Zack was familiar with a certain cynical type of girl. He met them at premiere parties or nightclubs, the models/actresses—anoractresses, he called them. At first glance, they would blow him off, but when they found out he was an agent, everything changed. His diminutiveness was no object. Suddenly, they were touching his arm, moving their lips near his. Shameless.

In his first year as an agent, he had enjoyed the attention—it was a trip to walk into a Michelin restaurant with a knockout on his arm—but at the end of the night, it was just him and the girl in his loft. Because none of the girls was interested in talking, it felt a lot like bringing home dolls. Coke helped, but eventually that bored him, too.

He didn’t know Maddy well, but he never would have put her in that category of girl. Now he wasn’t sure. She was vamping, hamming it up in that ridiculous dress, a dress you wore only if you had a movie in the festival, not if you were someone’s date. Berlin wasn’t the Academy Awards; there were different rules. He couldn’t reconcile the girl on the carpet with the girl he had seen in I Used to Know Her, the serious dramatic actress. Who could not only act but write. Maddy was smart. What was she thinking?

“It seems like a lot of trouble to bring her to Berlin for one audition,” he murmured to his mother.

“Not when your director refuses to leave the continent.”

“That’s a very fancy dress.”

“This is a very important premiere.”

“What’s your plan for her?”

“To break her in. Zachary, please. I don’t need to educate you on the value of advance publicity. You’re an agent, for God’s sake.”

He shook his head and watched the V grow tighter.


Maddy could hear a woman calling her name in a thick accent. The woman was in a parka, standing next to a guy with a videocamera. “Ms. Freed, I am Gisela Moor. I’m from a German television show?”

“Hey there,” Maddy said. Steven had released her hand and was talking to another reporter a few steps away.

“What is your film in the festival?” the woman in the parka was asking Maddy.

“Oh, I don’t have one. But I’m in a movie that just premiered at Mile’s End, in the U.S. It should be out by Christmas in the States, and we’re hoping for a release in Europe. It’s called I Used to Know Her. By a great new director named—”

“How long have you and Mr. Weller been involved?”

“Oh, we’re not—he isn’t—we just met. My boyfriend is the director of my movie, and he’s actually named Dan—”

Bridget was there, standing next to her. “That’s all for now,” she said. She ushered Maddy inside the theater. Maddy was flushed from the adrenaline of the past ten minutes and embarrassed that the press had misunderstood Steven’s gesture. She wished she had gotten more time to talk about Dan and the movie. “You did very well,” Bridget said, smiling warmly. “You’re a natural.”

When the rest of the cast finished their interviews and came inside, they all climbed the stairs to the theater. With Steven beside her, her hand still tingling, Maddy wasn’t sure what to say. “Thank you for doing that,” she tried. He said nothing but smiled at her briefly, paternally, before moving a few steps ahead.


At the after-party, held at a hot nightclub, she and the Widower crew sat a banquette in a roped-off private area. Zack had come to dinner with them during the screening but decided to skip the party.

Maddy’s cell phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize, with a strange area code, and not knowing any better, she answered. A man from the Daily Mail said he was calling for confirmation that Maddy was dating Steven Weller. “No, that’s not true,” she said. “I don’t know where you got that. I have a boyfriend.”

Bridget indicated that Maddy should give her the phone. Bridget took it, listened for a moment, and said Maddy was not going to comment on the rumors. Then she clicked off.

“But that makes it sound like it’s true,” Maddy said.

“No, it’s always better not to comment,” Bridget said, “or else it sounds like a false denial.”

“Maybe I should issue some kind of statement. Flora could help me. I want the press to know that Dan and I are together. I want to get his name out there, too.”

“Don’t take any of this seriously,” Bridget said with a wave of her hand. “The legitimate outlets won’t report anything without attribution. As for the illegitimate ones, I try to give them as little attention as possible.” A moment later, the phone rang again. Bridget silenced it, returned it to Maddy, and said, “We’re going to have to change your number.”

Maddy hoped no one else bothered her. She’d had too much wine at dinner and didn’t want to answer by accident and say the wrong thing. That it had been exciting to hold Steven’s hand. That she loved feeling his blood next to hers.

