The Starlet

by Mary McNamara

  “Oh, my God,” Juliette said, turning away from the window and heading toward the door. “We are not going to start this. You are not going to start this. I don’t love anyone, and if I did, you certainly wouldn’t understand the first thing about it—”

  “Oh, that’s healthy,” said Gabe, following on her heels as she clattered down the stairs. “You don’t love anyone. Right. I’m just saying that if instead of spending so much time helping Mercy sift through all the shit she is so clearly carrying around, you might want to start sifting through your own.”

  “You really are a poet, you know that? The Holden Caulfield of our generation,” Juliette said, slamming into the kitchen, and methodically dumping every dirty glass, dish, and piece of cutlery into the sink. “I simply cannot understand why I don’t want to follow your every step and piece of advice. Because you’re so healthy, living here in eco-isolation a million miles from home, surrounded by a bunch of students who you can screw at will because you know they’ll be on their way in six to eight weeks.”

  She turned to face him, panting slightly.

  “Okay, okay,” Gabe said, his palms up. “I’m not saying I’m some sort of example. But you are not me, Juliette. If you worked at it, you could probably become almost sort of normal.”

  • • •

  When the cameras weren’t rolling, Mercy became silent and withdrawn. There were no more tears, and she did join Steve Usher for early morning meditations, which seemed to subdue her, if not fill her with serenity. Carson and Golonski were ecstatic. Their star was punctual, prepared, and focused. Gulping the multihued gelatinous pills from the seemingly inexhaustible pick-up pack supplied by Usher, Mercy at times took on a luminous, almost ethereal quality, as if she were indeed inhabiting two separate time frames. Seeing her swathed in a black cape over her novice whites for the flashback scenes, Juliette thought she looked like she had stepped from a painting, a forgotten Botticelli or perhaps the lost Giotto. The detective had not interviewed Mercy yet, which Juliette thought strange, considering she was the one who had found the body. Instead, Di Marco seemed content to just watch the young star, a smile of pure pleasure tucked into his face. For her part, Mercy ignored him almost pointedly, though Angie occasionally drifted over to remind him that Mercy was quite busy but would be happy to help when she could. Invariably the inspector shook his head and continued watching. Juliette found his behavior odd. She began to think he was just another movie fan, milking his chance to be on set. She even called Rome, only to discover that he was precisely who he said he was.

  Making her way through all the equipment and crew, Juliette edged herself toward the monitors, where Golonski was sitting, talking with Carson. As she approached, he gave her such a hostile look that Carson turned, and Juliette could see she was about to tell her to get lost. But a few yards away, O’Connor caught sight of her and grinned. He looked over to Carson and held his hands over his ears—a signal for Carson to give Juliette earphones—and immediately Carson’s demeanor reversed itself. With a pleasant smile, she acquiesced, then offered her a chair. It was a modern scene, taking place in front of the villa/convent. Juliette laughed when she realized several of the interns were milling around in the background as “extras.” As the action began, she was struck by how stark and unlikely and overlit the set looked, how stagy the dialogue and acting seemed, yet when she watched the scene unfolding on the screen, it looked wonderfully moody and emotional, and just like a movie.

  It was a long scene, fueled by tense expository dialogue about the meaning of a certain painting and full of romantic tension as the two characters fought what was obviously a troublesome but undeniable attraction. Over and over Mercy and Michael ran the scene, with subtle changes here and there, and increasingly Juliette was struck by a sense of déjà vu in the . . . what? Not the lines, but something in Mercy’s delivery, in the way she tipped her chin, in the emphasis she put on this word or that, how her air of expertise and efficiency dissolved at one point into bright laughter and a wary sidelong glance, all reminded her of someone she knew.

  “That’s weird,” Juliette murmured to herself, wondering why it seemed so familiar.

  “No. Not weird,” said Carson, taking off her earphones. “You.”

  “That’s a wrap,” shouted a young man standing next to Golonski. “And that’s lunch.”

  “What?” asked Juliette as everyone around her began to move.

