The Actress

by Kirby Wright


ANGEL JUST HIT 42. It feels like a crash. She’s been acting thirty years and fears the 
bloom is off the rose. The A-movie offers have dried up like a riverbed in a decade-long 
drought. She still gets B-movie pitches from green pea directors and fledgling producers, 
but these roles are mostly mothers-gone-wild and cougars on the prowl. She checks out 
the pre-movie posters: most suggest porn, with models hinting ménage à trios action and 
she-devil lust. She knows B-movies are traps. Few get funding and the ones that do 
usually flop. 

Her husband drives out to the morning country and snaps Angel posing in minis, cowgirl 
hats, black fishnet stockings, and stiletto boots. Dilapidated barns and ramshackle 
shanties melt in the prairie backgrounds. She wants to portray the seductress in a 
deconstructing land, a contrast she prays makes her fresh and alluring. There are A-movie 
directors hunting down femme fatales. A whip cracks. Angel plays dominatrix while 
lusting red carpets, her husband crying in the shadows at dusk.