Feather

By Cher Smith

Between 1973 and 1978, Michelle “Feather” Jones dominated adult movie theaters as the burgeoning porn industry’s queen. Fans flocked to her screenings, and critics hailed her as the next big thing. By 1980, though, Feather was homeless, hooked on heroin, and prostituting in order to buy drugs. She disappeared from Hollywood’s restless spotlight and died at the age of forty-five from heroin addiction.

Michelle “Shelly” Jones teaches at a small state college in Denver. She dreams of becoming a great novelist, while her colleagues sign big-dollar publishing deals. When Shelly discovers that a deceased porn star shares her name, she becomes obsessed with her life and death and believes she can descend Orpheus-like into the hell of Feather Jones’ world to rescue and perhaps redeem her memory.

In her quest to make sense of Feather’s life, death, and infamous career, she meets Tim Rhodes, aka the legendary Ryder Long, Feather's real life lover and on-screen co-star. There is no doubting the chemistry sparked between them, but is it merely physical or can they build something that lasts longer than a scene? The bigger question remains in both of their minds, though: is this Tim's way of having Feather back?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dead Key Publishing
• Release date: Apr 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370886067

Cher Smith

Cher Smith began her writing career when she was eight years old, folding over notebook paper to look like a book. While her novel "Lazy Bones" was never finished, she never lost the love of creating characters and placing them in awkward, mysterious, dangerous or romantic situations, sometimes all at once. She has a master's degree in philosophy of religion and taught philosophy and English for a few years. She has been in marketing and publishing for most of her adult career and designs and maintains websites in her spare time. Her first published novel, The Falcon and the Serpent (1990), fell in the fantasy genre, but her writing career has grown considerably beyond that single genre into more contemporary and literary works, including Justified Means, a quirky comedy-drama that follows a pastor’s wife along a Robin Hood-like adventure. She has published numerous articles, including three entries for The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (the television show Home Improvement, the Coors mystique, and Playgirl magazine), movie reviews for Infuze Magazine and several feature stories for Colorado Country Life magazine. She also co-authored a nonfiction book about the changing demographics in America. Cher Smith is the founder, editor and chief instigator at Dead Key Publishing. It is her desire to bring novels -- hers and others -- to readers who love books.

Book preview

Chapter 1

During the day, L.A.’s MacArthur Park teemed with expensive-suited people on cell phones, who took business calls as they ate lunch out of Langer’s Deli to-go bags. They sat facing the lake, office buildings rising behind them, the concrete and steel out of sight and out of mind for the thirty minutes it took to wolf down the New York-style ham on rye smeared with brown mustard. If perchance the wireless conversation went on too long, the leftover sandwich, to-go bag, and brown-mustard-smeared napkin would be unceremoniously dumped in the trash receptacles that lined the park like wire sentinels, guarding these day-time people, these expensive-suited personages, from unsightly litter.

The litter came out at night, when the suits and cell phones had gone home to waiting meals and snug beds. The conversations of the litter never outlasted the ham on rye that had been rescued from the sentinels and lovingly, if somewhat voraciously, consumed, mustard sucked from the fingers of ratty gloves like so many kittens suckling from mama’s teats.

Shelly Jones sat in the doorway of the abandoned warehouse at the edge of the park and watched the litter come crawling out of holes, from behind bushes, out of other refuges like this one. She watched as they searched through trash, paper flying around them like confetti at a parade. Shrieks signified success as treasure hunters uncovered leftover crusts.

She put her backpack on her lap and scooted backward until she encountered the wall. The coldness of the concrete seeped through her t-shirt, but she refused to dig through her pack for the black hoodie (Get Your Rocks Off — Rockies Indoor Climbing and Gym), knowing it would get colder still before dawn streaked the sky, summoning the day people.

She could hear animals prowling in the darkness of the warehouse. She couldn’t, though, hear the breathing of other people as they tried to keep warm.

Alone.

