Off the Record

by Camryn Garrett

  “I don’t—” He falters. “Josie, I’ve heard rumors, but I told you, I can’t—”

  “They’re not just rumors,” I say. “No one would make up rumors about something this serious. Women know that no one would believe them. I just don’t get it. Everyone knows, but I guess you guys trick yourselves into thinking they’re just rumors, and that’s how Lennox keeps getting away with it. I don’t know. You tell me.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t? Of course not. I’ve only been interviewing women about it for the past week.” My eyes snap up to his face. “Don’t bullshit me, Marius. You can’t just brush this off because you want to be in one of his movies. You could be in any movie you want after Incident on 57th Street, but you chose to work with Lennox.”

  I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it isn’t his eyes growing glossy with tears. He’s breathing steadily, chest slowly rising and falling, nostrils flaring. I take a step back. I’ve never seen him angry. Penny’s words echo in my head: I would wait to see what he’s like when he’s not nice. Maybe this is what he’s like. Maybe he’s about to yell.

  “I don’t—” He looks away, swallowing. “It’s not as simple as just talking about it. And if I told anyone, I’d never get work again. I don’t know why we have to keep talking about it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I fold my arms. “I’m sure it’s so hard for you to have to be asked about it when there are women who—”

  “It’s not just them,” he snaps. “Everyone who works with him has to deal with something. I just didn’t know before I signed on, okay? And now there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Wait.” My heart sinks to the bottom of my stomach. “You mean…”

  Oh my God.

  “Marius—”

  “Don’t believe me? Do I have to tell you every detail for it to be true?” His breathing is faster now, frantic, like he’s just run a marathon. “Do you want to know how he took me to his hotel room for a ‘full cast reading’? But I was the only one, and—”

  “Marius.” Acid burns at the back of my throat. I’m going to be sick. “Stop. You don’t have to tell me anything. I shouldn’t have—”

  “And halfway through,” he continues, hands trembling at his sides, “there still wasn’t anyone else there, and I thought it was just something that would happen when I did more films, but no, it was just this guy my dad’s age who whipped out his dick and started jerking off right in front of me.”

  I hold a hand to my face. I can’t stop shaking. All of the people we spoke to were women. I never thought—I figured— God. I’m such a fucking jerk. I want to make this better, but I don’t think I can.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. We’re both breathing frantically now. “Marius, do you know how talented you are? You could work with anyone. Why wouldn’t you just leave the movie after that?”

  “It’s not that simple.” He shakes his head. “It’s not like I’m some white kid. I—I have to take opportunities I get. My parents are so proud of me, and so is everyone else. If I pulled out now, everyone would think something happened. I’m not allowed. He said no one goes against Roy Lennox without killing their career. He said things wouldn’t go so well for me if I told anyone. I don’t even want to. I’ll just shoot the movie in February and go to press events and never work with him again.”

  “No.” I feel guilty and mad and angry and I want to punch Roy Lennox in the face until his eyes fall out. “You shouldn’t have to keep working with him when you don’t want to, when he did something like that to you. Maybe you could talk about it with—”

  “Josie.” His voice sounds strained, like he’s spent the night screaming. “Talking about it won’t solve anything. All it’s going to do is make sure everyone knows. Half of them won’t believe me. And—fuck, then my parents would know. My mother already doesn’t want me acting. She thinks I’m going to lag behind in college. Can you imagine what this would do to her?”

  “But you can’t just work with him.” My mouth is dry. “Marius, you can’t.”

  “I have to.”

  “Maybe…” My throat hurts and I’m going to be sick and I just need to make this better. “Maybe the article I’m writing will come out before he starts production and you won’t have to go because everyone will get mad at him and the studio will take away his budget.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” he says. His eyes are red. “The women you’re interviewing for whatever you’re working on, they’re gonna get called liars. They might never find work in Hollywood again. Talking about it won’t help. We just have to pretend everything is normal.”

  “We can’t just not talk about it.”

  “We can’t talk about it,” he says. “It won’t fix anything, Josie. He has the power. He can end any of us in a second. It’s fine. I just won’t get in a room alone with him again.”

  “But what about the people who don’t know?” I ask. “What about the people who are new to the scene and think Lennox is gonna give them their big break? Somebody has to warn them. We at least have to try.”

  “There’s no point in trying,” he says. “I’m not telling anyone what happened. You can’t just force people to talk about it. He can deny it all he wants and turn around and fight dirty. I know exactly what people would say if I ever told: that I wanted it because I’m bi.”

  His words hit me like a slap. It hurts because I know it’s true.

  “Marius—”

  “So why should I try?”

  “For other people!” I’m waving my hands now, just like he does when he talks. “You aren’t the only one wrapped up in this. God, Marius, think about them.”

  His face looked horrible before, but it fucking crumples. It makes me want to cry. Before it was because of what Lennox did. Now it’s because I made him feel this way. I yelled at him and pushed him into telling me what happened and now I’m treating him like shit. I feel like dissolving into a puddle of tears.

