As Emily Rivens had wanted, the stories that were spun, the explanations as to why why why was media and journalist speculation Bibled into truth. They had jobs to do and that’s what they did. They took meager scraplings of fact and wove them into a comprehensible tapestry with an enticing and fashionable skin-driven photograph. The truth behind the matter remained time capsuled, buried under blogs, op-eds, and special features. Even if Rivens wanted to tell the truth she wouldn’t have been heard amidst the whirring noise of publicity machines, printing presses, and stock footage.

Sadly, Emily Rivens died in a plane accident over the mountains of Chile while she toured South America as a United States ambassador of good will to the ailing continent. Winston Graham had been long out of the public eye, resting in the rural outposts of some French countryside but the eagerness for blood was still threatening and the book was published, per Emily Riven’s instructions, a month after her enormous and CNN Live covered memorial service. Simply entitled The Beard.

The book’s biggest seller was the audio version. Emily Rivens herself narrates like you and her are sitting in her study, smoky bourbon in one hand, the smooth curve of a leather armrest in the other while she orchestrates the telling of her very personal and very Technicolor life. There was no need to interrupt her to ask questions because there were no questions that were required to be asked. The Beard had everything covered.

Turns out Rivens needed to wait for this book to be published not for the accusation of libel but, more importantly, for threat of purposeful defamation of character, back alimony and earnings from a divorce incurred forty years back and many other horrific financial burdens that would’ve rendered the Queen of Queens bankrupt.

Emily Rivens knew the young man who was documented cavorting with her husband. She met him on the set of Jane Eyre where he was a simple pastry caterer and she recruited him, as she usually did, for her husband. You see, Emily married Winston knowing full well the secret he kept. For connections, money, a bank account that grew faster than could be spent all she had to do was keep the secret with him. And pretend that she was blissfully married. For years she adored this arrangement especially after Ganymede was born. She even began entrapping young men to relay back to her husband which he was grateful for. Slowly he grew sloppy and rumors abounded. Gossip blogs began to call her names, or speculating on her own sexual orientation which she found disconcerting because it was lies. Once she was even referred to as “Winston’s beard”. She became enraged by the term, found it ugly and hurtful. She took that inner disgust and brought it with her to the humiliating screen-test audition of Jane Eyre and the whispers of “beards” turned to whispers of “Oscars”. All in all, there was little she could do to counter the incessant babble of celebrity commentators because most of what they claimed was true. As boys dove their suntanned bodies into the pool while her husband fawned over them with gifts, vacations and affections, she carried their newborn baby, her skin growing pasty, her arms flabby and stomach sagging, she turned down offers to star in sequels of poorly attended and reviewed movies. After the wrap of Jane Eyre her publicist suggested she look for “alternate representation” because the potential “approaching bombshell” was “too threatening” to her own “professional career.” She was afraid that this “beard-thing” might not be the easiest thing to “recover from”. That evening she hatched herself a plan to disintegrate the marriage while still maintaining her quality of life and full custody of her son.

The prenup barred her from speaking any truths of their arrangement while in or out of the marriage. She alighted upon reading the word “speaking”.

Emily Rivens convinced her assistant Ursula to convince the young pastry chef that, for Ursula’s own kinky enjoyment, wanted to watch a session of him with Winston and would pay handsomely in weekly deposits of supreme and clean cocaine. He easily complied. The rest is history. At home she sat in front of her vanity mirror and, with the aid of a theatrical make-up artist and vexed former lover of Winston’s, she became the one thing she resented.

But in her resentment she shone and exalted in this new character. It became an emblem of her strength and wit, traits no one thought possible for a girl who played a tomboy turned model in a television series aimed at young girls; younger than the characters on the screen and much younger than the actors and actresses who portrayed them. Emily Rivens surprised everyone and everyone became enamored by her audacity. That was the high she lived on for fifty years, climbing to her legendary spot and staking her claim and hold on the throne of Icon, deservedly and with very little blood on her hands.

by David Morini
Hokkaido, Japan

The Beard (Part 1)
The Beard (Part 2)