Movie Star By Lizzie Pepper

by Hilary Liftin

  My father cleared his throat. He was in his element now. Corporate tycoon by day, quietly determined manager of his daughter’s career by night. I should have known that he would like Rob for my career, and that was all he needed. My father had come to the dinner already knowing what he wanted, and my father always got what he wanted. I always win.

  My mother, obviously too curious about our conversation to finish the dishes, poked her head out. “Are these men plotting for you to take over the world?” she chirped.

  “Just Hollywood,” said my father. He said it lightly, but his eyes were dead serious.

  By the time we returned to L.A., it had all been arranged. I would switch to Rob’s agency, ACE, and my new agents would line up the lead in a franchise, pronto.

  I wasn’t exploiting my famous boyfriend if he wanted me to do it . . . right? And, according to the two men in my life, whatever huge movie this was would propel me into the stratosphere, where I would float alongside Rob, orbited by brilliant scripts and important directors. It would be a dream come true, just not exactly how I’d envisioned it coming to pass.

  9

  Two weeks later, in the middle of September, Rob and I went to St. Maarten. He told me he had a meeting and wanted to make it into a vacation, but I would soon find out that was a lie. The first clue that something was going down was when our car from the airport took us straight to a yacht club at the water’s edge. Rob led me out of the car, leaving our luggage to the driver, and straight up the dock, where we boarded a yacht—a large one, or, as I would later learn it was called, a super-yacht.

  The sun was just beginning to set, the water a dazzling gold. There was not a soul in sight—either by chance or design. By this point I expected the latter. As we boarded, I vaguely registered that the boat was named the Queen Elizabeth, but I didn’t think twice about it. Sure, it’s my name, but a) it’s pretty common and in fact seemed like a completely unoriginal name for a yacht; and b) I still wasn’t really used to being anyone but “Lizzie.”

  I’m not the kind of girl who’s had a fantasy of what her engagement night would be like since she was young. But I’m no dummy. I’ve seen and acted in my share of romance movies, and the minute I stepped on deck I saw that the mood had been set. Rob had spared no expense. This was to be our big night.

  Music played, classical piano. The floor was scattered with blue rose petals, which I would find out had been flown in that morning from Japan, by private jet. Dozens of white candles had been artistically placed around the cabin, wafting scent. I noticed how good they smelled, although I didn’t yet know that I was experiencing a designer scent that had been developed exclusively for us and this moment.

  “Wait here,” Rob said, and hurried up the steps to the upper deck. A few minutes later he called out, “All ready!” and I tiptoed forward. The sky was wide and glorious, streaked with red and orange. And looking perfectly cast for this backdrop was the man who stood in front of it. My gorgeous, movie star, would-be husband.

  He stood there, wearing the same boyish smile he had in the poster on Aurora’s bedroom door.

  In Rob’s hands was a box, and in the box was a custom Walford Diamond engagement ring, a rock that probably cost more than my first apartment. My heart was fluttering. This moment! It was happening before I’d even had time to wonder if or hope that it would happen.

  Rob got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Women’s hearts broke around the world.

  I said yes. You don’t say no to Rob Mars.

  The night Rob Mars asked me to marry him was every girl’s fantasy. It wasn’t exaggerating to say that he was the most eligible bachelor in the world. You can see it all in the photographs splashed across every magazine the following week: The shock on my face as I step out onto the deck. The hint of nervousness as he kneels in front of me with a ring. Our arms entwined, sipping champagne afterward. The photographs say it all: Here’s a couple who’s truly in love, perfectly happy with each other, isolated from the rest of the world in a moment of pure intimacy. But nobody stops to wonder: Who took those photographs?

  I said yes to Rob, dropping to my knees next to him. “Wait, we were better before,” I said, standing up again. We were exactly the same height when he was kneeling. We kissed, laughed, kissed again. “Oh my God,” I said. “Really? Really?” I was still processing, but Rob was a man with a plan.

  “Hold that thought,” he said, and pulled out his phone. I assumed he was calling his parents, but all he said was “We’re ready for you.”

