Molly Bit

by Dan Bevacqua

  Abigail went to the bathroom. The vodka and Percocet ripped through her bloodstream. In the stall, she took from her purse a little bag of coke. She tapped some out onto her maxed-out Amex, and, snorting, tried to regain the focus a person needed to get from one room to the next.

  “Good luck with that, sister,” she said to herself.

  Echo Chamber would put everything back together. All she’d said and done, all the bad will sown by Leonard—gone. Abigail had given Molly an opportunity she never would have had on her own, and it was time to be repaid.

  Back at the table, the waiter was talking with Molly. Abigail looked up at his polite, gaunt face, and the blond fuzz on his cheeks triggered her hatred of the world.

  “Get out of here, starfucker,” Abigail said, as she took her seat. She looked down. There was her fish, head and tail. He’d been serving them.

  “Abby—”

  “Molly—” Abigail mimicked.

  “Thank you.” Molly smiled at the waiter.

  “Right, right,” Abigail said. “You have to be polite now. You’re a celebrity.”

  “I’m not a celebrity,” Molly said.

  “You are,” Abigail said. “You just don’t know it yet. They don’t even know it yet.”

  For reasons that were unclear, the waiter was still standing next to their table.

  “Hel-lo,” Abigail said. She shook her empty martini glass. “More drinky, please.”

  The waiter laughed as he walked away. His disdain for her was the one thing Abigail liked about him. She gave him a little clap.

  Abigail watched her friend. Taking small bites, Molly looked out across the dining room. Counting the hours spent editing Starcatcher and Trust, the dailies from those films, being on set, the rehearsals, the meetings, the acting classes, and the time they’d spent together as friends, Abigail had probably stared at Molly’s face for ten thousand hours. She knew it in some ways better than her own.

  “You’ve become disturbed,” Molly said.

  “I’ve always been disturbed.”

  “This is something different.”

  “I’ve advanced.”

  A busboy appeared. He set Abigail’s martini down on the table.

  “See? If I wasn’t with you, there is no way in hell I would have gotten this drink.”

  “I think your perception is off,” Molly said.

  “No,” Abigail said. “I may be drunk, and on all sorts of drugs, but my perception is not off. Seriously, Molly. French costars, being a bitch whenever you want—you should start enjoying the perks.”

  Abigail drank her martini. In the end, she realized, what set Molly’s face apart was how well she thought with it. She emoted full sentences from out of the bones in her face.

  “Two weeks from today, millions of people are going to sit in the dark and look at you. You acted with Harrison Ford. You shot a movie in Paris. Those are perks.”

  Abigail pulled the olive from her empty glass and placed it in her mouth.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” she said, chewing. “Before they take it from you.”

  Molly carefully wiped each corner of her mouth with her napkin. She clicked the rage on.

  “I don’t want to hear about Leonard Roth again.”

  “You don’t understand,” Abigail said. “My life is impossible.”

  “There’s a reason for that,” Molly said.

  Yes, Abigail thought, it was definitely Molly’s face. It was a wonderful mask. It said everything. For instance, the muscles as they went taut and then eased along Molly’s jawline told Abigail that her friend was done with her. She turned away. She noticed Days of Heaven had started again from the beginning. Richard Gere was on top of a train, riding through the middle of the land.

  Molly watched too. “I know this movie by heart,” she said. “This is the part where the little girl says, ‘I met this guy named Ding Dong. He told me the whole world is going up in flames.’ ”

  * * *

  The next morning, Molly dabbed and smoothed her face with concealer. Done with that, she sat down on the edge of the bathtub and rubbed her bicep. Her right arm was sore from all the dragging, and holding, and keeping Abigail upright the night before. Inside her skull, her brain felt swollen. It was a contact-hangover. She felt panicked and nervous, as if Abigail’s fate were contagious.

  One good thing was that she wouldn’t have to make up an excuse about where she was going that morning. Through the wall, Molly heard Abigail snore. The choking honks were wet and arrhythmic, somehow mechanical. She wondered who could possibly stand such a sound? She imagined Abigail’s one-night stands, still drunk men tip-toeing through the reverb, making their way out into the safety of dawn, never to be seen again.

