“Absolutely. What’s up?”
“I read the script over the weekend—so funny, by the way, big congratulations—”
“Thank you.” Greg smiled.
“But Dream Girl doesn’t really have a lot of lines.” Krista cocked her head at him.
“Right,” Greg said. “Like I said, it is a small role, but a very important one.”
“I get that. I do. But the way it’s coming across now is that Dream Girl is just—and no offense or anything—a pair of tits in a skirt. But obviously even superhot girls have depth. Hot girls like me,” she was quick to add.
Greg’s eyebrows drew together slightly. “Obviously.”
“So, I was thinking, what if Dream Girl isn’t just hot, she’s also funny? What if she had a few quirks or a running gag?”
“Like what?”
Krista consulted the list of ideas she’d compiled on her phone. “What if she has a really big vagina?”
Greg flinched. “A what?”
“A hilarious Mary Poppins–style vag that she keeps tons of stuff in.”
“A big . . . vagina,” Greg repeated slowly. “I’m not exactly sure how that would work.”
“Name something.”
“What?”
“Name something. Something one of the characters needs.”
Greg folded his arms, looking concerned. “A . . . hat.”
Krista mimed pulling one out from between her legs. “A hat, you say? I have one right here!” She mimed putting the hat on, smiling. “Obviously in the film it’d be a real hat. Name something else.”
“I don’t think a really big vagina strikes the right . . . tone,” Greg said.
“No worries.” Krista glanced back at her phone, determined to keep the ideas coming. “Oh, this is a good one: What if Dream Girl secretly wants to be a singer? So whenever she’s talking with anyone, it starts normal.” And now Krista started singing enthusiastically, arms flung wide. “And then she breaks into soooonnng! She sings every word, like I’m singing them right noooowww!”
Greg gave her a weird look. For the first time, Krista sensed a lost connection. A niggle of anxiety picked at her optimism. Her ideas were funny, weren’t they? She wasn’t making a fool of herself, was she?
Greg waved at someone over her shoulder, looking relieved. “Yo!” he called. “My man!”
Ravi Harlow was sauntering over. On seeing Krista, the grin on his face faltered. But it was too late. Greg had already stepped past Krista to engulf the actor in a hug.
“Hey,” Ravi greeted Greg, but his eyes were glued on Krista. “What . . . uh . . . what’s up?”
“Surprise!” Greg said with a laugh in his voice. “We found your Dream Girl!”
“Ta-da!” Krista turned her palms upward, grinning, unsure why Ravi wasn’t.
“Whoa . . . What?” Ravi’s frozen smile was fraying around the edges.
“Yeah, your buddy, Lenka,” Greg said. “You guys know each other, right?”
“Yup,” said Krista at the same time Ravi said, “Nope.”
Krista cocked her head at Ravi, confused. Someone called Greg away. He slipped off, seeming happy for the distraction.
“How’s it going, dude?” Krista asked. “Hey, you don’t have a cig, do you?”
Ravi looked at Krista as if she’d just asked him for his home address. “Uh, no.”
“Hey.” Krista stepped forward toward him, lowering her voice. “Look, it doesn’t have to be weird. If you just want to be buds, that’s totally cool.”
“I never said I’d call,” Ravi said, backing up a step.
Krista felt a flash of annoyance. “Neither did I.”
“Whatever.” Ravi turned around and began walking away.
Krista stared at his retreating form, jaw loose with surprise. In the past, she’d assumed some guys didn’t want to see her again because they weren’t into tiny brown girls. But now, it was becoming apparent some guys were just jerks.
22.
Willow woke up to a full body assault: sharp stabs of stomach cramps. She doubled over, moaning, the pain spotting her vision. Her period? No, that was only last week. Food poisoning? She noticed her fingers: bony, pale. Willow’s fingers. She pulled herself into a sitting position, wincing. The mirror above the sofa revealed stringy ash-blond hair with a memory of pale pink dye and skin the color of skim milk.
She was Regular again.
