Bad Habits Die Hard

By K.C.

Marissa Praver had been a talented child actress. By the age of thirteen, she was known to audiences far and wide. Like so many before her, she was unprepared for the pressures of fame. After three court ordered trips to rehab and several of run-ins with the law, Marissa had become the laughing stock of Hollywood.
Dillon Phillips’ world was turned upside down by the death of his young wife, Lilly. It took him nearly three years to overcome his grief and for the first time since college, he‘s considering dating again. In fact, he hopes to ask out Samantha, the cute server at his favorite bar.
Everything changes when Marissa Praver comes to Delray Beach. Quickly, their lives become a small-town soap opera between the wino, the widower, and the waitress.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.C.
• Release date: Apr 24, 2014

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Bad Habits Die Hard

Written by K.C.

Copyright 2013 K.C.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination, or depicted in a fictitious manner are used with permission. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or real events is purely coincidental.

While there are several references to one particular blonde-bombshell, throughout this novel, none of these references are based on actual events. Even fifty two years after her death, MM, is still as iconic as ever. I had to find an excuse to write about her. This is also true of my Marissa Praver character. She is not any particular child-star turned afoul. She is merely a product of my imagination.

At the end of the novel, I do give credit, to all those who have helped me with this project. I also recognize anyone who has given me permission to use their likenesses as characters, and the names of their actual businesses in my work.

Prologue

My wife Lilly died from cancer two days before my fortieth birthday. Given the tragic circumstances, we skipped the traditional party. Instead, as a toast to her passing and my impending milestone, everyone at the wake did a shot. The last few drops from each glass fell on her casket as the procession past. Some people might consider that sort of behavior inappropriate, but then again, none of them were invited to her funeral. Lilly and I defied convention, we defied all that was normal, and that was part of what made our love so special.

…

The first couple of years, I couldn’t find anything to fill the void her absence created, and believe me I tried it all. No bottle was full enough, no task lofty enough, and no endeavor foolish enough to make me forget her. None of it worked. Nothing in my world was the same without her, because before she died, Lilly was my world.

When I did not bounce back as quickly as they’d hoped, my friends and family got involved in my recovery. Try as they may, no one could help me, not even the grief councilors or the therapists. Every word they spoke, all of their encouragement, was wasted. Do you have any clue how many times someone said, life goes on,? Mixed in with the occasional, I’m sorry for your loss, those were the opening lines to every conversation. After a while, I stopped answering the phone or leaving the house because of it.

Granted, I knew they meant well, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them they were all wrong. When my Lilly died, life did not go on. In fact, it stopped. While the rest of the planet continued to revolve. I was frozen in time. It was as though God had pressed the pause button on my existence, and then when he was absolutely-positively certain I could rejoin society, he pressed play. With that, life resumed, tomorrow became tomorrow, instead of just another version of the day before.

It was right about that same time that my friend Sam sat me down for a little heart to heart. She made me recite the same words over and over again for a straight hour. Lilly is gone, but I am still alive. After fifty eight or fifty nine minutes, and a couple thousand recitations, I got the point.

It had to move on.

By the middle of the third year, I started to forget some of the things Lilly and I had said to each other. I forgot the places we’d been together. When I closed my eyes, her face wasn’t the very first image I saw. When I read, or heard something funny, I didn’t automatically reach for the phone to text her. When I spotted an iguana on our fence or a manatee on the Intracoastal, I didn’t instinctively take a photo to show her later. Lilly was slowly fading from my memory and from my life. (I assure anyone reading this though, she never left my heart, and I am not sure she ever will.)

As that third year came to a close, I began to notice women again. At first, it was just a passing glance, a smile in the grocery store, or an awkward peek at the beach. Before long, I remembered that forty-three-years-old wasn’t really that old. I was still alive, and that meant it was time for me to reenter the dating pool again.

If only I hadn’t stumbled across a bizarre repost on my Facebook page, I might very well have been able to do that.

Chapter1:

I am not ashamed to admit, I thought Marissa Praver looked fantastic naked. No matter what else I say from this point forward, I will stick to that statement. Regrettably, I am also not ashamed to admit, that she was not Marilyn Monroe. In my opinion, Marilyn was Marilyn, and no one would ever hold a candle to her. Why do I bother to mention them in the same sentence? It all goes back to that Facebook repost. I can’t even remember anymore who sent it to me.

