by N. K. Smith
“You need to start making those contracts work for you. If they want some skin, they need to pay for it. I don’t take my top off unless I’m damn sure the scene warrants it, and I’m getting paid for it. They want these bad girls on screen, it’s going to be an extra fifty grand a tittie,” she says as she points down at her chest in such a theatrical way that every gossip paper in the world will be running a candid snapshot of it.
The tension tightens in my neck, and I realize I’m clenching my teeth. Instead of lashing out at her, I look at my friend. She’s not looking back. She’s making kissy-duck faces at the photographers. We’ve been compared so many times by the media. We started our careers around the same age, we’ve been in movies together, we even look similar, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I’m taller and her breasts are smaller, but apart from that, we could be interchangeable.
But why does she get better parts in bigger movies and more acclaim than I do? It’s not simply because she looks at the contracts, because I study mine as if they hold the secrets of the universe. I don’t like taking advice from her.
I watch as she wiggles her fingers at a small child, then gives a sexy look to the kid’s dad. She pushes her shoulders back and her breasts jut out.
“Lili, I look at my contract. I get paid more money for nude scenes. I don’t—”
“Yeah, but what you—or Elsie—doesn’t do, is make sure it adds to the story instead of just being tits on screen for the sake of having tits on screen.”
I tighten my jaw muscles in annoyance. She’s right. I know she’s right, but I don’t like it.
Lili reaches out and places a hand over mine. At least one photog will jostle himself around enough to snap that picture. I can see the headlines now: LILIANA ADDISON LENDS GOOD FRIEND ADRA WILLOWS SUPPORT, or something just as stupid and not at all true.
“Adra, babe, this is what I’m talking about. You need to step up to the plate and make your own rules. Elsie wants you naked on screen because when you make more money, so does she.”
“Elsie wouldn’t do that.”
A condescending smile appears on Lili’s face. “Aw, honey.”
I take my hand back and place it around my mocha. I hate it when she plays this older sister, like I’m just some dumb kid. Can’t she just be real for a moment? Can’t we just be friends without her acting like she’s better than me?
With a sigh, Lili drops the movie star act and licks her lips. “Adra, I’m being honest. You’re funding her coke habit, padding her pocket, and making a name for yourself as something less than a serious actress. We all have things in our pasts—the movies we had to do in order to do what we really wanted to do. Lord knows, Tortured Desires continues to torture me, but it’s time to move on.”
It takes me a moment to process all she’s said. It seems like everyone hates Elsie, but I’m tired of talking about it. Lili and Peter just need to realize she was there when no one else was. They need to just accept that she’s a part of my life in general and my decision-making team.
“What’s your next role again?” she asks before I can respond to what she said.
“Outside the Club.”
Lili sits back. “The stripper one? I turned that shit down.”
Had I known that, I would have turned it down, too. I don’t want Liliana’s cast-off roles. “Even though Maxwell Lang is in it?”
She lets out a dark chuckle. “The fact that Maxwell Lang was in it was one of my main reasons for passing on the project. Remember that party at Josie Pendergrass’s?” She doesn’t wait for me to confirm. “Well, he was drunk and he came onto me something fierce. Now, I was high and you know how I like to roll, but the dude’s like my dad’s age, so I shrugged him off, but the creeper keeps showing up, lingering, you know? Turns out the chick attached to his hip was his lawyer, and they wanted to proposition me into agreeing to a faux five-year marriage that included pregnancy. I get fake relationships and all, but he wanted me to carry a baby and push it out of my vagina!”
Her voice is so loud it carries over to the other tables. The guy with the kid raises his eyebrows and gives her a want to go at it? smile. Liliana smiles back at him in a way as if to say, it’ll never happen, baby.
“Still,” I say to break through her moment with the guy, “it’s an awesome opportunity to be in a movie with him.”
“Being in a movie with a well-loved actor isn’t going to get you where you want to be. The only thing that’s going to do that is you shifting your mind into knowing your name and your career are a brand and business, and every time you take a part where you get naked for no justifiable reason, you cheapen your brand and undermine your business.”
