a three week stint in a play, in a so far off off Santa Monica theatre that it was practically in another state, she was still there. Still struggling. Still trying to get a ‘really good, really powerful’ agent. Still trying to perfect the perfect 8’ x 10’ head shot, the one that would catch the eye of a casting director instead of ending up lining the trash. It was hard, being rejected constantly and despite lashings of daily moisturising, you had to have the skin of a rhino to survive in Los Angeles. Even her infrequent forays into therapy had failed to prepare her for this constant mind beating, for
    handling constant rejection was something in which Meringue had had way too much practice, something in which she had almost strangely begun to relish, trying to use it to her advantage. If ever she landed a part that called for ‘a pretty, white, tall girl who had spent years suffering from rejection’ she probably wouldn’t even have to research her character. She would be able to just slip right into the role, just like that, just like an oyster slipping easily down your throat. If you liked oysters. Which Meringue did not. She thought they looked as if someone with a really bad cold had sneezed into a shell. Boogers on the half-shell. Yum. But she kept that thought to herself, not wanting to make anybody feel uncomfortable. She could not afford to offend anyone in this town, for who knew if someone knew someone with clout. Everybody knew somebody who might know somebody powerful. So she kept her oyster musings and carnivorous dark side to herself.
    Meringue dated men. She dated almost any man that asked her. So she dated a lot. She had lots of first dates, but refused to let anything interfere with her self-maintenance schedule. Gym, facial, Brazilians, Restylane in the lips, occasional bouts of liposuction, Botox, highlights, root definition, augmentation, jazz classes, Jujitsu (a girl must learn how to defend herself), Pilates (fashionable but incredibly boring and she already spent way too much time on her back). She had little jobs on the side. Working part time in a variety of trendy boutiques on Melrose. Waitressing in a beachside pizzeria, (unusual pizzas; sushi, matzo ball, chicken fried duck). She was also on the books of an agency that