by Emma Dibdin
‘She’s dead now. Bridget.’ My voice sounds strange, even to me. ‘Did you know that?’
She shakes her head.
‘She was twenty-three when she died.’
Again, a tiny head shake.
‘Does Skye know the truth?’ I ask. ‘I mean, that she’s not your daughter?’
‘Clark told her when she was thirteen, I think to spite me. She wanted nothing to do with me after that, and he loved it. She’d always felt like a little bit of a misfit in our family, I think, and just kept it to herself. But once she had solid evidence that she actually didn’t belong…’ She trails off. ‘Skye was always his girl. Crafted in his image. He wanted her to be as famous as he was, got her an agent when she was barely out of diapers.’
‘He arranged for her to date Brett Rickards.’
‘Oh yeah, he was particularly proud of that one. He saw Brett’s star rising before most people did – he likes to play dumb about millennials and social media, but he has this intuitive understanding of what sells. And he wanted Skye to sell.’
And a crack in Clark makes itself clear to me, suddenly. The way he hates influencers, but started dating one the minute he got divorced. The way he wants to protect Skye, but pressures her to act instead of going to college. The way he claims to be fame-weary and press-shy, but has courted both relentlessly in the time that I’ve known him, all the while letting me think I’m the one steering him.
‘But Brett has such a terrible reputation. I can’t believe Clark would set his daughter up with him, even for publicity.’
‘Like I said. He knows what sells. I hope you know it’s not a coincidence that he picked a journalist to get involved with at this particular moment.’
Nausea twitches in my gut, but I hold steady, keep my expression neutral.
‘Someone told me that Shelly Brook sold her story to a tabloid, exclusively, and they buried it. Instead of publishing it, they did the opposite. Is that possible?’
‘Honey,’ Carol says, the twang even more pronounced now. ‘Of course. Happens all the time – catch and kill, that’s the term. And if it’s done well, you never hear a word about it. There are so many ways to keep women silent in this business. Including good folks like yourself waiting hungrily in the wings to write an adoring profile about how sweet he is.’
I bite my tongue.
‘People always say “there’s no smoke without fire”, right?’ she asks. ‘But what they actually believe is that there’s no fire without smoke.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘People think that if they haven’t heard about something – at least in whispers, at least in the comments section of a gossip blog – then it can’t be happening. They think that what they see is the totality of what exists. When in Hollywood, nothing could be further from the truth. You see what people want you to see. Manufactured gossip makes people feel like they’re getting the inside scoop, but it’s just more product.’
I nod.
‘Listen – we made it work. You’d be surprised what you can make work. Clark is a truly phenomenal husband, a wonderful man, until he isn’t. The ways he could twist reality, make you doubt yourself, because he was so fabulous ninety per cent of the time, that when the other ten per cent came around, you’d think “well, I must be the problem here”. I’m the reason he’s so furious. I’m the reason he’d rather be at work than here with us. I’m the reason he needs to go elsewhere to get his needs met. So I stopped existing for myself. It got to the point where I would not leave the house unless I had his permission.’
Carol stops then, pursing her lips as though physically preventing herself from saying more.
‘Do you believe what Bridget said?’ I ask her. ‘Now, in retrospect?’
She looks up to the sky, and doesn’t answer me. I ask again, and she does not answer, and this is the kind of silence that’s an answer in itself.
‘You know what’s funny?’ she says as we’re crossing the intersection back towards her building. ‘Our best times were always when his career was in a downturn, when he’d had an off year, when something had bombed. The better things were going for him at work, the more controlling he got at home.’
The silence is mine now; my throat feels frozen, no words coming.
‘Be careful,’ Carol says under her breath as we part ways, right before the sssssssh of the revolving door whisks her inside and I can’t know for sure whether I heard her right.
I walk too far east and end up lost on my way back, and instead of looking at my phone for directions I just keep walking, in a daze. When I finally get back to my hotel, I realize that I’ve forgotten my room number.
‘Room 307,’ the clerk tells me, ‘and actually, there was a delivery for you. Give me one sec.’
He disappears, and re-emerges with a bouquet of flowers so vast that it obscures his entire head. Red roses and tulips and white Alstroemeria arranged into a breathtaking explosion, and alongside it a card bearing my name. Up in my room I open it with unsteady hands.
To Jessica, my favourite fan. My translator. My saviour.
Always,
C.C.
That night, I lie awake for hours, staring at the silhouette of flowers in the dark. Because I never told Clark where I was staying.
20
My unsettled mood doesn’t last. When I arrive at my gate at LAX, my neck and legs stiff from five hours crammed into a middle seat, a text message lands on my phone from Clark. ‘Go to Passenger Pickup D.’ He has come to meet me at the airport, and when the blacked-out door opens and he is waiting inside, I feel a physical pull towards him that’s stronger than all my misgivings.