I take a sip of my coffee, but all of the sweetness must have sunk to the bottom because it only tastes bitter now.
Chapter 5
The bitterness I felt during my coffee with Lili has lingered for weeks. I hate when she’s right. I don’t know why I always feel so at odds with her, but I do. When we were kids, even when we were up for the same roles, we weren’t like this. I must just be a petty person. Or maybe she is. Or we both are.
I’m not sure it matters because she’s right. Lili’s where she is because she manipulates the world and the people around her exactly the way she wants them. I mean, some of it is pure luck, or maybe that’s just me trying to justify why she has everything she wants, and I’m sitting here complaining about what I want but don’t have.
In happier news, Peter’s coming back in a few days. I can’t wait to see him. I think my whole mindset will be more positive when I’m around him more.
***
“Glad to be back in the good ol’ U.S. of A.?”
Peter laughs at my question and holds up a piece of his borderline raw steak. “Land of meat and potatoes? Hell, yes I am. I don’t want to eat another bowl of noodles in my damn life.”
“Oh, come on. There has to be more than noodle dishes in Hong Kong. Don’t perpetuate the cultural stereotype.” I cannot keep this damn grin off my face now that I’m in the same room with him again. It’s good to see him in the flesh.
He raises his eyebrows as he chews a hunk of his steak. “There’s a lot of rice, too. Stereotype or no, I’m glad to be back in ’Merica where we kill us some cattle and fry shit in grease.” Peter shakes his shaggy hair out of his eyes before nodding toward my plate. “No offense there, Miss Healthy Eats.”
I take an exaggerated bite of my portobello mushroom. “None taken, Mr. I Love Sugar and Butter.”
Peter holds a hand to his heart. “How dare you use my love of sweet, fatty goodness against me!” He shrugs. “Besides, you forgot flour. You mix the flour with the butter, roll it in sugar, and fry it in more butter.”
“Sorry,” I say while laughing.
“Get it right next time, Willows.”
Holding my right hand up, palm facing him, I bow my head. “I swear it.” I pick my fork back up before speaking again. “But seriously, more than noodles and rice, right? You wined and dined some Hong Kong beauty, and you’ve invited me out to tell me you’re getting married, right?”
It’s a running joke with us. I can’t remember who started it; I think it was him. Every so often, when we go out to a formal meal like this and we’re dressed up like high society or something, one of us pretends the other set us up for this huge announcement.
I’m waiting for Peter to roll his eyes and tell me he could never find a girl like me, just like he always does, when I notice how he chews his food just a tad slower. Something in my heart gives a little ping, like one of the little rivets that holds it together has become too weak and the head has burst off. I swallow hard just as Peter looks up at me with his big cinnamon and nutmeg brown eyes.
I know I have Danny. I might love Danny, and Peter deserves to have someone he loves in his life, too. I just worry because he picks the worst women. They’re all bitches who mindfuck him or use him because he’s famous and has money.
I set my fork down again. “Well? Do
n’t kill me with the suspense.”
“Of course there was more than noodles and rice in Hong Kong. They had a lovely—”
“Cut it, Truelove. Who is she and are you really marrying her?”
His eyes are still wide, and he still wears a smile, but it’s different somehow. “No! Marriage? Me? I’m too young, and this relationship is still very new.”
There’s that ping in my heart again. If I ignore it, it’ll go away. It’s not because he’s dating someone else, because he’s just my friend. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Even if I want something more with him, he’s my friend first. My heart is too hard to give in just because my best friend might get hurt again. His life is his to lead.
I paste on my happiest smile. “Who is she?”
“Shyla Cade.”
I bring my eyebrows up in shock but then pull them back down and soften my expression. “Your costar?”
Peter raises his eyebrows and gives me shy smile as he shrugs one shoulder. “She’s really nice.”