  Then he explained. We were going to sell photos of our engagement to Rounder and donate the proceeds to One Cell’s youth education fund. No sooner had he finished explaining than people started filing up on deck. Rob’s event planner, a photographer, two assistants, hair and makeup people for me and Rob, and a magazine writer. Where had they come from? They must have been hiding in one of the staterooms. I wasn’t ready—I’d barely caught my breath—but I could see why he wanted it done right away. Then they’d be gone and we’d be alone again to bask in the excitement and mystery of our future. Also, as his event planner pointed out to me, we only had fifty minutes until we lost our light. Of course, it had all been perfectly timed for sunset. Not the actual engagement—the reenactment.

  They scurried me back downstairs to prep me to arrive on the upper deck, have the question popped, and be surprised and elated all over again. It was like an acting exercise.

  At least I have no trouble remembering the details of my engagement—I did at least five takes of it before they were sure they had what they needed. If I remember correctly, the magazine donated $100,000 to One Cell in honor of our engagement, so it was all for a good cause. And then I called my parents to tell them the exciting news.

  I thought of myself as a cynic, yet when it came to love I seemed to be stuck in teen movie fantasyland. After all, my first kiss was for American Dream, perfectly lit. My first love was my onscreen prom date, a heartthrob who’d literally been cast for our chemistry. My first heartbreak played like an end-of-series finale, both of us, still in love, compelled to go our separate ways. After Justin, the perfectly cast love interest, there was Johnny, a classic bad boy through and through. Most girls have four years of college to lie on a dorm bed, hash through obsessions and drunken encounters, and get these clichés out of their system. Then they have their twenties for a series of near misses as they tiptoe toward the mundane realities of long-term relationships. But I went straight from youthful romance to a fairy-tale prince. Roses and diamonds, mansions and islands, Rob was everything but the shining armor: a movie star, a hunk, the catch of the century, an icon. I didn’t care about his fame and success, I didn’t care about money and power. And I certainly didn’t go for the diamonds and roses. Rob was king of the great, romantic gesture—but I always saw the role of Prince Charming as a nervous habit of his, something to fall back on when he felt something he had no idea how to express. Contrived as our engagement was, it came from his bundled-up heart. I didn’t need Captain Joe, the hero of Rob’s classic movie. I loved Rob for what was underneath it all, for the frog I could extract from all that princelyness.

  After I said yes, we called our parents, and I called Aurora.

  “You won, Pepper! You won the gold medal in the Love Olympics!” she exclaimed. And then: “But the most important thing is that he loves you. I saw how he looks at you. Oh my God, I’m Rob Mars’s maid of honor!”

  “Oh yeah—you’ll be my maid of honor, won’t you?” I said.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  My parents feigned surprise until my father admitted that Rob had asked him for my hand when we were in Chicago.

  “He didn’t!” I punched Rob’s arm.

  “I told him you were a grown woman, but that he had my blessing.”

  I knew my father too well to believe that. He could blather on about my independence and maturity, but no q
uestion he was pleased Rob had asked. And delighted to bestow his blessing on a man of such . . . achievement.

  After the phone calls came the part of the evening that was just for us, the part that wasn’t in the magazines.

  At Rob’s cue, the Queen Elizabeth headed out into the lagoon. Champagne and a plate of spicy shrimp appeared.

  “By the way,” Rob said, “I hope you like this boat. It’s your engagement present.” Hence her name: I was marrying the king, and that made me Queen Elizabeth.

  I could only shake my head. “You sure you want to do this?” I said. “Why buy the cow . . . ?”

  Rob burst out laughing, pulling me into his arms. “I want the cow. It’s the best damned cow I’ve ever seen.”

  The waitstaff started bringing us food. Local specialties—some of the freshest fish I’ve ever had—though I also had the sensation that everything—dinner, the champagne, dessert, the view, the waiters—everything tasted better, looked more beautiful, and felt delightful simply because I was in love.

  After dinner we stood together, alone, at the prow of the boat. The pink-and-gold sunset had faded, and the sky was dark, full of stars. The captain cut the engines and we floated quietly, the scattered lights of the island illuminating the harbor. I watched Rob looking out at the view. He took a breath, as if to speak, and I put a finger to his mouth.

  “Wait,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

  “Don’t do what?”

  “Don’t yell how much you love me.”

