The Starlet

by Mary McNamara

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “All night?”

  “All night.”

  “I wondered where she had got to,” Juliette said, then said no more.

  “We were talking most of the night,” Gabe said, after a pause that he clearly was not comfortable with. “About her recovery. She seems to really want to get sober even if no one else does. Did you know that Steve Usher told her that a reasonable first step was choosing between drugs and alcohol? That it was okay to drink because she had to ‘step down’ from her addictions? We see how successful that’s been. Apparently Lloyd tried to get her to give it all up. I think . . .” He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer, less defensive. “She swears she never gave him any drugs, but she feels pretty guilty about his death, like it was somehow her fault. I told her no one could make or break Lloyd’s sobriety except him, but . . .” He stopped and shook his head. “It’s too bad, because it seems like he had almost gotten there, you know? She gave me his copy of that horrible Little Book and you should see it. He wrote these hilarious and really insightful things all over the margins. He totally went to town on the bibliography, which is five pages long and chock-full of books you’ve never heard of. Seriously, Usher should be arrested for being criminally unhelpful.”

  “Poor Mercy,” she said, automatically tuning out Gabe’s lecture on the evils of Steve Usher; having seen the anguish on Usher’s face as he looked down on Angie’s body, Juliette had a difficult time casting him in the role of the villain at the moment. “How is she ever going to survive this?”

  “That will be interesting to see,” he said. “With any luck, she won’t. If by survive, you mean continue to deny the reality of her life so she doesn’t have to change. With any luck, she will let herself feel whatever it is she feels without burying it under too many drugs and bullshit. With any luck, she’ll finally decide to get help.” He gave Juliette a piercing look. “But that may be too much to ask for.”

  “What’s too much to ask for?” said O’Connor, stepping onto the porch. “That they just pull the plug on this wretched film and let us go home?” he said, handing Juliette Angie’s purse. “Here, the police asked me to deliver this to Mercy. I guess they’re satisfied that it was an accident, which is a minor blessing. I mean, after Lloyd, it is beginning to feel like this project is cursed or something. I mean, God, what a thing to have happen. Angie wasn’t my favorite person in the whole world, but still. How is Mercy? Is she still sleeping? Oh, there you are, princess,” he said, his voice instantly dropping to a more gentle, almost loving tone, his gaze shifting over Juliette’s shoulder to where Mercy stood, blinking against the sun, in the doorway. “How are you feeling, kiddo? I’m just sorry as hell about your mom. It’s a terrible thing. Unbelievable, really.”

  Mercy nodded silently, and held her hand out toward Juliette for the purse, which she drew against her chest and cradled as if it were a doll.

  “What would you like to do, baby girl?” Michael continued in a soft voice. “You want us to get you home? You want to talk to your dad? We can get you on a plane tonight, you just say the word.”

  Mercy did not seem to hear him. She opened the purse and lifted it up to her face, breathing deeply. Watching her, Juliette remembered in a rush the smell of her own mother’s purse—an intoxicating mix of leather and White Shoulders, cinnamon gum and the copper of old pennies. Mercy lowered the bag and, rummaging around in it for a moment, found her inhaler. After three long puffs, she looked at Michael with a coolness that added years to her face.

  “I haven’t spoken to my father in six months,” she said. “I don’t see why I should speak to him now.” She turned to head back into the house. “Tell Carson,” she said over her shoulder as she trailed away, “that we can shoot that kitchen scene, if there’s still time to set it up. I just need to take a shower first.”

  “Mercy,” objected the three of them in unison; after exchanging looks, the men ceded to Juliette.

  “You really don’t need to do that,” she said. “Not even Carson expects you to work today, or tomorrow, for that matter. You need to take care of yourself or you really will collapse . . .”

  Mercy sighed and looked at Juliette with pity.

  “How long do you think it will take for my mother’s death to hit the media, the Internet? I mean, if it hasn’t already? And when it does, how long do you suppose it will be before every paparazzo and entertainment reporter in the world tries to find me and photograph me and interview me, the troubled and grieving daughter? Cerreta may be isolated, but it isn’t on Mars.”