  He steps away, arms folded so tight, they look like they’re the only thing holding together his narrow frame.

  “Marius,” I say again. “I—I want to make it better. Tell me what to do.”

  “I think,” he says, not meeting my eyes, “you should go.”

  His words make my chest ache. I’ve never fucked up this badly before. I want to fix it. I want to erase Roy Lennox from history. I want to go back in time and make sure none of this ever happened.

  But this is my fault.

  I can’t just run away, and yet that’s what my body wants me to do. I still feel sick. It’s the worst sort of panic attack. This isn’t because someone was talking too loud or because I had to give an order at a restaurant. This is because I fucked up. I hurt Marius, the nicest person I know, by stepping on an open wound.

  He told me to go, so I do.

  @JosieTheJournalist: pleased to say i built a new timeline where Ava DuVernay won every single Oscar for being perfect and I’m moving out of this dimension

  “Fuck.”

  I’m pretty sure this is the fifth time my computer has shut down and deleted my draft. I don’t know whether to scream or cry. It’s not like it was a good draft, anyway. I have no idea how to combine all six of these women’s accounts in a way that makes sense. Normally, I make a story as good as I can before sending it to an editor, but I need this one to be perfect. I need to make sure whoever edits this story immediately wants to take it on and defend it to the ends of the earth. It needs to be amazing. Most of all, I need to make sure these women are represented well.

  It’s early Monday morning, and since our flight is tonight, I have to get everything done now. It doesn’t help that I’m not even sure I should be writing this story. Every time I reread the sentences, I picture it happening: the groping, the fear, being trap
ped in a corner. Then I think about Marius and want to puke. After what happened at his apartment yesterday, how can I be the best person to write this story? How can I be the right person to write a profile of Marius, for that matter? I keep ignoring Penny’s texts, keep ignoring everyone and everything, plugging myself into my computer. It doesn’t help.

  “Hey.” Oddly enough, Alice’s voice is soft. “Having trouble over there, Bernstein?”

  “I want to be Woodward,” I mutter, slamming the restart option on my computer again. “And yeah, I think I’m dying. I want this to be perfect before I send it out.”

  Even though I owe Ms. Jacobson a draft of my Marius profile, I can’t bring myself to open the document. It literally hurts to look at it. Instead, I’ve been working on the Lennox story. I already have three other drafts. Maybe I should add a personal anecdote about what happened to me in middle school at the beginning. The plan was to send it to Penny, but I don’t even know if I should do that anymore.

  “You mean the profile?”

  “I—well, no, I was working on the Lennox piece. But I’ll get started on the profile as soon as I’m done.”

  If I’m ever done. My computer is moving along at a glacial pace. I run a hand through my hair and yank at it, hissing. There are tears in my eyes. I honestly shouldn’t have committed to either one of these things. I’m not mature or talented enough. I should just go back home and hang out with Maggie and Cash and never leave the house again.

  Alice walks over, bending down next to my chair. I don’t know why I force myself to write at the desk in our hotel room. At home, I write on the couch. Maybe it’s my form of self-inflicted punishment.

  “I think you should take a break,” my sister says. “Working on the same thing for hours won’t get you very far if you’re just frustrated the entire time.”

  “I can’t, Alice,” I say, scrubbing at my face. She pulls one of my hands away. “I have deadlines and people counting on me.”

  “You can’t get anything done like this, though. That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she says. “You’re literally pulling your hair out. What does your doctor tell you to do? Those breathing exercises, right?”

  “I know,” I snap, even though I hadn’t thought of doing them. I couldn’t tell that this was anxiety. It feels more like a million emotions blended together and a lack of sleep and the feeling I had on the math portion of the SAT. I force myself to take deep breaths and count.

  Alice moves to the other side of the room, shoving things into her suitcase. I close my eyes. The article is fine. It has to be. I’ve been working on it for what seems like a month now. I’ll send it to Penny and hope Lennox hasn’t threatened her, and we’ll see what she wants to do next. And then…the profile, I guess.

  It was already hell to go through the recordings where women talked about being sexually assaulted and harassed. I don’t want to listen to all the conversations I had with Marius. I can’t listen to his voice. It’ll just make me feel bad. Maybe I should feel bad. It was wrong for me to assume. I thought Lennox only targeted women, but I was wrong. Now I can’t stop wondering. Did Lennox pick Marius because he knew he was bi? Or was it just because Marius was the youngest person on set? Are there other boys?

  All I can think about is what he said. Talking about it won’t solve anything.

  This has to work. It just has to. I don’t know what we’ll do if it doesn’t. I’ll spend the rest of my career making sure that people call Lennox out for being one of the worst people in existence. If I have to spend the rest of my life making sure directors can’t harass workers on the job, I’ll do it. I’ll do it without a second thought.

