by Emma Dibdin
‘So, get yourself an Instagram. You could easily be an influencer, all those BBC fans? The crowds who waited for you at the stage door after Much Ado?’
He rolls his eyes.
‘I don’t want to do that shit. Put my life out there as a commodity. That’s the opposite of what acting is supposed to be. The less people know about me, the better. How are they supposed to buy me in a role if all they’re thinking about is the avocado toast I ate for breakfast three days ago?’
‘You know The CW is probably going to make you get an Instagram if they cast you,’ I tell him. ‘And a Snapchat. And whatever other social media platforms the kids are using that I’m too old to know about.’
‘And you’re two years younger than me.’
I smile at him.
‘And this is why I love hanging out with you. Eternal youth. Although I actually do have to get to bed early tonight.’
‘Big day tomorrow?’
I take a breath. He’s the first person I’m telling, and his reaction does not disappoint.
‘Clark Conrad? Jesus, how did you pull that off? I thought he never did interviews.’
‘He doesn’t, really.’ I explain about the home renovation, the fact that it’s for Nest, the architect friend he’s doing a favour for. ‘Plus I guess everybody loved him and Carol together so much, he has to try and get himself out there as a single guy now. Pimp his bachelor pad.’
‘So do you have to interview his architect too?’
I nod with a grimace. ‘How much do you think I can learn about interior design by tomorrow morning?’
The reality of tomorrow is pressing in on me now, too urgent to ignore, and so at ten-thirty I reluctantly order a Lyft, promising Tom that we’ll catch up properly this weekend. I have so few real friends in LA, so few people with whom I share history, that I’d forgotten how it felt to be known. And as we’re parting ways he looks at me, holds on to my hand for long enough to make me wonder.
Speeding through the night back towards Echo Park, I try not to feel the ache too profoundly, try to refocus my energies back towards the impossible day that awaits me in the morning.
My apartment looks so much worse at night. By day it can pass for cosy, enough sunlight flooding in from the single south-facing window to offset the gaps in the skirting boards and the grubby off-white walls, and it’s occurred to me before that this place would be fine if it were always morning. Cockroaches don’t come out as much in daylight.
I find a dead one on its back beside the cooker, and when I spray it with Raid to be sure it’s not playing dead its legs twitch feebly, just enough to turn my stomach. I wrap its body in three layers of kitchen towel and walk all the way down the hallway to throw it directly into the trash chute, as far away from my bed as possible, as though it matters. As though there aren’t hundreds more waiting in the walls.
‘You’re taking on too much again,’ my mother warns me, when I finally steel myself to return her call from beneath the covers, trying to make excuses for why it’s taken me this long. ‘Getting lost again.’
She makes an art form of this. She has a sixth sense for when things are going well for me, and picks those moments to make thinly veiled reference to the worst time in my life. I moved five thousand miles away and she still won’t let me go.
‘This isn’t like before. I’m fine. I’m taking on exactly the right amount.’
‘Have you signed up for your insurance yet?’
‘Yes.’ I have to let her believe that I make enough money to afford monthly health insurance.
‘You sound strange.’
‘I’m just tired. I’m about to go to sleep.’
‘I wish you would phone me when you actually have time to talk.’
‘You’re going to be waiting a while if that’s your condition.’ Then, because I can already hear the wound in her reply before it comes, ‘Sorry, I’m just really busy this week. I have a big interview tomorrow.’
I’m too tired to explain to her why it’s big, why it matters, why she should pay attention to my career for once instead of simply worrying. Instead, I lie and say my battery is dying and then hang up on her, and go to sleep running through Clark’s filmography in chronological order in my head.
3
There are parts of LA that are closed off to me. As a non-driver in this city you are always navigating around your own limitations, adjusting your plans based on where you can and cannot reach, calculating in your head how many bus transfers it will take to get you within three miles of your actual destination.