  “She’s doing you,” Carson said. “At least for the Roxanne part. I realized as soon as I met you. Probably why she was so intent on spending so much time with you. Courting the muse. Or maybe just getting that thing you do with your chin. It makes sense,” she added, “since Roxanne’s basically a love-starved control freak hoping someone will save her from herself. And please feel free to join us for lunch.”

  Turning, Juliette saw Michael and Mercy heading toward her, both of them, miraculously enough, smiling, but even as they reached her, Inspector Di Marco appeared. He took Mercy’s arm as if he were her prearranged escort, asking if he might borrow a few minutes of her time.

  “I—I don’t know,” Mercy stammered. “Have you talked to my mother?” She looked wildly around for Angie, in the hopes she would intercede, but Angie was strangely absent. “I guess so. We were going to lunch, though,” she said, suddenly inspired. “I have to eat something; we have six more pages to get through and I haven’t been feeling very well.”

  “No?” said the inspector. “I’m sorry to hear that. It does not show, of course. Your performance is inspiring. I told my wife about the movie and she and I can hardly wait for it to be. Perhaps I might join you, for lunch?”

  Squaring her shoulders, Mercy seemed to settle back into character. “Certainly,” she said, with a small nod Juliette recognized as her own. She shot a look at O’Connor, but his eyes were on the inspector.

  It was perhaps the oddest lunch Juliette had ever endured. Watching Mercy answer the detective’s questions while still in a modified version of the Roxanne character, Juliette felt strangely exposed, as if she were looking at herself naked in the mirror with everyone watching. God, did she really put her head to one side like that? But no one seemed to notice, or if they did, they gave no sign. For once, she wished Michael would play the megastar and request his lunch be served in his trailer; she even went so far as to suggest this, but he only smiled and shook his head. “I don’t have enough time to eat and be in my trailer alone with you,” he answered with a friendly leer. “Besides, one of the stylists is having her birthday and she wants me to cut the cake.”

  He motioned to one of the craft services tables, where a very American-looking sheet cake stood, festooned with frosting rosettes and loopy writing. Juliette had to laugh: no matter how famous or admired a star was, he or she was expected to preside over crew birthdays, and baby showers, and engagement announcements, choking down stale grocery store cakes and raising toasts. Some refused, of course, but then they were considered “difficult,” and not even the most cushioned on-set nest created by the most thorough agent could totally protect a star from a resentful crew. Especially on location. O’Connor would sing “Happy Birthday” as many times as Carson or Golonski asked him to, and kiss the birthday girl, or boy, if that, too, was required.

  Looking weary and slightly troubled, he asked Juliette how Gabe was bearing up, if the crew was composting rigorously enough, what Gabe had in mind for the place if it should indeed survive the filming. Juliette answered truthfully, explaining about the money problems and how she and Gabe differed on the future of Cerreta, but though he met every new piece of information with an appropriate comment or question, Michael clearly had his eyes on Mercy.

  “Is she still doing me?” Juliette said finally, not bothering to turn around.

  For a moment Michael looked surprised, then illumination dawned over his face and he threw down his napkin and laughed.

  “That’s what it is,” he said. “I have been trying to figure out why these scenes have bee
n so easy. For a minute or two I was afraid I was—” Now it was Juliette’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “But I knew, of course, that wasn’t possible. I mean, she’s a child, not to mention a mess, but still . . .” He glanced back over at Mercy and laughed again. “Good Lord, it’s uncanny. They can say what they want, but she really is brilliant, that girl. She’s a much better actor than I ever was, though if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it.” He gazed at Mercy with frank admiration. “Did you know?” he said, finally returning his attention to her. “I mean, did she ask you? It makes perfect sense. The character is brilliant and capable but with her own hidden wounds.”

  “Carson says the character’s a control freak looking for someone to save her,” Juliette answered flatly.

  Michael laughed again and said nothing, which was not the response Juliette was hoping for. She wanted to know that Michael saw Carson for what she was—pathetically ambitious and manipulative, not to mention phony. “Your cousin,” he said instead, deftly changing the subject, “does not like me very much.”

