Success

   After all the hustle of the day, the sidewalk was finally left alone, although not untouched. Lots of glass fragments were scattered all over the place, as well as paper and some pens. Journalists weren’t really careful with their stuff. Like their cameramen, they just dropped things wherever it was convenient for them. And the sidewalk in front of the Oak Tree Hospital was not a place they would respect in any way. They didn’t care if the patients needed silence to sleep, they’d rather had their story.

 And they did that day. After coming day after day, waiting for him to finally kick the bucket, the seventy-four year old man had finally passed away due to complications with the procedure he had gone through. It had been a very challenging adventure to fight where he knew he was already a loser. His mother and then sister before him had died exactly the same way, around the same age. So it wasn’t very surprising at all. That night, his body was sent to the cremator.

 The next day, he was incinerated and his ashes kept on a small jar to be given to the only person that had been with him through the last few hours, his partner Eddy. They had been together in the industry for years and had formed a bond no one could match, especially not in the modern times when friendships and all sorts of relationships seem to be built on something very fragile, that could break at any moment. It wasn’t their case at all, because even then they felt the same towards each other.

 They had never dared to be more than friends. They did agree on having to work together to fight the competition that plagued acting and all other forms of performance. Sydney, the one you had been cremated, had only been sixteen years old the day he arrived in the big city, looking for a chance to shine. Back then, the industry was only beginning. No major studios existed and the craft of cinema was thought to be a thing that would have only a couple of years in this Earth.

 Sydney, however, had always seen the magic in the movies and was sure it was going to become the largest groups of performers and other artists to be known in the world. He began cleaning around and helping people getting coffee or whatever they needed at the moment. The directors took pity of him and let him attend some rehearsals and even some casting sessions. By the time he was an adult in the eyes of the law, he was a very knowledgeable man, with a great deal of respect for acting. That was what got him inside an acting school soon enough.

 He met Eddy in one of his first productions. Eddy was an assistant of the director and Sydney had land a role as the son of the protagonists. It was a big deal to him because he had never acted before. He was so determined to be good, that he did his best with the little lines he had. It worked in its favor, as many others started hiring him for their pictures. It was mostly for the young brother or son parts, but he knew that was a way to climb to where he really wanted to be.

 With Eddy, they shared their love for industry and their yearning for a time where they could be next to the biggest stars in the business. When there wasn’t any work, they would go out together and watch a movie and then walk around or have something to eat while they discussed said movie. They had fun like that and it was during those long and elaborate conversations when they probably noticed, for the first time, what was happening between them. They didn’t acknowledge it, though.

 Sydney’s first big picture came in when he was twenty-five years old. He was offered the role of a young sailor who falls in love with a mermaid. It was one of those beautiful fantasy setting, with the grand costumes and the elaborate production design. The day filming started was the happiest day ever for him, as he had finally reached he point that he wanted in his career. And although the film was not the serious kind of thing he would like to dedicate himself to, it was a great way to begin.

 It was so well received in the theaters by the general audience that he was signed on to reprise the role for two more movies. The studio proposed to him to raise his salary as well as given him many more accommodations and luxuries in exchange for him staying with them for the saga of movies they had planned. He accepted but with fear of never going back to the more serious movies that he had always longed of doing. Maybe, he thought, he could work something out.

 There was the sequel of the mermaid movie, and then the other movie and then the next one. Suddenly, he had already signed on for five more, for a whole series with the character, and nothing had changed, not even the costumes and monsters he fought. It was Eddy who gave him the push he needed to demand more of the studio and of anyone working near or around him. He needed much more creativity if they wanted them to stay. That was how he put his foot down, in the hopes that could actually grow as an actor, instead of getting stuck forever in the same place.

 After all the money he had won for them, the studio was not that reluctant to let him get closer to the creative process. It was a revolution: he was responsible for the firing of the screenwriting and the hiring of a new team of younger, more vivacious men like him. He worked for long weeks with them in order to create a new great story for his audience to love. Meanwhile, he was also eyeing some roles in other movies, more dramatic ones with potent stories and strong characters.

