by Emma Dibdin
‘Do vampires use Amazon Prime? Or gyms?’
‘These ones do. They’re very entitled.’
He shows me around the apartment set, which so far only consists of the open-plan living room and kitchen, the refrigerator impressively already stocked with vacuum-sealed sachets of fake blood.
‘Isn’t this living room going to be kind of… sunlight flooded?’ I ask, pointing at the huge windows. ‘For vampires that are allergic to sunlight?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom replies slowly. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure the writers have entirely got their version of the vampire mythology down. Maybe they’ll just explain it away as being sunlight-proof glass. I do know we’re doing a hell of a lot of night shoots.’
‘Wait, you haven’t even told me what your character is.’
‘Oh!’ he exclaims, then slips seamlessly into a honeyed Southern drawl. ‘Why, I’m the eccentric neighbour with a cross nailed to his door who carries holy water in a flask. Which is smart, by the way.’
‘So you’re not a vampire?’
‘You’re gonna have to watch the pilot and find out!’
‘Oh come on, I’ll sign whatever NDA you need me to, just don’t leave me in suspense.’
‘Basically, it’s unclear what his deal is for the first couple of episodes, but he’s a vampire hunter who lost his entire family, and now he’s kind of unhinged. Not in a single-minded vengeance way – he’s kind of lost his edge, and so if we get picked up to series, he’s going to end up being turned into a vampire by about midway through the season. Which is his worst nightmare.’
‘Sounds dark.’
‘Yeah, but then I think he’ll probably discover the upsides, reunite with his undead family, or whatever.’
‘And they’re letting you keep the hair?’ It’s not as long now as I’ve seen it before; cut to just above his shoulders, but it’s still an unusual look for a teen-skewing network TV show.
‘Oh yeah, they love the hair. I think that’s why I got the role, honestly; it’s a bit of a Jesus vibe.’
He takes me to another corner of the stage filled with racks of costumes and props designed to be worn by extras and background actors.
‘So your boy won his Oscar,’ he says quietly as I’m rummaging through a box full of prosthetic fangs.
‘Yeah! I missed half his speech because the bar was so loud, but seemed like people online were happy about it.’
‘Well yeah, everybody loves him.’
Feeling the need to distract him, I slip on a set of fangs and grin.
‘You’d better keep those, and don’t tell anyone. Thief.’
‘I’m really just here for the free stuff.’
There’s something different about Tom. He carries himself differently, a little taller, maybe he’s started working out since moving here, or maybe the confidence of having landed a pilot has shifted something in his body. I can’t entirely put my finger on it, but when I briefly turn away and then look back at him, there’s a moment where he seems new to me.
‘If we get picked up, we might end up shooting in Vancouver or maybe Atlanta,’ he tells me as we’re walking from the stage towards the makeup trailer, where he’s due to get fitted for his own customized set of fangs.
‘For the tax breaks?’
‘Yeah, which sucks.’
‘I don’t know, I’d rather live in Vancouver than LA.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘Well, okay, I wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t. But most sane people who aren’t trying to get into this industry would. Anyway, a ton of stuff shoots in Vancouver, you could probably just as easily get cast there than here. Here just has the mystique of Tinseltown.’
‘I hate that,’ he grumbles. ‘What is the tinsel part about? It’s not like this is a massively Christmassy place. Or is it secretly always Christmas in LA and Tinseltown is like, a code word for those in the know?’
‘You’ve clearly given this a lot of thought,’ I say, bumping my shoulder into his. ‘Weirdo.’
When we get to the makeup trailer, I excuse myself, leaving Tom to his fitting. Wandering aimlessly around the studio lot disoriented by all the identical-looking sound stages, I run into a chunky brunette who’s juggling two cellphones and a clipboard. When I ask, she confirms that she is a publicist, and doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that I’m a reporter.
‘You’re not writing this up for anybody yet, right?’ she asks vaguely, eyes down at the larger of her two iPhones.