  My phone beeps and I frown down at it. There’s a new email from Spelman. I feel a flutter in my chest, despite everything. I open my email up on my laptop so I can see. It’s not like I need to see the acceptance letter now, but it might make me feel a little better, make me feel like less of a failure who has no idea what she’s doing.

  Dear Josephine Wright,

  Thank you for your interest in Spelman College. We received many interesting and excellent applications, only some of which we were able to accept. We reviewed your application very carefully and noted several strong features. That said, there was rigorous competition for entry into our undergraduate programs this year, and your application was not among those that we were able to accept.

  We wish you every success with your studies and beyond.

  Yours truly,

  I don’t see the rest because my eyes have blurred with tears.

  How could this have happened? I had it all—top grades, great SAT scores. Is it because I wasn’t in enough clubs? But I had all my writing stuff. I thought that would stand out. And I’m a legacy applicant. Everyone in my family has gone: Grandma, Auntie Denise, Mom, Alice—

  Alice. How the hell did she get in when I didn’t?

  I toss my computer to the side. Alice glances up at me. She’s still packing clothes away in her suitcase.

  “Did something happen?” Alice asks. It sounds more like a statement. She already knows.

  “Shut up, Alice,” I snap. “God, why do you have to be the worst?”

  “Is this about the boy? Marius?”

  I clench my hands into fists. I still feel shitty for hurting him. How am I different from the people who called Julia a liar when she first came out with her story years ago?

  “No,” I say, even though it is, partially. “It’s about you applying to Spelman when you didn’t even want to go and taking my spot.”

  I know it’s stupid—there wasn’t a spot reserved for me—but it feels really good to say.

  I’m expecting her to yell at me, but her eyes just widen.

  “Fuck,” she says. “You didn’t get in?”

  “I know.” I laugh. “As if this trip couldn’t get any worse, right? I have no future. I got rejected from my dream school. I messed up everything with Marius. I don’t know how to stay objective anymore—I don’t know if I ever was objective. I’ve spent all this time on this story I probably won’t even be able to publish. I’m failing everyone.”

  Alice presses her lips together, closing her suitcase.

  “I wouldn’t call you a complete failure.”

  “Right.” I laugh again, but my throat is clogged with tears. I try my best to hold them back. “Thanks, Alice. You’re super inspirational.”

  “You don’t have to be a bitch to me, you know,” she says, sitting at the edge of my bed. “I’m trying to help. Look—you’re gonna figure this out.”

  I don’t say anything. I might start crying if I do.

  “I’m sure you’re not the only one who has gotten too close to a subject,” she continues. “It’s not just Marius. It’s all these women you’re writing about—I don’t know. I’m not a journalist.”

  “Wait,” I say, leaning forward. I’d rather listen to her speak than be stuck inside my own head any longer. “Tell me what you were gonna say.”

  “I don’t think you have to be objective all the time,” she says, shrugging. “I don’t know what’s going on with Marius. I told you to leave that boy alone, didn’t I?”

  “Forget it.” My stomach sinks at the thought of another one of her lectures. “It’s not about Marius being too pretty or too skinny for me, okay? It’s about me messing up. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “What?” Her eyebrows rise. “I never said he was too skinny for you.”

  “Well,” I say, “it was implied when you said I’d snap him in half.”

  “I—” She opens her mouth but seems to think better of what she was going to say. I almost flinch away when she places a hand on my shoulder. It’s awkward in a way that only Alice could be.

  “You’re full-figured,” she says. “And you’re gorgeous.”

  I roll my ey
es. “You can just say fat.”

  “Fat. Whatever,” she says. “But pretty boys—especially skinny pretty boys—usually can’t handle Black women at all, let alone fat ones, even if they’re Black themselves. That’s the only reason why I said anything.”

  She’s not wrong. But that was never the issue with Marius.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “The way you and Maggie talk sometimes makes me feel like you think I’m not as good as you because I’m fat.”

  We’re moving into different territory now, something I wasn’t prepared for when we first started talking, but I keep going.

  “And I know you probably don’t mean it—”

  “I don’t,” she says. “And I know Maggie doesn’t, either.”

  “Yeah, well.” I shrug. “It can just be hard to remember when it feels like the world is telling me I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry.” She bites her lip. “I don’t know what to say. You’re amazing and you know we don’t think any less of you because of your weight. I guess we could mention those things more.”

  “Thanks,” I say, picking at my pajama pants. “I’ll remind you, I guess. I just don’t want to seem like I’m…fragile or something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know,” I say. “Because of my anxiety.”

  Alice narrows her eyes.

  “Lots of people have anxiety,” she says. “It doesn’t mean you can’t have feelings. You should tell us things. I’m always levelheaded and you’re the same way.”

  “Really?” My brows rise. I’d say I’m the furthest thing from levelheaded. “Am I?”

  “Why do you think you’re so good at getting people to talk to you?” She folds her arms, like this has been too much tenderness for one day. “Anyway. This all feels like the end of the world, but I promise that it isn’t.”

  I snort. “Have you been threatened with legal action from a gigantic director and major company before?”