She pulled the feather from the waistband of her jeans. Raven black tipped with the blue of the ocean, it served as her talisman. She ran it down the side of her cheek and under her chin, keeping her eyes closed even though she couldn’t see much in the darkened warehouse anyway. She felt the tickle of the feather and imagined the great and terrible freedom of the creature who had bestowed the feather upon her.

She tucked the talisman behind her ear so she could still feel the softness in front of the sharp tip. She reached again for the backpack, the zipper loud and unnatural, almost other-worldly, in the gloom. She pulled out a notebook and pencil stub. Though she couldn’t see the lines of the paper nor the lines the pencil scrawled, she had to get it out as though no other time existed but this one to make this statement.

"Three months and six days older than me, Michelle Feather Jones died three years and six days before I, Michelle Jones, discovered her. And I, the unnamed one,

look at her freckled face framed by wisps of feathery blonde hair and I see me."

The sandwich came out next. She had forgone the to-go bag, and the sandwich wasn’t New York style but simple bologna and American cheese hold the mayo. The girl behind the counter had wanted to at least put sprouts on it, and she had looked at the girl uncomprehendingly. Why would anyone want sprouts on bologna and cheese, and the girl, who no doubt worked on her screenplay during lunch hours, had looked back at her, her frown asking why anyone would want bologna and cheese period.

Shelly Jones became aware of the man sitting in the opposite corner as she unwrapped the wax paper, as though the noise and the smell had conjured him. She couldn’t see his eyes and yet she knew that they turned away from her, embarrassed at the obvious longing that hung palpable in the musty air. Each dust mote that swirled unseen around them carried his hunger to her.

She scooched forward and held it out.

I can’t, he whispered, and she heard rather than smelled the whiskey in his voice, soaked into him until the man and the alcohol could no longer be separated.

I don’t like bologna, she stated and waited until his fingers grazed hers as he took it from her. He broke it in ragged halves and wrapped one of them.

How did you get a whole one?

She shrugged. Just lucky, I guess.

She returned to her place at the wall and leaned her head against it. She had just started to drift off to welcome sleep when the cat’s gentle meow and pressure against her leg woke her.

Hello, baby, she whispered. Are you hungry too?

That’s Bowie, the man said. He don’t like people.

The cat kneaded her leg, and his purr filled the empty spaces. He seems to like me okay.

He don’t do that, not to anybody. Here, give him some bologna.

No, she objected. That’s for you.

He reached in his coat pocket for his wax-wrapped treasure. What kinda person wouldn’t share? He tore off a corner of the bologna and handed it to her. I tell you, though, he likely won’t eat it. He never does. He prefers to scrounge for hisself. He don’t like people.

She took the greasy offering from him and with sudden and hot clarity remembered making bologna and cheese sandwiches for Bailey. She remembered Bailey slurping the lunchmeat into her mouth and poking it out again. She always smelled like bologna then when Shelly put her down for a nap and she had said, I’m going to gobble you up, and had pretended to start with her little tummy, munching, making yummy sounds, and blowing raspberries into the untanned smooth skin.

With homesickness unexpectedly clinging to the meat, she offered it to Bowie the cat. He ate it with obvious delight and then licked her fingers, the sandpaper tongue extracting every drop of oil and fat from them.

Well, I’ll be damned. He’s never done that before. Scratched a woman week last, drew blood, too.

With his snack finished, Bowie crawled into her lap, curled until his tail covered his face, and fell asleep.

The man exhaled, and the sound carried throughout the warehouse, communicating his awe to the farthest reaches of the hell he called home. You’re a special one, he said at last.

Shelly Jones took the feather out of her hair and ran it over her cheek before touching the cat with it, anointing them both with the great and terrible freedom. I know, she whispered, although she didn’t know if the man heard her or not.

She leaned her head back again and closed her eyes.

It had all begun with Feather.

Chapter 2

The announcement, on thick cream-colored cover stock, lay in the center of the uncluttered desk like an ice burg waiting to shipwreck the Titanic proportions of Shelly Jones’ aspirations. Its thickness offended her, as though the paper itself had something to do with the pompous puffing up of Dr. Geoffrey Atlas’s ego, itself massive and unsinkable.

