Through His Eyes

by Emma Dibdin

  ‘After your father left.’

  I feel shivery, and excuse myself. As I make my way into a cavernous carpeted corridor towards the bathroom I feel eyes on me, though of course there are eyes on me. A nobody with a somebody always attracts attention, even at the discreet kind of party where no one will ask and none of this will end up in the tabloids.

  When I return Clark is no longer alone, and I hover awkwardly on the fringes of his circle. A young woman with an impossibly golden blonde bob, two neat, slender men in suits, an older man who I think is Schlattman for one awful second, until he turns.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he asks, and Clark beckons me over, introducing me by name without explaining my presence. To say I’m a journalist would not behoove me here, and so I stay silent and smile, though I know that from this they can only draw one conclusion. Clark has to know it too.

  These are industry people, important people, but for once I can’t find the energy to place their faces or to try to remember where I have seen their names in the trades. I want them to leave so that I have him to myself again, and sure enough after a few moments of polite conversation something unspoken passes through the group, and it dispels gently. This is how parties like this work, I think. You have to know the cues.

  ‘Armstrong should’ve got Best Picture, too,’ I tell him, sinking gratefully into a sofa beside the warmth of a roaring torch.

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘No.’ I suddenly have no desire to lie to him. Armstrong was a solid, workmanlike biopic with a sharper-than-average script and a mesmerizing lead performance from Clark, not to mention a few stunning technical scenes in space, Armstrong’s first walk on the moon included. But it’s not doing anything particularly groundbreaking, and though it’s exactly the kind of movie that gets labelled ‘Oscar bait’, Best Picture would be a stretch.

  ‘What did you actually think deserved to win?’

  ‘Obelisk, but I know it didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘Because of the risqué subject matter?’

  ‘That, and the fact it’s a tiny Sundance indie – it cost, what, $2 million or something crazy? And it’s about a woman, so that was sort of the nail in the coffin.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That Best Picture always goes to movies about men. White men, I should add.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Oh, really? When was the last time a movie with a female lead won Best Picture? I’ll wait.’

  His brow furrows.

  ‘Yup,’ I nod. ‘Harder than you think, isn’t it?’

  ‘The Clint Eastwood thing,’ he exclaims finally, ‘the boxing – Million Dollar Baby!’

  ‘Twelve years ago? That’s your best answer? Also, that movie is more about Clint Eastwood’s character and his man pain than Hilary Swank. Her story only matters insofar as it’s filtered through his.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ he says, ‘but she’s certainly a lead in that movie.’

  ‘Doesn’t count. The correct answer would be Chicago, in 2002, fourteen full years ago.’

  ‘Which didn’t deserve to win.’

  ‘No argument here, but are you seeing my point?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that,’ he says, ‘but you are technically correct about that category.’

  ‘Yeah. So. I knew Obelisk didn’t stand a chance, but I love to root for the underdog.’

  ‘How do you know so much about Oscar history?’

  ‘It’s my job. And I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up,’ I say with a laugh. ‘Gives you time to get really nerdy about Hollywood trivia.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘Well, I had two friends at uni who also wanted to stay up all night and watch the Oscars with me, and write out our predictions on notecards beforehand. Tom always used to win, he was ridiculously good at working out the technical categories.’

  ‘Who’s Tom?’

  ‘Just a friend from back home.’ I take a long sip, watching him out of the corner of my eye. ‘He just moved here, actually, he’s an actor.’

  ‘You don’t say! Anything I’d know?’

  I fill him in on Tom’s history as a stage actor, his bit parts in BBC dramas, and then the pilot, the vampire thriller with an unexpectedly satirical edge. Clark chuckles out loud when I explain the notion of a blood shortage forcing vampires to develop bureaucracy.

  ‘I’m actually going to the set tomorrow, it’s their first day of shooting so I’m just going to observe, get some colour, maybe interview a couple of people. I can’t really do anything with it until we know if the show’s getting picked up, but Tom seems to feel good about the script, so.’