‘You’re basically disabled,’ a colleague once scoffed to me, a broad-jawed slick-haired bro who thought he was hilarious, and despite his wildly offensive choice of words, he isn’t wrong. Not driving in LA is a deficiency around which your every plan revolves, and there are parts of the city you will simply never go. For example, the Hollywood Hills and the canyon neighbourhoods within, their tucked-away streets winding up and up and up into secret kingdoms, hidden gardens and wonderlands deliberately segregated from everything in the city below. The hills are a mystery to me, but not for much longer.
‘The GPS is going to give out soon,’ says Tanya from the driver seat, our video producer and de facto manager for the day. I’ve never met her before, but she greeted me outside the office today with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and has ignored everything that I’ve said since. I’m squeezed into the backseat between Justin and Nick, the laconic photographer who smells of cigarettes. ‘You sure we know where his place is? I thought he lived in the Bird Streets.’
‘No, he’s way into the mountain,’ Justin replies. ‘I have it pulled up on Google, we want to take Wonderland Avenue.’
‘I hate these roads— Jesus.’
We slow down sharply to allow a car to pass in the opposite direction, driving altogether too fast for the narrowness of the space.
‘Who chooses to live here? Why would you put yourself through this every day?’ Tanya mutters, glaring at the driver as he roars past. ‘This is like driving in a funhouse mirror.’
‘The craziest people in the city live in Laurel Canyon, right?’ replies her assistant producer, Chloe, whose unkempt hair has been distracting me all day. It looks like she hasn’t styled or even brushed it in months, and she’s wearing baggy boyfriend jeans and a plaid shirt with a button missing and yet somehow, on her, the look works. The disorder looks deliberate.
‘I would kill myself if I had to do this drive every day.’
‘I don’t think Clark Conrad drives himself anywhere,’ Justin says.
‘Oh no, he does,’ I reply. ‘He has a motorcycle and drives that everywhere unless he’s going to an event or something. Then he uses a driver, but he tries to be low-key as much as possible.’
‘Is he still dating Amabella Bunch?’ Tanya asks.
‘Ugh, please do not talk to me about Amabella Bunch right now, I skipped my beta blocker this morning,’ Justin moans, and I smirk. I’ve been in denial about this particular element of Clark’s life, so much so that I’ve left it out of my interview preparation entirely. His girlfriend of just under five months, Amabella, is an influencer, a failed actress who has now made an actual career of sponsored inspirational Instagram posts, whoring out every moment of her life for public scrutiny through just the right filter and in just the right lighting. Amabella posing with a green smoothie. Amabella doing Pilates in an exotic location. Amabella looking wistfully into the sunset. She gets paid more money per post than I’ll make in a year, probably, and she goes home to Clark Conrad every night. I’ve always found envy to be a waste of time, but sometimes it’s unavoidable.
‘Wait, didn’t the Manson murders happen somewhere near here?’ Chloe says vaguely, squinting out of the window as though expecting to see some evidence of a fifty-year-old massacre.
‘Okay, no, that’s Benedict Canyon, and can we lighten up?’ Justin reprimands her. ‘Like, for example, Joni Mitchell used to own a place here. Isn’t that nice? I t
hink that’s nice.’
I tune them out, thumbing through the index cards on which I’ve written down more questions than I will have time to ask. I’m usually good at prioritizing topics, but here there are so many variables that I’m struggling. In theory, I am to ask him mostly about the house with a few tangential questions about his work, his trajectory over the past two decades, the Oscar and Golden Globe nominations he has just received for a biopic about Neil Armstrong. In practice, I need to get him to talk about the divorce, if only in passing, if only in the context of his new home. Jackie wants this to be more than a Nest article about a celebrity home; she wants wide pickup, recognition for the brand, and the first post-divorce exclusive with Clark will do that in spades.
‘He’s gonna win, right?’
‘What?’
Justin gestures down at my notes. ‘For Armstrong.’
‘Did I invite you to read my questions?’ I ask snappily, but he’s unfazed.
‘I doubt he even cares, he already has an Oscar,’ Tanya says.
