The presence of celebrity still alters the space; its power wafts behind the entrance of So-and-So, even more if she is with a new Mr. So-and-So. Such a presence leaves a room charged, electrified. Even the dullest tables of obligatory work breakfasts suddenly perk up, ignited to be in the presence of fame or beauty. People who never smile bare their teeth until their cheeks hurt. And the surrounding tables either go silent or cannot stop talking, even with absolutely nothing to say. Ah, the ambient noise of celebrity. The performance of pleasure that must follow them everywhere. Sophie recognizes it within seconds now—the hush—whispers traveling like wildfire across tables and in between them. The paralysis of proximity.
And yet, having spent her first several years at parties across Hollywood, in homes stilted into the hillside, caterers brought in for a handful of guests, Sophie has learned that in the industry’s ranking, the actors often come last. In fact, the actors seem almost cheap, embarrassingly cheesy. Desperate. Those petite, polished men who rely on others to get them work. They are Hollywood fish food. Sure, writers call their own shots and can kick-start projects. But it is the producers and directors who really shift a room of industry people. Actors fawn over them; writers suck up to them. People drive across town for catered dinners at their homes, dip their toes in their pools, pet their dogs.
This hierarchy of Hollywood power, of course, is how Ray Delaney gets the same table at the Chateau every night and fills the seats at said table with a constant rotation of actors, actresses, models, and writers. This is why he gets to creepily rest his hand on your forearm uncomfortably long; to call you sweetheart; to ask you why you never smile. This is why you still are not meant to complain.
Sophie looks over toward table 5, immediately spotting Ray Delaney by the popped collar on his leather jacket, the salt-and-pepper of his close-cut hair. He keeps it tight on the sides but fluffed on top, masking his impending baldness. She wonders what ingenue would be at his table tonight. Judging by the ambient hush, and the fact that he has sat her in the most prominent seat, she must be someone big, or as he might say—on the verge.
Sophie passes a fiddle-leaf fig and hustles back to the private bungalows. The bungalows are curtained booths tucked into the most secluded nook of the courtyard, usually reserved for high-level meetings or illicit rendezvous. Tonight, she has three Russian oligarchs with much younger counterparts, all there on business. Their bungalow sounds unusually quiet now, where cheers had filled it earlier and many drinks had been ordered.
Inside the curtain, the three men sit at the table with their heads tilted back, a salute of Adam’s apples, mouths agape. Two women—of questionable drinking age—teeter over one of them, giggling, and trying to light their cigarettes without falling over. Sophie looks around for the third, as one of the women fumbles her match and drops it into the man’s lap, eliciting even more laughter.
Sophie sets the tray down and the sound must startle one of them because her stiletto catches on the cobblestone, and she falls, nearly overturning the man’s chair with her. Upon landing, she crumples into a ball with laughter, which the other joins in, until they are heaving with such fury that someone stumbling upon them at that moment might call for help.
Once the laughter subsides, Sophie gestures back to the table. “I’m leaving the check here with your drinks. No rush, of course.” She accidentally looks to the men, unconscious, and regrets the implication.
“You’re very pretty,” one of the women says in a thick Russian accent, looking up at her with the glazed eyes of too many drinks. “Like swan.”
She lifts her arm, wrist limp, and presses her thumb together with her fingers, into a beak. The other looks up, then spits out another laugh and hits her with the back of her hand.
As Sophie ducks out from the curtain of the bungalow, another server, Ariel, nearly bumps into her with a tray carrying beet salad, tuna tartare, and pommes frites—the truffled smell nauseating to her since her second week. He stops her midstride.
“Delaney is asking for you,” he says.
“I know.”
He shifts his weight impatiently.
“Willow asked me to tell you. He’s at five. Obviously.”
Sophie takes a deep breath and walks through the center of the courtyard, around the exotic plants. She sees the girl seated next to Ray Delaney better now. A startling beauty even from afar, with olive skin, bright eyes, and—as Sophie gets closer—an Australian accent.
“Here she is!” says Ray Delaney.