  ‘Well, good for him. He sounds like exactly the kind of actor we need more of over here. Theatre background, some real training, an interest in the work and not the glory that comes after the work.’

  ‘Yeah, he definitely did not get the role on the basis of his social media following.’

  He smiles, acknowledging the reference. Our first conversation.

  ‘Did I come off as a completely out-of-touch fool in that rant? Old Man Yells At Cloud?’

  ‘No! I didn’t think so. Someone getting passed over for a role because they don’t have enough Instagram followers is bleak no matter how old you are. But we didn’t really talk for long enough that day for me to form much of a sense of who you are.’

  ‘Well, we have plenty of time.’

  My head is spinning, my skin tingling, and I want to move closer and press myself into him, but this is something I can never take back. It can’t be me who crosses that gap, not here in public, and not anywhere. This man is not within my reach, even if he’s physically inches from me, but the whiskey and the fire and the look in his eyes are making it hard to steady myself.

  ‘How’s Skye?’ I blurt out. ‘Didn’t she want to come tonight?’

  ‘She did. But then, uh—’ He pauses, clearly struggling with whether to tell me. ‘She spoke to her mom, and it seems that call didn’t go well.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with her. Carol. She’s been so… Well, you said it. Your kid tries something like this, I can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere other than by their side. But Carol never was very traditional.’ There’s a bitterness in his tone that I’ve never heard before, his usual diplomacy about his ex-wife dissipating.

  ‘Maybe she feels guilty for moving away. And instead of confronting that guilt, she’s just doubling down on not showing up,’ I suggest.

  ‘She and Sarah were always so enmeshed. From the moment Sarah was born, they were just… they came as one unit. Sarah had terrible nightmares when she was little, so Carol used to go into her bedroom and sleep with her. I got used to sleeping alone. Sarah would sort of cling to Carol, just always be at her side, and by the time Skye came along, there just wasn’t any room for her. Probably why she and I have always been close.’

  ‘You and Carol always seemed to have an amazing connection, though.’

  But how could I possibly know this? I don’t want him to think I’m one of the gullible public who believes everything they see of a star’s persona, and yet. Clark and Carol were beloved for so long because they always seemed visibly, genuinely in love whenever they appeared in public together. They were relationship goals, they were flawless, they were the kind of couple that body-language experts were interviewed about in gossip rags, explaining why his hand on the small of her back or her angling her torso towards him demonstrated that they were built to last. I remember seeing coverage like that as recently as last summer, but who ever knows what the truth is behind the show? And it’s not as though there weren’t whispers. One persistent rumour on the internet’s less mainstream, more dubious gossip corners was that Clark and Carol’s marriage was a sham, built to cover up Clark’s affair with his male co-star in Loner. In retrospect, this story probably originated with the show’s rabid fans, many of wh
om wanted to see their antagonistic characters get together on-screen. But I wondered, as a teenager, and I wasn’t the only one.

  ‘I’ve been feeling bad about something,’ Clark says, quietly enough that I have to lean in close. ‘It’s plaguing me, actually. Something I want to tell you, but.’

  He finishes there. But. As though this were a sentence.

  ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘Did Skye say anything about her mother, the other day?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t mean Carol. Her real mother.’

  My mind is sluggish enough that I don’t immediately understand him.

  ‘Skye isn’t Carol’s. That’s what I was hinting at before, just talking around it, but there it is.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Had an affair. When I was a young asshole who got famous too fast and then married too fast, and I was away from Carol for months on this shoot in New Zealand.’

  ‘With who?’

  ‘A young woman who worked on the set. She was lovely, but not stable, and I didn’t treat her very well. Sort of discarded her, after a while.’ There’s true revulsion in his voice, as though he’s speaking directly to the man he was then. ‘It was a terrible time. And when she told me she was pregnant, I knew I had to come clean with Carol.’

