The Actress: A Novel

by Amy Sohn

  She pressed the button on the phone and dialed. “Zack Ostrow’s office,” said Natalie. Bridget had met her once when she went to pick up Zack at the office, a pretty Jewish girl with Japanese-straightened hair.

  “It’s Bridget,” she said.

  “Hi, Bridget,” said Natalie, betraying nothing. A good assistant always acted in the dark. “Let me see if I can get him.”

  The phone went silent for several long seconds, and Bridget prepared her speech. She would remind him of the sacrifices she had made so she could be a manager and a mother at the same time. The business dinners she’d skipped for those excruciatingly boring parent-teacher conferences, the trips she hadn’t gone on, the promotions that had taken years longer than they should have. As his mother, she wanted him to be aggressive, it would make him a good agent, but he had been wrong to pursue one of her clients.

  “I couldn’t get him,” said Natalie. “Can he return?” Never before had the girl spoken these words to Bridget. He always took her calls.

  “I know he’ll take this. Try again.”

  “Just one moment,” Natalie said, and Bridget detected a hardening of tone.

  She was driving faster now, conscious of the trees passing, the seconds going by. She had been the agent on the other side of this call hundreds of times and could see the scene playing out: Natalie was reporting to Zack that Bridget wanted her to ask again. And what was he saying to Natalie in response? What words were being spoken during the silence? Was he wrapping up another call and stalling for time?

  He was challenging her now, not to lose her cool. She had taught him to play Scrabble when he was about eight, and on vacations they would take a travel set. Back then she could make up words, and because he was so young, all he could do was believe her. She would devise long, complicated combinations of vowels and consonants to score bingos again and again, but by the time he was twelve or so, he’d begun packing a dictionary. From then on, he’d challenged her. Half the time she was right but the other half she was wrong, and she could still see his desperate, hopeful face as he thumbed through the pages, and she could always tell the result by his expression. Sometimes he didn’t want to believe it; he would flip the page back and forth as though he had missed something, as though there was an entire colony of words between BI- and BIB-.

  “Bridget?” Natalie said. “I just can’t reach him right now.”

  She wanted to curse the girl out, but Natalie didn’t work for her, she worked for Zack, and she wasn’t insolent, she was being a good assistant, doing what she had been trained to do, what Zack had been trained to do by George Zeger, and Bridget before him with Jack Keil. Above all, it was important to remain professional: To yell at an assistant was to yell at a wall. And she didn’t need Natalie reporting that she had become “hysterical.”

  “I understand,” Bridget said. She clicked off, then slammed her hand against the dashboard and let out a sound that was anguished and macabre.

  6

  Steven was reading the last page of The Moon and the Stars. Maddy had left him alone, and forty-five minutes later, returned to the study. She was standing, too amped-up to sit, periodically glancing over at him at the desk.

  It was late August, a week and a half after her return from London. He had wrapped Office Mate and flown home from Wilmington.

  The layout in his new study was exactly the same as in the old. The Mediterranean house was finally beginning to seem finished, and though it was marginally warmer in color tone, his study was a replica. He had taken his creepy busts, ornate mirrors, and silk walls and transported them from one house to the other. She often felt as though she might as well be living in the mansion.

  Steven looked up at her, his eyes narrow and angry. “If you do this movie, our marriage is over.”

  “But I did The Hall Surprise for you,” she said.

  “That film wasn’t about our marriage.”

  “Of course it was,” she said. “It was capitalizing on our marriage. The studio wouldn’t have wanted me if I weren’t your wife.”

  “This project is an insult,” he said, rising from the seat. “It’s a kick in the stomach.”

  “It’s a role. It’s fiction. You won’t even be in it.”

  “It makes no difference. I can see the headline now: ‘Maddy Freed Stars in Biopic About Own Husband.’ ”

  “It’s a strong role. It’s period. It’s Walter. It’s by a really good screenwriter who’s going somewhere. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing.”

  “Do you remember our wedding vows? ‘I am your biggest fan, most loyal advocate.’ Did that mean nothing to you?”

  “But this movie isn’t about you and me. Unless you’re saying it is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What’s going on between you and Ryan?”

  “Oh my God, are we into this? What did I tell you about not trusting me? What did I say it would do to our marriage? I said you have the power to poison us. Do you want to poison us?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I am asking you, as my wife, not to do this job. You saw what I went through with The Weekly Report. This would be low-hanging fruit for them. You don’t want to do action films, fine. I’ll help you do the movies you want to do. I was going to say Bridget will help, but she said you fired her. I can’t believe you did it without speaking to me. You’ve gone off the reservation.”

  “It was my decision to make. I should have done it years ago.”

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Firing your manager. Keeping secrets. And going with Zack, who is still so unproven that I don’t know what you could be thinking. You know he’s been to rehab.”

  “You didn’t tell me about the Tommy movies until it was a done deal. You didn’t consult with me. Why should I consult with you?”

  “This is another level. I think you’re unstable. Do you have your period or something?”

  “I don’t have my period! I went off the pill right before I went to Wilmington, and it hasn’t come yet.”