Maddy heard Chrissie Hynde singing “I’ll Stand By You,” and began to sway in response to the music. She was sixteen again, at the Potter High School prom. Steven saw her swaying and asked if she wanted to dance. “Yes, Mr. Weller, I will dance with you,” she said, realizing she was verging on drunk. At the banquette, someone had ordered cranberry and vodka and she’d already had a glass.

He held her closely as they rocked back and forth. It was intoxicating to be close to him. He smelled like cedar or musk.

His wrists were heavy on her shoulders. In her velvet heels, she was three inches taller than he. “Your real last name is Woyceck, right?” she asked.

“Yeah. Polish. Way too hard to spell, so I changed it early. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking about how I used to know everything about you. When I was a teenager, I clipped articles about you from teeny-bopper magazines. Isn’t that stupid?”

“Not at all. Even at a young age, you had good taste.” It was classic Steven, pretending to be full of himself as a way of pretending not to be full of himself.

He was cocking his head and closing one eye, and then he ran his hands down Maddy’s hair. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Imagining you with a shag. I think it would be a good look. I used to do women’s hair, you know.”

“You mean like Warren Beatty in Shampoo? The one based on Jon Peters?”

“Yes, but Jon Peters is sixty.” His eyes were bloodshot. She wondered if he was drunk, too. The way he acted all the time was a little bit drunk, the hoarse voice, the ever-present whimsy.

“Can I ask you something? What exactly happened with you and Cady Pearce? Dan told me you guys broke up, but—he didn’t say why.”

“We didn’t want the same things.”

“Then why was she at that party at Mile’s End?”

“Because she’s a good friend. I try to maintain good relationships with all my exes.”

“Does that include Julia Hanson?”

His face went dark. “Are you really asking me about this?”

“Sure I am. I appear to be slow-dancing with Steven Weller. I might never have this opportunity again.” She put on a British-journalist voice and set her fist below his mouth like a microphone. “Tell me, Mr. Weller. Why did you and Ms. Hanson get divorced?”

He smiled at her, but the smile had lost some of its warmth. “When we married, I was very frustrated professionally. This was before Briefs. She was doing well, she had a film career. I was competitive. It was just a bad time to get into a marriage, especially so young.”

He wasn’t giving her anything. Maddy didn’t blame him. It was inappropriate for her to ask about a near-stranger’s divorce. Especially a celebrity.

“It also ended because she was insane,” he continued, surprising her. “We had a bad fight one night, and I knew if I stayed, she would pull me into the abyss. Never sleep with someone who has more problems than you.”

She smiled at him drunkenly. “Nelson Algren.”

“What?”

“Nelson Algren. A Walk on the Wild Side.” Dan had turned her on to Algren soon after they started dating. “ ‘Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s,’ ” she went on, speaking more loudly as the music rose. “Weren’t you quoting him?” The music was blaring, and she couldn’t quite make out his response, but it sounded like “Of course I was!”


Dan was at the kitchen table on his laptop. It was Friday night in New York and he had dinner plans with Sharoz and their lawyer. If he didn’t leave soon, he would be late. But he was surfing. He browsed through his usual liberal news sites, pretending he wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and then he typed “Maddy Freed.”

Dozens of items popped up from entertainment and gossip sites describing her as Steven Weller’s new girlfriend. He clicked on “Images.” Rows and rows of photos appeared. Maddy in a glamorous dress, standing close to Weller. There was one where she was looking at him, not the cameras, and her eyes were so adoring Dan closed his laptop. His mother in Silver Spring would see these. And all his friends. People would think they’d split up. He would have to explain that it was a misunderstanding, that she was there on business.

Maybe he should have told her not to go. But she never would have listened. She wanted to meet Walter Juhasz. And maybe she would.

Weller was gay. Not a sexual threat. He was a master of this. Clearly, he’d been doing it all his working life.

Dan dialed Maddy’s cell, even though it was two A.M. in Berlin. “There are pictures of you on the Internet,” he said. “A lot of them.”

“Oh God,” she said. She had come home from the party and was hanging the Marchesa in her hotel-room closet. “I haven’t gone online yet, but I should have expected it. These journalists have been calling me, and you wouldn’t believe how many photographers there were. Did they print anything about I Used to Know Her?”