‘No, I wouldn’t pitch a piece just on the pilot, but I’m really excited about the show. Just on a hunch, I feel like it has the potential to become something.’
‘We’re hoping so. Who are you with?’
I tell her that I’m a freelance journalist, and barely contain a laugh as I see her face visibly fall. Not even the news that I have a piece in the works for Reel seems to help, and so I bring out the big guns.
‘You might actually have seen a piece I wrote recently, on Clark Conrad.’
‘Oh!’ She looks up from her phone. ‘The Nest piece. Yeah, that was… Good job getting him to talk!’
‘Thanks,’ I smile, glossing right over the way she trailed off from describing the actual piece. I know that it was mediocre, a compromised version of what I want it to be. And now having spent real time with Clark, seen glimpses of the insides of him, I know how much better a piece I could write.
‘I’ve gotta run, but take my card,’ Gina, the publicist, says, pressing it into my hand. ‘Let’s stay in touch.’
I smile and tell her yes, great, but my mind is elsewhere now, stewing once again on Clark and the way I could describe him in words, the way I could reintroduce him to the world in the way he deserves.
‘I’m glad you came,’ Tom tells me later, when we’re taking a break from the sun inside the craft service trailer.
‘Me too.’
Something about the way he’s talking, the way he’s been watching me all day, has set a tension in the air. Conversation is never stilted between us, but now I can’t think of anything to say, and I don’t think it’s just because my head is pounding again.
‘Jess—’ he starts. ‘This whole move to LA, uprooting myself, it’s got me thinking about everything. About what I want out of this next phase of my life, you know? And whatever happens with the show, it’s always going to be a great big question mark. It might get picked up and then cancelled at midseason, or it might become a huge hit and then I’ll be tied into a five-year contract and eventually start hating it.’ He’s talking faster and faster, a tell that he’s nervous. ‘I have no control over that. But I don’t want to be so rootless any more in every aspect of my life, you know?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ I say, uncertain.
‘I don’t want to be one of those clichés who just never commits to anything, is what I’m saying. I’ve always been like that. And I’ve only been in LA for a couple of months but I already see what it could do to me, how you can just get sucked into this endless cycle of parties and pills and better parties and better pills, and— anyway, what I’m saying is, I’ve been thinking.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you want to have dinner with me?’
There’s a moment where I know I could choose to wilfully misunderstand him. I could choose to take this as a casual friend invite, instead of the larger question it clearly is.
‘Tom…’
He reaches over the plastic table to take my hand, his thumb pressing into my palm, and I try to remember how I felt for him. But it’s impossible now for me to contemplate kissing him.
‘Tom, I’m so… I’m flattered. But we’ve been there, done that. Right? We were great, but we both knew when it ended that it was time. I don’t want to ruin what we’ve got now by—’
‘Don’t give me the “ruin our friendship” line, Jess.’
‘I’m pretty sure you used that exact line on me back in the day.’
‘Yeah, because I was pretending to be okay with us ending things.’
>
‘Tom, that’s insane, you were the one who broke it off. Don’t rewrite history, because there are at least four girls in London I could call up right now to corroborate my memory of how that whole thing ended.’
‘I know, I was a dick, but you were never really there with me when we were together. You were always somewhere else, always chasing some fictional world, even when we were – you know – together. And I loved that about you, that you got so absorbed in your work and in movies and in all of it, I still do. But now we’re both older and established and—’
‘Come on, I’m twenty-five, you’re twenty-seven, I’m starting to feel like I might be getting somewhere but even saying that is probably jinxing it. You just got your first pilot. We’re not established.’
His face is falling now.
‘Okay. That’s a no to dinner, then?’
‘Tom, do you really want to do this right now? Here? It’s your first day, why don’t we just— In fact, yeah, let’s get dinner, and we can talk this over properly.’ I grasp inside my bag for my phone, intending to pull up the calendar to schedule a date. ‘Let’s just pick a day when I feel less like death.’
