Dennis waited for a moment, then another. Then another. “Wait. Wait,” he erupted. “You almost did it? That’s all I get? You almost did it?” He looked completely outraged. Kyle would have felt sorry, but he had in fact noticed that Dennis had a growing boner, strategically disguised behind the mustard-colored throw pillow he held oh so casually against his thigh.
“Yeah, we almost did it,” Kyle admitted, abrupt. “And then she stopped it, and I went home, and worked things out with Van.”
“You ‘worked things out,’” Dennis sneered. Kyle, wavering on his feet, didn’t understand how this confession had gone so far awry. It didn’t matter. The spell cast by his own words had splintered. He felt the shame of all of it, doubly, yet again. Why had he said so much, so unwisely, after holding it so close for so long? The television was a blank. He was drunk. A fractured family of unhappy women waited for him to return, and create, for them, a misery.
That’s ridiculous, they love you, he told himself, as he had told himself so many times before. You are being ridiculous. Alison is a fantasy. She’s not a real person anymore. Van and the babies are real. They are waiting for you. They are love.
He had no way to determine, anymore, if what his brain told him was true.
seventeen
BY THE TIME Lars finally allowed himself to undress Alison, he was so obsessed with her body he had a vague urge to hurt it. The unfolding of her white back as he lifted the straps off her shoulders was exquisite. The dress, a simple black silk slip, dropped to the floor with an erotic grace as he turned her toward him. She wasn’t wearing underclothes.
He always made them wait. Actresses were as a breed too volatile; you couldn’t let them get the upper hand too early, as that would be the end of everything. But this one had not accepted his feigned indifference to her body with anything remotely resembling insecurity. She accepted his invitations to dinners and screenings with professional ease, and performed her duties as arm candy with the practiced charm of born royalty. She never intruded on his privacy. And then she disappeared. She literally just bolted—from Per Se, at a dinner which had cost him a thousand dollars a head—and then was utterly unreachable for two full weeks. He thought for a while that she was just fucking with him, and his interest cooled. He didn’t have the time or the energy for a difficult actress. But then she returned, just as quickly and inexplicably. She called and apologized for leaving so abruptly. She had had a family emergency in, of all places, Cincinnati. She was sweet and funny. She wanted to take him out, to make up for it. He had his assistant Josh arrange a date for the following week; she would join him at a business dinner. When she showed up at the restaurant, she was wearing the thinnest of thin dresses. Another check in the plus column.
They sat next to each other on the banquette, facing a couple of the countless suits he had to deal with from one studio or another. He was glad that she looked so hot, as that was what those clowns expected. As usual she ate next to nothing, again something those shitheads approved of; the guys from headquarters were always suspicious when they saw a woman eat. She was winning and witty, laughing at their slightly toosexual jokes, but never losing her poise. You could see the hint of her nipples underneath that black silk. He wanted to fuck her right there.
He waited through the drive back to his apartment and invited her up. While he turned her body toward him, she reached for his shirt. Conveniently, there was a condom in his back pocket, so they made love, for the first time, up against the door.
“Just like in The Godfather,” she whispered, laughing, as he entered her.
The following morning, when Lars woke to find her in his bed, he studied her naked body with the eye of a connoisseur. Was she a notable beauty? It wasn’t clear. She had certainly participated in behaviors which would increase that perception in the general public. Her hair had moved through a series of colors and cuts and extensions and curls, and had settled into a breathtakingly tousled brunette mop. Having gone back to starving herself since her return from Cincinnati, she was once again thin as a teenage tomboy with a glorious curve to her hips. As she turned and stretched, the hint of those green eyes lifted to him under the black smudge of mascara and eyeliner still more or less in place in spite of the vigorous night before.
Which of her predecessors did she call to mind? Elizabeth Taylor, another raven-haired beauty with extraordinary eyes? Ava Gardner? That was perhaps more like it. The ruthless duality which had made Ava a star had begun to assert itself in Alison’s being. The eyes were too vivid. The soul was too big. She was both body and self. As he reached for the condoms in his bedside table, Lars let the thought skitter across his brain: Men would want that. It was marketable.
Lars had been intuitively aware of this possibility from the first moment he saw Alison Moore on a television trailer which had been forwarded to his email account from his otherwise generally useless agent. He was constantly being told to “take a look” at these girls and in fact it was a part of the detritus of his job that he enjoyed. Girls were always being offered up to him; he was expected to taste and determine which ones might develop into more than a taste. His agent had told him that Alison was “something special,” but they said that about all of them, and most of them were anything but. Even in their early twenties, they had been sculpted and painted into an abstraction of beauty that was cheap and pornographic: the silicone breasts, the tiny nose, the strangely voluptuous lips, enormous eyes, tight, perfect skin. These were the girls who came to Los Angeles with a fierce and unexamined ambition to be a star, and each and every one of them proved willing to subsume any shred of individuality in the quest for that prize. Lars had railed about the contradictions mercilessly during drunken arguments with producers: None of these girls were anyone! Why do you need to turn them all into Kewpie dolls? Where is the next Monroe supposed to come from? You would have dismissed her for being fat. Streep? Funny chin. Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, God forgive us, those two horsefaces wouldn’t have made it out of the starting gate. They all laughed at him, and had another martini. The next day he would get another ten emails, with footage on ten more identical starlets. When Alison’s demo showed up in his inbox he didn’t dismiss her immediately simply because she was a brunette. Perhaps if he had been less bored by all the Botoxed blondes, he wouldn’t have given it any attention at all. But he was bored, and Alison was having sex with some good-looking hunk. The chemistry with her costar was impressive, and so were the green eyes. Having now tasted the wares, he could congratulate himself on the unerring accuracy of his instincts.