"Random House is pleased to announce the signing of Dr. Geoffrey Atlas’ novel, Wyatt’s Torch, which will appear in its Fall catalog. The note scrawled at the bottom in Geoffrey’s aggressively spiked hand read simply, Celebration. My place. Saturday. 8 p.m."

Don’t scowl, Shelly. This will rid us of him for good.

Rob Owen, associate professor of English and first in line behind His Massiveness for the Emerson Chair of Literature Studies, slouched in her doorway, fanning his own announcement. Rob might lag behind Geoffrey in academic pursuits, but Shelly was sure that the female student body didn’t heave a collective sigh of desire whenever Geoffrey walked by.

Do you really think we’ll get rid of him?

Are you kidding? Rob slung himself into the chair opposite her desk, the one reserved for freshmen trying to convince her that they didn’t need to sit through Composition 101 yet again. "If he teaches another day in his life it’ll surprise me. He got a six-figure advance for Wyatt’s Ass, or whatever the fuck it is."

Six figures? Is it really that good?

A friend of mine at Random House said it was incredible. He called Geoffrey the next Tom Wolfe.

Tom Wolfe. Shelly had recently read I Am Charlotte Simmons. She would have changed the title to I Am Fucking Charlotte Simmons and let readers decide whether the fuck patois was a verb or an adjective. It wasn’t that it offended her, and most of the time she could see the brilliance of the prose behind the endless copulation or planning for copulation that occupied more of students’ time than did classes and homework combined. She liked the book. So why did Tom Wolfe’s name make her angry? Perhaps nothing more than the fact that he was there and she was here, kicking against the goads of her own ineffectiveness and lack of ability. There was no doubt, however much she hated to admit it, that Tom Wolfe was a chronicler of American culture in a way she would never be, that Rob would never be. But Geoffrey? Apparently so.

What do you think it’s about? she asked.

Tweedy, effeminate professors who want to fuck college boys, no doubt. Rob picked at his teeth with a corner of the announcement. Seriously, what kind of ‘torch’ are we talking about?

You can turn anything into a double entendre.

Can, have, and will again. Don’t take it so hard, Shel.

If you tell me that I’m a great teacher, I’ll hit you, she warned.

You are a great teacher, but that’s not what I mean. Students love you. You inspire them. Would it be so horrible to be responsible for finding the next Tom Wolfe?

Or the next Geoffrey Atlas?

Or that.

Not horrible, but not enough.

Have some fun with it. I did. Google his name and hit images.

What for?

Just do it. Just for fun. I did it earlier. It’s amazing how much better you’ll feel.

She did as he said. One hundred and ninety-three images came up, and, at least on the first page, His Massiveness didn’t appear in the thumbnail pictures.

Click on the first one, so you can get a good clear image of it.

She laughed out loud. The first image displayed a clown, bright red hair bozo-ing out over his ears, white face with blue accent marks surrounding his eyes staring insanely into the camera. The clown named Geoffrey Atlas was naked, a small yellow clown’s cap held with one hand over his genitals while his other hand did a jazz-hands movement in the air over his head. It made her laugh to know he was available for adult parties.

The second image was of an atlas. Ditto the third and fourth. The fifth a college yearbook picture from the ’70s. The sixth a skydiving instruction school. Ten pages, twenty images to the page, displayed the various and non-literary uses of the name Geoffrey Atlas.

I do feel better, she said, but I’m not sure what the point is.

The point, my dear Professor Jones, is that he ain’t the be-all and end-all. He may think he’s hot shit and Random House may think he’s hot shit, but in reality, he’s just another bone bag in this thing we call humanity. He smiled and stood up. Lunch today? Rob, Shelly, and Vanessa Vallendez, the theater professor, ate lunch together every Thursday after Van’s class.

Yeah, but let’s go off campus. I need a break.

He left, tapping his hand on the doorjamb as he went, his way of expressing sympathy and solidarity.