“Is this one of those contracts like Lili had with—”
He lets out a disbelieving puff of air and shakes his head. “You know I’d never sign up for a fake relationship, Adra. Give me some credit.”
“So you go to Hong Kong to shoot a kung fu flick, and you come back attached to a newbie actress.”
Although he laughs, Peter gives me the look. It’s the look he gives me when he thinks I’m stepping over an invisible line or he’s worried I’m getting too close to one. “Don’t be so elitist. She was in Portugal Nightmare.”
I nod. “Yeah. That was—”
“Stop, Adra. Elitism isn’t pretty on you. Besides, it’s not like every movie you’ve made has been stellar.”
“Stellar, no, but I’ve never done any B horror movies either.”
Peter gives me another look, but this one is different. This one I interpret to mean Yeah, you just get naked all the time.
Chapter 6
My heart hurts, but I’m ignoring it, or at least I’m trying to. Peter’s been featured in several magazines and gossip shows with his girlfriend. She’s beautiful, of course, and they look happy.
I’m happy for him. I mean, not really, but I’m trying to be. Anyway, I’m channeling all that emotion into preparing for Outside the Club. The more active I am, the less I think about Peter and Shyla.
***
I fight with my body to comply with what my trainer is asking of me, but I am sluggish. My arms feel rubbery, like all of my muscles have atrophied into scrawny bands of flimsy plastic. All I have to do is make these large ropes undulate, a favorite of Roman’s. He thinks while women shouldn’t have bulky upper bodies, they should be defined and toned.
“Come on, girl, work those ropes!”
I try to move them up and down but it seems to be a battle I can’t win this morning. I give him a couple more seconds, but when my arms start to go cold and feel numb, I let go and double over.
Roman bends over to bring his face square with mine. “What’s up? Giving up? You’re a quitter today?”
“No.”
He stands back up. “You look like a quitter.”
I keep my eyes on the growing pool of sweat on the floor as more drips off me. Roman is trying to motivate me. It’s what I pay him for, but I can’t force myself to stand upright yet.
“Come on. Let’s do some free weights.”
I shake my head.
“No?”
“I can’t.”
He squats back down and tilts his body so he can look up into my eyes. “I’ve never heard you say that before. Come on, Adra, pick yourself up. I don’t know what you’ve been doing in the past few weeks, but you’ve lost too much muscle mass.”
Wrapping his large hands around my shoulders, he brings me upright. I can’t look into his eyes as he stares at me.
“You got bags, girl. You been sleeping?”
I nod.
“What you been eatin’?”
“Good food. You know . . .”
“Show me your journal.” He lets go of my shoulders, and again, I feel limp.
I shuffle over to my black bag. It seems like it takes forever to get the damned thing unzipped. The book is at the bottom, so I have to dig around for a few seconds until I find it. When I turn around, I hold it out to him. I’m still kneeling on the ground, and it seems like way too much work to have to stand up and walk over to him.
Holding this little book out feels like a harder work out than those ropes just a minute ago, so I bring my arm back down to my side as I let myself sit on the floor. When he sits down next to me, I can feel his gaze, almost penetrating my skin. He takes the book from me and inhales a deep breath after he flips a few pages.
“This isn’t enough. You’re already vegan. You can’t just give up necessary fat and carbs, girl. No wonder you can’t work out. I doubt you’ve eaten enough calories in the past week to fuel getting out of bed in the morning and brushing your teeth, much less a high intensity workout.”
“I start shooting in a month. I’m playing a stripper, so I thought she can have some muscles, but she has to be skinny, right?” Elsie’s pretty certain that I have to look a certain way to sell the part. She says audience can smell a phony a mile away, and if I want to win some awards for this one, I have to be dedicated to the role. That’s why I’ve adjusted my nutritional intake and scaled back on my sessions with Roman.