Alison stretched. As she drifted back into consciousness of what she had been up to the night before, she had to admit that making Lars wait had not been such a bad idea after all. Having finally landed herself in a movie director’s bed, she also had to admit it was not a bad place to be. Lars was handsome, rich, and emotionally unavailable. After their second round in the sack they took a shower together, lounged around the apartment until noon, and then had sex again on the blond wood floor of his pristine dining room. The next day a pair of stunning silver earrings arrived at her apartment two hours before he did, carrying two bottles of Veuve Clicquot and one of the very finest olive oil. The olive oil was not for cooking.
“Well, you must have had quite a weekend.” Ryan was positively cooing over the phone lines. It was only Monday afternoon.
“What are you talking about?” Alison felt a quick panic. She already knew that Lars had an absurd, even paranoid obsession with privacy. If he thought that she was out there bragging about their sexual escapades, the whole thing would immediately fall apart. “Tell me what you heard and who you heard it from.” It crossed her mind that Lars might have had security cameras taping their activities in his apartment. She prayed there were no crazy photographs or sex tapes on the internet.
“I didn’t hear anything! But you have been getting some very interesting attention from some very interesting people.”
“Stop being coy or you’re fired
,” she announced.
“That’s my little spitfire! Louise Nagler just called. Lars has talked to the studio. They’re moving ahead with an offer for you on Last Stop.”
Her heart stopped. Would he do that? Would he cast her because she had fucked him? The idea seemed too ludicrous to even entertain. “Oh, for crying out loud, Ryan,” she said. “That’s—impossible.”
“Oh, no it’s not, my dear.” His tone was brisk, excited, confident. “You don’t need to think about this side of it. Let me do my job. You just keep doing yours.”
The words went through her like a knife. “I didn’t sleep with him to get a job offer,” she protested.
“No no no, of course you didn’t. That is not what I meant. I meant acting. You are a brilliant actress. Stay focused on that. That is why they want you.”
It hit her sideways. Kyle’s accusation, that she was “brilliant.” This was all moving too fast.
“Ryan, it’s not Sophie’s Choice. It’s an action flick in the middle of the jungle.”
“Okay, fine,” he replied. “You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want.”
“Of course I want to do it, I just—you know, I’m surprised. I didn’t see this coming, I really didn’t.”
“Alison. Get excited. This is tremendous! Just give yourself a minute to be happy, okay? I’m going to get you everything you deserve. And then some. Now, go kiss your boyfriend, he’s going to make you a movie star.”
Boyfriend? She had spent the weekend having sex with the guy, and now he was her boyfriend? The radical disconnect between Lars and Kyle—with whom she had spent so many years, not having sex—was not lost on her. After that ridiculous dinner party where she and Kyle had accused each other yet again of so many mysterious failures, Alison had just decided to get back on the track of her own life. Calling Lars up and apologizing to him was simple good manners. Wearing a black slip dress with no underwear to a dinner date was something else entirely, but Lars was sexy, she was lonely, and she was mad at herself for even talking to Kyle in the grocery store, much less going to a stupid dinner party at his house. Having a hot date with a movie director seemed like a reasonable idea, in the wake of that nonsense.
This new development—he wanted to offer her a part in his movie?—was the last thing she had looked for. She had spent half the day wallowing in a walk-of-shame insecurity; having wild sex with a big Hollywood director for two solid days had truly made her feel like a slut, the fact that she had enjoyed every second of it notwithstanding. There was no question of love involved; obviously they did not love each other. What is this then, a business arrangement? Her brain was having its way with her; she wanted to tell it to shut up. In any event, when Lars’s assistant called at six to find out if she could meet him for a late dinner at ten, she agreed immediately. She didn’t hesitate when he let her know that Lars would love it if she could meet him at his apartment.
She also didn’t think twice about wearing the maroon silk Prada mini dress which showed up at her door minutes later. Lars’s eye was, not surprisingly, impeccable; the dress fit beautifully and the color was both slutty and glorious in its classic grace. Alison looked like a whore and a goddess. It was the first breath of an inkling as to what Lars was going to try to do.
eighteen
AGAINST ALL ODDS, the script was good. Having expected it to be total junk, Alison was caught off guard. The dialogue was sharp; the jokes were funny. The hero was world weary but determined—because of his tragic past he had lost all hope, but a shred of the hope for hope remained. The action sequences were terrific and on the whole the script was surprisingly careful not to kill extra people. Those who lost their lives in the black-op showdown with the local drug dealers were mourned. There was no meaningless carnage.
