An assistant with a walkie-talkie appeared and escorted me to the set, reporting along the way, “Randle on the move … Randle in sixty seconds … Randle approaching …”
The set was a satisfyingly stupendous casino in the sky. There were roulette wheels, blackjack tables and, standing or seated in clusters, at least seventy-five extras dressed as oily, jaded, tuxedo-clad high rollers and their bored, bejeweled trophy wives.
I was brought to the elevated VIP balcony of the casino, guarded by hydrant-necked goons with black mock turtlenecks, ski-goggle sunglasses and greasy ponytails.
I was seated beside my on-screen mobster boyfriend, a man-mountain of tapioca-colored fat squeezed into a bulging black suit and an open-collared black satin shirt, with a neckload of gold chains. He looked like what would happen if you went into a pancake house and ordered a triple stack of jowls. I recognized this actor from the movies where he’d played every nationality of dictator and drug kingpin and once, to win his Oscar, a crusty French villager who against his better judgment had hidden an adorable Jewish child from the Gestapo.
“Hello, so good to meet you,” said the actor, in his real-life English accent. “I’m Colin Swetland-Jane and I’m going to treat you horribly, because I’m the most dreadful Soviet mobster.” Then he grinned happily, which made me love him.
I only had one line in the scene. The camera would spot me as Colin was snarling into his cell phone. He would warn me to “Stay!” and lumber off. As I sat, moody and restless, I was supposed to ignore all of Paree as Jate sauntered over. He would ask, “Is this seat taken?” And I would reply, “Can you afford it?”
Billy Seth was crouching many yards away deep within a fortress of video monitors and sound equipment, with a set of bulbous headphones clamped around his skull as if he were back in his childhood New Hampshire basement playing a maximum-mayhem video game.
“Lights!” cried the assistant director and the soundstage was flooded with artificial moonbeams and the dapple from twenty chandeliers.
“Quiet!” yelled another assistant as the crew’s jabbering voices, planning the menus for their lunch breaks, ceased, and everyone began watching the scene unfurl.
“Rolling!” shouted a final assistant and from inside his humming hideout of moviemaking wizardry Billy Seth said, “Action!”
“Screw ju, American schvine!” Colin sneered into his phone, with a guttural Russian accent. “I vill tek jour eyes, and de eyes of jour cheeldrens!” He glared at me as if he could barely remember where he’d bought me, barked “Stay!” and, breathing heavily, heaved himself to his surprisingly tiny, alligator-loafered feet. He nodded to his goons and angled himself toward his hair and makeup people, waiting just off camera and eager to begin touch-ups. Then Jate came toward me, rugged and suave, with one hand tucked into the pocket of his white dinner jacket, as if he might remove a diamond bracelet as a gift, or a revolver. He caught sight of me, cocked his head an eighth of an inch and asked, “Is this seat taken?” After scrambling for what felt like three lifetimes to remember my line I blurted out, “I don’t know!”
“Cut!” yelped an assistant and Jate assured Billy Seth and the hundreds of other crew members that this was my first time on a movie set and that I was a tiny bit nervous and that I was going to be great. Then he added, “I mean, if only she didn’t look like a baboon,” and everyone laughed. There was a second call for quiet, a second “Rolling!” a second “Action!” and a second “Is this seat taken?” to which I answered, in a trembling whisper, “I can’t afford it!”
“Cut!”
There were many, many more takes, as I said, among other things, “It’s the mobster guy’s seat!” “Wait, what was the question?” and “Hi, I’m a call girl!” I was shaking and shivering and about to crack when Jate asked for a time-out and guided me swiftly into my trailer.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” asked Jate once we were inside.
“I don’t know!”
“You’re gonna be terrific. And you look, okay, I’m just gonna say it, you look even better than me.”
Jate wanted to lighten things and I almost smiled but I didn’t know what to tell him. Something in me, in Rebecca, had stalled and I was lost. Was it the pressure of living too many lies, of Becky trying to be Rebecca who was aiming to become Elyssa? Were my triple personalities short-circuiting?