“Listen, your vegan lifestyle already made you lean. It doesn’t matter what role you’ve taken on, you shouldn’t go restricting calories without asking for professional advice.” He’s pissed as he stands up and walks away. When he comes back, he drops down to the floor again and pushes a banana into one hand and a protein bar into the other. I know the bar alone has almost four hundred calories and the banana has about a hundred and twenty.
I hesitate for too long, so Roman takes the bar and rips it open. He slaps it back into my hand. “Eat. You want to be a skinny vegan instead of a lean one? That’s fine, but we have to do it the right way.”
I feel spacey as my mind wanders and I ignore Roman’s words. I settle into a memory of the disgust I felt when I decided to research my role and watched a stripper—who couldn’t have been older than twenty—give a lap dance to a guy who had to be fifty. The man had drooled on her shoulder, and I could tell she was disgusted too, but she didn’t wipe it off until after the dance was over and he’d given her an extra five bucks as a tip.
I realize that girl was probably using that money for something good like feeding her family, going to school, or just plain getting by. I understand that she probably doesn’t have a lot of choices, but it doesn’t make it feel less repulsive.
Roman brings my hand to my mouth, and I concede to his wishes and take a bite. It takes effort to chew, but soon I finish the bar and start eating the banana. It’s amazing how much better I feel once my stomach has something to digest. My thoughts become clearer.
“Come on, girl. Now that you’ve got a little energy in your body, let’s finish out with some light yoga.”
When I’m on my purple mat, following Roman from down dog to up dog, a thought crosses my mind. No, it doesn’t cross my mind; it strikes me. It pierces me. It takes hold.
I’m no better than that stripper.
There is no difference between us, beyond the amount of money we’re paid. Men go to her because she has a beautiful body. Studios and audiences come to me because I have a beautiful body. We both have to work hard to keep ourselves looking the way other people want them to be. The patrons of that dirty club don’t care what her name is or how well she dances; they just care about seeing tits and maybe a glimpse of something else.
Likewise, I’m just body in this industry. I could take off my clothes in a million films, but it won’t win me awards. People come to see my movies not because I’m a great actress who can convince the world that I am my character. They come to see the movie because it holds the potential of seeing some skin.
<
br /> My stomach aches as I return to child’s pose. The contracts have been signed, and there’s no way Elsie will let me back out of this movie now.
Chapter 7
Roman’s new diet and workout plan is killer. I’ve gotten better results than before, and I get to eat more. And I have a ton more energy. I think I’m ready to give this damned stripper role a go. Just like with everything else, I’m going to make the best of it.
Talked to Peter yesterday. He and Shyla are doing fine, I guess. He says they went out with Lili and her man of the month. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go on a double date with Peter and Shyla. No, wait, I can. Danny would be passive aggressive, make fun of his name, and I would sit there trying to soften it all while not staring at the perfection that is Shyla, and trying not to judge her because Peter really likes her. I guess. At least that’s what he says. Which is good, right?
***
It’s the first day of shooting for Outside the Club and I’m determined to make the best of it. Despite his offer to marry Lili for an undisclosed amount, Max Lang is a hot Hollywood star. His presence alone in this movie will generate buzz that will lead to box office sales.
Even though Elsie promised she’d be here today, she stood me up. I was nearly an hour late because I sat around my house waiting for her to show up. I called and called, but she never picked up. This isn’t the first time she’s done this. It hasn’t happened in a while, but it’s still as annoying as the last time. I mean, I can drive myself to the studio, but we had a plan.
Once I’m shown my trailer, I wait for the director, Lenny, to go over a few things before we start. The trailer I’ve been given is large, so in that respect I’m already feeling better about signing on for this film, but it’s bland. I’m sure after two months of shooting, this place will be a papered with snapshots and magazine clippings. That’s how it always goes.
It was more fun when I was younger. When I was in films for or with other kids, it felt more like a room at home than anything else. On one of our films together, Peter, Lili, and I used to take turns whose space we chilled in, but no matter where we were, we filled the walls with graffiti. One of Peter’s talents is art. He’ll never admit it, but his doodles are more than just drawings from a bored mind.