 He signed on to a couple of those but then he realized he didn’t do as well with the dramatic stuff than with fantasy. Critics said that he was a bit too dry during his performances in the big movies he got to make. They didn’t say he was bad or anything, but what they always said only meant that his skills as an actor didn’t really show much during those grand romantic scenes he had tried so hard to do. It was something difficult to hear but he had to accept it, as it was a fact.

 Sydney kept trying, though. With the help of his best friend Eddy, he would often get the kind of role he had dreamt of doing. But he did, he came short of having the reception that Captain Granger had in the theater. The Granger series were a huge hit among young people and their parents love the movies too because of its depiction of a true hero. The new team of writers had done a marvelous job making the character more realistic and daring. He was who kids wanted to be.

 So he kept on doing those movies. He never stopped. During his career, he filmed maybe more than thirty movies as the character of Captain Granger. He made money and fame; people loved him and appreciated him. But they also questioned his life, as Sydney never married. He argued that the lack of time and the commitment to his craft were the ones to blame for him not having a big family. He did make some relations public, to appease the audiences and their thirst for gossip. But they were all lies.

 All along the road, Eddy was there, helping and cheering him on. He was Sydney biggest fan and his best friend in the world. In their older days, they would still sit down and discuss the movies. When Sydney retired, they did it always, almost as a rite they had to go through everyday. And that was their relationship, one were one depended in the other and vice versa, to push him along the long line of life and resist the blows life launched against either of them. They never discussed their relationship further, and it wasn’t necessary because it had obviously been a great success.

Self-made woman

   Sam had always being a very confident person. She wasn’t he most beautiful girl in the world or the most athletic or anything like that. She was just an average girl that never really had a problem with her own body. When she was at school, she saw many people being bullied because of how they looked or how they dressed or things like that. But the bullies never got to her because she simply did not believe anything they said. Maybe it was the way she was raised or maybe she had been born with a very thick skin. The point was no one could take her down.

 As she got older, she decided to try a little bit of everything. She did theatre and always went to a summer camp not far from home. She would also love to help recycle and clean the parks of her city. She earned some money by walking her neighbors’ dogs and she had at least five pen pals from all over the world. Sam lived to be active and to feel she was doing something. She even approached the kids at school that were bullied and tried to help them by giving them more things to do. Sometimes, she succeeded.

 After graduating high school, she entered a proper acting academy where she was always one of the most advanced students in the class. She got the directions of the teacher very fast and knew how to connect with a character in a matter of minutes. She became that person fro a while. It was amazing to see her as all those characters, no matter if they were men or women, young or old or foreigner. She always knew exactly how to do it.

 The school lasted for years year and by the third year her parents announced to her that they had financial problems and that they wouldn’t be able to give her money for transportation and food for her third year and that they had no money for her fourth and last year in the academy. For a moment, she was very worried. It was the first time in her life that Sam didn’t really know what to do right away. She spent a whole night without sleep thinking of solutions.

 However, the solution came to her the next day. Her acting school was part of a larger university, so when she went to class she always walked by a big board where people would pin down what they were looking for. She checked the board to see if there were any jobs she could take part time in order to help her parents pay for her stuff or pay it herself in any case. She read many little papers looking for something good and a blue one got her attention.

 Sam had never cared about what people said about her. She had never really had second thoughts about what she wore; how her body was build or the things she had to do to get somewhere. She was a fighter and very hands on kind of a person. So after class, she went straight to the classroom written in the blue paper. They were looking for men and women that would pose for the art students.

 It was in an area of the university she rarely went to. Outside, there were about three people waiting. When the door opened, a woman asked her name and physical data. She wrote those down in a sheet of paper on a clipboard and then closed the door after one of the people that had been waiting had entered the room. Sam could only see one other person inside with the woman: a middle-aged bald man who probably was the teacher for that class.

 She waited for an hour until the other two people had passed. Apparently the “audition”, or whatever it was, could be very exhaustive. When they finally let her in, they immediately asked for her to remove all clothes and to step up in a square that was about thirty centimeters tall. She did exactly that, feeling a little scared at first. The woman, who was probably an assistant, was doing some kind of sketch on her clipboard. The man just turned around Sam, looking at every single inch of her body.