“What can I do to help you?” asked Jate.
There was a knock on the door and Tom Kelly stepped inside, making it known, with a glance, that as far as he was concerned, even the fanciest trailer was still just a trailer.
“Tom Kelly,” he said. Tom and Jate had never met but they instantly sized each other up as rival brand names.
“Jate Mallow,” said Jate.
“Could I have a minute with Rebecca?” asked Tom.
“Please?” I begged Jate. “Maybe he can help.”
“I am so disappointed in you,” said Tom after Jate had left. “What is your problem?”
“I just — I feel like the biggest phony who’s ever lived! And when people see this movie, everyone’s going to know that I’m not beautiful and I’m not sexy and I have no idea what I’m doing!”
“Which is precisely how just about every human being in the world feels, every morning,” said Tom. “Including the movie stars. Especially the movie stars. They’re the most frightened, insecure people of all because they know the world is watching. That’s why they go crazy and take drugs and shave their heads. In fact, your having a breakdown and running off the set practically proves that you’re a movie star.”
“But how do they get past it? The real movie stars? How do they deal with the pressure and the stage fright and the expectations?”
“They use this,” Tom explained as he reached inside his jacket and removed, from a pocket, a silvery tube of Tom Kelly lipstick.
“Lipstick?” I asked doubtfully.
“Not just lipstick. Confidence. Raw courage. Stardom in a tube.”
Tom tilted the lipstick so that I could see the circular label on the bottom of this prized Hollywood secret. The color was called Icon by Tom Kelly.
Tom rotated the outer tube so the lipstick itself appeared. It was a clear cylinder, more like crystal than wax or whatever lipstick is ordinarily made of. As I watched, tiny veins of red began to appear in the lipstick, creeping and expanding and intertwining until the lipstick was the exact color of my dress. The lipstick was glowing and pulsing, as if it were either sexually aroused or radioactive; either way, it seemed eager and alive.
Tom took my chin in his hand.
“Hold still.”
As Tom deftly applied the lipstick to my mouth, something occurred to me.
“Was my mom ever in a movie?”
“She was going to be. Right before she vanished. She was going to be the lead and she was out of her mind with excitement. And, of course, she was scared to death.”
“Which movie?”
“It was called Under the Tree.”
I was stunned, not just because my mom had almost appeared on-screen but because of the title.
“That was my mom’s all-time favorite movie. We would watch it every Christmas and she’d cry her eyes out.”
Under the Tree was a Christmas classic about a young girl from Iowa who arrives in New York on Christmas Eve and meets a handsome guy as they both admire the towering Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. They spend the night together and arrange to meet again the next evening under the tree but the guy gets in a car accident and doesn’t show up and it takes the rest of the movie for the couple to find each other, on the next Christmas Eve, under the tree.
“She would’ve been sensational,” said Tom, but he wasn’t taunting me. This was hard to believe, but he sounded wistful.
I knew what I had to do. The lipstick would help but if I really wanted confidence, my performance couldn’t be just about me. I had to become a star, because my mom had never gotten the chance.
“Lights!”
“Rolling!”
“Action!”
“Is this seat taken?”
I took a strategic pause, allowing everyone on the set to wonder if I was going to blow it again, if I was beyond hopeless.
I crossed my legs at the knee, rustling the graceful layers of red chiffon and revealing a swath of sleek long leg and a fetishist’s dream of a foot in my red high-heeled shoe. I licked my lips, just lightly, tasting my Icon by Tom Kelly. As I was about to speak, I heard my mom’s ringtone coming from a deluxe red phone that the props person had set on the table in front of me beside my red satin evening bag. As the ringtone continued, I instantly knew that the sexiest thing I could do would be to ignore Renn Hightower completely, and take the call. As I lifted the phone to my ear I glanced at Jate disdainfully, because he was interrupting my evening. “Can you afford it?” I asked.