  Juliette opened her mouth to make a cutting Carson comment, then closed it again. Experiencing jealousy was bad enough; exposing it would be fatal. “He doesn’t like most people very much. He thinks you’re just another needy man in a string of needy men that I feel compelled to save because of my . . . hidden wounds.”

  Juliette had meant to speak lightly, perhaps ironically, but the words did not come out that way. The hardest thing about being at Cerreta, about having all this play out at Cerreta, was Gabe. After years in Los Angeles and at the Pinnacle, Juliette was used to a tacit tendency toward indulgence. That filmmaking was important work was just a given, and those who succeeded in that work were granted immunity from many social and business mores because, the thinking went, they had earned it. Gabe began at the other hand of the spectrum, with the assumption that filmmaking itself was an indulgence and everyone involved was, by extension, shallow, corrupt, and lazy. It was such a shift in perspective, it left Juliette feeling slightly nauseous.

  Gabe always made her feel so accountable. It was one of the reasons she had stayed away for so long. He had never liked Josh, though when Juliette had married, Gabe was in no position to judge anyone. Over the years, he made it clear he was just waiting for her to come to her senses and leave so she could address the issues that had led her to fall in love with Josh in the first place. So there had been some pride-swallowing involved in her decision to come to Cerreta. And although Gabe had been, for the most part, respectful of her refusal to have a heart-to-heart about the past, she knew her cousin was not going to let her leave without some sort of emotional showdown.

  But more than that, this was the first time in a long time that she had ever lived her life in front of someone who was an essential part of her past. She found herself comparing the person she was with the person she had thought she would become when she was young. Too many of the lines didn’t match. When she and Gabe were running wild in New York, they had each prided themselves on being nonconformists, and though much of that was just an excuse to drink and do drugs, some of it was not. Juliette had never imagined herself becoming a member of the service industry, no matter how elite it might be. Seeing her choices through Gabe’s eyes, which he made all too easy, it was hard not to wonder how she had wound up running interference for movie stars. And although she knew it was absurd, she blamed Gabe for how she felt. It wasn’t pretty, and she didn’t feel pretty thinking about it.

  She swallowed hard and tried to look nonchalant, but when she shifted her eyes from the horizon, she found O’Connor looking at her.

  “Don’t,” she said, almost unconsciously, turning away from the bright blue gaze and banishing her own thoughts back to her unconcious. “I think”—she cleared her throat—“the only person Gabe currently likes is Mercy. And he rags on me for being a martyr.”

  When she looked back, Michael’s face was gentle and amused.

  “He has work cut out for him,” Michael said, nodding toward the inspector, who was, at that moment, refilling Mercy’s very large glass of wine.

  “Oh, great,” Juliette said, both exasperated by and grateful for the distraction. “Where the hell is Usher? I thought that was what he was here for. And where’s Angie? How is it that Mercy has been left to cope with the cops unattended?”

  “Well, I don’t think a glass of wine is going to kill her as long as she isn’t using it to wash down whatever it is she washes down. Usher was last spotted tailing after your cousin. And maybe Angie thinks it’s time Mercy learned to take responsibility for her actions.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Michael shrugged. “I happened to see Angie chatting with our friend Di Marco and she seemed to be apologizing.” He glanced up as one of the young PAs came hurrying over. “When I spoke with the inspector he said he was acting on an anonymous tip. My theory? Mercy called in some half-baked accusation or other just to stir up trouble. Or at least that’s what her mother seems to think.” Leaning over, he kissed Juliette warmly just behind the ear. “I have to go now, darling, but allegedly we’ll be done by nine. Perhaps another moonlit stroll?” And with a wicked grin, he was gone.