 Suddenly, he asked Sam to pose in three different ways. He showed her three different paintings and she had to imitate the positions of the models in them. Sam wasn’t very into painting as such but she knew those pictures were rather classical. So she immediately knew there not going to do anything very modern in that class or at least not from the first day.

 After the first ten minutes, she was very comfortable posing as a goddess shooting an arrow at a centaur and then being seductive, half covering herself with a very silky and transparent tissue the teacher provided for her. They were there for more than an hour until the assistant told her she could grab her clothes and dress. They told her they would call her in order to know if she had gotten the job. She asked if she could know how much they paid and the mentioned the number. It was a very good one.

 She got the job and worked there for her whole third year. She had to arrive to some early classes, which was awful because of the cold, but the teacher was always kind enough to bring a portable heater for her not to freeze. Then she would go to her classes and sometimes she would come back late in order to pose for the advanced students.

 Sam didn’t really tell many people about her job. She certainly didn’t tell his parents. They were happy enough seeing their daughter knew how to move around in the world. And only a couple of friends knew. They even went once and told her how odd it was that no one really saw her but instead saw her body as if it was some other person. It was very strange.

 That year, se won a lot of money. With that and a job she got the following summer, she was able to pay her last year of acting school. She kept modeling during that year but she didn’t do as many hours because the audition part of her life had begun and she really had to be looking for all the parts possible. Once she graduated, she began to do so more actively, landing roles in plays and even movies.

 Her breakout role was the one of the heroine of a post-apocalyptic story involving zombies. She signed on for one movie but two more were made. After that, she did more elaborate stuff like a costume drama that happened in Africa and another where she was a woman that had a very awful disease that was deemed incurable for many years. For that one she received the most praise and Sam was even considered for many awards. It was the best time of her life because she got to travel a lot.

 When she turned 28, she got the role of a woman trying to save millions from genocide in a war that people didn’t even talked about. Sam researched the role and actively pursued it for many months until they chose her over many better-known actresses. She was careful about every aspect of the role and was able to do her best performance ever. That year was a whirlwind for her as everyone praised her work and called her a “revelation” and things of the sort.

 She began being nominated for many awards. Every time it happened she would call the director of the film, a woman called Flora, and they would chat for hours about it. However, something happened that would sour their happiness for a while. Someone had gone through Sam’s past and had found the portraits she had posed for and some pictures too, as she modeled for the photography students too. The tabloids had a field day and everyone else started to talk solely about that and not the movie.

 Sam apologized to Flora but the woman told her never to do that. She hadn’t done anything wrong and it was nothing that would affect her forever. She encouraged Sam to be herself and confront the issue as herself and as no one else. And so she did. She released a statement and even made a video that went viral, when she explained how she had always trusted herself and wanted everyone to feel the same way.

 She showed everyone that she was not ashamed but rather proud of being a woman that did not have to hide or feel bad because others wanted her to feel like that. She had made a life by her own hand and she was also proud of that. In her video, she invited every woman to be comfortable in their skin, take nudes pictures or just looking themselves at the mirror and accepting who they were because everyone is one of a kind.

 Many attacked for the way she saw the world, mostly men. But she had decided she would never care about what destructive people thought. She knew most people were not like that, she knew they would all see what she meant, where she was coming from.

 Her chances of having a great career were never harmed after that. She eventually won an Academy Award and went on to pose for magazines naked, in order to prove that they couldn’t take her down or shame her. Sam was there to stay.

Tea with Deb

   She puts five drops of lemon juice on her tea and then tastes it, to know if it’s the proper amount. It is: combined with the sugar and the quality of the tea, the beverage is perfect. She asks for a napkin and sips even more tea, as she watches out for her guest to make an arrival. The café is quite filled with different kinds of people but she would notice someone that shouldn’t be there or at least felt awkward, in a moment. She gives one, two and three sips, still waiting. She even eats some of the pastry she had asked for, instead of waiting to share it with someone else. She has never being very good at patience and it shows: she moves her leg, posed over her other leg, with a rhythmic movement that would put any dog nearby into a deep hypnosis.