He hadn’t left a moment too soon. The tears of a thousand unpublished stories and a hundred unfinished novels threatened to spill forth, their screams as silent as the aborted tissue that filled a doctor’s waste material can.

Rob couldn’t really complain. At 35, he still had years in front of him to work on his novel. He had his doctorate and his associate professorship. All he needed was a few more publishing credentials to gain full tenure. And he was right about Geoffrey. He wouldn’t hang around here, not in this small state university, not when a venerable publisher had proclaimed him the next Tom Wolfe. Universities around the country would be clamoring for him, offering exorbitant salaries to have him lead a new generation into the often-muddy waters of creative expression. No more Freshman Comp for him. No more Research Writing. No more Intro to Lit, Intro to Shakespeare, Intro to Being a Well-Read and Well-Rounded Person with a Worthless College English Degree. No. If he taught at all, which Rob may be right and he would never grace the ivied and ivoried halls again, he would teach things like Elements of Characterization in Drama or the ironically titled Structuring the Post-Modern American Novel.

She did a Google search sans images on Geoffrey (God have mercy on the colleague, student, or receptionist who called him Geoff or, worse yet, Jeff). Hundreds of hits came up this time, and there he was, all over the Internet like a virulent virus, but instead of erasing the hard drive, it filled it with stories about the new American novelist, the new Tom Wolfe. She looked at Random House’s online announcement, complete with picture (no clown hat), and Geoffrey did look tweedy and academic and Wolfe-ish, languishing away at the state school in Denver, his bulging bookshelves behind him, as though those giants of literature had cheered him on, as though they granted him his rightful place beside them, somewhere between Albee and Auden. You could almost smell Papa’s whiskey and gunshot residue in the picture.

She Googled herself. Shelly Jones. Michelle Jones. Michelle Ann Jones. God, she hated her name. If the name defined the person, and in so many ways it did, then she was as banal as Jane Doe. She would die unknown and uncelebrated. Here lies Shelly Jones, who doesn’t even have the e in her first name to give it a more literary look or the e at the end of her middle name to make it more distinctive. And Jones. She couldn’t really blame herself for taking her married name, when her maiden name was Johnson. At least her husband’s name, Jason, had alliteration going for it. She didn’t even have that. Boring, dull, white bread, uninspired.

Google seemed to agree. Her name had brought up twenty-five million sites. According to the world wide web, her name was a paean to the pedestrian.

The image search came next.

And that was when she found her.

Michelle Feather Jones.

It was like looking at her own high school picture. Blonde hair, mid-’70s Farrah Fawcett styled, framed a waifish face and had no doubt been responsible for the nickname. Freckles, which scattered across her upturned nose like errant children, made her eyes appear wide and innocent. She looked directly into the camera, and the reflected lights made her eyes vibrant, even in the black and white photo.

She’s me, Shelly thought. She hated her name enough to want to change it. While she wouldn’t have chosen the name Feather, it did have distinction. It reminded Shelly of being thirteen and trying on names the way other girls tried on shoes. For a time, she had tried to get her parents to call her Seashell, at least incorporating the inevitable Shel that everyone called her. Her mother had ignored her, and her father kept calling her Strombus, the scientific name of the Conch shell. She never asked anyone else to call her Seashell, but she did sometimes address herself that way in her diary.

How would her life have been different if she had insisted on the name? What kind of life would Seashell have had?

What kind of life had Feather had?

Google search.

* * *

Intro to British Literature was her favorite class, and it made her dream of eventually teaching an entire semester on the novels of Graham Greene. And yet, of all her classes, it created the most dissatisfaction in her, as it reminded her of just how far she had to go, not only in an academic sense but even more in a literary sense. She would never live up to the man she considered a genius. Her dissatisfaction when she taught him gnawed at the bones of her insecurity, leaving them ragged and shredded, exposed.

The students don’t necessarily help, she thought as she gazed out at their faces. Sixteen students, all of them English majors or minors, most of them not giving a damn about books. She would bet that fully half of the students chose this major because they thought it would be easy. The other half, minus maybe one or two, took the class because they would eventually be teaching. They were English majors education minors, and creativity ran like a dried-up creek in their blood.

