Wet Nails Read online

  Wet Nails

  By Shira Glassman

  Copyright 2015 by Shira Glassman

  Smashwords Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Torquere Press Publishers

  P.O. Box 37, Waldo, AR 71770.

  Wet Nails by Shira Glassman Copyright 2015

  Cover illustration by BSClay

  Published with permission

  www.torquerepress.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. LLC, P.O. Box 37, Waldo, AR 71770

  First Torquere Press Printing: October 2015

  Wet Nails

  by Shira Glassman

  To Anne Baxter and Nina Foch, my own Hollywood crushes.

  Lonely grad student Adina Greenberg is in for a treat when the glamorous ghost of Rose Hamilton, her favorite 1950s Hollywood actress, comes out of the television to give her a manicure and great sex.

  ***

  The thrust of the queen's dagger was sharp and accurate; within seconds, the king slumped over and moved no more. Her face, shockingly beautiful in its symmetry, remained proudly resolute for only a moment before full knowledge of her deed set in and marred it with anguish. She sank onto the bed beside the body of her husband, recoiling from the dagger as if she'd never seen it before. One of the room's lone candles flickered out, leaving her in shadow. She began to weep.

  So intent was my focus that when I reached for another chip, my hand went straight into the bowl of onion dip instead of the open bag. "Dammit." I guess I was just that riveted to the television, even though I'd seen this all before.

  I fumbled around for the remote and finally hit pause, Rose Hamilton's ridiculously pretty face filling up the screen. Inwardly I was cracking up at how these old movies try to pretend it's night when they're on a fully lit sound stage. She was at the window of the "castle" now, her distraught expression lit up by "moonlight."

  On my way to the kitchen, I licked off the bulk of the dip, on the theory that what the hell, yogurt was good for me. Good enough to balance out the mountain of salt in the onion soup packet I'd added, anyway, and the potato chips. Man, I can't even get away from potatoes when I'm at home mainlining old movies.

  Potatoes... I'd left about four tubs of them back at the lab, along with my other friends, Mr. Lab Coat, Ms. Lab Notebook, and Mx. Gas Chromatograph. Don't get me wrong -- I love science, but tonight was my night to unwind from the pressures of graduate school by hiding in my apartment with my chips and dip and incredibly self-indulgent Rose Hamilton marathon.

  I dried off my freshly washed hands on my college-logo'd dishtowel and went back to the living room. A flicker of movement caught my eye. Was there a glitch in the screen? Shit, I didn't have money to replace the TV, and my laptop is literally smaller than my lab notebook.

  Squinting at the set, I thought I saw Rose Hamilton beckoning -- beckoning at the audience. From a paused television set.

  I looked down at the remote, as if that was somehow supposed to explain things. When I looked back at the set, Rose was smiling at me.

  Wait, at the audience.

  Or at me?

  Then she lifted one hand and waved a little, like she was in a parade, and I was the crowd. I yelped and nearly knocked over the onion dip. "What's going on?"

  "Adina?"

  What the fuck--? "Hello?"

  Rose Hamilton's smile broadened, and I crumpled into the sofa clutching my hands in astonishment. My mouth hung open like a broken glove compartment.

  "May I join you?" My God, that voice. Her alto sounded like thick honey dissolving into a hot cup of tea.

  "Yeah, sure!" Suddenly, I was glad I was freshly showered and wearing the nice pajamas. That was the crush talking. The crush I'd had since I was six. Oh my God.

  She reached out toward me. "Can you give me a hand?"

  I walked toward the television and placed my fingers against the glass. To my amazement, her hand, warm and firm, grasped mine. And then, right out of the set, stepped the golden-age goddess herself, curvy and gorgeous, and still in black-and-white.

  Her touch had drawn heat into my panties, but now I was a little creeped out by her lack of color. All I could say was "Um," and I stared.

  "Oh, sorry!" Her skin bloomed into a more realistic shade. "Thank you for enjoying my movies so much. You know, I only appear like this for my fans. You're what keeps me alive. A movie star's only dead if she's run out of fans, not when she draws her last breath."