‘I missed you,’ he tells me in a murmur, pulling me onto his lap and I fall into him, let Carol and Susan and Bridget Meriweather become memories from another time, another planet, another reality. That night in my bed, I wait until his breathing has evened out into sleep and then press myself hard into him, my face against his neck, one of my legs between his like I’m trying to climb into him. I can’t get close enough, or cling hard enough, and still I can’t sleep.
‘How’s the work going?’ he asks me the next day, after he’s brought me coffee in bed.
‘Good. It’s going great.’
It is not. I missed a deadline, for the first time in my life. Fully forgot that it existed, days ago, and remembered far too late to do anything but send a frantic email to the editor, who did not respond. It would have been easy money, a gallery list of ‘25 Fall TV Shows You Need To Watch’ based on early buzz, and it would probably have led to better things, but now I’m likely dead to that editor. I have to get my shit together. But I don’t know precisely what it is that I’m striving for any more.
I avoid David’s call the first time I see his number on-screen, then regret it and call him back. I have nothing to show for my time in New York, nothing usable, and I’m no longer even sure that I want anything to do with the story. I want to go back to a time before I knew the story existed.
‘Well, don’t feel bad,’ David says when I tell him I have nothing. ‘The Times is killing their piece too. Couldn’t get enough people to go on the record.’
‘There are a lot of NDAs involved. I don’t think most of these women are able to talk.’
‘Right.’
I want desperately to discuss this with him, and wonder if he would agree to meet me in person, somewhere private, somewhere there’s no chance we could be recorded. Carol has got in my head, and I want someone objective to lay this all out for. Someone more anchored than me.
‘There’s something else,’ he says, hesitating with every word. ‘You shouldn’t pitch to us any more. I’m not going to be able to commission you.’
‘What?’ Everything around me becomes very still. ‘Is that a budget thing, or…?’
His silence is endless.
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
‘Are you seeing anybody?’
‘I’m sorry?’ I laugh a
little, thinking maybe he’s making a weird joke. ‘Is this— What?’
‘I’ll be more specific. Are you seeing anybody that you have also profiled for us?’
My stomach feels leaden. I run through tens of possible responses in my head, ways to deny it, but we have been sloppy so many times now. Restaurants, hikes, parties, even the airport last night. The door was open only briefly, but photographers are always at LAX, and all they need is to be in the right place for the right second.
‘How many other people know?’ I ask, at last.
Another endless silence.
‘I wish you all the best, Jessica,’ David says heavily, as he hangs up.
I stare at the phone for what must be ten full minutes after that, trying to think straight, trying to stave off a full panic attack. The room around me feels inconstant, as though its walls could shift and fall away like in a dream where things are fluid, and I don’t think twice about where to go. The radio said that the wildfires had receded, that the air quality was improving, but to me the smog still feels heavy enough to choke on. The sky is not its right colour, and on the ride to Laurel Canyon it’s hard not to feel as though the world is ending.
Skye answers the door, and I barely recognize her. Her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, she’s wearing a neat dress and subtle makeup, and her eyes are clear. It’s enough to make me wonder if her appearance at Cannes, manic and wide-eyed and unsteady, was some kind of mirage. She is a different girl every time I see her.
‘I have an audition,’ she tells me, seeing my surprise at her outfit. ‘My dad arranged it. My character’s supposed to be kind of uptight, so.’
‘Speaking as someone who’s kind of uptight, I think you’re nailing it,’ I say, doing a fine impression of someone having a normal day. And though Skye never really laughs, there’s the shadow of a smile. ‘So you’re not going back to school after all?’
She shakes her head.
‘That was dumb.’
‘Jessica?’
I spin at Clark’s voice, and let him pull me close. From the corner of my eye I see him make a sharp gesture to Skye, dismissing her, and on cue she turns and drifts back towards her wing of the house. It strikes me that I’ve almost never seen them share the same space, not for more than a snatch of time.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks me. I want to feel consoled by his presence, taken in. I’ve worked hard to put Carol’s words out of my head, but my body remembers.
‘What happened?’
‘Someone found out about us.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, but the editor of Reel knows, and I’m done there. If he knows, then the media gossip circle knows.’
‘So?’
‘So?’ I stare at him. ‘So, my career is over.’
‘Don’t be dramatic. There’s no law against a journalist dating an actor – one of my best friends is married to an editor.’
‘I know you never saw me as a real journalist, but the fact that I’m sleeping with the interview subject who basically made my career makes me a joke. It’s the worst stereotype about female reporters.’
He takes my hand and pulls me over towards the deck, as if to whisk me away from this subject altogether.
‘Listen,’ he tells me when we’re outside, steering me towards the edge to look at the view. ‘Take some deep breaths. I can make a call any time and get this straightened out. If Reel don’t want you, there will be people who do. I’ve got a buddy at the The Daily Reporter I can connect you with.’
His arms are tight around my waist, and I look out at the canopy of trees and try to feel held, not clutched.
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.’
‘You went to New York for that assignment, didn’t you? Sounded promising.’
‘Yeah. It didn’t pan out. By the way, can I ask you something?’
‘Anything.’
‘Did you know that Skye was at Cannes, when we were both there?’