Only one or two were there because they loved literature, and they were writers in training. Maybe Rob was right; maybe this would be where she would find the next Geoffrey Atlas. She wanted to throw up.

Well, I think she’s a slut, one student, Olivia, a girl with blue chunks in her hair, said.

Why? Just because she has an affair? This from a girl whom Shelly was sure hadn’t read the book but had only watched the movie.

Yes. There is nothing wrong with her husband, and she just goes and cheats on him.

Shelly decided to let the discussion spin out a little longer. At least the conversation had risen above the dull level. As a bonus, the more she got them to interact with the material and with her, the further the discussion pushed Geoffrey out of her mind.

A boy began to raise his hand, put it back down, and then thrust it in the air again. Shelly nodded at him. He was one of the two writers, and he hardly ever spoke up.

But it’s more than just an affair, he said at last.

What do you think it is, Eric?

It’s passion.

Yes! Go on.

Well, sure, her husband’s a nice guy. But maybe she needs more than that. Bendrix is consumed by her.

The blue-chunked Olivia whirled in her chair to stare at him. And you think that justifies her actions?

He shriveled under her look, sinking down in his chair until the hood of his jacket gave him the look of a retreating turtle. He gave a quick glance in Shelly’s direction. She smiled at him, encouraging him. Go on, Eric, you can do it.

It doesn’t justify. It just explains.

Does Greene judge his characters’ actions? she prompted.

I don’t think so, he said. I mean, both Maurice Bendrix and Henry are portrayed as good guys.

And what about Sarah? Is she portrayed as one of the good guys?

He squinted his eyes a little and his head tilted to the left. He opened his mouth and then closed it again. Uncertainty clouded his features. So, she said. Henry is a good guy, because he’s the cuckolded husband. Bendrix is a good guy, why?

Another boy with Rastafarian dreadlocks spoke up. Because he’s single.

Why does that make him a good guy?

The dreadlocks swung back and forth as the boy shook his head. Because his actions don’t hurt anybody.

Good.

But he’s an atheist, blue-chunked Olivia protested again. That makes him a bad guy.

Okay, hold that thought. Let’s not jump ahead, Shelly said. We’ll get to that in a minute. So, we have the cuckolded husband and the single guy. What about Sarah? Good guy or bad guy?

Well, Graham Greene doesn’t portray her as bad, muttered a girl who constantly munched on popcorn in class.

How does he portray her?

Silence, but Shelly could feel the heaviness of the quiet as though the question were something that sat in each hand to be weighed.

A shy girl tentatively raised her hand. Shelly smiled. Shelly was sure that Consuela hadn’t spoken once all semester. She tried to hide behind thick, overly long bangs and baggy sweatshirts. Consuela.

She’s a saint.

Shelly’s smile broadened and she could have kissed the girl. How is she a saint?

She prays for things and they happen. She touches people and they’re healed. She heals people’s lives. That’s more important than whether or not she’s having an affair.

Students started gathering their papers together, shoving them in backpacks. Shelly glanced at the clock and saw she was already two minutes over.

We’ll pick this up on Thursday. Start reading Evelyn Waugh.

Olivia swooshed out the door and said to her companion, It’s a stupid book.

That comment at one time would have hurt Shelly and made her wonder again why she was teaching. But Consuela passed her desk and said, I like the book. I’m glad we read it.

Me, too, she said. Graham Greene somehow made it all worth it. And she was glad that at least a couple of students could see that Sarah Miles, Henry Miles’s wife and Maurice Bendrix’s lover, was one of the most complex female literary characters of all time.

It was just too easy to put her down as a slut.

* * *

She was a porn star.

Really? Rob was instantly interested. Have I seen her in anything?

Jeez, Rob, grow up, Van said. Would you even recognize her face, or would you only recognize her tits? Go on, Shel.

She did a lot of porn. And she was also in a bunch of those early ’70s B-movies, you know, the kind that have either ‘cheerleader’ or ‘nurse’ in the title.