  Molly did not miss that kind of sex. As she stepped into Abigail’s elevator, she thought of Jared. Nearly against her will, she daydreamed of his body up against hers, of his hips slowly rolling against her own. She wanted him to make her head knock against the wall—to have it hurt a little. Afterward, in the fantasy, they lay in bed for ten minutes, and then they went into the kitchen and drank orange juice from tiny glasses.

  She stepped out of Abigail’s building. San Francisco smelled of salt and urine. She’d called Irene the night before, waking the older woman out of a deep sleep. “Make sure he’s there first, honey. He should be waiting on you,” Irene had said, and then, to the fact it might be their last professional exchange, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

  Wearing a green Donna Karan blouse and a high-waisted, tan linen skirt that flowed around her knees, she hailed a cab on Columbus. Five minutes later, she stepped out of the cab onto Market Street and walked into the Four Seasons.

  The foyer was old school, with drapes on the walls, and carpeting. The angles that otherwise defined San Francisco, the gleaming edges that seemed to tip the whole city toward the future, were absent here. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and the patrons were mostly old white ladies. A few men of similar age were among them. Aside from Molly, Leonard Roth was the only other person under fifty in the restaurant. He was a short man, with a body like an oil furnace.

  He stood up to hug her.

  “It’s good to see you, Molly. You look beautiful, as always.”

  One of the things Abigail had mumbled to her last night as Molly dumped her into the passenger seat was, “Don’t you just hate it when men tell you what you want to hear? It makes me feel so average.”

  “Good to see you too,” Molly said.

  To herself, she sounded strange, a little robotic, but it was a tactic she had learned to employ in order to get through those first few minutes, even hours, with the sorts of people she was dealing with now. When she was first introduced to Harrison, it was the only time in Molly’s life where she felt as if she might actually pass out. Telling the story to Abigail, she’d played it cool, but the truth was, shaking his hand in the Eighth Arrondissement, she’d started to have an out-of-body experience. Not only did she feel as if she didn’t belong on set with him, but wondered—and not for the first time—if this was what she wanted at all? She was slipping through a membrane, entering into a relationship with the world that afterward could not be reversed.

  Leonard Roth wasn’t Harrison Ford, but he was still Leonard Roth. She knew why he was there: to give her everything she ever wanted. It terrified her.

  “Can I confess something?” Leonard asked. They were seated. He drank a cup of black coffee. “I kind of hate San Francisco. It’s cold. I’m always cold here. And the people are ridiculous. I was in the car coming over, and my driver almost sideswiped this guy on a bike. You know what the guy on the bike yells? ‘Please, be more mindful!’ What is that about? And you can’t smoke here. That’s the first sign of fascism, you know. Hitler hated smoking.”

  “You can smoke here,” Molly said. Saying it, she felt like she’d wasted her turn. It wasn’t exactly a conversation she was engaged in.

  “Where? Outside? It’s too cold
outside,” Leonard said. “Did you fly here?

  “Yes, I—”

  “They’re gonna take away everything. You just wait. First, it’s you can’t smoke. Then it’s you can’t travel. Then you can’t communicate. And last you can’t think. Listen, I want to kill this Osama bin Laden with my bare hands. I would love it. I would relish it—tear his arms and legs off and watch the blood spray. I am full of a murderous rage that contaminates my life in a way I could never explain to you, or to anyone. But do you know how I got to where I am today, Molly?”

  “How?”

  “By not being a short-sighted asshole. Don’t get me wrong. I’m an asshole, but I’ve got vision. Just like your friend Abigail.”

  Men saw what they wanted in you. This was especially true of powerful men, who spent most of their time imagining scenarios and then watching those scenarios become realities, so that the difference between their private desires and the world was almost negligible. As soon as a powerful man had an idea in his head, he expected it to be. Her life in Hollywood, Molly knew, would be easier to navigate if she were an idiot, some sort of hollow-eyed vessel. That was why the town was filled with girls who had IQs that peaked at 70. A girl that dumb was easy to make into something else. The powerful man said, “You’re like this. This is you,” and she said, “Okay-ee.” The old adage was wrong. The world wasn’t harder if you were a woman. The world was harder if you were a woman with a brain. A brain was friction, and that kind of friction wasn’t the sort of friction that a powerful man, or maybe any man, wanted.