  “She’s right,” O’Connor said after a pause. “We’ll be lucky to finish even if we do start today. It could get ugly.”

  “We’ll get security,” Juliette said. “We’ll put up a gate at the end of the road.”

  Mercy gave her a small pale smile.

  “You do that, Juliette. Meanwhile, tell Carson we should keep shooting as long as the light holds.” And she vanished back into the house.

  In the silence that followed this proclamation, Juliette turned instinctively to Gabe to see what his reaction would be, to Mercy’s decision and the reason behind it. She did not imagine he would be happy with the idea of a gate or security at the end of the road leading up to Cerreta—it certainly was not in keeping with the eco-crunchy nature of the place and would certainly let any paparazzi, and gawkers, know they were in the right place. But Gabe was still gazing at the space where Mercy had just stood, his face a mixture of admiration, pity, and anger. “What the hell,” he said finally, “is in that inhaler?”

  “Nothing,” Juliette said, taken aback. “Seriously. I checked.”

  “Check again,” said Gabe. “Because my money says she’s sucking down a speedball.”

  • • •

  Juliette managed to take the inhaler to a pharmacy in Siena, and found nothing but albuterol. She emailed Devlin for a local security contact; she wasn’t about to call him again and would have rather not emailed, but she needed a name. Almost instantly he replied, sending her a name and a number, told her he was glad she was “finally seeking professional help,” apologized for getting off the phone “so abruptly,” and asked if Steve Usher was still there.

  “Yes,” she messaged back, relieved that their communication was back to normal. “But I don’t think he will be of much help. He doesn’t seem to have much of a network over here. He is,” she added because she felt she had to, “sticking pretty close to Mercy. For once.”

  And it was true. Mercy moved through the next few days like a wraith, sitting in silence between takes staring at nothing or disappearing into her trailer. She smoked constantly, ate rarely, and acknowledged the presence of the makeup artists, the stylists, her costar, the director, or even Juliette only when absolutely necessary. Surprisingly, she allowed Usher to coddle her, to ply her with fortified water, a rainbow assortment of herbal supplements, and a constant low murmur of readings from the Little Book.

  Maybe, Juliette thought, this was because Usher had seemed so genuinely shocked and upset over Angie’s death. Remembering how the blood drained from his face when he peered down at the body, Juliette had to wonder if there wasn’t some truth in Mercy’s accusations that Usher and Angie had had more than a working relationship. For once Usher seemed at a loss for words; even the loose-limbed jauntiness of his self-conciously rock-star step had vanished. Moving almost crablike in his floppy linen, he seemed to have aged ten years. But somehow it brought him closer to Mercy. Soon it was Usher making Mercy’s needs and requests known to Carson and O’Connor and the rest of the crew, and everyone had to acknowledge he was much more charming about it than Angie had ever been.

  Even with an official proclamation of accidental death, a low hum of tension filled the set and quickly seeped all over Cerreta. With little or no argument, Carson had a gate installed at the bottom of the road leading to the castello, and the Italian security firm Devlin had recommended sent over a
pair of requisitely thuggish-looking men who wandered the grounds and various live sets. But aside from a backpacker who was carrying a suspicious number of cameras and several telephoto lenses, there was no trouble. Back in the States, Becker quietly announced Angie’s death and issued a statement that Mercy was flying to Paris to be with friends and family. Everyone on the set received a personal email from him reminding them of their confidentiality contracts and warning he would “personally take action against” anyone who breeched that agreement, “considering the tragic circumstances.”

  It may have been an effective news blackout but it didn’t help the mood at Cerreta. The normally profane and jocular crew now fell silent whenever Mercy made an appearance. Some quietly offered their condolences, but many exchanged skeptical, judgmental, or even occasionally accusing looks when she passed. In death, Angie was granted a sympathy she had never received in life; among themselves, some of the same crew now discussed how high-handed and ungrateful Mercy had been with her mother. Anyone could have seen how miserable Angie had been that last night, but had Mercy even bothered to try to patch things up? Of course not. No wonder Angie had been such a bitch, with a daughter like that. It was not at all surprising she had gotten so drunk that night; more than a few wondered if Angie hadn’t simply hurled herself into the quarry, and why not? Hadn’t her own daughter just fired her?