And her character—well, it wasn’t her character yet, but the one they were considering her for—was fantastic. Laila was a hippie waitress who had split the States three years ago, following a boyfriend to the middle of Mexico. He subsequently disappeared, carelessly informing her he was going to Belize for a weekend from which he would never return. The girl stayed on and became a local legend. She ran the only decent restaurant within a sixty-mile radius of Salusito, the mountain village in which she found herself. Her cook, Diego, was fiercely loyal and protective of her. She fronted for some of the local kids when they tried to play rock and roll in her cantina on Friday nights. The whole town adored her. What a part, Alison knew. Her Midwestern practicality informed her quite firmly that the chances of her actually getting it were slim to none.
And of course the offer didn’t come, did it? After being told that it was on its way, both by Ryan and by Lars, it simply didn’t show up.
“How many times do I have to tell you, these things are complicated,” Ryan reassured her on one of their daily phone calls.
“Oh, Ryan, please stop. You know I love you. I think you’re a great agent, this isn’t about you.”
“I know it’s not about me, who said it was about me?”
On days like this she really wished she wasn’t dealing with such an agent. The layers of show business bullshit were like some sort of very strange, sticky cocoon. “I’m just saying it’s been a long time since you told me this offer was coming through, and it was a long shot to begin with. I’m not stupid.” She suddenly felt overwhelmed that she even had to mention that. No matter how cataclysmically she had been misunderstood by every single member of her giant family, no one had ever underestimated her intelligence. And now here she was, being conned by idiots who expected her to care about a shell game. Where is it where is it? Where’s the ball? A reasonably smart canine would have picked up on this useless bullshit years ago and refused to play.
“It’s okay,” she said, suddenly humiliated by her own stupidity. “If I’m not getting an offer, it was a long shot.”
“I thought things were going well for you and Lars.”
“Lars and I are fine, that’s not—look. You know that’s not why he offered it to me. He’s not offering me the part just because he’s screwing me. Oh, God. I can’t believe I just said that. Particularly because as far as I can tell he’s not offering me the part at all.”
“What does Lars say?”
“Lars—Lars says they’re offering me the part.”
“Well?”
“WELL, IF THEY’RE OFFERING IT WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG?”
“Back down, tiger. We’ve been through this. They are offering you the part, they just have an internal situation they need to work out.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Alison. Alison. Do you trust me? Do you trust me?” For a moment Alison remembered that snake, from The Jungle Book, who sang a sweet little song to Mowgli to get him to go to sleep, so that he could eat him.
“Sure, Ryan,” she said. “I trust you.”
“How are things going for you and Lars?”
She took a breath. “Lars and I are fine. We’re great.”
“That’s all you need to think about. The rest is my job. Let me do my job.”
Things were good with Lars. “Good” was as usual a relative word, but she would have a hard time describing her relationship with the Icelandic Prince in more unsavory terms. Lars was gorgeous. He was sexy. He was romantic. He was remote, but in a way that you would expect out of a global film director. It was true that sex with Lars, while exciting, was a little unnerving. He would do things like suddenly grab her by the hair, pull her toward him, and kiss her with complete, unself-conscious abandon. She could be sitting on the couch eating popcorn and the next thing she knew he was on top of her, with his fingers shoved up her vagina, her back arched over the armrest, moaning with pleasure. She felt like a total slut at times like that; she had never known that sex could be this overwhelming, and there were moments when she wanted him inside her so much that she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t go see some therapist about sex addiction. It was like a fever dream, half the time, and she would have been embarr
assed by her own behavior if he were not even more creatively hedonistic in this arena. If one of them was a sex addict, it was Lars, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t it. This was the thing she couldn’t possibly tell Ryan: Lars was obsessed with her.
He sent dresses to her apartment and then came over at all hours to watch her model them, before undressing her in creative ways so he could fuck her. He brought her exotic Moroccan oils and showed her even more exotic ways to use them. And then one day he brought actors with him.
No big deal, he explained; he just wanted to have the guys read a few scenes from the movie with her. Her apartment was so small, and so marked as Lars’s sexual territory by then, the addition of the two strange boys was unnerving, bumpy. On the other hand, the idea that Lars wanted to work on the film seemed promising. She had practically memorized the script by then, and the chance to actually say the words and show what she could do with the character jazzed her. There was no way to say no. Why would you?
And of course it was fun, at first. Snappy little scenes where she flirted with the boys, bossed them around, acted all cool and witty while nursing a secret crush on the too-tough leader of the crew. It was lively and they were enjoying themselves. And then they got to the sex scene.
The living room, with so many men in it, had gotten a bit too warm and one of them—Carl, the one playing her love interest—had conveniently stripped down to his T-shirt.
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