He clasps his hands, then spreads his arms as though to introduce Sophie to the table. Instead he holds out a pudgy, tanned hand for her to kiss. She forces a smile and squeezes the ends of his fingers before returning her hand to the empty tray by her side. Ray Delaney chuckles.
“Another round of drinks?” she asks.
Ray Delaney’s leather jacket crunches as he adjusts himself in his chair. He pulls his pants at the crotch. Under his jacket is a black V-neck, always revealing just a hint of groomed chest hair in the same salt-and-pepper. The young man beside him wears a buttoned-up oxford, thick-frame glasses, and a persistent frown, and the two to his side wear identical gray suits and seem to move in unison. This is a classic Hollywood meeting. The fresh young starlet, the slick producer, the thirsty writer. The suits.
“I’ll take another bourbon,” the hypothetical writer says, tilting his glass.
“Whiskey, neat,” says one of the suits.
Ray Delaney waves a hand, beckoning Sophie closer to his side, which she obliges. Once close, he pulls at her forearm until she leans half her weight on the arm of his chair. He takes her hand in his, placing his other on top. His skin looks nearly orange in the candlelight, and it takes every effort for Sophie not to yank her hand away and spit in his face.
“You can sit with us for just a moment.”
“I really can’t,” says Sophie. “I have other tables.”
“We can just tell Willow it was my fault,” Ray Delaney says with a smug smile. “Willow and I are tight.”
Ray Delaney’s face is blown up and laminated in the VIP binder Sophie committed to memory three years ago upon being hired by Willow first as a hostess. Deep down, Sophie senses that Willow likely despises him for all his crudeness and entitlement, but Ray Delaney had long ago secured his place with her and thus plays his hand freely inside the Chateau’s storied walls. Sometimes it feels like he’s testing them, like a child wanting to be scolded.
“Five minutes,” he says. “Ruby here was just telling us about her mind-altering experiences.”
The young actress smiles, a hand to her bare breastbone, her silk top glowing rose-gold in the candlelight. “Oh, no,” she says, her Australian accent stretching the words, “I’ve never done Mem. I’ve just heard things.”
“Never? And why’s that?” Ray Delaney says, getting off on her shyness. “It’s expensive, I know. But I’m sure you’ve been offered. In your circle? Please.”
The starlet cups the candle from the tabletop with both hands, the votive cutouts flickering shadows across her face. “Well, I don’t mean to be rude but I guess I figured I’ve already got a life. It’s pretty good, yeah? Why would I want someone else’s?”
Sophie feels a spark of triumph for her. Go Ruby.
“But only one,” Ray Delaney counters. “And therein lies your problem, kid.”
The two suits laugh.
The starlet turns her face toward her shoulder and gives a coy smile, punctuated by dimples. But Ray Delaney has now lost interest in her. He picks up a glass of rosé off the table and holds it out to Sophie.
“Whose is this?” she asks.
“Yours. It’s—a table wine. That is, wine for the table.”
Sophie laughs until she realizes he is not making a joke.
“It was mine,” Ruby says. “But then it was way too sweet for my taste so he—”
“Blah blah blah, extremely interesting—look it doesn’t matter how we have it. We do, and now it’s yours.�
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“Sorry,” says Ruby.
“Don’t apologize, look at you—you should never drink anything you don’t want. Not with that face.” He turns back to Sophie. “Have a sip. Take the edge off.”
“Thank you, but I can’t,” says Sophie, still processing the implication there. That she, unlike Ruby, should drink whatever and whenever she is offered. “I’m working.”
“What are you, delivering babies or something?” he says.
Sophie is still leaning on the side of his chair, her thigh beginning to cramp. The skin on the back of her leg is turning sore from the wicker. She looks toward the bar, to Jonathan, but he is too busy mixing cocktails to notice her.
“It’ll loosen you up,” he says. “Make you even better at this very important job of yours.”
With the rest of the table watching, Sophie takes the glass from him and takes a sip between clenched teeth. Before she puts it down, she twirls the glass, watching the reflections of the others at the table stretch and spin as they blabber on, examining their distorted faces in the rose-gold glow.