 Finally her guest arrives. She’s a young woman called Gaby, the daughter of her late husband. Since he died, they haven’t really seen each other, partly because their relationship was never very good. Not minding that, she waves to the young woman who doesn’t respond but has obviously seen her too, as she walks towards the table. She arrives and tries to smile but fails, instead sitting down and receiving the menu from a waiter that has appears out of nowhere. The woman tells her what’s good in this café, what kind of beverages they have and what to eat, but Gaby is not very focused or doesn’t seem to be at least. She breathes in slowly and lets out air through her nose in the loudest and most annoying way. The woman drinks more tea to calm her nerves.

 Gaby then puts the menu aside and asks her why she asked to meet her.  The young woman is obviously not comfortable, grabbing her purse as if she was afraid someone might steal it away right there. The woman sips a bit more tea and waits a few seconds to answer the question; meanwhile Gaby pierces her with her sight. She then declares she missed her and that since the death of her husband, six years ago, she has been trying to put her life together. She realized, or so she says, that she never really gave Gaby a chance when they lived together, not even trying to form some kind of relationship of any kind. She says she only wants for them to be friends and to be united by the memory or their beloved Peter.

 But the young one doesn’t look very impressed by the words of her former stepmother. She just looks at her and, finally, sighs and smiles saying: “You kill me, Deb. You do.” Deborah, a name she had forbidden Gaby to use when in her presence, has shrills all over her body and turns around instinctively to know if someone has heard the comment. No one is looking at them, actually many customers have left the café, as lunchtime is now over. She sips more tea, which runs out and calls, with a trembling hand, another waiter and asks him for more tea. When she looks at Gaby, the girl is still smiling.

 Gaby asks the waiter for a cappuccino and a croissant filled with chocolate. He leaves, not without looking at the horrified face of Deborah. Her expression has contorted into an awful grin and all because she has begun remembering the past. A past where she hated her husband Peter and had only wanted to marry him for the money but in the transaction she never thought she would have to put up with a little kid, he’s annoying daughter who was in that age when they just look at you and seem to know everything about your life and accomplishments. She was a pretty girl, but annoying like any other kid and Deb knew she had to make Peter realized she was the important one in his life and that’s why she planned getaways together, that didn’t include Gaby.

 The girl, now twenty years old, just smiles. She knows what Deb has on her mind and she loves that the woman is now regretting of have a small reunion with the stepdaughter she never wanted. When the cappuccino and the croissant arrive, she starts eating and drinking loudly, only to annoy her stock up companion across the table. Deb is annoyed, extremely annoyed, as her life has always been one when she faked to be someone that she wasn’t. She had always preferred etiquette and glamour to many other things in life like honesty and hard work. Gaby knew her father was her third husband and that she had now divorced number five. She was what many people would call “a gold-digger”.

 Gaby said it out loud and it had the expected reaction: Deb smashed her fist against the table, spilling her tea and dropping some sugar cubes to the floor. A waiter, apparently someone that had know her for a while, came in fast and helped her clean up and pick up what had fallen to the floor. She stood up and Gaby was hopeful she would leave first, humiliated. But she didn’t, she just dusted off the sugar and some tea and sat down again, with more rage in her eyes that she had ever seen. She remembered then the time she had seen him drink like a sailor because her father hadn’t arrived from a trip and she “needed” him urgently. Of course, the real reason was that she needed money.

 To be honest, the girl didn’t understand how it was that a woman that had been married so many times had no idea of keeping money. One would think a person in that line of business would know to save a little for the future, as looks vaporizes fast and life is more and more expensive each day. She still kept her good looks, her nice dresses and her appointments to the beauty salon, but she was very late in her rent payments, she couldn’t get a job and a former lover had come to her, with wishes to blackmail her, thinking she had money but she had none. He didn’t believe it and kept asking for money.