The moment I look at my phone, I forget the calendar. My screen is taken up with a series of push alert news notifications, three in a row from different outlets.
Clark Conrad Accused of Domestic Violence – Report
Amabella Bunch Alleges That Clark Conrad Physically Assaulted Her
Clark Conrad, Fresh Off His Oscar Win, Accused of Abusing His Girlfriend
13
I read the words over, three times. Then I get up without saying another word, a hot tingling rising through my body, making me numb. I step out of the trailer, trying to take a deep breath but the air feels too close. Within my immediate line of sight, three separate people are holding their phones, looking nonplussed. I see Gina huddled in conversation with what looks like another publicist, their expressions sombre, and though I can’t be sure I know they’re talking about this. Clark has nothing to do with Undead, but there’s no way anyone can be talking about anything but this.
Tom tries to stop me leaving, tries to hold on to me and I shake him off, fully running away until I find a private shaded area behind a row of trailers to the west of the lot. There, I read the headlines over again, and then brace myself to read the full articles. Amabella has filed for a restraining order against Clark, claiming that he’s been physically and verbally abusive throughout their relationship. There are photographs of her, no makeup, close-up, looking directly into the camera, with bruises visible on her neck and her left cheek.
I zoom in on each of the photos in turn, squinting as though there’s any way I can possibly tell anything from pixels. Even as I’m doing this, I know that it’s more a distraction tactic than anything, because I don’t need to look this closely to know that the bruises are not real. It’s not possible.
I start walking home on instinct, almost unconsciously, because I’m so wrapped up in reading every detail of this story. Amabella’s specific claim, as detailed in the restraining order filing, goes as follows: Clark was mentally abusive almost from the very beginning of their six-month relationship. ‘He was controlling about what clothes I wore, what kind of work I did, how I spent my spare time,’ she’s quoted as saying, ‘but it was kind of flattering at first. Until it didn’t end.’ He got physical with her on several occasions, she says: grabbing her by the wrists, the throat, pushing her against walls, throwing things at her. One time, she claims that he locked her in the safe room at his home – a room that should in theory only lock from the inside – for two full hours. And then, most recently, the physical violence, as evidenced by her bruises. The judge granted a temporary restraining order, preventing Clark from coming within one hundred feet of Amabella or her residence.
I feel shaky, almost outside of my body as I run all of this over in my head, letting the images solidify, waiting to see if any part of them feels possible. Could he? The brute in these stories is so remote from the man I’ve known Clark to be for most of my life, never mind the man I’ve actually got to know over the last month. Objectively, I don’t know him that well, but there’s a gut level on which I’ve known him for a very long time, before we even met. That part of me, coupled with the strange expression on Amabella’s face in these photos – the solemn eyes and tiny almost-smirk – confirms my sense that something is off.
When I first moved to LA, in defiant denial of the realities of the city, I walked everywhere. Time and time again I would map out a manageable-looking route on Google Maps – only a forty-minute walk, entirely feasible – and set out with a spring in my step, enjoying the sweetness in the air and the miraculous quiet of manicured streets. These walks would inevitably end with me sweating, sore-footed, on some sun-blistered portion of an endless freeway – or, even worse, on a road where the sidewalk suddenly ended without warning, giving me no choice but to turn back. But today, the bleak walk home gives me exactly the head space I need. Midway through I get a text from Faye, the alert sliding down to partially block the photograph on my screen.
Faye: I’m sorry, but those bruises look fake as fuck.
Jessica: One of her many skills is makeup design, right?
Faye: YUP. And there’s a bunch of pics of her on Getty from the day this attack supposedly happened, looking just fine.
Jessica: Wow. She’s not even good at this.
Faye: Have you spoken to him??
I don’t reply to this.