  I think that was some point in the 70s. Certainly she wasn't around anymore when I was a tiny bi twerp in a t-shirt with puffy graphics, hugging my mother's sofa cushions and staring at Rose Hamilton movies.

  I had to say something before this got awkward. "I never thought I'd have the chance to tell you this, I mean, obviously," I babbled, "but that scene I just watched -- I love the way you can totally see in her face the moment she starts to regret what she did. That's amazing acting. It's so subtle!"

  Rose beamed at me. "Thank you! May I sit down?"

  Shit, I am so rude, what is grad school even doing to me? "Sorry, yeah, please!"

  "So what do you do, Adina? I can call you Adina, right? Or are you Mrs. Something?"

  I giggled self-consciously. "I'm not Mrs. Anything. But hopefully in another year or two I'll be Dr. Greenberg."

  "Oh, that's wonderful! A medical doctor?"

  "No, I research potatoes."

  "That's interesting! I don't know very much about potatoes besides make mine mashed, but I was in a picture once about the Irish potato famine."

  "I've seen that!" I exclaimed. "Your accent sounded so real! I mean, not that I really know from Irish accents. But it didn't seem fake or anything."

  "Months with a very good vocal coach." Her eyes twinkled with a conspiratorial flash. "I guess I had everyone fooled pretty good!"

  I tried to keep from picking at the skin around my fingernails, my horrid little habit, but I was too excited and stress always makes it worse, even happy stress. She was dazzling me, and I had to do something with my hands.

  "Can I get you anything? Potato chips? I've got dip to go with." A ring? My babies? "Maybe something to drink?" Did ghosts drink? Was this even really happening, or was I passed out at the lab after huffing something weird from a haz waste jar? Maybe I was comatose, and the annoying guy from the citrus genome project would find me in the hallway and act like a big hero later.

  "Do you have the stuff for a Cape Codder?"

  "That's vodka and cranberry, right?"

  She nodded. I went to the kitchen, glad for the chance to collect myself. As I approached the refrigerator door, I checked what I could see of my reflection in the shiny black surface. Yep, definitely glad I was wearing the nice pajamas, and that my thick curly black hair was clean and not too frizzy.

  I mean, not that it mattered.

  Might it matter?

  I sliced a lime, wincing as the lime juice did nasty things to the open wounds I'd caused on my own fingers. Then I walked back toward the sofa.

  "So, what was your favorite movie you ever made?" I handed her one of the drinks in my hands.

  "Oh, goodness!" She took a sip. "I loved so many different things about so many of them. I love the way I felt powerful when I played Elizabeth the First, but that wig! And there's a special place in my heart for Billie Jane. I thought I made a pretty good gangster's moll, don't you think?"
>
  I grinned over the pain as I squeezed the lime into my glass, which was only seltzer water. "Definitely! You were terrific."

  "Are you sure?" There was amusement in her glance. "You made a face."

  "Oh, tha -- that wasn't about you. I-I was--" I showed her the fingers on my free hand. "I can't stop picking at them. Even when it makes me bleed. I know I need to stop, but it's almost a compulsion. I'm so used to it hurting when I put lemons or limes in my drink; I don't even notice it anymore. The fifty dollar word for it is dermatillomania, but that doesn't do me any goo--"

  And then Rose Hamilton, Rose fucking Hamilton, took my hand into hers and caressed it gently. Holy shit. I shifted on the sofa, letting the cushion relieve some of the pressure between my legs. "I can fix this for you."

  "You can -- what?"

  "I'll show you what to do! Have you ever had a manicure?"

  "Well, no, but my mom tried painting them and it never--"

  "It's not just nail polish," she explained, continuing to nurture my hand as if it were a precious treasure. "I'll do it for you, and then you'll be able to do it yourself every week. Trust me; you won't have any of those little pieces left to bite off if you stick with my regimen. Like the idea?"