  Leonard didn’t say anything. The microphone was apparently hers.

  “I’m sorry about your sister.”

  “Thank you. That’s nice of you to say. I appreciate that,” Leonard said. “It hasn’t quite hit me yet. It comes and goes. It came on there for a second. Now it’s gone. I won’t apologize for that. I’m physically incapable of apologizing.”

  From across the room, a copper-skinned waitress came to take their drink orders. Directed at Leonard, her face held in it the dull recognition of fame.

  “More coffee,” Leonard said. “And I’d like an ashtray.”

  The girl was beautiful. Molly could imagine the tips. Was she Brazilian? Argentinean? Chilean?

  “You can’t smoke in here, sir. I’m sorry,” the waitress said.

  “Okay, then. You’re sorry. Everybody’s sorry. The whole world’s sorry.”

  The waitress paced back to the host stand.

  “I assume you’ve spoken to Nick by now,” Leonard said.

  Earlier that morning, Molly had had a very brief conversation with Nick Perlman.

  “And what did he say? That he was just pleased as fucking punch with your performance and wanted to do business with you again? Only Nick needed to wait on the box office, right? He didn’t say that exactly, but you knew what he meant. Did he remind you of Warners’ history? Did he use the word ‘storied’?”

  It was almost word for word. Perlman, like Roth, was a talker, although he lacked Leonard’s charm, the boyish street-corner bluster that made his arrogance palatable, entertaining. Perlman was like the father of one of Molly’s high school girlfriends. He had spoken to her as if she were fifteen, stressing cautious optimism, patience. Molly needed to think about her future, Perlman kept saying. She needed to make intelligent choices that would ensure optimum returns. “You’re in the big leagues now,” he’d actually said. Had Perlman finished the phone call by reminding her to wear her seatbelt, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “There’s nothing like being congratulated for the work other people have ‘allowed’ you to do, is there?” Leonard said. “ ‘Allow us to say you’re welcome for all the difficulty you’ve encountered. Be patient with us while we don’t pay you enough and fuck you over.’ I never could have worked at a studio. Thank God for Emily. At a studio, I would have pulled a Temple of Doom. I would have ripped hearts out. And the young guys—all respect to Nick—don’t know anything about film. I mentioned Fellini once to Nick Perlman and he thought I was talking about pasta. Shouldn’t you know a thing or two about history if you’re going to hang it over the talent’s head?”

  Leonard pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and set them on the table, his lighter on top.

  “Listen, Molly. Make It So is going to do well. It’s going to pull in numbers next weekend. That’s the popular vote. And then some fucking fucknut who thinks he’s the next Ebert is going to write a piece about your choices, about how brilliant you are, and so the very small percentage of people who give a shit about that sort of thing in this country are going to love you. On the level now, Molly? All bullshitting aside? None of that is going to mean a thing to Nick—in terms of you as a performer. He’ll say it does. They’ll run an ad in Variety. He’ll get six of his producers to send scripts. You’ll be up to your eyeballs in meetings. And that’s just Warners. It’ll be everybody. Every fucking studio in town. But those meetings will be to pitch Make It So II, III, IV, V, fucking piss-poor copies of lightning in a bottle. That’s what it’ll mean to Nick and to everybody like Nick—which is all of them. It’ll mean, ‘Here’s a product I’ve got. How do I market it?’ They have no understanding of history. They don’t understand talent, or how to take care of it. They don’t get the magic.”

  Molly didn’t need Leonard Roth to tell her that she was in a rare and enviable position. She didn’t need him to say anything. The fact that he was there meant she didn’t need him.

  “Did he mention specifics to you?” Leonard asked. “Did he talk dates?”

  “No.”

  “Really?” Leonard said. “Interesting.”