I feel him go still.
‘Yes,’ he says, after a long silence. ‘With Brett. I didn’t like it much, but she was desperate to go, and she’d been cooped up for so long that I felt terrible saying no.’
‘Right. I just wondered, because Brett said that you were the one who introduced them. Like a setup. And that you sort of managed Skye’s career.’
Silence, again.
‘I mean, it’s Brett,’ I say, already giving him an out. ‘It’s not like I take his word as gospel, but I just wondered—’
‘Why were you at my ex-wife’s apartment?’
I stop breathing.
‘Huh?’
‘Since we’re asking each other things. Why were you at Carol’s apartment?’ He asks it calmly, enunciating the words fully.
‘Why did you send those flowers to my hotel? Were you watching me?’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he says lightly, his breath a featherweight on the nape of my neck.
‘I wanted to talk to her. I was told that there was a story coming about you, the LA Times one, and Reel had a reporter pursuing their own version. I was hoping she would tell me something that made it clear the story wasn’t true.’
‘And did she?’
I shake my head, still gazing directly outward into the trees. I’m afraid to turn around now, like Orpheus, afraid that if I look properly at him it will be the end of something.
‘Do you believe her?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Carol always had a pretty active imagination. It’s why she was such a compelling scene partner. But also why it was difficult to sustain trust in our marriage.’
‘Oh. I assumed that was difficult because you cheated on her.’
His eyes flick towards me, and I know I’m playing with fire. I want to bring up Bridget, but something holds me back.
‘So, what? You’re on the anti-Clark train now?’ His tone is still light, but I know better. ‘Your next piece is going to be a takedown?’
‘No, of course not. I’m just trying to make sense of what’s smoke and what’s fire.’
‘That’ll make a nice intro.’
He’s not touching me any more, gripping the wooden railing in both hands like he’s wringing it out. I picture him suddenly, holding Bridget down, tearing into her, smothering the life and the power out of her, and the world starts to turn grey at the edges, my ears ringing, my palms sweating. When I used to faint these were always the warning signs, the world growing insubstantial.
‘I am wildly imperfect,’ Clark is saying, but I realize he’s been talking for some time and I haven’t heard him. ‘I’ve always been open about that with you. I’m human.’
‘You’re not supposed to be human. You’re supposed to be better.’
His superiority is not a matter for discussion; it’s soaked into every fibre of his being, his existence. He has star power, that indefinable magnetic pull that draws every eye in a room, and he makes the world around him feel bigger and brighter and more full of possibility. This, maybe, is the meaning of being a movie star. I’ve been so close to him in these past months, closer than I ever dreamed, but looking at him now, I’m not sure that I’ve truly been anywhere near him.
‘I have to go,’ I say quietly, already backing away into the house as he asks, ‘Are you sure?’ The ringing is gone, my palms are dry, and I have somewhere to be. Weeks ago, I confirmed my attendance at a publicity firm’s summer party, and I will go, to prove to myself that I can still exist in this industry. A few gossipy hacks may care about my personal life, but Hollywood at large does not. A sprawling party full of executives and actors who don’t know or care who I am is exactly what I need.
That logic crumbles as soon as I arrive at the venue. It’s much smaller and more intimate than I expected, a courtyard within a hotel shrouded by vine-laden trellises, a jazz band playing instrumental versions of Frank Sinatra classics. There are eyes on me everywhere, following me, but my fac
e is not recognizable and so I am being paranoid. I must be. I’m sure of nothing now, from one moment to the next, and I sip Bourbon until that ceases to matter.
And that’s when I see Ben Schlattman, holding court in a corner, and an idea comes to me as naturally as my next breath. I need a new story, again. Something that has nothing to do with Clark, and ideally something that has nothing to do with me, but this would at least be halfway there. That hotel room, the blend of adrenalin and bewilderment and instantly suppressed rage as I realized what Schlattman really wanted from me, all of it’s now flooding back.
This could be my next story.
And so I duck into the bathroom, freshen up my lipstick, turn on the recording app on my iPhone and slip it into the front pocket of my bag. And walk up to Schlattman with a coy smile on my face, letting my hips sway a little more as I walk, letting my fringe fall just slightly over my eyes as I look up at him.
‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin,’ he says by way of greeting.
‘Yep. I know the song.’ I see him trying to unsettle me, but I smile, trying to be charming. ‘I’m holding out for “My Way”.’
‘Regrets, I’ve had a few,’ he smiles. ‘You’re probably too young for those.’
‘You sure about that?’
I glance at him, searching for an indication that he knows, and there it is. So it really is all over town.
‘You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last,’ Schlattman tells me, in a conspiratorial tone, and I want to smack his fleshy face until he looks as hollowed-out as I feel.
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ I say. ‘But I have been thinking, lately, about how we left things. I guess I feel a little bad about that.’
‘About storming out on me?’
‘I don’t think I stormed. I wasn’t sure how to take what you were doing.’
‘I was thinking you wanted to talk about our mutual friend.’