“Oh my God, cut! Cut! Shit! CUT!” yelled Billy Seth, and for the first time in his career he left his video village and dropped his headset onto the floor, the wires trailing. He was staring at me in helpless, distracted bewilderment and there’s no polite way to put this: There was a stain, from seconds earlier, spreading across the front of his pale blue jeans. Thanks to Rebecca, Billy Seth had finally hit puberty.
As Jate beamed, I asked, “Billy Seth, would you like me to do it again?”
“Yes! No! I don’t know!” Billy Seth wailed and, clutching his crotch, he ran off, into the darkest recesses of the soundstage.
“That was perfect,” Jate whispered to me.
“Thanks,” I said, just to Jate. “Still gay?”
The rest of the filming went smoothly as the cast and crew were shipped from Paris to Berlin and then to Cairo. And more than ever I was learning just what it meant to travel first class or, as I was starting to think of it, Triple Premium Platinum Elite Everything. And I kept reminding myself, Becky, take notes.
I became aware of urgent debates held just out of Jate’s and my earshot, which would clear hallways and lobbies and screening rooms for our use. I never needed tickets or keys or cash as such things were handled by skilled personal assistants walking briskly a few feet ahead of me and murmuring into their headpieces. I’d once seen a study online where an anthropologist had charted how attractive people get better jobs, bigger and more frequent raises, faster and more attentive service in restaurants and, in general, have an easier time of things than their less attractive counterparts because, as Tom Kelly loved pointing out, life isn’t fair. But as Rebecca I could get apprehensive about taking advantage of, well, my advantages. Yet when Jate and I were automatically ushered past long lines and behind the velvet ropes of the most exclusive clubs and hangouts, I noticed that the otherwise bristling and impatient crowds didn’t complain, because the presence of Jate and Rebecca, or Jatecca, as we were sometimes known, assured them that, even if they were never ultimately allowed inside, they were wasting their hours and their flashiest outfits on exactly the right quest. Some waiters would yawn conspicuously and pretend they didn’t know who we were but I’d always catch them in a corner, texting all their friends about who they’d just ignored.
Jate and I were regarded as a couple, and he became, in a way, the fantasy boyfriend that my childhood self had pined for. He was wry and generous and always available for gossip; at times he would literally take my hand and steer me through the tricky stuff. Jate knew all about navigating interviews with communist journalists (“Just compliment the interviewer’s terrible hairstyle — they get confused.”), appearances on non-English-speaking Japanese talk shows (“Learn three words of Japanese and keep repeating them — they’ll appreciate the effort, and they’ll think your accent is hilarious.”), and our audience with the Pope (“Just cover your hair, smile and check out his little red shoes.”).
During these unnatural days of filming shoot-outs atop the Sphinx’s forehead and sharing a lavish multicourse breakfast with one of the film’s backers, a Saudi billionaire and his eight burka-shrouded wives, I wore either my red dress or an additional and extensive wardrobe that Tom Kelly had provided. Many of these clothes weren’t red but each piece held some hint or layer of the first dress’s signature shade. The collar of a silk blouse was trimmed in a millimeter of red silk ribbon and a pair of navy blue linen pants concealed red pockets. All of these clothes fit with the identical perfection of the original dress and soon Tom and I were being ranked alongside other legendary masters and muses such as Audrey Hepburn and Givenchy, and Catherine Deneuve and Yves St. Laurent. I’d never heard of most of the stars and designers people were talking about so I’d look them up online and gasp. The designers all shared Tom’s air of I’m-the-best-and-I-know-it disdain and the women were always impeccably lovely. It was as if each couturier had taken a beautiful woman and made her distinctive, someone whom other women, and drag queens, could imitate. And when I saw photos of myself dressed by Tom I could understand the comparisons. There I was, chatting with a Parisian shopkeeper or feeding a baby elephant and laughing at a Berlin zoo. My clothes could’ve been designed at any time during the past fifty years and no matter what I was doing or wearing, I looked like an ad for Tom Kelly.