  "Well, yeah. Thanks. What do we do?"

  "I need some supplies, first. Let's see. Now, first we want some nail clippers and an emery board. A bowl of water, household salt, dish soap, and a washcloth. And I hope your bathroom's clean because it'll be a lot easier to do it in there."

  I bustled around the kitchen, grabbing the items as she called them out. "I think my roommate has clippers. She went home for Labor Day weekend, but her bathroom's over there."

  "Will she mind if you use them?"

  "Probably not; we use each other's toilet paper and shampoo if we're out. But I guess I can buy her another set and keep this one, if you want me to keep doing this."

  "Yes, clippers will definitely solve a big part of your problem," said Rose from the hallway as I fished around in the basket of supplies in Jamie's bathroom for the clippers and emery board. "If she has clear polish in there, grab that, too."

  "Here, I found clear and pink. I know she won't care what happens to this one -- she hates pink and only even has this from one of those free bags of swag you get when you buy X dollars' worth of makeup." Holding the salt in one hand and Jamie's nail gear in the other, I led Rose toward my bathroom, which was buried inside my bedroom. Jamie had been generous when we moved in and let me have the "master."

  I set everything down on the counter and turned to face Rose, who stood in the doorway holding an empty bowl in one hand and my dish soap in the other. The costume from the medieval movie was gone and instead she now wore a silky vintage dressing gown halfway between green and gray like a desert plant. All of this was totally, undeniably, scientifically impossible, but here we were.

  "Turn on the hot water," she ordered. While waiting for the heat to kick in, I looked at us standing together in the bathroom mirror. We both had long dark hair, but there the similarity ended. She was tall and graceful, and her hair was a rich brown like polished wood, straight and glossy. My hair's brown was dark enough to pass for black and as usual it was a little wild, even freshly cleaned. Her glossy robe contrasted sharply with my blue cotton pj's from Target. Plus, I was several inches shorter and looked like a regular person. People just weren't as perfect as Rose Hamilton.

  She followed my gaze to the mirror. "Not bad! Back in my day, you could have been our favorite extra on all those big Bible movies."

  I smirked. "There's a good reason for that. My ancestors lived those movies." As if the name wasn't a giveaway. And the nose.

  "I know," she said pleasantly as she filled the bowl and turned off the tap. "When I was younger, if you had a name like that, you changed it."

  "That's what they told my grandfather when he was starting out, but he wouldn't do it."

  "Good man," she commented. "It can be a hard world out there. For Rada Amaliyev, too." Her perfectly shaped mouth twitched up at the edge, and vague memories of a trip down an internet rabbit hole reminded me that this had been her, before stardom, before the legend that was Rose Hamilton. "Wish I could say I'd been that brave, but I always liked comfort a little too much. Uh, sit down." She gestured vaguely toward the toilet, and I plopped myself down onto the closed lid.

  I was staring at my chewed-up cuticles, until she roused me from my reverie. "Here, soak your fingertips in this. Start with your right hand."

  While my fingers waited in the bowl, she examined my other hand. "All different lengths... that's fine. I'll just make them short, if that's okay."

  "It's probably best, because of all my lab work."

  "What are you researching?"

  "I'm looking at postharvest reactions of potato to modified atmospheres and ethylene treatment," I rattled off.

  "You must be very smart if you know what all those words mean!"

  That made me grin so hard I almost laughed. Rose Hamilton was in my bathroom giving me a manicure and she called me smart. "Thanks. I'm proud of what I do."

  She had used the clippers and now she and the emery board were going to town on my left fingernails. "Nice girl like you probably has at least two boyfriends, right?"

  I chuckled. "That's two more boyfriends than I'd want. Girlfriend, maybe," I added, looking at the corner of the floor, "but I'm waiting until after I get my doctorate."

  "You don't have to be scared of telling me you like girls," she said as she examined her work on my hand. "You're not the only one here who does."

  "Wait, what?" Fire flooded my cheeks and I struggled not to look as shocked as I was as that seemed rude.