  He picked up his cigarette and flicked the filter with his thumbnail.

  “Sorry to hear about Helen,” Molly said.

  “Why? I’m not.”

  “Her back? It’s broken?”

  “Fractured two vertebrae,” Leonard said. “It’s fine. She’ll walk again. The lesson here is: famous people shouldn’t ski.”

  “She won’t be ready by February?”

  Leonard lit his cigarette and inhaled. Molly couldn’t believe it. It was as if she expected the police to come banging through the dining room, or for the old ladies to stand up from their seats and athletically pounce upon him. But no one did anything. Not the waitress at the host stand, nor the short manager wearing glasses beside her. No one. Leonard had gone ahead and tested the rule, and he’d been right: it didn’t apply to him.

  “February?” he asked. “The shoot’s in three weeks, Bit. Twenty days, actually. We’ve taken advantage of a timid job market. It’s why I’m here.”

  Molly’s brain clicked into place. Knowing that the shoot would start in three weeks made Leonard’s California trip understandable. It wasn’t that Molly was his one and only, his dream girl. The forces that blew her life in one direction or another suddenly revealed themselves to be more practical. Leonard had walked out of that screener for Make It So and asked himself three questions. 1) How much do I want her? 2) How much would she cost? 3) Would she dump the other movie?

  “But you’ve got this Abigail thing, is that right?”

  “Yes,” Molly said. She lifted her purse from off the floor. She unzipped it, and reached inside for her cigarettes. “She’s my friend.”

  “Is she?” Leonard asked. “Is that woman capable of having friends? Is she an actual human being? I don’t think so. I think she’s a drug addict, and, all respect to drug addicts, they aren’t people.”

  “What are they?”

  “Needy,” he said. “Manipulative. Full of shit where their hearts should be.”

  “Sounds like a person to me,” Molly said.

  “No one would blame you,” Leonard said. “It would make sense.”

  Molly lit her cigarette and moved a bread plate into the middle of the table. Drawing, she didn’t have a chance to respond. She wasn’t deliberately stalling, but Leonard was used to immediacy, to things happening right now—or yesterday. Pe
rhaps a second had passed.

  “You’re right,” Leonard said. “This is a conversation. I said we would have a conversation.”

  Two cigarettes seemed to be the limit. The manager approached, a short man in dark chunky glasses with a certain delicate wobble to his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is just—we can’t have this.”

  “Can’t have what?” Leonard asked. “What can’t you have?”

  “The smoking, Mr. Roth. I’m sorry. And you,” he turned a kind smile on Molly. “Hi. You’re wonderful. I loved Trust.”

  “Isn’t she amazing?” Leonard said. “Isn’t she the best?”

  “She is.”

  “Thank you,” Molly said, putting out her cigarette. “I’m sorry.”

  “What are you doing?” Leonard asked her. He turned his face toward the manager. “I paid thirty-eight dollars for a BLT that still hasn’t come yet, and you’re telling me I can’t smoke? What is it with this city? Why is it so afraid of death? It’s gonna come for you. It’s gonna come out of the sky one day, and take you, and swoop you up to heaven with a bunch of virgins. Tell me those guys aren’t disappointed. Who wants to sleep with a virgin? It’s like fucking a hole in the ground.”

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said to the manager.

  “It’s the law, is the thing. If it was up to me—”

  “What’s San Francisco’s heaven like?” Leonard asked. “Is it just like San Francisco? That would be the worst. Is it fifteen assholes in beanbag chairs writing code? Why the fuck are people dying in planes that crash into buildings, and you’re telling me I can’t smoke? Who the fuck are you?”

  “I just work here,” the manager said.

  “That’s a Nazi answer,” Leonard said, suddenly out of breath. He put out his cigarette. “Do you see what I mean?” he asked Molly. “It’s a moral lockdown.”

  “Thank you,” the manager said. He snatched up the ash-covered bread plate, and walked away.

  As if for the first time, Molly looked at Leonard. He was in pain. The skin on his face was loose with anger, as if his body had tried to pull away from his bones.