“So, you’ve never done Mem,” Ray Delaney says to the starlet, back in his good graces again. “Tell us, then, what do you do for fun? All this talk of our film, we better know that you can act the part. Imagine, someone never having had a good time.” He turns to wink at Sophie, like this is their inside joke—her the prude to his scoundrel.
“I don’t know,” Ruby says, accent thickening with every sip. She brushes the short blunt bangs from her forehead, presumably to think. “I like to hike with my friends, at Runyon or Topanga. Road trips to Joshua Tree, Big Sur. Oh, and I love a good massage.”
Mass-age, Sophie thinks. It does sound more fun with an Australian accent.
“You adorable thing,” says Ray Delaney. “Don’t you love this girl? America is going to love this girl.”
Ruby beams. Sophie feels bad for her, though she knows she should not. After all, Ruby is probably only a few years younger than her, and seems pleased with her place at that table. In another world Sophie might consider finding her later in the bathroom, telling her to go home, get out of there. Find some real friends her own age.
“Look, can I be blunt?” says Ray Delaney.
“Please,” says Ruby.
“These activities—hiking, massages, drinking—they are ordinary things for ordinary people. But you, kid, you’re anything but. Look around. We’re lucky. We have the chance, and the means, to do the extraordinary.”
Ray Delaney glances at Sophie with another wink that makes her jaw clench.
“If anyone knows about being lucky it’s Ray here,” snorts one of the suits.
“I’m serious—and not just because I think it would help Ruby get into character for the film, which it would, undoubtedly. But because she deserves a little life.”
“Get into character?” says Ruby, curious now. “How do you mean, then?”
“All the big names are doing it. Daniel, Bradley, Margot. Hard to imagine how they ever acted without it now. It’s practically the new school of method acting.”
“Gosh, what would I do without you?”
“A lot more hiking?” says the other suit between crunches of ice from his drained Moscow Mule. Ray Delaney shoots him a look and he shuts up.
“These are just the things you pass along, to younger generations,” says Ray Delaney. “I’m a mentor. It’s what I do.” Then he turns to Sophie, still perched against the arm of his rattan chair. She feels his breath on her shoulder. “And how about you?”
“I should get back to my tables,” she says. Now drinks really are piling up beside Jonathan at the bar.
“We live in a fucked-up time,” he says, ignoring her. “Everything is accessible at any hour—all you need is a Wi-Fi password and a pair of eyes. Do you know what that’s like for someone in my generation? I’m an old fuck. My father was a real estate guy, raised four children. They did okay, but they weren’t traveling or eating like we do today, like we expect. Maybe once a year they’d scrape together a few extra bucks to get away—to Cuba, or the pyramids. And do you know why?”
“For the romance?” The starlet blinks, wide-eyed.
“Because none of their fucking friends had been,” Ray Delaney says. “They’d come back with photographs and blow minds. Kaboom. The pyramids—massive, towering structures—built when? Kaboom. French bread. Moroccan rugs. No one had ever seen these things in person. Life was all competition then, too, just a simpler one.”
The suits nod along, and Sophie looks anxiously to the bar, wondering how long this speech will go on, and whether the punch line will be a warning to her, a threat of some sort. Or most important, when he’ll loosen the sweaty grip on her wrist.
“They’d have a big party just to scroll through blurry photos on the projector, retell their stories, describe the fucking food. Do you know what people would say to that now?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that online,” says one of the suits.
“Check my fucking Instagram,” adds the other, shaking his head.
This gets a laugh from everyone but the writer, swiping at something on his phone.
“Point being,” says Ray Delaney. “We have the means to travel anywhere faster and cheaper, but so what? We’ve already seen it all. It’s all waiting on the other side of this.” He plucks the writer’s phone from his hands and dangles it between his fingers.
“Fuck off,” says the writer. “If I have to listen to another talk about connectivity—”
“You fuck off,” says Ray Delaney. “Know your place.”
Then Ray Delaney extends a finger to his temple and taps it there. “So really—what’s left of luxury when there’s no place left unseen? No destination exotic enough?”
“Space?” says the starlet.
