Okay, guys, this is not my big story, just something that was too big to be a one shot and wanted to be written too badly to be ignored. Please don't read it if you are offended by strong language. This is very, very bleak and dark. Not a happy place. Much grimmer than Coup de Grace, so you might want to tread with caution. It is disillusioning and sad, but I like it. You really shouldn't read if you're easily offended. There will be minors taking drugs. Adults too. There will be a lot of drugs. That is what enables California dreaming, after all.

If grammatical mistakes bother you, I should warn you that I didn't have a beta for this. I will have for the other one, but not this, because this is just a fling, a one night stand if you will. I did try to proofread it several times, but there are bound to be mistakes.

I will update regularly, but very little, every few days.


I get out of the cab and I look at my reflection in the car door. I'm wearing huge shades, my exhaustion doesn't show. Good. My hair is mess, but the good kind, I decide. I still cannot bring myself to feel anything but resentment and bitterness about this whole ordeal. The cabbie goes and gets the suitcase out.

"Have a nice flight, ma'am," I just scowl at him. Fucking imbecile, just how hard is it to find your way from Milwaukee to O'Hare? It's beyond his capabilities but the least he could do is buy a fucking GPS. I drag my carry on bag after me my mind still murky from lack of sleep. We just finished renovating the house in Milwaukee; this would've been our first weekend there. It was Royce's uncle's before. He was the kind of guy who thought fucking everything that moves is a form of limiting yourself. He tried to bag me a few times, but there was something gag inducing about him standing close to me, so nothing became of it. He liked the 'loft and scotch more than any woman he ever slept with so it was anybody's guess when he would finally go west. He always did love Royce and one family weekend I caught him standing outside the window of my bathroom, so I think he liked me okay too.

Nobody was surprised when he was found in thigh highs, his dick in his hand, hanging from a tie around his neck on the doorknob in his wardrobe after he's been missing from work for a week. The official report quoted heart failure, of course. He left Royce the mansion in Milwaukee, but there was some serious work to be done to transform it from pussy den to a decent place for the weekends. I don't know that much about STDs but I had the pool drained and sanitized and all the systems replaced. You never know.

And I am, by far, in the sane brunch of the family.

I strut up to the check in counter. Carlisle had better arranged this properly or I'm going back to bed.

"A ticket to Beijing for Mrs. Rosalie King," I say.

"There you go, Miss." I snatch it away. First glass. Good. That fucker had better pay up, it's the least he could do, after getting me out of bed on a Sunday morning. "Do you wish to check in now?" I just nod and put my Luis Vuitton suitcase up. The guy checks me in and I just go to the security-check just to get over that nightmare as soon as possible. Who the fuck is going to blow up a plane using their shoes? These people have clearly gone overboard or just wanted to fuck with us. I think it's the latter. But I don't want to argue with them, not today. I'm too tired.

I arrive in the waiting lobby and I'm kind of tempted to smoke, but since all smokers are cramped up in a glass cage, like some kind of cross between Hannibal Lechter and an exotic animal exhibit, suffocating in their own smoke swirling around them like they're on death row, I decide I'd rather not. I hear you can smoke as much as you want in Beijing, no one is gonna say shit. It's not like it matters anymore. I can smoke as much as I fucking like. I still feel that pang, that little hollow sadness when I think about this, though I really don't want to. I go to Starbucks instead and get myself a chai latte with soymilk. Although I could drink as much normal milk as I like now, too. Or eat seafood.

I decide to call Royce one last time. To tell him not to fuck up the house, the producer will be coming on Wednesday to take a look at it. It's not like I have to worry about getting cast, I'm the only safe bet in the bunch and they know it too. I must go to Beijing to keep it that way. The phone rings for several minutes before some bimbo picks it up.

"Hey, Royce is still sleeping, can I take a message?" she asks in a sex kitten voice. I cannot believe that an hour after I left he would already call her whore in. I could leave a message if she only let if go to voicemail. I always knew he had a soft spot for girls with double digit IQs, but then again, if she is stupid enough to pick the phone up for "The Wife", she is clearly beyond hope.

"Tell Royce his wife just called. Do not fuck on any table surface or in the pool, do you understand? If I find the house in anything but the prefect condition I left it in, you'll be sorry, sweetheart. Keep it wrapped. And next time someone calls; don't answer his phone like a desperate ten dollar hooker. It makes both of you look bad." I hear a shocked gasp on the end of the line. I guess she didn't expect it to be me, much less my reaction. But I'm not going to explain myself to her. I don't need to.

"I… I didn't even know he had a… I'm sorry, I…" Hmm, maybe she's not really a whore. But the house looks too good to be a bachelor pad, she couldn't possibly have believed he was single. "I'll tell him you called," she says, resigned.

"Good. And keep in mind what I said. Do not fuck in the pool." I think she got the message. Don't fuck in the pool. I should've told her to leave the fruit bowls untouched too. Well, I guess I can always amend that pretty quickly. I buy a Vanity Fair and sit down in the VIP waiting area to read it. There is some story in there about some fucked up rich kids raiding celebrities' houses in LA. And people are surprised. Everywhere you look there's a celebrity, you cannot turn on the TV or buy a fucking magazine without running into a self proclaimed starlet trying to sell you something or wanting to convince you how butchering their body and risking brain damage for bigger tits is a spiritual decision that they just had to make. Hell, Michel Jackson's death was announced on the weather channel. Celebrity's the new deity, the altar is fame and it's even more smokes and mirrors than the gods before. I should know. I was born and raised in Tinseltown.

I look for something about Edward Cullen and VF does not disappoint. It's a column on a Late Night Talk show he did a couple weeks back. The columnist seems to have the impression that he is deep and insightful. I just snort. He does live in an entirely different dimension that is for sure.

I've known him for a long time, but I never wanted him in my life. I liked musicians and being a hot, blond, aerobic junkie in her late teens, early twenties made it easy to get hooked up with a few and they loved me. I was almost famous. I listened to their music too, and I've always known he was good. Not just the music, he could entice, charm, excite, fascinate a crowd unlike anyone else out there at the time; I've only ever seen the big ones handling the crowd with the same grace. He was magnetic, hypnotic even. But you don't want to get involved with those ones. They're going places where nothing's normal or predictable anymore. People expect them to live a life of extreme. The life of a god.

I was always strong, I liked to play around with these local rock gods, who were trying to make it big, but I knew where I was headed. I wanted to go to law school in North Western, and work always came before play, even if I was dying to make it seem like the opposite. Daughter of a quasi-alcoholic LAPD employee, who wants to make it big in LA. What a cliché. I wasn't going to become that. I was that mythological creature, pole dancing for college money. I wasn't ashamed of it, but guys I rarely wanted to discuss NAFTA while getting a lap dance, so I shut my mouth and never told anyone.

Only Bella knew.

My sweet, angelic sister. She was four years younger than me, and so out of place in LA, it wasn't even funny. She was pale, skinny, naïve to a fault and a brunette. Bella was a studious little mouse, who pretended to be sick the nights her friends went out, and told guys her dad wouldn't allow her to date. Which was bullshit, Charlie didn't give a shit. It's ironic that I would become the dutiful housewife and that same mousy, insignificant girl would become the Jedi of famewhores, one of the most prominent celebrities who had nothing to show for their fame, except the shit about them in the tabloids.

They are calling for the passengers of my plane, boarding has begun. I collect my bag, adjust my sunglasses and board the plane. Thank god, I didn't forget the Valium. I'll need to catch some sleep.


Tell me what you think, please. Since this is a fling, if there is no interest, I'm not sure I'll continue. But thanks for reading, in any case.