 Gaby did not know this and Deb wouldn’t tell her. Breathing slowly, Deb told the girl she had not been a great stepmother but that was precisely the reason why she had decided to make contact again; in the hope they could be friends. To the sound of the word, Gaby started laughing, again attracting the attention of the restaurant’s staff and of the few customers. But she didn’t mind, she kept laughing, authentically crying because she had found Deb choice of words extremely funny. She smiled to her and just couldn’t reply back because she found the situation so ridiculous and out of every context. She finally got serious and asked Deb how much money she needed and why she needed it. Deb, of course, started acting confused and offended but it obviously didn’t work.

 Still smiling, the former stepdaughter told her she knew what moved her and what had made her marry her dad. Faking been horrified or something like that would not work, as she had known her much better than her father. Deborah attempted to talk but Gaby continued, reminding her that only she knew about the lovers she had back then and about the amount of money she spend on useless things. She was a shameless whore who just wanted money and a place to feel safe but Gaby wouldn’t be the person to provide for her. She had to find someone else to believe her, to buy into her trap of a femme fatale in distress, a performance for which she was growing older and older, becoming a comedic role.

 This hit Deb right in her pride. Suddenly her facial expression changed as well as her body language. The red in her face did not go away but it was obvious the real her had finally come out. She approached Gaby over the table and, in a really low register, told her that what her life was like and what she had done with it, was her problem. Who she was a result of a series of things that had happened to her and that a spoiled brat like her would never understand. She pitied her for being so blinded by her youth and by her morals, which she would never think were wrong. She said, before pulling away, that she had done what she had to and that she wasn’t sorry.

 It was Gaby who stood up first, grab a bill from her purse and put it on the table. She looked at Deb, not angry but with disgust. She told her that women like her were just poison and that she was just scum, not only for marrying old timers for their money but because she had the nerve to ask her for money, because she knew that’s what she wanted. She had no shame and she pitied her. Gaby turned around and left in a huff, leaving Deb drinking her tea, trembling because of all the rage inside of her. She picture every single one of those men and those lives she had lived through in the past and the only thing she could to was to throw her blessed tea cup across the room and smash it against a wall.

The best

   He had always being that person. You know, the kind of man that’s always on top of everything and whom everyone thinks about. Many want to be like him and others want to be with him. But few have ever get close enough to really know him as he has being intelligent enough to keep it all separated, in order to keep up the illusion.

 Yes, an illusion. Because Martin, the perfect man, had always had to act and had always had to do things to stay where he was. Martin wasn’t only an employee, he owned the company and ran it for the last five years, after his father had decide, rather surprisingly, to leave control of his beloved company to his son. This had been a matter of discussion amongst the high class of the city and the commerce guilds but eventually all doubts disappeared when they realized he was much more than what he looked like.

 He had gone to school in Europe and had a keen sense of fashion. He knew every single member of the richest families on both sides of the Atlantic and he had more than one affair with many of them, men or women. Many would have looked over him because of him being a bisexual man but another surprise; people found this a very interesting trait, complemented by his great skills handling money and people. Because his most alluring trait was the fact he could make anyone do anything he wanted. Sometimes, he didn’t even have to ask.

 Some people thought it was all about his physical appearance.  He was tall, tanned but not too much, well dressed, manly but soft features and ideal in every sense. Many magazines had asked him to do photo-shoots and he had accepted gladly to all the offerings. He would even do them for free if it helped the company promote some new article that they wanted to push on people or simply to get everyone to know who he was.

 People love to buy things to get to be like someone. Because people are obsessed to be closer to their idea of perfection, which is actually the idea of the media. And Martin was exactly that. Once he was in every magazine, more than one man was getting their hair cut in the way he had it and stores selling the clothes he liked had their sales rise for a whole month. Of course, his company owned many of those stores so it was all a very round business.

 His father eventually died and his mother went away to leave in France. This left him with free rein, more than ever, over his company and his image. From time to time, he would let paparazzi’s come close enough to get a few shots of him, maybe alone or maybe with a young beautiful model or someone people would hate him to be with. Because his goal was to make people want to be that model, be that person who had the unspeakable honor of going around town with him.

