Beards
A young woman gets paid to be a beard for an older actor.
The below was read by Britt Astrid Alphson at Heatwave on July 20, 2025 at dear friend books.
The sun was nothing but a clementine lozenge in the sky, the night was but a prayer. Would it ever get answered? It was one of the few days of the festival without wind. G.N. tugged on Sascha’s sleeve during some interminable documentary, something men with a chip on their shoulder claim they’ve sat through like it’s a medal of sorts.
“Leslie is at some champagne brand thing. Some party down by the beach.”
So, the two walked out the Grand Palais and into the streets of Cannes with its big white tents like the circus was in town and interns with lanyards fastened around their necks and the sun-abused locals. Pin-striped umbrellas dotted the beaches, just landing strips of white sand against the sea. Palm trees swayed; easy in themselves, sure of their purpose to sway. Middle-aged women, their breasts sagging under their emerald triangle swim tops, splayed themselves across rocks like seals. We are all animals, Sascha thought. She looked at G.N. with his reservations and his glory: except for him. She couldn’t quite place if she was happy to be in the animal camp –– body-first people, time-bound people, urgent people –– or embarrassed. Wouldn’t it be nice to be cut loose, if only for a day or two?
***
Sascha did not like Les, because Les was an object of universal adoration.
“Hi, hi,” said Les –– his accent was Australian, and his eyes were so light they seemed inhuman. “Come meet my friends.” He turned around, “Well, new friends. I showed up completely alone. My friends are doing Ket on some spaceship out in the middle of the ocean. I aged out of that about three years ago.”
The night unfolded itself strangely, limply. Like a knee that falls to the ground without you telling it to, after sitting with it held to your chest for a while. Muscle memory. Sascha drank, Sascha couldn’t decide if her body was a plaything or a sacred vessel. Skinny dipping: Sasha looking up, suspended, relieved of herself a moment. She allowed herself to smile. The Mediterranean reminded her of childhood, the desert. New Mexico was flat and flat, and the sky was oblivion. I mean, just absolute annihilation. You asked the sky a question and the sky said no. She loved that, looking out into the darkness and not seeing for so long, only to see when you least expected to. She had trouble with that, later on. Sight.
And then she was stumbling and then McDonalds –– fluorescent lights, flattening, menu items she was unused to. G.N. not getting recognized, him looking to lash out after that. Everyone on their phones, defeated ones in the corners. Teenagers scaring them all with their rampant energy. A car ride and some signal with the bouncer and the back corner of the club named after a woman of Greece with snakes for hair. Bathed in cotton candy light. Little circular couches. Sascha drank. Cranberry with vodka, pineapple with tequila, Gin and Tonic, Gin and Tonic, grapefruit juice and champagne. The air was heavy, had a certain weight to it –– summer. She watched women with good asses contort their bodies on a little lifted stage. Illuminated circles on the ceiling above Sascha, they looked like portals. The club wasn’t enclosed –– just beyond the oblong tables and periphery of potted plants was the harbor with its spatters of yachts, and beyond that the total darkness of the of an unbroken sea.
At one-point, Sascha was in the kitchen with one of the dancers and then out in the alleyway behind Medusa with the girl in her hands and her mouth on the vein of the girl’s neck. Apparently, that’s when Les and G.N. got sloppy –– forgot where they were.
***
The next morning was a bad one ––– Sascha awoke to G.N.’s muttering.
“Fuck, fuck.”
Pictures had been posted online, him and his Australian. “Hon, I hate to ask this of you, really ––”
“No, it’s fine.”
“You’d really be a savior.”
“It’ll be funny.”
“Well, let’s not hope too funny. We need it to be believable.”
“No, no. Just funny, because it won’t be…happening.” Sascha adjusted her underwear. “Right?”
Silence.
“I’m not going to suck your dick, G.N.”
“Okay, well. I’ll tell Jessie to tell the guy to shoot from farther away, then.” He sighed then, like she was making it difficult.
***
When it happened, it was strangely beautiful. Out on the terrace; the coast below. Her laughing in his lap, her body moving up and down but not in the way the planted man with the long-lensed Nikon thought. Laughter –– joy breaking free from the body. The body –– that dogged jailer. He really was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
She was a servant to many things in her twenties: a servant to pain, a servant to pleasing, a servant even to people. A servant to rapture, a servant to reputation. An unsure bearer of some inherited ideals about what it meant to be a person, to live well. As she aged, she became a servant to nothing except to what mattered: discipline, family. Steadfastness. Work. A good life was a season of hard days and one minute of pure, unvarnished light. People buoyed themselves with Valentines, with affairs. With a turning of the bend. But that was costume jewelry. She would miss, later on, being in service of such stupid things –– blowjobs on a terrace.
Britt Astrid Alphson earned her MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University, where she will teach in the fall. Her work has been published in Crybaby Press and the New Limestone Review. She lives in Ridgewood.
We’re glad you stopped by and hope you’ll stay awhile.
Strangers or Friends is a reading series by Annika Carlson and Ava Litchfield based out of Brooklyn, NY. Every other month we gather at a bar somewhere in the borough and enjoy a variety of literary work read aloud. And then, of course, we soiree!
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Oh wow…this one is just magic