I love those movies! Rob exclaimed.

You were a baby in the ’70s, so shut up.

Shelly took another bite of overloaded and slightly soggy-bottomed pizza. Definitely overpriced. Even the campus food tasted better. She couldn’t deny, though, that it was better at times to get off campus, even if the breadsticks crunched when she took a bite. She was just a couple of months older than me.

Does it feel weird that she looked so much like you? Van scraped all the meat and cheese off her crust before sampling it. At 55, she still looked mid-forties, due to strict dietary regulations and a dance schedule that many students couldn’t keep up with. Only her hair, gloriously silver and covered with a tie-dyed bandana, hinted at her age.

Yeah, it does, but it’s more than that. It’s who she was. I can’t really explain it. I need to do more research.

What for? Rob asked.

Van dropped her pizza and looked at Rob as though he were some strange species of bug. Why shouldn’t she do the research?

I didn’t mean don’t do the research. I meant would you use it for something academic. Like, say, research for a book?

You think I’m doing this because of Doctor Atlas, the new Tom Wolfe, God’s gift to the literati?

Yeah, I do.

Well, so what? Maybe a certain amount of envy can be a good thing.

Rob shrugged. Go for it. What does she do now?

Who?

Feather. Is she still an actress? I’m assuming that at forty-something she doesn’t do porn any more. His eyes widened and he cleared his throat. Not that you couldn’t. I didn’t mean—

Shelly laughed. I know what you mean. It’s okay. I realize my chance at doing porn is over. Feather stopped acting in the ’80s. Kind of dropped out of the acting scene. She died about three years ago.

How awful! Van said. How did she die?

Drugs. But I can’t tell if she died of a drug overdose or . . .

Chapter 3

. . . from complications caused by drugs.

Jason kept chopping tomatoes. Shelly scooped up a cupful and dumped them into the chili.

What kind of complications?

I’m not sure. The web sites I looked at were a little unclear. There’s some discrepancy. Like one said that she died homeless and strung out. Another one said that that was wrong. She was clean and living with a friend.

And she did porn?

Shelly popped a tomato chunk into her mouth. Yeah. But a lot of B movies, too. You know, the kind that have ‘cheerleader’ in the title.

Cheerleaders? Really?

Shelly flicked the side of his head with her thumb and forefinger. You sound like Rob. What is it with guys and cheerleaders?

Do you really have to ask?

She thought of the bouncing breasts and micro-short skirts. No, I guess not.

It’s the uniform. Cheerleaders, nurses—

She had one of those movies, too.

—school girl uniforms.

That’s perverted, Jason.

I know it sounds that way, but it really isn’t.

School girls? Their underage!

Yeah, but so was I at one time. Jason tasted the chili. Add more chili powder.

It’s hot enough.

Just a little more.

Shelly rolled her eyes at him and shook more chili powder into the thick mixture.

It’s not that I want to be with a school girl now, although it would be totally hot if you dressed up like one. The point is, it reminds men of when they were teenagers.

When sex was good?

Jason smirked. No. But when it was all-consuming. When the imagination was inflamed by the sight of a girl’s bra strap.

What was inflamed?

Yeah, that too. He put the spoon down and nuzzled Shelly’s neck. C’mon, little girl. Show me your bra strap.

The chili—

It’ll wait. He hooked his finger under her blouse sleeve and pulled her bra strap down. His other hand worked her blouse loose from her skirt so that it rested on her warm and bare skin.

She turned her head to encounter his lips still kissing her neck. And when they started making love, after Jason had led her to the sofa and opened her blouse and unfastened her bra but didn’t remove it and pushed her skirt up around her eager hips, she thought that maybe they were over the rough patches of the past year. It was the slow coming together of a couple married for thirty years, and if she missed excitement and urgency, maybe she could let it go for the sake of comfort, for the sake of returning to what they had had a year ago.

Lying on the narrow sofa afterward, Jason’s arms around her and the rough blue and tan material of the couch tattooing stripes on the side of her thigh, she felt safe enough to tell him. "Geoffrey’s