“Why do people do drugs?” says Ray Delaney, exasperated. “To escape themselves. But you know what—they can never get away.”
The writer pushes his chair out to get up, but Ray Delaney keeps talking.
“This smug shit over here will always be a smug shit, even after a bump of coke, which I’m sure he’s off to do. Go on, go on,” he says, and the writer scoffs before heading to the bathroom. “No, to truly leave yourself, the one place you can never escape, and to experience a moment as someone else. That is the ultimate luxury.”
Just then, up the Chateau’s courtyard wall, a window opens and two shaggy heads appear against the ivy-covered brick, yelling something about a party in room 204 before immediately retreating back inside. The window slams shut with such force that another waitress across the courtyard instinctively ducks under her tray.
Sophie sees her opportunity and pushes herself back up to standing, her heels uneasy on the mossy cobblestones.
“For example,” Ray Delaney says, “I’d love to know what it’s like to walk around on a pair of legs like these.” He makes a show of looking Sophie’s legs up and down, grinning.
“Oh relax,” he says, her discomfort apparently evident. “I’m kidding, princess.”
Sophie manages to smile, her heart racing, as she slips away. She keeps it up—big and forced—until safely facing the bar.
“Join us for a taste later,” he calls after her, tapping his gold ring against the half-empty old-fashioned. “We’ve got business to take care of first, but I brought some top-shelf shit.”
* * *
Jonathan is shaking a martini as Sophie leans against the bar.
“I can’t do it,” she says. “I can’t go back over there. I hate everything about that man.”
“Well, he’s very hate-able,” Jonathan says.
“You have no idea what it’s like.”
“Please, I work every waking hour I’m not here on a pilot no one will ever see, while that guy drinks twenty-five-dollar cocktails and makes shitty blockbusters. I’d love nothing more than to punch him in his little pug face.”
Sophie laughs, and it feels good. “He actually makes some good movies, isn’t
that the worst part? If he didn’t he wouldn’t be here anymore.”
“So help me god, Sophie Marden.”
Sophie rests her weight against the bar to relieve her throbbing feet, then slips one foot out of her shoe. She rolls her ankle, undoing the damage from the morning’s rehearsal and the pain of these heels that bring in better tips than wearing sneakers. The pain, and the pleasure of its release, travels all the way up her body.
Sophie hesitates to linger on the unwanted attention she gets while working there, at least not to Jonathan. She can sense how little he understands; how, like so many men, he still thinks such attention is a privilege that women simply don’t know how to spin. How, in her position, he would do something with it. Nothing she could say would make Jonathan comprehend what it feels like to be seen by a man like Ray Delaney. To feel trapped in your own skin.
Sophie has no idea how Jonathan keeps writing. Ballet can be thankless—hard on her body, her nerves, her social life—and she also trains endlessly for delayed gratification, but at least her efforts are externally validated by her director, Auguste. Jonathan toils at scripts no one sees. That no one may ever see, on paper let alone the screen. Sophie knows he took this job to get proximity to the industry and that instead it is torture, watching other careers launch from up close while he serves them. Invisible.
Just a few weeks ago, Sophie had impressed someone, finally. After four years in the Los Angeles Ballet Company, Auguste announced Sophie would move from soloist to principal, and dance the title role in La Sylphide, one of the oldest ballets in existence. She would fill the role dancers like Natalia Osipova and Cynthia Gregory have all performed, a role aspiring ballerinas dream about from their very first pair of toe shoes. Now in just a few months it will be Sophie who is the envy onstage. She still remembers the first time she watched the haunting, tragic ballet—the sylph, a spirit effervescent and charming enough to lure a betrothed away from his future wife, who is similarly destroyed in the process. Whoever plays the sylph must be tempting and magical—the highest challenge for a dancer, alluring one moment and fluttering the next. She must capture the audience and then captivate them as she dies. The greatest romance, perhaps, is that between the spirit and her crowd. Oh, to be a woman who inspires men to do the most craven things, to break the rules of society, to leave a true love without another choice. This is what little girls are taught, after all. To be a glimmering, precious thing. Delicate, and ultimately cursed.
The Shimmering State Page 4