  Silent and pale, Mercy seemed to accept that her status was not that of a grief-stricken daughter, or at least not that alone. She drew to the set not only the normal mayhem of a troubled star but something that began to feel like fear. Like an unfortunate sailor whose mere presence appeared to doom a voyage, she was in danger of becoming Jonah. O’Connor was not the only person to use the word “cursed”—it hung in the air like a constant whisper, utterly at odds with the bright skies and fragrant wind of late spring as it shook its skirts out over the Tuscan countryside.

  Yet even as Mercy seemed to melt away into silence and smoke, on camera she had never been so vivid, so full of desperate fire or tamped-down passion. As the dueling narratives of the film crescendoed, Mercy was a wonder to watch. Her modern woman battled nefarious forces that would destroy art and lives in pursuit of profit, while in a parallel life, her young nun, hobbled by poverty and the oppression of the times, vainly attempted to deny her earthly desires, seeking in God what she could not have in life.

  Soon the work became as much a source of tension as the accident. As Mercy became almost pathologically immersed in her character, Michael O’Connor struggled not to be outshone. In scene after scene, he, too, reached for depths of feeling and layers of complication he had not visited in years as an actor. And while Juliette felt a rush of almost proprietary pleasure seeing him push himself so far and hard, she could also see the toll it took on him, emotionally and physically. More than once, she saw him reach for his own tawny vial of prescription medication and she wondered if it was continuation of the chemotherapy or just pain meds. Any concern he had for Mercy, any thought he might have of Juliette, were soon put aside as he disappeared entirely into the two characters, becoming almost as taciturn and withdrawn as Mercy.

  “Juliette, I’m working,” he had said with a sigh at one point when she brought him a cup of coffee and attempted a conversation. “I’m sorry, but this is all I can do at the moment.”

  Juliette found some consolation in the fact that he was not lying. Aware that Becker’s Paris story could only hold for so long and fearing that the intensity of the two stars could not sustain itself indefinitely, Carson and Golonski pushed the schedule, shooting scene after scene, requesting rewrites to accommodate Mercy’s increasing abandon, Michael’s desperate determination, and the landscape around them. The few times Juliette glimpsed Joseph Andrews, he looked gray and grim, utterly unapproachable, his sole companion a laptop on which he appeared to be writing an entirely new movie.

  Golonski, on the other hand, had never seemed happier, smiling and nodding, cosseting Mercy during the shoots, arranging the folds of her costume, stroking her hair, touching her impassive face as if she were a doll. Following his cue, Carson took the opportunity to glue herself to O’Connor’s side, position herself as beloved trainer to his prizefighter. Juliette had barely spoken to him since Angie’s death, and aside from offering a few regretful smiles, O’Connor did not seem to notice.

  It was little comfort that Gabriel seemed to be suffering the same fate.

  “Mercy won’t even speak to me,” Gabe said as he and Juliette stood on the northwest corner of the courtyard, watching the crew set up for a series of scenes involving the bell tower. “Which I kind of get, since we spent a lot of time that night talking about all the damage her mother had done. So she probably feels guilty, which is ridiculous, since the fact the woman is dead doesn’t make her less of a bitch. But still . . .”

  Juliette nodded, her eyes searching for and finding O’Connor, who was watching a nearby monitor with a look of distinct dissatisfaction on his face.

  “And she probably blames me,” Gabe continued, “which means she’s wrapping herself up in denial, aided and abetted by ol’ Steverino. Who, by the way, has offered not only to buy Cerreta but to create a foundation that would allow me ‘to take my message all over the world.’ The man will not take no for an answer, even though I’ve given it to him in three or four languages.”

  “She’ll speak to you,” Juliette said. “Just don’t be pushy. You can be very pushy.”

  “Caring,” Gabe said. “I can be very caring. The longer she wastes with him, the longer it’s going to take for her to get sober and on with her life.”