  “You went off? But I thought you weren’t ready.”

  “I thought if we made a family together that things would be better. But they’re awful. You don’t understand me. I would go back on it right now if it wouldn’t mess up my system.”

  “I knew something was going on. It’s the hormonal drop making you do this. Why do you want to have a baby with me if you don’t respect me?”

  “I do respect you.”

  “Then say no to this film. Walter hates me. He wants you to do this so he can make a fool of me again. And you’re enlisting.”

  “You’re wrong. This is a good role. I’m saying yes. Whether or not you want me to.”

  She had taken the script from his desk. It was the only copy she had, and she didn’t trust Steven to hold on to it. He didn’t stop her.

  Steven wasn’t her partner. Maybe he had never been her partner.

  “I think I need to go away,” she said, moving slowly toward the door.

  “Go wherever you want!” he screamed, his face wrenched and ugly. “I don’t give a shit anymore!”

  “Good!” she cried. She ran upstairs, threw some clothes and the script into a bag. She went outside and got in the Prius. Her cell phone rang but she ignored it. She drove, with no destination.

  Who was this man? How could he be so domineering when he owed her?

  She made a few calls to get the number, and then Julia answered. “It’s Maddy Freed.”

  “Hi, Maddy.” Julia’s voice was calm, indicating nothing.

  “Did Steven ever tell you what jobs to take when you were married?”

  “All the time. He was competitive with me, and he read my scripts more closely than I did. He hated me doing anything he deemed objectifying. Which, in the ’eighties, was pretty much every script with a
woman in it.”

  Maddy was driving too fast; she had to be careful, her mind was racing with fear and excitement. “Did you listen to him?”

  “Sometimes I did. Now I regret it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was just beginning my career, and he had no right to make me suffer just because it was happening more slowly for him. Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  After she clicked off, she kept driving, with no idea where to go. She could stay in a hotel for a couple of days, but the press might find out, and she wanted to be alone. She thought about calling Zack, but she was embarrassed. She was starting a business relationship with him; she couldn’t have him thinking that she was nuts, that her marriage was on the rocks. After three and a half years in Los Angeles, she felt like she hadn’t made any real, meaningful friendships. And then she had an idea.

  Kira’s house was a charming Tudor cottage in Silver Lake, on the Eastside. Maddy drove up in the Prius and let herself in with the key in the planter, as per the instructions Kira had given her on the phone. In the living room, there was a poster from Rondelay, an indie-rock record collection, a flokati rug, and a tabby cat.

  Maddy turned on the TV, and flipped channels. An action movie came on starring a young Steven. She stared into his eyes during an action sequence in which he ran from a moving train onto the roof of a passing SUV. She wanted the Steven in the movie to tell her whether to stay with him. Whether to do The Moon and the Stars.

  When Kira came in from an audition, she fixed Maddy a vodka tonic from her 1930s-era bar in the corner, lay on the couch with her feet up, and said, “Tell me everything.” When Maddy had finished, Kira said, “So basically, he doesn’t want you to do it because it’s about a closeted gay man?”

  Maddy nodded bleakly. She was in a potato-chip chair catty-corner to the couch. “He says Walter hates him and wants me to do the movie because it will make a mockery of our marriage.”

  “That’s an awfully expensive way to make a mockery of a marriage,” Kira said. “Finance an international feature.”

  “Maybe, given everything he’s been through, with the press and the whole thing with The Weekly Report, he’s right to be concerned. And I’m being selfish to want to ignore him.”

  “I don’t think you’re selfish. It must be a good script. I mean, I don’t know. Do you have it here?”

  “I left it at home,” Maddy said, though it was still in her bag. “Maybe I should just turn it down. If the roles were reversed—”

  “If the roles were reversed, you’d send him off to London. Because you have respect for him as an actor. Though I have never been entirely sure why.” Kira cocked one eyebrow.

  “Come on,” Maddy said.

  “If you want to do this movie,” Kira said, “I mean really want to, you have to do it.”

  “What if Steven leaves me?”

  “Then you’ll be a wealthy divorcée with a two-million-dollar quote and an awesome settlement.”

  “How do you know my quote?”

  “It was in the Reporter. But thanks for confirming.”

  “Do you think I’m disgusting for doing The Hall Surprise?” Maddy asked.

  “It’s not out yet.”

  “It’s pretty embarrassing. I say the word ‘cockfight.’ And the bikini, oh my God, the bikini. Kira, it’s horrible, you should have seen the stuff they had inside it to try to make me look buxom. You should have done it, your breasts would have looked much better. But you wouldn’t have played Faye Fontinell, not even for two million dollars. Because you’re not a sellout. You’re so much braver than I am.”

  “Are you fucking kidding? I’m wearing a push-up bra right now. I gave up chocolate. And I have hair down to my shoulders.”

  “But you don’t pretend to be straight.”

  “You think this industry takes my lesbianism seriously? The young guys, the really hot-shit directors? To them, it’s a turn-on. They just see it as a challenge.”

  “But would you wear a bikini in a movie?”