One Miss Praver’s many publicity gurus came up with a shameless stunt to draw attention away from her well-documented run-ins with the law. A mysterious benefactor purchased the rights to several of Marilyn Monroe’s most famous photos. Shortly thereafter, he hired Marissa Praver to play the part of Ms. Monroe in their modern reproduction. Utilizing some of the biggest names in photography at the time, they recreated Marilyn’s entire repertoire from the redheaded pinup, to the naked, blond-bombshell in her notorious Last Sitting.

When I originally heard about her enterprise, my first thought was, Why? Why would anyone ever go there? Marilyn was iconic. All any other model could ever hope to do was imitate her, and fall short. In my opinion, it was pointless. My second thought was, Who the hell does Marissa Praver think she is? She was certainly not Marilyn Monroe and never would be. Imitation is not always the sincerest form of flattery. Sometimes it’s just plain insulting.

Leading up to the release date, I followed her website like an impatient teenager. Each day, I logged on to see a new photo of Marilyn, and next to it, an empty box where Marissa’s would be. Glaring angrily at my laptop, I asked the question for the hundredth time, Why go there? Was there some hidden message in those pictures? Like Marilyn’s infamous final session, I wondered was Marissa predicting her own morbid farewell?

If so, then her people vastly overestimated her appeal. How did Marissa Praver expect to go from tabloid fodder to Marilyn Monroe, in one-tenth the time, with only one-tenth the talent? I snickered at her gall. They were not even in the same league. Honestly, she was light years behind her own contemporaries. The puddle-shallow, hotel-magnet’s daughter, and the twerk-happy, tongue-wagger, were both beyond her reach. Granted, Marissa’s photo spread was classier than the prior’s emotionless sex tapes, and the latter’s video interpretation of How not to use a wrecking ball as a speculum. Either way, I assumed she was wasting her time.

When the photos were released, I laughed aloud. Her various states of nudity didn’t shock me in the least, but the sheer audacity of her endeavor, left me speechless. Miss Praver had no business being mentioned in the same breath with likes of any real Hollywood star. The more I considered it, the angrier I grew. Didn’t her people understand how shallow and presumptuous it was?

The day they opened the site her page received over six million hits. As I clicked thumbnail after thumbnail I found myself intrigued rather than appalled. I had never pictured Marissa Praver like that. She was the cute girl not quite ready to be a sexy woman. I mean when had she blossomed into a full-blown hotty? The last time I had seen her she was; seventeen maybe eighteen? Perhaps my preconceived notion was slightly jaded by the child star tag that had stamped upon her at such an early age. Once someone is pre-labeled, it is surprisingly difficult to picture them in any other way (a Natalie Portman or Emma Watson being the rare exceptions rather than the rule.)

Still, to see her naked, it was hard to deny her sexual maturity. She was no longer a freckled, tweener. Sickened by my fascination, and the knowledge t she was easily young enough to be my own daughter, I moved my gaze from the photos, to the comments below.

I quickly wished that I hadn’t. Many of my fellow voyeurs left horrible blogs beneath each picture. Nearly every one of them was nasty. Instead of focusing their comments, on the impudence of her choice, they concentrated all their venom on her physical appearance. They casually hinted at the sag of her breast, the shagginess of her nether region, and the elongated shape of her buttocks.

I turned my head away in disgust toward the other coffee shop patrons. How could we ugly Americans" make such despicable comments? Contrary to popular culture, most of us are not supermodels-in-waiting or actors on extended leave. I would be willing to wager a fair portion of my meager salary, that not one of the people, who had commented, looked better naked than Marissa Praver. Glaring from one person to the next, while they surfed the net, and scoffed down enough calories to feed three people, my ire shifted focus.

Try as I may to look away, I couldn’t help it. My eyes were drawn there. No matter how painful, I simply had to read on. For every comment, my rage grew. How dare they comment on her cellulite? How dare they refer to her bouffant hairdo, the shade of her toe nail polish, or the masculinity of her areolas? How dare they tear her up one side and right down the other? Who were they to talk?

When they had exhausted every physical attribute, they moved onto Marissa’s troubled life. Her "True Hollywood Story" was not the product of a tabloid journalist. Miss Praver was truly haunted by demons, ones most of us would thankfully never have to face. What was true and what was not didn’t seem to matter to any of them.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the comments concerning her character. Too many tabloid junkies actually believe famous equates to perfect. Celebrities have looks, money, and fame. People scoff at the idea that anything could be wrong with that kind of fairytale existence. What more could anyone desire from their time on earth, right? I hope the rest of you are not really that naive. Everyone has issues. Money creates as many problems as it solves. There is no such thing as the perfect life, or the perfect person.