  Whatever Mercy and the inspector had discussed had a definite impact. He left shortly after the conversation with the implication that he would not be returning. Mercy disappeared into her trailer and when she finally arrived on the set, an hour late, she was spacy and lethargic, easily distracted by a light she thought misplaced or a line she found too preachy. They were shooting a flashback scene—the pages were now a dull orange—and using the golden distance of her eyes and the halting nature of her words, Mercy certainly evoked a woman untethered by her love of God, so for the most part Carson and Golonski were happy. At least they were happy when she didn’t flub her lines. But in between scenes, Mercy seemed barely able to communicate except to argue or complain, which slowed the shoot to a crawl. The cinematographer was beside himself; every minute the sky grew darker and the lights had to be readjusted. They were, he kept saying, in danger of losing the entire day. O’Connor, tired of trying to humor his costar, flung himself down in a chair and began to do a crossword puzzle.

  Finally, Mercy threw off her cloak, which she claimed was irritating her neck, and stalked off to her trailer, which she then refused to leave. While Usher spoke to her soothingly through the locked door and Carson threatened Angie with legal action, the storm that had been threatening for days claimed the sky all at once. As lightning flashed and thunder boomed, the crew cursed and ran around like a swarm of angry bees, moving armloads of equipment into trucks and buildings and under balconies as icy fat raindrops pelted the olive groves and the vineyards and the uninterested stone walls of the villa. Juliette ran and lugged and heaved with the rest of them; though she could not touch any of the film equipment—“union rules,” the best boy shouted at her when she tried to help. She and Gabriel wrestled shovels and rakes and wheelbarrows into the carriage house, unlocked whatever doors stood before rooms that could provide shelter. By the time she stopped, Juliette was soaked through, her hair plastered to her face, her pants lashed with mud. With a wave to Gabe, who stood in one doorway of the fattoria with an intern on either side, she ran to Casa Padua.

  Pieces of Mercy’s costume, damp and rumpled, led to the closed door of her bedroom, which was shut and, as Juliette discovered, locked. “Leave me the fuck alone,” was the only response Juliette got, so eventually she did just that. As the lightning and thunder cracked, she made her way around the house shutting windows and doors. For a long moment she stood on the porch, breathing deep the mineral-rich air that rose from the newly wet stone all around her—rain on rock made her mouth water. She looked over at the villa, where a light shone from every window as all the guests dried off and drew baths and prepared to wait out the storm.

  Sighing, she made her slightly squishy way to her room. She was halfway through stripping off her wet clothes when a voice said, “So it is t
rue, then; it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good.”

  Fully clothed and perfectly dry, O’Connor was lying quite comfortably on her bed. Without a word, Juliette dropped the dripping blouse she was holding onto the floor and shut the door.

  The crash of breaking glass followed the screech of something heavy being shoved against the floor, and Juliette was instantly awake. Outside, the moon shone high and clear; the storm had passed and no clouds blurred the stars. From the next room, she heard a low laugh and Mercy’s voice softly calling her name. She glanced over at Michael, who in his sleep had rolled on his side and clutched the covers under his chin like a child. Juliette whispered his name but he did not stir. Outside, Mercy called again, and Juliette could hear the big iron bolt sliding open, the heavy wooden front doors pushed apart.

  She emerged from her bedroom in time to see Mercy stumble onto the porch, down the stairs, and into the wet courtyard, laughing softly as she went. Exasperated, Juliette followed her. No matter what her state of sobriety, it wasn’t safe for someone like Mercy to go prowling around Cerreta in the dead of night. The gray-water swamp was a few hundred yards away from the house and hidden well by reeds; barbed wire and electrified fence ran along many of the fields behind the fattoria, and adjacent to the olive groves yawned the old quarry, its dangerous depths obscured by a cushion of morning glories that swarmed along the bottom and up its sides. Not to mention all that mud.

  But Mercy wasn’t heading for any of those dangers. Watching her pale form glimmer across the courtyard, Juliette hesitated. Maybe the girl was just keeping some midnight assignation, maybe, Juliette thought with a smile, even with Gabe. But she doubted it. The day had not unfolded in such a way as to provide for midnight assignations. And before she could get to the back entrance of the villa, Mercy veered to the left, heading toward a small door cut into the bottom of the bell tower. Even at that distance, Juliette could see her throw a glance over her shoulder, before she reached up above the doorway, found the key Juliette had showed her, and disappeared.