  ‘But wait…’ I’m trying to remember what press coverage there was of Carol’s second pregnancy. I was too young at the time to be aware, but in the course of my research for interviewing Clark I went back and looked at archival scans of magazines. Her first pregnancy, with Sarah, was covered extensively, but I can’t remember anything about her second.

  ‘You passed the pregnancy off as Carol’s? How?’

  ‘You have to remember, this was before the internet became what it is now, and before people could track your every movement. Carol was already laying low at that point, raising Sarah, so when we announced that she’d quietly given birth to a second daughter, nobody really questioned it. Back then, you didn’t have to announce everything like you do now.’

  ‘My God.’

  I don’t know what to do with the image I’ve always had of the Conrads, now, but I should have known better than to buy in. Nothing is that golden.

  ‘What happened to Skye’s mum?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘She dropped off the map, after the adoption. I tried for months to track her down, because I wanted to try and figure something out, some kind of arrangement, but she was gone.’

  ‘And Carol just agreed to raise Skye as her own daughter?’

  ‘Carol is extraordinary. In ways that are hard to describe in words. I have never deserved her.’

  I don’t know what to say to him.

  ‘Jessica, if this ever got out… Well, you know.’

  I want to tell him that I will hold this secret like a treasure and never give it up to anyone, that his confiding in me feels like lightning in my heart. But he looks worn out and I feel unsteady, the skyline and the lamplight pulsing around us, and I should not still be here at this hour. He’s saying something, now, and I mumble in response that I just need to close my eyes for a second, sinking back on the couch. I want to sink into him, lean in and see whether he pulls me closer or stiffens, but this is not the moment, and I realize too late that I’ve said this out loud too, or some version of it.

  The last thing I remember is the sprawling backseat of an unfamiliar car, dark wood and darker leather, and Clark saying my name.

  12

  I see the canyon the minute I’m awake. It takes me several minutes to process anything else: that I’m lying on my side, looking out at the view through two full walls of windows. This is nowhere I’ve ever woken up before.

  I’m dizzy, when I finally raise my head. I’m still wearing my clothes from last night, my shoes and bag lined up neatly on the ground. Someone put me to bed last night, and though I have a dim memory of this, I have no idea who it was. I don’t even remember leaving that party. The transition into too drunk came suddenly, and now here I am, unmistakably waking up the morning after in Clark Conrad’s house.

  A voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Faye’s is telling me to take a selfie in Clark Conrad’s bathroom, except that this is not a moment I ever want to relive. Just when I was getting closer, I may have scuppered everything. There is no way he’s going to take me seriously as a journalist again after this, if he ever did.

  I don’t remember seeing this bedroom during our house tour, probably because it’s one of so many, all of them equally stunning. This room is quite literally larger than my apartment, and flooded with morning sun, because I’ve slept in for the first time in weeks. It’s almost nine by the time I make it downstairs, showered but still fuzzy-eyed, wishing I had a change of clothes. The kitchen looks exactly the same as in the photographs we ran on Nest, neat and clean and barely lived in, with no sign of the ‘bachelor pad reality’ Jerome referenced. I can’t imagine Clark ever leaving anything out of place.

  ‘Morning, miss,’ comes a voice to my left, and I turn to see a woman smiling from behind the breakfast bar. She’s middle-aged, Hispanic, dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, and I remember now that Clark has a housekeeper named Lupe. Though a lot of Hollywood stars on his level employ a full staff, Clark keeps it ‘low-key’ as Jerome put it to me, employing just a housekeeper and a gardener, and occasionally a private chef when he’s prepping for a role.

  ‘Morning!’ I chirp back, trying too hard to seem casual. After my dad left, for several years my mother hired a cleaner who came once a week, and even though I was young I already felt a deep-rooted kind of discomfort, something close to guilt. I know that given Clark’s reputation for largesse, Lupe probably makes more money than I do, and yet I still feel it. I should tip her, probably, but I have no cash.