  “See, that’s what I’m talking about, Gabe. Nobody makes any real change in their life just because someone tells them it’s a good idea. You really need to watch more television.”

  Seeing O’Connor rise, looking weary and unhappy, and make his way toward his trailer, Juliette frowned a bit and almost unconsciously began following him. It had been days since they had actually had a private conversation, much less anything more intimate. She knew from experience how hard it was for him to ask for help, at least when he actually needed it, and she wondered how much anyone on the set knew of his physical condition. Since he had come to Cerreta, she realized as she began to walk a bit more quickly, he had not even mentioned the cancer to her.

  Meanwhile, Gabe continued to walk beside her, saying things she didn’t quite catch because she wasn’t quite listening. “You really should take a look at the Little Book,” Gabe said, refusing to acknowledge her intention to leave, “if you need a laugh or two. Lloyd’s notes are pretty hilarious. I bet Usher wants it back so no one can sell it on eBay. Although if you believe Mercy, he’d be the one to sell it on eBay.”

  Juliette frowned—there was an unfamiliar note in her cousin’s voice. Frivolity, that was it. “Are you high?” she asked. “Or is this just you in love? Because it’s really weirding me out.” She began moving toward Michael’s trailer, into which he had disappeared for once not trailed by Carson. Without missing a beat, Gabe followed her.

  “I am ebullient by nature,” he said. “Where are we going? You know,” he said, his voice rising slightly, “I actually forgot to tell you. I managed to pay down a bunch of debts and get us on a program to pay off the rest. I think you should see it.”

  “Later,” Juliette said.

  “Later I have to go into town,” Gabe said. “Let’s do it now, real quick.” He took her arm and all but pulled her away. “Just real quick.”

  “What is wrong with you?” Juliette replied hotly, jerking her arm out of his grasp and knocking on the trailer door. “We can do it later. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Jules,” Gabe said, his voice low and pleading, “come on. I don’t think you should—”

  But it was too late. Upon her final knock, the trailer door had swung open, revealing, if not in full light then at least in no-explanations-necessary silhouette, Michael seated on the sofa while Carson bent over him. She was wearing only a T-sh
irt.

  Juliette didn’t pause to see what would happen next; her face flaming, she turned on her heel and left. She heard a voice call her name but she was moving so fast she wasn’t sure if it was Gabe’s or Michael’s. Either way, she didn’t care. She didn’t want explanations or reassurances or Gabe’s infernal lecture about the importance of feeling her feelings. She just wanted to get away, to be alone so she could remind herself, calmly, that she had known something like this would happen, known it all along, it was just a matter of time, and this didn’t matter, not really, not at all. She remembered, with a bitter smile, a conversation she had fallen into back in Los Angeles with Michael’s most recent ex-wife, who had warned her about getting involved with him and mentioned, most specifically, O’Connor’s on-set behavior. Even Mercy had warned her: “Michael cheats,” she had said, “though maybe he won’t with you.”

  “Maybe” is not a word upon which to balance your heart. But why should she be any different from the countless other women in O’Connor’s past? And why would Michael be any different from her husband? Josh had cheated on her. After ten years of marriage, happy marriage. Even after everything that had happened, Juliette still couldn’t quite believe that Josh had left her. You really couldn’t count on anyone. Hadn’t she learned the lesson yet? Hadn’t she learned that lesson years ago, right here in this very spot, listening to the angry words and the weeping, the roiling silence that followed? There was at least some comfort in the symmetry—beauty and peace were no protection against treachery. Love, romantic love, was a small illusory Eden, its borders defined by betrayal.

  Taking the steps of Casa Padua two at a time, she was barely aware of the car pulling into the courtyard, but when it was quickly followed by two more, red lights flashing, she paused. Inspector Di Marco unfolded himself from the first car and smiled gravely up at Juliette. “Signora Greyson,” he said. “Where would I find Signor Golonski and Signora Cooper?”

  “Is something wrong?” Juliette asked, quickly steadying her voice. From the corner of her eye, she could see Gabe come to a halt a few yards away.