  "Oh, don't get me wrong, I loved my husband."

  "Which one?" I cringed. "Shit, I'm sorry, that sounded meaner than I meant it."

  She smiled. "Don't be. Perfectly understandable. Anyway, I meant the last one. Leonard. But before him, in between some of those other marriages, I had my secret adventures. Things were different back then -- you must know that."

  "Yeah. I'm sorry. Don't worry -- I never take anything for granted. Things aren't perfect yet, but I've always been grateful to be around now rather than back then."

  "Other hand." Obediently, I put my left fingers into the bowl of water and gave her my right. "I fell for my stunt double once, can you believe that? It was on that -- that gangster picture we were talking about earlier. I loved her fearlessness. The way she could just fall backward out of a window without even thinking about it. Of course, there were plenty of safety nets, but the human body just doesn't want to fall, even if it knows."

  "I like men a little bit," I commented for no reason, more out of nervousness than anything else. "Like Dean Raymond. The best part about being bi is when you two costar and I can fangirl you both at the same time."

  "Oh, so he's your type, is he?" she teased as she began worrying at my cuticles with her tools. Snip snip went the clippers, and every so often she tapped them against a piece of tissue she'd put on the counter to get rid of the dead skin. I felt like my fingertips were being nibbled clean by tiny fish.

  "If by 'my type' you mean, on the other side of the TV screen, then yes. I mean, I'm glad you showed up instead of him!"

  "You let me know if any of this hurts, all right?"

  I nodded. "Thanks."

  "See, the soaking makes it easier to get at all the bits that need trimming. It wouldn't be as easy to get at them if your hands were dry."

  I breathed deeply as she worked, just enjoying the feeling of being close to her, and fascinated with how bright her skin looked against the muted green of her robe. She became realer and realer to me every moment, less the movie star and more an actual woman. I had admired her beauty and compelling acting for years, but I'd never thought about her too hard as a person. She'd lived in a much scarier time for women like us. I was thankful my decisions had been easier.

  "I had a little thing going on with a producer's wife once," she
commented as she patted my hand dry with the washcloth. With the clippers and emery board, she quickly caught this hand up to where the other one was. "Okay, now hold out your hand."

  Into my cupped palm she poured some of my table salt, and then added a chaser of dish soap. "Rub that together, over all the places I just trimmed and the surface of your nails. It scrubs away the rest of the dead skin. When you're done, you can rinse with hot water."

  I did as she asked, enjoying the decadence of the homemade scrub. "Producer's wife? Did anyone find out?"

  "The only people who knew were discreet. It didn't last long, anyway."

  "I'm sorry you had to go through all that." When I was finished, my hands felt clean -- aggressively clean, even.

  She met me with the washcloth and dried my hands. "Of course, I had to be careful. Dozens of lovely young extras running around, but back then, things were different. You could be blackmailed, wind up in the papers, even arrested. I wanted my career. So, I limited my adventures with women to ladies in my own circle."

  "And not extras on big Bible epics," I blurted out.

  Reaching for the clear polish, she responded with a smile of such mischievous glee that I forgot to breathe for a moment. My hands were still hot from the water but also my heightened emotion, and it was pleasant to feel the coolness of the wet brush through my nails.

  "I'm starting with a base coat. It helps the colored part of the polish not chip if you put this down before and after," she explained. Honestly, at that point she could have been cutting off my fingers and I might not have noticed. And she held my hand with such gentleness.

  "So you had manicures all the time when you were working?"

  She nodded, swapping out the clear bottle for the pink. "Part of the unreal dream of Hollywood. Women never have body hair, nails naturally grow in every shade of the rainbow, and the men never scratch their pants. Other hand?"

  "Oooh." I examined the hand she'd already done, and marveled at her self-control. The times I'd tried to paint my own nails I'd smudged it on my skin a little, but she hadn't missed a trick. The job looked professional, and I goggled at the unfamiliarity of seeing my hand so dressed-up.