If Only in My Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

the lab.
    How can she, Clara, possibly be ridden with deadly, toxic cancer cells when she feels absolutely fine?
    “Listen, I’m here if you need a friend instead of a shrink,” Jesus is telling her. “And you should make an appointment with Jezibel, my life coach.”
    “I don’t think I—”
    “She’s amazing. I’ll give you her number.”
    “No, that’s okay, Jesus, I doubt I’ll—”
    “I need something to write on.”
    Because it’s easier than arguing, she opens a drawer, rummages around, and plucks one of her photo business cards from a rubber-banded stack. On the front is her head shot, on the back, her contact info.
    “Just put it on here,” she tells Jesus.
    “Don’t you have any scrap paper?”
    “Does this look like an office?”
    “Got a pen? Or do you want me to use eyeliner?”
    She sighs and relinquishes a Sharpie she keeps handy for signing autographs. Which doesn’t happen as often these days as it did when she was on
One Life to Live
. Soap fans are a dedicated breed.
    Jesus scribbles something, then hands the card back to her. “Promise me you’ll call Jezibel.”
    She sticks it into the shallow lone pocket in her vintage forties’ skirt. “Thanks, but I really don’t think—”
    “Um, hello, you need to close your mouth so I can do your lips now.”
    “Okay, but just so you know, I don’t need—”
    “Ah-ah-ah,” he cautions.
    Forced to close her mouth so that he can apply the vintage deep-red lipstick, she contemplates the day that lies ahead.
    She still hasn’t found the nerve to break the news of her illness to the powers that be, particularly Denton Wilkens, the director. She will, before the day is out, but she isn’t looking forward to it.
    What’s the worst that can happen?
    It’s not as though he can recast the Violet role at this stage in filming… can he?
    No, but he’s going to have to scramble the production schedule to accommodate her surgical recovery and treatment. As the world’s most notoriously anal-retentive director, he’ll hardly welcome the disruption—particularly on a film this close to his heart, and one he’s wanted to make for years.
    Glenhaven Park is Denton’s hometown; he was born there on December 7, 1941.
    “The world I came into that day,” he dramatically told the cast at the first read-through, “was a far different world than it had been the day before. I was born the day America’s innocence died.”
    Denton can be a little over the top… but not necessarily more so than any other director Clara has ever known.
    “Just think,” Jesus muses, expertly giving her the lips of a forties’ film siren, “you’ll be able to channel all this personal angst into your role as Violet. Maybe you’ll win the Oscar.”
    “Yeah, posthumously,” she says darkly.
    Jesus curses. “You just smudged. Stop talking.”
    “Sorry,” she mumbles through a clenched mouth.
    “You’re no ventriloquist, honey. But move your lips one more time”—he brandishes the crimson lipstick tube—“and you might just be a clown.”
    Sitting mute and motionless, Clara wonders when would be a good time to talk to the director about her illness. Definitely not until she’s finished filming her scene today—the one in which city-girl Violet steps off a train in Glenhaven Park, slips on the icy platform, and literally bumps into her future husband for the first time.
    It’ll be difficult enough to muster believable passionate attraction for a man who, she happens to know, has been battling a nasty stomach bug the last few days
and
is having a torrid, clandestine affair with the best boy. She might be a pro, but given her current emotional state, it will be more challenging than usual to separate the closeted actor Michael Marshall from fabled all-American hero Jed Landry.
    “All right, you’re all set, Violet,” Jesus proclaims, taking a step back to admire her face. “Off to the hairstylist you go.”
    “Thanks, Jesus.” She removes the