  ‘Is – um, is Mr Conrad here?’

  ‘No, miss, he’s always out by eight. Goes to the water to swim.’

  ‘The ocean?’

  She nods, and I understand. He doesn’t use the pool any more.

  ‘He said to make sure you eat.’

  ‘Oh.’ I laugh, too hard. ‘Yeah, I probably— That’s a good idea.’

  ‘Any special diet? Vegetarian?’

  ‘No, I eat everything. But I can just pick something up, I don’t want to put you out—’

  She acts as though I haven’t spoken, already cracking eggs into a bowl and halving an avocado and slicing bread, and I’m too hungry to put up any real resistance. It’s been a very long time since anyone cooked for me.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I call out lamely as I leave a few minutes later, having washed up my plate and silverware. ‘Have a great day!’ But she’s too far away to hear me, probably outside, and rather than prolong our interaction I leave a thank-you note on the counter, on a pad of thick cream notepaper that I realize too late is embossed with Clark’s initials. I put my own name in the corner, for clarity.

  Undead is shooting on a studio lot in central LA, less than a half-hour drive from here, and though the rush-hour traffic is close to gridlock I still arrive with time to spare, and pick up my ‘guest’ security pass from a bored-looking man in the entry booth, who directs me to Stage 17.

  I’ve grown used to these spaces over the years, the jarring fact that the most glamorous industry in the world has its roots in vast, dusty lots full of warehouses and trailers. Visitors are ferried around in golf carts between sound stages – sprawling hangars that house fake worlds, entire city streets and apartment buildings and family homes beloved by audiences who look at them and believe they are real. I’ve been on sets so large and convincingly lived-in that it’s possible to forget yourself, and forget your surroundings, right up until the moment you look through a seemingly sunlit window and see empty space and a lighting rig outside.

  Inside the stage it’s dark and cool, with stacks of plywood and mechanical equipment lining the walls, and though the sets are still being constructed I can see part of a graveyard f
rom a distance.

  ‘Hello there,’ Tom whispers into my ear out of nowhere, and I turn to smile at him.

  ‘Sneaking up on me in a darkened room is very method of you.’

  ‘You could probably get hired to play the undead yourself right now.’ He gives me an exaggerated once-over, but apparently the dim lighting here isn’t doing much to hide my dark eye-circles and lack of makeup. ‘Too much Oscar night revelry?’

  ‘That’s only the half of it. Please take a seat while I fill you in on the wall-to-wall horror show that has been my life for the past forty-eight hours.’

  I tell him about my extermination saga, carefully omitting everything that took place after ten o’clock last night.

  ‘Wow. From roaches to red carpet.’

  ‘I was nowhere near the carpet, thank God. I watched it from a bar, but only because I had to wait for the roach bomb to clear before I could go home.’

  He mimes a dry heave.

  ‘You know, Jess, there are times when I think the unremitting glamour of your life here in Hollywood is going to your head.’

  ‘It was inevitable.’

  ‘So did you come home to a massacre? Bodies strewn as far as the eye can see, one lone roach just screaming for its parents, wandering through the wasteland of its fallen brethren…’

  ‘You’re really wasted as an actor, this is beautiful. I almost feel guilty for the roach genocide I committed. Almost.’

  ‘Well, now that we’ve established your taste for the kill, want a tour of the vampire lair?’

  These being modern, urban-dwelling vampires with a satirical edge, their ‘lair’ is actually a penthouse apartment with Caesarstone countertops and heated floors and sweeping views of an indeterminate skyline. A running comic thread of the series, Tom tells me, will be that the vampire protagonists move into this apartment building for the amenities, only to gradually discover – thanks to the new world order in which vampires now outnumber humans – that all of those amenities are unavailable without humans to run them.

  ‘There’s no concierge at the front desk, no staff to clean the pool, nobody to repair the machines in the gym, the rooftop terrace is unfinished, there’s nobody to take Amazon Prime deliveries—’