Sickened by it all, I gave up reading, and returned to the sanctity of my own secure internet connection.

…

At home, I abandoned the comments and returned to the photos themselves. I would rather be considered a middle-aged letch than a hypocrite, and so I refocused my attention on the side-by-side photographs. For what seemed like an exorbitant amount of time, I focused on one in particular. Even though Marissa was naked from the waist up, it was not her breasts that drew my attention. I was more interested in her visage, in particular, her russet-colored eyes. They surprised me with their openness. True, it was only one photo in an extensive shoot, but Marissa had finally captured the essence of what the rest of the collection represented; heartbreak.

After all, that was what Marilyn’s Last Sitting showed us. Despite the beauty, the money, and the fame, Marilyn was mired in a constant state of sadness. Whether it was her infertility, the drug addiction, or the failed relationships, I cannot say. Whatever the cause of her depression, in that one photo, I saw the very same anguish in Marissa’s eyes.

A single tear formed in the corner of my eye. I heard Elton John singing his mournful tale of a Candle in the wind. I heard Pete Seeger asking his listeners Who Killed Norma Jean? All the tabloid gossip and the Hollywood glamour blew out the window on a warm Florida breeze, and I felt her pain. Marissa’s multiple trips to rehab, the DUI’s, the family problems vanished from the pages of her blossoming rap-sheet. For one brief second, I was no longer looking at Miss Praver. Instead, staring back at me, through that layer upon layer of cinematic grime, was Norma Jean. In spite of all the focus we placed on her lack of modesty, I saw the photos for what they really were; a window into a frightened child’s soul.

I felt her ache inside of me as though it was my own. Unconsciously, I associated that photo with watching my Lilly’s demise. From the initial diagnosis, through a hysterectomy, to chemo, to radiation, and then chemo again; nothing worked. In the end, all that was left was a gravestone. Having failed to help my wife, I vowed somehow, some way, to take away Marissa Praver’s pain.

Chapter 2:

I felt guilty that next afternoon as puttered aimlessly around the house. I was angry at the naysayers, and I was equally perturbed by my own lingering fascination. Marissa Praver shouldn’t have mattered to me, but suddenly, she did.

When I heard the pleading voices, I knew right away, that my time for reflection was over. Mr. Dillon, Mr. Dillon can we walk Paco? For some reason, everyone under the age of thirty called me Mr. Dillon, which was my first name, instead of Mr. Phillips, my last. I never quite understood why, but I never bothered to correct them.

The neighborhood kids loved my dog. Paco Diablo (the little devil) was a long haired Chihuahua and Lhasa Apso mix. I was never particularly fond of small dogs before. I’d prefer a Pitt Bull or a Rottweiler. Paco, who came into my life with Lilly, had won me over. I realized not all small dogs were ankle biters, extra points looking for a place to happen. He had moxie and style. He was the master of his own domain. Plus, he was awfully darn cute.

You can walk him out back, inside the fence, I grumbled. As I opened the sliding glass door, Paco jumped up and down like a yoyo on a rubber band. At eight years old, he had lost very little of his pep. When I grabbed the leash, he spun in circles and bounced triumphantly. He knew it was walk time.

Look, it’s Poco, said an adorable little boy named P.J. pointing to my dog with one hand, while shoving his thumb into his mouth with the other.

Keep him inside the fence, please. I reminded the eldest of my visitors. Tina was eleven, though she looked all of about nine. The girl was brilliant; I mean like Mensa smart. Regrettably, in my neighborhood, that was more of a liability than an attribute.

I lived in West Delray Beach, Florida, a neighborhood known as Delray Greens. Unlike the rest of Rand McNally’s Most Fun Small Town in America which had skyrocketed in popularity, The Greens was just beginning to rebound from the crippling effects of the recession. From burglaries, to vandalism, to assault, and drug overdoses, The Greens had not always been the safest place to live. I found the whole dynamic a tad peculiar considering most of the single family homes had at least one school age child residing there.

As the lone, white person for ten blocks, I was looked upon with equal parts scorn and mistrust. Most of the residents of The Greens did not want me there. They drove by at two miles an hour so they could stare at me like a caged animal in a zoo. Come see the white man, the only one not driving a police car in your neighborhood. I can laugh about it now, because for the first few years, people really did think I was a cop.

Let it be said, there is no such thing as reverse discrimination. Prejudice and racism are wrong in any form. It is immoral. There is no justification for it, and you will never convince me otherwise. People are people. Some are good and some are