  “I’m going to marry you, Elizabeth, and I’m so proud I might explode.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I get it. But this is not Titanic. Just keep it small.”

  He leaned forward and whispered in my ear in the tiniest, truest voice. “I love you. You are my heart and soul. I will love you forever.”

  I turned my head and whispered in his ear, “Me too.”

  The next day, the whole world found out. Pictures of our engagement showed us on the Queen Elizabeth, at the beginning of the night. Rob and I looked really happy and perfect. How could we not? The Caribbean. The roses, the candlelight, the glorious sunset, the big ol’ Walford Diamond ring: It was Celebrity Wedding Package Deluxe. And, just like that, in an instant, all the bad press was over. All the flubs and missteps of the past months; all the vitriol and schadenfreude and snark; all the cynicism about our relationship just melted away. It didn’t matter that, to us, they were photo-ops for charity. The media ate it up. We were “the ‘It’ couple of Hollywood.” America’s Girl Next Door and People’s Sexiest Bachelor of the Year. A match made in Hollywood heaven. It turned out that this was what they’d wanted all along—the perfect movie romance—me and Rob, holding hands under a rainbow, ready to start our lives together.

  PART TWO

  SPOTLIGHT

  1

  Magically, now that Rob and I were engaged, the press suddenly loved me—but they had a funny way of showing it. Starting the minute we returned from the Caribbean, I was followed by at least six photographers in SUVs every time I left the house. One particularly aggressive guy with dark curly hair must have specialized in zoom shots of dermatological conditions because he was always two inches from my nose. I nicknamed him Pops because it was easier to pretend this omnipresent man was part of some bizarre family structure than to fight for my right to walk freely to my car.

  Amidst the press calls and congratulatory gifts and more than a hundred thousand new Twitter followers overnight (literally), there was an odd note that, instead of coming with the regular mail, slipped out of a stack of tabloids where it must have gotten caught and nearly lost. It was written in a long, elegant hand, and all it said was “Dear Elizabeth, I wish you all the best. ‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’” I knew the line from Hamlet—and from the yearbook pages of at least six of my high school classmates. It was signed “Lexy.” Rob’s ex-wife. It was a kind enough sentiment, but, again, strange.

  In addition to having ACE as my new agency, I had a new PR company, Lotus. My longtime publicist, P. J., was out—as Rob pointed out, it made sense to work with the same people as him across the board. For “leverage.” Lotus told me to just roll with the press onslaught. Eventually, the value of the photos would decline, and the attention would die down. My new hair and makeup guy, Joaquim, moved into the guesthouse in Malibu, and if I left the house, even for a coffee, he spent a half hour getting me ready.

  At least twenty messengers arrived every day with hanging bags from various designers. Now that I was being photographed constantly, I was a “trendsetter.” Genna, my stylist, picked my outfits for events. Meg helped me with the day-to-day and managed a spreadsheet that documented everything I’d ever worn in public, when and where I wore it, and who was there. I felt like an idiot not dressing myself, but the clothing situation had become completely unmanageable. I was expected to wear something different every day, and I had no idea what I owned anymore. Or had on loan.

  One morning—a few days after my twenty-fifth birthday—Meg and I were in the Brentwood guest room, getting it ready for me and Rob to co-opt while the master was being renovated. (We were breaking through a wall to “capture”—as the architect put it—what was currently a spare sitting room so it could be my dressing room.) After we finished, I had to get ready for a lunch in Beverly Hills. I was wearing what Meg had laid out for me that morning: a hand-knit sweater and jeggings. The sweater was oversize and chunky, with dolman sleeves, a built-in scarf, and earth-toned stripes. Not something I ever would have picked for myself, and now that it was midday, the cloud cover had broken and it was too hot for alpaca, or llama, or whatever hairy yaklike beast had sacrificed its wool for my warmth. As I pulled my head out of the sweater, I caught Meg pursing her lips.

  “What?” I said. “Do I look like a cow?”

  “Stop it,” Meg said.

  “Why are you making that face?”

  “It’s just—do you maybe want to pose in it first?” She explained that Lotus made deals for us to be photographed in certain clothes. This was called a “trend launch” and my rate was $20,000 a pop—twice Rob’s—assuming the designer was mentioned by name in a major media outlet. If not, if the item was photographed but there was no mention of the brand, then the fee dropped down a tier.