Tom explained to me that, “Beautiful people exist to be photographed. You’re like a rare natural resource and pictures of you allow the world access, for fantasizing. You’re a glamour machine.”
“But that sounds creepy,” I’d protested, “and exhausting.”
“Which is why the truly great beauties are like athletes or dancers or mathematicians. At their peaks, they’re glorious to behold, but their gifts can’t be sustained.”
“So what happens to them? To all of those people?”
“They have two choices: They can either develop an exit strategy, or they can die young and become legendary. Both choices work.”
When Tom said this, I felt a chill, especially because shooting Jate’s movie had taken over two months and I still hadn’t fallen in love and gotten married.
But here was the most shocking development of all: I was actually getting used to being Rebecca Randle. The line between Becky and Rebecca had begun to dissolve. Inhabiting Rebecca, and accepting her beauty and the opportunities and adulation, was like learning a foreign language; at some point even the most die-hard American patriot can begin to think and even dream in French or Farsi or Portuguese. When someone gaped at me or tried to speak and stuttered or silently handed me a rose or a room key, or the deed to their family’s ancestral manor house, I’d almost stopped wondering why and I’d begun to think, of course.
The filming ended in London, with a Lamborghini, hover-craft and Jet Ski chase along the Thames. I had to sit or stand behind Jate in most of these vehicles looking impassive and mildly annoyed as the wind rippled my hair, and sometimes I fired an automatic weapon to prove that, even in a Tom Kelly dress, Elyssa was a feminist. The shooting days could last till four in the morning and I knew that I was starting to think like a movie star when I caught myself telling Jate, “This is really hard work.”
Jate patted my face and agreed, “It’s tragic. People just don’t understand.”
While we were in town, Jate and I were invited to visit a local children’s hospital to help raise funds for a badly needed expansion of the burn unit. At the last minute Jate was called away for a day of reshoots so I went to the hospital alone. I was met by bodyguards and two members of Parliament and was introduced to Dr. Imogen Barry, a sturdy older woman whose silver hair was tugged into a Swedish prison matron’s bun and who’d founded the burn unit twenty-three years earlier.
“You have extraordinary skin,” said Dr. Barry, whose eyes were quickly only a few inches from my face. Dr. Barry was like Seeley Burckhardt, because both women’s professions involved staring at people up close. “It’s completely poreless, it almost seems … not possible. This is the sort of skin we’ve been trying to grow under laboratory conditions, combining donor DNA and artificial polymers, for use in grafts. What are your p
arents?”
“Just regular people.”
“You’re like some sort of next-stage android.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be offended and then Dr. Barry couldn’t resist and she ran a fingertip across my cheek. “May I?” she murmured, although her hand was already rubbing my skin, as if testing its resilience and harvesting a microscopic sample.
“That’s enough,” I said as I had a pang of sympathy for the celebrity mannequins in wax museums, those life-sized replicas that are always being groped and kissed and occasionally beheaded by aggressively devoted fans. Rocher had once asked if the Jate Mallow mannequin was anatomically complete, for dating purposes. “I mean, it would be almost as good as the real thing,” she’d theorized. “Or maybe even better because it couldn’t leave.”
“So sorry,” said Dr. Barry, reluctantly withdrawing her hand as I wondered if there was any way she could detect what had happened to me.
“As you know,” said Dr. Barry, “Mr. Mallow has been unable to join us. So to compensate, we’ve been lucky enough to recruit someone of perhaps a more useful renown.”
“Who?” I asked as I heard a babble of voices and then the all-out blast of a paparazzi assault from nearby. The front doors of the hospital were flung open and at least ten English police officers from Scotland Yard marched rapidly toward us, all of them managing that elite surveillance trick of seeming to stare straight ahead while sweeping the room for terrorists or overzealous admirers.
“Miss Randle,” said Dr. Barry, “I would like to present His Royal Highness, Prince Gregory of Wales.”
The twin flanks of officers parted, like Vegas showgirls or a team of synchronized swimmers, revealing their hidden treasure, their precious cargo, their prize.
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