 So what people didn’t know very well about him was that he was very manipulative of everything he did. Most people would never calculate every single movement in their lives as he did but it was not as if he had an option. From a very young age, he had realized it was best to be the one with power and not the one being ruled. And if his family’s fortune was of any help, he wanted to be that guy everyone admires for every reason possible.

 It was him who started, not only doing benefits and helping those in need, but he actually went to the orphanages, hospitals and retirement homes to help in any way he could. Martin knew that he needed people to admire him because it benefited both him and them: if they were in love with him, the earning of his companies will rise but also the amount of money he was able to invest in any charity he would like. So it was great for everyone.

 Once his family left, he was more and more controlling of the company but no one ever said anything because it became one of the best companies in the world in less than three years. Before, it had been an old and respectable company but now it was on top of everything. Besides, working there was seeing as the best that could happen to anyone. The pay was great and employees enjoyed many benefits, all which had been established by Martin. He thought that if they were happy, they would work harder and the company would do even better.

 In time, he started absorbing minor business and it became one of the top companies in the country. It was so powerful, that their endorsement in any way was almost a warranty of success. Martin, however, had never cared for politics thinking those men and women always had underlying intentions. He thought of himself of a more honest person than them and decided to be clear, stating that his company would never serve anyone’s political efforts. He would rather shut it all down before bow to a politician.

This was rather hypocrite from him because Martin had never really being honest about him. He had created a character, a sort of persona, who acted his life. But the real Martin, the one that had existed back when he was only a kid, had been trapped inside his brain and was never allowed to be outside, to be in control. He sometimes had minor breakdowns, suffering from flashes of depression. Martin’s acting had earned him a severe headache problem but people knew and were not surprised: with everything he had on his plate, he was allowed to have a headache from time to time.

 When he reached the age of thirty five, people thought he was finally going to get a wife but that didn’t happen. He was still being photographed with many beautiful men and women but he knew them all too well to have anything more compromising with any of them. The models were always dull and the pretty faces always hid stupid minds. And Martin, handsome as he was, was not as stupid fool at all. He would have wanted to meet someone like him, someone that had fought his way to the top and wasn’t afraid to do or say anything. Because that was another thing he loved about his position: he could have any thought about any subject in current life and people would always support him or, at very least, not even care.

 And, to explain it further, he was a self made man. In spite of his money, he had decided to become much more than he was supposed to be. All his life he had heard it from the media, from his parents, from the society he had been born into. He had heard of perfection and of the rulers and the ones that are ruled. So he decided, at a very young age, to be the one on top. To beat every single other guy or girl in that race and be the one to beat them all. That's who he had always wanted to be. He started learning about everything and finally, he came back from Europe as a new man that would change the world.

 Of course, there were people that did not trust him be he never worried about any of them. As far as he was concerned, they were only jealous of the amount of power he had because, after all, that is what people really look for. When improving ourselves physically, we are only seeking to have power over other, to be better than the rest. Because being better than other means that there is a sense of superiority and that always entails powers. And Martin thought that those that were too mediocre to improve were the ones expending their days criticizing his life and way of doing business.

  Martin acquired a big condominium in the middle of the city, on top of one of the tallest residential buildings of town. From there, he could see his office tower and the lives of many people below. He felt even more powerful than ever but it was then, only then, when he realized there was no one beside him to share everything with. No family, no real friends, no lover. There was no one with whom he could share his visions of the future or his passions. It was only a huge space, filled with riches but with no soul at all.

 When feeling like that, he would disguise himself and walk around the people on the street and he realized what he lacked was love. Not only romantic love but also every single kind there is in the world. Some people that were far from being like him laughed in the street and appeared to have the best time possible. They loved themselves far more than he would ever love himself, because he had no idea who he was anymore. He had renounced to his true self long ago and now that boy was lost forever.

 After a few outings, he decided to cut off all thought of that forever, focusing on the future of his company and how to enjoy life with all the power and money he had. Because, after all, he had made a decision all those years ago: he had decided to be perfect in every sense, to go to the gym and get a perfect body, to handle money correctly to have the most refined luxury items and clothes and teaching himself to be the business man his father had never been.

 He was going to be the best. And, according to him, he already was.