  “Twenty thousand dollars? To wear a sweater for five minutes?” I was no stranger to freebies, but now it turned out I wasn’t just getting free shit. I was getting paid to make use of the free shit.

  “Well, not always. We drove them up pretty high on this one since it isn’t exactly you.” Meg wrinkled her nose at the sweater.

  I looked in the mirror. “What’s me?” I asked. Meg laughed, but didn’t respond. “No, I’m serious,” I said.

  Meg took a moment. “Okay, well, I think I’ve heard Genna pitch you as ‘urban refined’—tailored and classic, but with shoes and bags that pop.” She reached into the closet and pulled out a navy silk blazer that looked like someone had taken a razor to its back. “Here, is this better?”

  “But what about the twenty thousand dollars?”

  “Some other day,” she said, shrugging.

  That $20,000 was at the back of my mind all day. It was a lot of money, but what did it even mean to me now? I never saw the bills, but we probably spent at least that much every time Rob shut down a restaurant so we could have a night out. At the same time, that kind of money could change people’s lives. It could provide clean water to some googleable number of children for a year. Aurora’s charity could build a school or two in Africa. And I could earn it for wearing a sweater. A dinner out; two wells in Africa (I googled it); a school.

  My next thought was Great, I’ll do it. I’ll wear whatever they want—so long as the money goes to charity. I would relinquish my fashion autonomy for the greater good.

  The next day when I proposed this to Meg, she just said, “Don’t overthink it. They’ll keep maki
ng the deals. Sometimes you’ll like the product, sometimes you won’t. Don’t sell yourself out. There’s always another opportunity.”

  “And what about the money?” I asked. “I want it to go to a worthy cause.”

  “Rob gives forty percent of his net annual income to charity,” Meg said. “It adds up to a whole lot more than your trend fees.” Right. So that was that. Sorry, Africa.

  My birthday had passed. (A dinner with Rob. More diamonds.) I was already getting more attention than any human being could tolerate. So why did I have a blowout twenty-fifth birthday party that garnered a tabloid grand slam? (That’s what Lotus called landing the covers of all three major tabloids—Rounder, Glam, and Starlight—in one week.) When Meg suggested the party to me, she gave me two reasons. The first was that now that I was a client, ACE wanted to throw me a sort of coming-out celebration. They were the most powerful agency in Hollywood, and, as my father had pointed out, it made sense to be at Rob’s agency. They would do anything to make their biggest client happy, and Rob would be happy if I was happy. ACE had the power to transform my career overnight.

  The second reason to have the event was that apparently Rob had already signed off on it, so it didn’t really matter what I thought anyway.

  It says something about Meg that when she said the birthday party would be fun, I almost believed her. Plus I needed to take my mind off Man of Her Dreams. The preliminary reviews were trickling in, and they weren’t good.

  My birthday party needed a theme, because that’s how celebrity party planners work. You can’t just say, “Come to my birthday party,” stick some candles in a store-bought cake, and call it a day. Bethamy, who did all of Rob’s events, could see that I was an inexperienced hostess, so she spent hours walking me through the process, which, now that I think of it, wouldn’t have taken nearly so long were it not for Bethamy’s propensity for run-on sentences. As Bethamy informed me, first there had to be an idea board, and Bethamy was sure I had a favorite historical period or a tropical destination or a famous crime spree that captured my feelings surrounding my first quarter century of life, and if I wasn’t sure what to pick, no worries, because Bethamy herself had the best vendors, and her parties were transformative. Right now she was seeing a 1920s gangster theme—Rob in a chalk-stripe suit and a Panama hat. Me in a beret and tight sweater, smoking a cigarette (I liked that part). Did that give me any ideas? I felt sure Bethamy was trying to get me to suggest Bonnie and Clyde, but I refused to bite. With fake money bags and toy guns and cigars? Did I see it? No, Bethamy, I didn’t see it yet. A bullet-ridden getaway car? An old Ford? Nope, nothing. Finally I said, “I like books about explorers. Mountain climbers. Jailbreaks. The Donner party. Could you make a cannibal theme work?” That shut her up for a good five minutes.