The morning was muggy and overcast. The sky was a dull sweep of off-white, as if nature or God or whatever had simply forgotten to make weather today. Her sickness subsided more quickly than the first transformation. Evidently, it was easier turning Regular than it was turning Pretty. Willow took the subway from Williamsburg back to the Upper East Side. This was where she belonged now, squashed next to disinterested businessmen with their gray hair and skin and hearts. The streets seemed dirty and lackluster. Her doorman looked tired, barely managing a wave. Even the elevator opened into the apartment with what sounded like a bored sigh.
There was a leather duffel bag by the side table. A pair of scuffed men’s shoes. Her heart tightened.
Her father was home.
She could hear them in the kitchen. Claire’s measured, unflappable tone. Matteo’s booming voice, loud even in his own home. Despite having lived in the US since he was a teen, his looping, blunt Dutch accent was still strong. Sometimes, Willow wondered if he’d kept it deliberately, somehow. To charm people. Or intimidate them.
Matteo and Claire had met when Claire had been writing her PhD dissertation on him, Lost Boys, Macho Men, and Wanton Women: The Cinema of Matteo Hendriksen. What was most interesting about their relationship was its longevity. In his day, Matteo had been a notorious womanizer. A Google search brought up images of a grinning young man, surrounded by near-nude women with Farrah Fawcett blowouts. Claire was (roughly) girlfriend number six, the tail end of a string that followed Willow’s parents’ divorce when she was ten.
There was a sizzling noise and the smell of cooking onions. Willow paused by the entryway and took three deep breaths. She made her face blank. Then she walked in.
The pair stopped talking. Claire was by the oven, her hand on the handle of a frying pan. Her father was leaning against the large kitchen island. A newspaper was open in front of him. Two fingers had frozen, about to turn a page.
Claire was the first to speak. “Willow!”
Her father didn’t say anything.
Neither did Willow.
Claire glanced between the two. She crossed the clean tiles to give Willow a quick, hard hug. “Hey. We, um . . .” She glanced at Matteo. “We didn’t know when you’d be home.”
Willow gave a noncommittal shrug.
Matteo turned the page of his newspaper, but he was looking only at Willow.
Claire moved back to the onions. They were starting to smoke. “Would you like to stay for lunch? I’m making a stir-fry.”
An equally blasé shrug.
“She’ll stay,” Matteo said. Even when speaking quietly, his voice seemed to make the glassware on the shelves shiver.
“Will I?” Willow shot back. How typical of her father. Telling her what to do.
“She’ll stay,” Matteo continued evenly. “Or she won’t get the present I bought for her.” He lifted his eyes. Now his expression was playful. Mischievous.
Willow tried to scowl. But she couldn’t. Her father, for all his many, many flaws, always brought back frustratingly wonderful presents from his trips abroad. The Venezuelan death mask. The taxidermy Moroccan spider. The silver pipe from Joni Mitchell’s Parisian pied-à-terre. In spite of herself, she felt intrigued.
Claire glanced between her partner and his daughter, relief softening her stance. “Fifteen minutes,” she told Willow.
They ate in the dining room, three people circling the edge of a table that easily fit twenty. Claire’s stir-fry was delicious—seared tofu and julienned carrots and yellow bell peppers over brown rice—but Willow ate with deliberate slowness s
o as not to convey how good she found it. (Had her sense of taste become more acute after changing back or was she looking for comparisons that weren’t actually there? Too hard to tell.) She drank the glass of sauvignon blanc she’d poured for herself considerably quicker. Her father talked nonstop about potential locations he’d scouted on this trip; the wonderful old church in Prague, the tiny inn with the secret courtyard in Rome, the zoo that time forgot in Madrid. “In fact, it was in that zoo,” Matteo concluded, “that I found this.” He lifted a gold paper bag from between his feet and slid it across the polished tabletop. It was light. Willow reached inside and pulled out something wrapped in purple tissue. She could feel both Claire and her father watching her as she unwrapped it.
It was a wooden figurine of a lion. Three inches tall, painstakingly carved from honey-colored wood. Willow turned it over, eyes traveling over her lion’s flowing mane, whipping tail, and bared teeth. It was wild and delicate at the same time. Violent and precious. It was wonderful.
She smiled. “Thank you.”