‘Yeah, but he’s never won Best Actor, and he’s been nominated for it a bunch of times,’ Justin points out. ‘You know actors care about that shit, it’s all about the tiers. Supporting is good, but it ain’t the real prize— Wait, I think that’s it, see that house coming up on the left?’
I crane my neck upwards trying to see, but then we take a bend and all at once there it is, unmissable, a sprawling rooftop nestled into the canopy of trees just hinting at what is hidden. A modern castle carved impossibly into a hillside.
‘How do we even get up there?’
‘Just take Wonderland for another few minutes, and the email said there’ll be a gate coming up at the corner of Crescent Drive with an intercom.’
Sure enough, a few winding moments later we arrive at the gate, and are buzzed in up the steepest driveway I have ever seen, so steep that I’m briefly afraid the car will stall and we’ll skid uncontrollably back out into the road. The house is not as large as I imagined but it is taller, its three storeys stacked high and its bright white walls standing out a mile amidst the wilderness.
‘Is that… a moat?’ I ask pointing towards what looks like a swimming pool surrounding the house.
‘All the A-listers have moats these days,’ Justin says. ‘You’re British, you should be into the castle vibe.’
‘That’s his wraparound pool,’ Tanya replies, as though this is the most obvious statement in the world. ‘It’s literally the signature part of his whole renovation – that, and the climate-controlled art cellar. Did you even read about the house at all before we came here?’
I ignore her, appreciating Justin’s covert eye roll.
Jerome, the architect, meets us at the top of the driveway. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and chinos, he has the pressed, edgy energy of someone eager to be seen. I hang back as he welcomes the others, walking a few paces around the driveway and scribbling down as many colour notes as possible onto my lined pad (water features, miniature rock garden, two cars out front).
‘Hi!’ chirps a polished brunette to my left, sticking out a hand for me to shake. ‘I’m Peyton.’ Clark’s publicist, newly hired. Until recently, he was one of the most famous people in Hollywood without one. I exchange pleasantries with her as we follow Jerome and the others inside, nodding politely as she reiterates once again that I will have twenty minutes, that I am to ask no personal questions, that Clark will not participate in the video shoot, that the interview will take place at 4.40 p.m. and that we need to wrap at five on the dot. Wrap meaning: get the fuck out of Clark Conrad’s house.
‘All sound good?’ she concludes with a razor-sharp smile, and I beam back and say, ‘Absolutely. Can’t wait.’
‘So, Clark wanted to leave the place exactly as-is, show you the lived-in house,’ Jerome is saying, leading us through the foyer towards the light-flooded kitchen. ‘But I persuaded him to clean up a little, y’know, because Nest doesn’t need to see the bachelor pad reality. Let’s keep it aspirational, right?’
‘It’s cosy, though,’ Tanya notes. ‘It doesn’t have that sort of too-vast minimalist thing that we see a lot of.’
‘Right, Clark is all about that, the homey vibe as opposed to something very functional. He always said from day one that he wanted it to feel like a home, not a residence. So here, for example, you’ll see we went for something more traditional with the kitchen where the focal point is this beautiful dining table, not an island like you’d see in a lot of more modern designs. Instead of an island, we did this outsized breakfast bar. He’s big on entertaining, so we still wanted the food preparation and dining areas to be integrated, but this just feels more rustic, more welcoming, and that’s really the direction we went with throughout the house.’
Our next stop is a sunken living room with three walls of windows, looking out onto a deck and the canyon wilderness beyond. Three steel-grey couches sit at right angles around a coffee table that looks carved out of driftwood, while the fourth wall of the room is lined with cluttered bookshelves, horizontal volumes stacked on top of vertical rows, ornaments and wooden sailboats dotted haphazardly in front of the books. Here I see the cosiness, the clutter without which this room would feel sparse.