The route from the studio lot to my apartment is a straight eighty-minute shot along Melrose, and by the time I’m home I’m drenched with sweat and desperate to get out of last night’s clothes. But once I’m showered and changed, it becomes very clear to me that there is somewhere else I need to be. And for once, the traffic from Echo Park to Laurel Canyon is close to non-existent, which I would take as a sign if I believed in such things.
When my driver gets halfway up the winding roads into the canyon, it’s another story, and of course, I should have counted on this. A small mob of paparazzi has assembled outside the gate of Clark’s house, photographers on small ladders, reporters clutching microphones and digital recorders, all of them lying in wait. There is no way for me to get to the intercom, and even if I could, I can’t risk having these vultures flood in after me.
But something comes back to me from my interview with Jerome, something that wasn’t relevant to the piece but still struck me as interesting. There’s a second entrance for deliveries and large vehicles, he said, but with a wink that indicated subtext. What this second entrance is really for is keeping secrets.
And sure enough, when I walk around the sharp downward bend and follow the road down, there’s a tiny alleyway leading upwards to a gate with another intercom. When I ring the buzzer, there’s no answer, but when I try a second and then a third time, finally a familiar voice answers.
‘Hi, Lupe? It’s Jessica, from this morning. I just wanted to see if he’s here.’
A silence, during which I literally grit my teeth. And then the sound of the buzzer, and I’m inside.
‘Hello?’
I move cautiously through the hallway, which feels quieter and more still than ever, and I see him. He’s wearing a variation of his usual three-piece suit – fitted jeans, waistcoat and shirt, but no jacket and the shirt is half untucked, and he looks like he did in that newscast I saw after Skye almost died, leaving the hospital under the flash of neon bulbs. Drained.
‘Hey,’ I say, softly. ‘I just wanted to see how you’re doing. And I also wanted to thank you, for last night.’
‘Quite a night.’
‘I don’t really know when I went from being pleasantly tipsy to embarrassing, but I’m sorry about that.’
‘You weren’t embarrassing. Sort of bewilderingly charming, in fact, even when you couldn’t quite string a sentence together any more.’
‘It’s probably the accent. Hides a multitude of sins.’
He shoots me that same crooked smile, a smile like he’s ashamed of it, and I follow him to the couch.
‘So.’
‘So,’ he echoes, pausing as his phone begins to vibrate on the coffee table. I glance at the screen: Peyton.
‘Been dodging her calls all day,’ he says.
‘This is probably one of those times when you want to take your publicist’s calls.’
‘Come on, you met her. She’s not really— I mean she’s great, incredible at her job, but it’s just not a fit for me. I’ve never had a personal publicist before, I’m not sure what made me think I could start now.’
The only way I can process this is to not think too hard about it; the fact that Clark Conrad is currently undergoing the biggest crisis of his career, and the only person here to witness it, or to advise him, is me. My mind is racing, but I can’t just stay silent.
‘If you don’t want to deal with Peyton, you might want to look into hiring one of those crisis management people. Just temporarily.’
Head in his hands, he gives no indication that he’s heard me.
‘You know, like in Scandal – they spin a situation, figure out the best way to redirect the narrative, discredit the other side…’
He looks up, sharply.
‘You mean hire someone to make Amabella look bad?’
‘No, I mean—’
‘Because I would never do that. It doesn’t matter what she’s said or done, I will not stoop to that. That kind of mud-slinging, it’s crass.’
Having him glare at me for the first time, snap for the first time, should make me wither. I would have expected it to wreck me, and yet I feel energized. I know how to handle him.
‘Okay. You’re right. But the fact remains that she’s making you look very, very bad, and staying silent is basically an admission of guilt as far as the media is concerned. You don’t have to take my advice, but you should take someone’s.’
He sighs.
‘I don’t want to hire anybody to handle this. Apart from anything else, the fact that I’ve hired someone will be news in itself. Talk about an admission of guilt.’