Her father grunted with pleasure and pushed his empty plate away. “So,” he announced to the room. “You’ve been staying with Mark.”
It was a statement. Not a question. Willow pushed her plate away too. “Yes.”
“Have you moved in there? Finally flown the coop?”
This question surprised her. “No,” she said. “I just—” She glanced at Claire. “Needed a break from living here.”
Her father snorted sarcastically. “Yes,” he said. “I can see how all this”—he raised his hand to indicate the dining room, the apartment in general—“must be so tiresome for you.”
“Matty,” Claire said. “That’s not what she means.” Claire leveled her gaze at Willow. “Is it?”
Willow shrank down into herself, feeling the weight of their respective gazes drill into her. She couldn’t tell if she felt exactly fourteen years old because her father was treating her like a teenager, or she’d started acting like one. After all, she had no rational-sounding explanation of her absence, so in a way it was like being a teenager again: feelings she couldn’t explain and memories of regrettable acts. She didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
Matteo touched a napkin to his lips. “Why haven’t you moved out yet?”
Willow’s voice sounded louder than she wanted it to. “You want me to move out?”
“That’s not what I said, is it?” Matteo replied.
Willow shrugged and lifted her wineglass again. “I don’t have any money.” And then, before her father could protest, “Any of my own.”
“What about your photographs?” Matteo asked.
Willow bristled.
“Your exhibition,” he pressed. “Haven’t you sold—”
“I sold one, Dad, okay? I sold one fucking photograph.” Willow reached for the bottle of wine and sloshed her glass full.
Claire looked sympathetic and uneasy. “Oh, honey. I’m sure you’ll sell more. I can put some postcards up for you in the student lounge if you like.”
“Don’t bother,” Willow said. “They all suck. Everything I do is stupid.”
She swallowed some wine, bracing herself for her father’s inevitable words of encouragement. Matteo picked at his teeth. “Make some more work.”
“What?”
“Make some more work. You’re right. Your photographs lack . . .” His eyes wandered, searching for the right word. “Life. They are flat. Like . . . an advertisement.”
Willow blinked rapidly. “You haven’t even seen them—”
“I went this morning. As soon as I got back.”
Embarrassed anger built in Willow’s chest, spreading to her cheeks as a hot flush. “You don’t like them?”
“I’ve seen you do better.” Matteo leaned forward, hand raised for emphasis. “Do what scares you, my pet. Be unsafe.”
Willow found herself looking to Claire—Claire!—for support. “I . . .” she stuttered. “I . . . Fuck you!”
Matteo leaned back in his chair, with something like amusement in his eyes. “The eternal words of the scorned artist. ‘Fuck you.’ Sweetheart, you’ll have to learn to take criticism. No one’s any good when they start. Look at Smoke and Summer,” he added, referencing his first film, which had been enthusiastically panned worldwide. He glanced at Claire, who squirmed in her seat and chuckled weakly.
Willow turned on her. “Thanks a lot. Real nice.”
“No,” Claire protested. “Willow, I was just—”
Willow pushed back her chair so fast it screeched. The idea that her father wouldn’t be supportive, thrilled, proud beyond belief of her first solo show hadn’t even crossed her mind. She was so stupid. Of course he’d be a bastard about it. Of course he would. “Why is it so fucking hard for you to act like my dad?”
“I’m being honest, Willow. To help you grow.”
“Oh, honest? You want honest?” Breathing hard, she turned back on Claire, whose face was raw with alarm. “He’ll leave you for someone my age.”
Claire made a small strangled sound. Matteo’s face turned a fierce, muddy red.
Head whirring loudly, Willow ran for the elevator, collapsing inside it only after the doors slid shut.
23.
Krista called Evie from outside the large white tent that was set up for lunch. The phone rang so long Krista was worried it’d go to voicemail, before Evie finally picked up, breathless. “Lenka Penka, star of stage and screen. How’s it going?”
“Disaster is a massive fucking understatement.” Krista lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply.
“What? What’s wrong?”