Upstairs a library room, lined with more overflowing bookshelves and a cabinet of awards: two Emmys, a Golden Globe, an Oscar, a collection of glass plaques from lesser ceremonies. After all the times I’ve been forced to ask Hollywood’s most inane question (‘Where do you keep your Oscar?’) I’m seeing the reality at last, the fact that these are physical objects that are stored in someone’s home, and must be accommodated like any other knickknack. This room is tucked away at the end of a corridor, almost hidden from the main house, and I make note of this, planning to use it as a lead-in to talk about Clark’s humility, his everyman thing, his infamous unwillingness to act like a star. Clark Conrad does not need every guest in his home to see his trophies.
‘So do you guys know what shots you want to get first?’ Jerome asks, as the tour concludes back downstairs.
‘Let’s start in the reception room, that conversation pit is great.’
Chloe and Nick surge into motion with their equipment, manoeuvring lights and cameras around me and I try to find somewhere unobtrusive to stand, suddenly deeply aware of my superfluity here. There are few situations quite like this, when you’ve been invited into someone’s house not as a guest, but as part of a business transaction.
‘Jessica, you wanted to speak to Jerome for your piece also, right?’ Peyton asks. ‘While they’re getting their photos, do you guys want to grab a corner, maybe go back through any rooms you want extra details on?’
This, at least, I am prepared for, having asked Jackie for some basic interior pointers. I ask Jerome about the finishings on the wood and the colour scheme across each of the bedrooms, the elements of mid-century architecture preserved alongside modern renovations, the reclaimed oak furniture and sea-grass rugs, because as it turns out Jerome is both architect and interior designer.
‘Am I right in thinking that there’s a whole separate wing of the house, with its own entrance?’ I ask, deliberately vague.
‘Oh, yes, Skye’s suite. I would love to show you around there, but you know—’ Jerome gives me a conspiratorial glance. ‘She’s a teenager. Not big on hospitality. Probably still asleep.’
Undoubtedly. I saw paparazzi images of her on the Daily Mail this morning, weaving her way out of The Abbey in the small hours, cigarette in hand, Brett and his posse in tow. Jerome takes me outside to point out the exterior of Skye’s wing, the edge of her patio visible through its surrounding hedge. She has her own semi-private section of the wraparound pool, one side of its C-shape ending right outside her bedroom, and it strikes me that father and daughter could both swim in the same pool without ever encountering one another.
It takes me longer than I expect to run out of questions about the house, but finally it happens, and although Jerome seems as though he could t
alk for ever with or without my prompting, Tanya eventually calls him away to consult on a shot in the bedroom. And so here I am again, at a loose end in Clark Conrad’s house, trying to find a way to look busy.
I wander down a hallway which turns out to be a dead end, a locked door which must lead to Skye’s domain. I imagine her somewhere inside, maybe just waking up still fully clothed from last night’s excesses, that flowing blonde hair strewn over her pillows, maybe alone or maybe not. This renovation setup makes it clear that Clark respects her privacy, and I wonder if she has any concept of how lucky she is. To be simultaneously free and protected.
This house is a maze, and I’m now not even sure how to get back to the foyer to find the others, so I take the opportunity to look again at the rooms we rushed through before, the ones in which Jerome took little interest because their renovation was minimal. Upstairs, I pause on the threshold of the library room, looking again at the cabinet of awards.
‘Hi there.’
I spin around and he is there. His salt-and-pepper hair slicked up into a quiff, his sharp jaw offset by just the right amount of stubble, wearing one of his signature three-piece suits, the Tom Ford numbers that have – along with his name – earned him the title of Throwback Man, a matinee idol flung out of time. He smiles, and I’m dizzy.
4
‘Are you the reporter?’
I look around wildly, waiting for someone else to introduce us, but there is no one. This is happening.
‘Yes! Hi,’ and I move quickly to him, shake his hand and try to smile and hope he can’t feel me shaking. ‘I’m Jessica, it’s such a pleasure to meet you.’
‘Great to meet you too, Jessica.’ He beams, shaking my hand while squeezing my wrist with the other, his eyes as kind in person as they are on film. ‘Want to come on out to the deck? I know you’re into interiors, but the view is probably my favourite part of the house.’