  “Only if a woman ran the studio.”

  “There are no female studio chiefs right now.”

  “I know,” Kira said. “It’s so sad.”

  They got dinner at an expensive Japanese place in Beverly Hills, where the host found Maddy a table, and then they called a car to take them to Havana in Hollywood. The photographers called out Maddy’s name as they entered. A few shouted “Kira!” and Maddy was startled by it, not aware that Kira was first-name famous. The press knew Kira because of her roles in Barry Hiller’s Loins and Rondelay and two other mid-budget features that had been released in the past year. Maddy had been known since the moment she moved to L.A., because of Steven. Kira was known because of her work.

  They danced by the banquette to the DJ’s mix of Morrissey and Kanye West. She felt as though she were getting her spark back. Somewhere along the way she had lost it. It was the exhaustion of being with Steven. Who hadn’t made her feel beautiful in months, even though she had seventeen percent body fat from her training for The Hall Surprise. She and Steven lived like monks because Steven hated the press. He had been keeping her prisoner. And she had let him.

  Maddy held a Seabreeze in one hand and waved the other above her head. She wasn’t even drunk, just tipsy, but she was happy and free. They stayed a couple of hours, dancing with strangers. For so long Steven had made her feel that she was a drag, and maybe she was. She was insecure near him, and it turned her into someone she didn’t want to be. A killjoy.

  I am a joyous person who has been living joylessly. A husband was supposed to increase your pleasure, not decrease it. She had married Steven because she’d believed he would encourage her to live out her dreams, and now he wanted to squash them. All that talk about respecting her as an actress, and he was telling her what roles to take, like David O. Selznick with Jennifer Jones. Yes, the press had attacked Steven, but he had to be smart enough to know I Used to Know Her wasn’t about him. Audiences could understand the difference between real and pretend.

  Lael Gordinier came in with Munro Heming, whom she was dating, and Maddy greeted them. Munro got up to chat with some other Young Hollywoodites, and Maddy invited Lael to their table. Each congratulated the other on her recent films and gossiped about executives and directors. It turned out Zack was representing Lael now, too. Maddy was reminded of the friends she’d had at The New School, united by reckless ambition.

  Lael and Maddy caught up about their projects, and Maddy remembered the dinner party in Mile’s End, where Lael and Taylor had spoken about their own auditions for Husbandry. “You and Taylor went in for Husbandry, right?” Maddy said.

  “I wouldn’t call it auditioning,” Lael said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t get to read. I got the sides and worked on them for days. They flew me out to London on the studio’s dime, put me up in a really nice hotel, and summoned me to an audition room. For this ridiculously long time, I had to shmooze with Walter, Bridget, Steven, and some casting director I never heard of before or after that, and then they left. I never read the scene.”

  “What do you mean they left?”

  “Everyone except Steven. I sat there and talked to him for about half an hour. I mentioned that I was into kiteboarding, and we wound up talking about different boards and where I had done it. It wasn’t until Mile’s End that I found out Taylor had almost exactly the same experience, except they talked about Brazilian jiujitsu. Every girl who went in had these long conversations with Steven about their hobbies or his art collection or, like, Kie´slowski. Isn’t that how it went for you?”

  “Not at all,” Maddy said. “I read two scenes. With Steven. On camera.” She thought back to that strange audition in Venice, with Walter not telling her till the restaurant. As though it had been preordained.

  “Y
ou know, that’s really good to hear,” Lael said. “Because I never believed the stuff people said.”

  “What stuff?”

  “We all thought Husbandry was going to be bogus. Either put into turnaround or straight-to-video. A high-budget wife-finder. But when it came out and you were so amazing in it, I was like, What? And then I figured you guys must have fallen in love, which, you know, was a bit of a shocker. But anything’s possible, right? I thought maybe Walter really was just trying to cast the best Ellie. In his own way. Maybe he was spying on all of us with a camera while we were schmoozing with Steven, to see about the chemistry. So no matter what people say about how it all went down, I think you deserve everything fucking awesome that’s come to you.”

  Maddy nodded absently. It was stupid to put stock in anything that Lael said—she was nutty and probably competitive—but Maddy found it odd that they hadn’t read Lael or Taylor. And then Kira was coming toward them and yelling that they both had to dance, and Maddy stood up and went to the floor.

  7

  You need to get some perspective,” Bridget said to Steven. They were lying on two of the chaises by the pool.

  A separation was never good for a career, especially not one that made the man look cruel. It was one thing to play a womanizing asshole—you could win awards for that—and another thing to be one. The Hall Surprise would be released in just seven months, and Bridget didn’t want any bad publicity before then. A film was like a baby. You had to be extremely careful until the birth.

  “I have perspective,” Steven said. “Walter wants to ruin me, and she wants to help him.”

  “That’s not true. It was the wrong arena for you. We know that now.”

  “I won’t have her working with him.”

  “She wants something meaty. Walter got a good performance out of her the first time.”

  “Why are you taking her side? She fired you.”

  “It doesn’t mean I stop caring. But I’m not saying this because of her. I’m saying it because I still represent you.”