As various crew members drifted by with plates of steaming food, Krista relayed the morning’s respective failings: the fact she had no good lines whatsoever, how Ravi Harlow was not only treating her like a stalker but was in the fucking film too, and how because she was basically just an extra, she’d been assigned a junior makeup artist who was about as experienced as an Amish schoolgirl. “What should I do?” she whined into the phone. “Should I call Cameron? Should I leave? Evie? Fuck, are you even there?”
There was a pause before Evie said, “Sorry. Trying to find an outfit for tonight. You’ll never guess who I’m going to interview—”
“Evie!” Krista stamped her foot. “Can we focus on me for five fucking seconds? What should I do?”
“Nothing!” Evie exclaimed. “You shouldn’t do anything. You’re there to make money as quickly and quietly as possible. Who cares if you don’t have any lines? You’re not in the movie, Lenka Penka is. And she’s not even real!”
“But it’s so unfair! And how should I handle Ravi? I can’t believe he’s being such a douche—”
“I don’t know. I have to go, I’m sorry—”
“Wait, I’m not finished workshopping this—”
“Babe, I’m sorry, we’ll talk tonight. Or tomorrow. I might be home late. Bye!”
Evie hung up. Krista stared at her phone incredulously. That phone call didn’t solve any of her problems at all. In fact, Evie sounded positively uninterested in what was undoubtedly the biggest life drama she’d ever experienced. Krista exhaled angrily and ground her cigarette butt into the earth.
Everyone. And. Everything. Was. Fucked.
At least it was lunchtime.
She stalked into the tent and saw the spread. “Jesus titty fucking Christ.” The buffet looked as if it had been attacked by wild dogs. All the good stuff was gone. The large metal trays of chicken cordon bleu and steak and potatoes were scraped clean. All that was left was fruit, bagels, and plastic bowls of limp-dick salad. Fuck it, Krista decided. Dessert for lunch would have to do.
Not much was left in that department either—a bowl of gluggy fruit salad, a pile of plain, dry cookies, and—a cupcake.
One single, perfect cupcake.
Moist chocolate base. Thick cream frosting. Mini Reese’s Pieces delicately covering a generous domed top. Cue white light and heavenly music. Krista’s anger ebbe
d and was replaced with the single thought of cupcake. Cupcake would make all this go away. Her feet moved toward it, hand outstretched—
Someone grabbed it.
Krista flinched. Her head whipped to the cupcake kidnapper . . . Ravi Harlow.
They stared at each other.
What should she say? Hello? Fuck off? Give me the cupcake and we’re even?
But before she could command her mouth to say anything at all, Ravi put the cupcake on his plate and started walking toward a group of guys sitting in the corner of the tent.
Just like that. Without a word. Without a hint of acknowledgment that just a few days ago, the mouth he’d be using to eat that precious cupcake had been eating her precious pussy. Evie was right: guys like Ravi treated women as if they were as disposable as goddamn razors.
And that’s when Krista got mad.
“Hey,” she called. He didn’t turn around, but she knew he heard her. “Hey!” She strode after him, grabbed his shoulder, swung him around. Shock was written all over his face.
“You don’t want to be my friend?” she exclaimed. “Fine—I have, like, a million friends. But we had sex, jerk face. You know it, and I know it.” Ravi was frozen, mouth hanging open, allowing Krista to steamroll on. “We. Had. Sex. So the least you can do is acknowledge my existence. Because that’s what grown-ups do.” She plucked the cupcake off his plate and took an enormous bite. Her last three words were muffled through frosting. “Common. Fucking. Courtesy.”
24.
“Willow! Darling! I’m so glad you came by!”
And with that, Willow was unceremoniously wrenched from the reverie she’d been in for the last hour. After leaving her home, she’d numbly stumbled in the direction of the 6 train, desperate to get off the Upper East Side and back to Williamsburg. Once there, she’d just been walking. Walking without seeing, trying to escape her father’s cruelty, Claire’s face, and the things she’d said. Which was why she was so shocked to hear her name. And then even more shocked to realize it was Meredith, the curator of Wythe Gallery. Her gallery. With her horrible photographs. That she was standing in front of. Without realizing it, her mindless ramble had brought her back to the scene of the crime. Drawn inevitably to her own failings.
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