“I have to go,” she said, her cheeks burning. She strode purposefully toward the suite door, but it turned out to be the bathroom. She opened it to see a gleaming marble tub, and embarrassed, she spun around, not knowing where to go.

“It’s to the right,” he said. He didn’t get up. She pulled open the door and turned her head to see if he was following her. But the hallway was empty and quiet.


Maddy’s hands were shaking as she slid her card in her door. What she’d felt in that room had been electric and irrefutable.

Or maybe she was just being self-centered. Maybe when he said What do you think is going on?, he was letting her know he was gay and had no interest. She barely knew the man.

She lay awake awhile before drifting off into a deep sleep. She had an old recurring dream in which she was in the backseat of a car, behind an empty driver’s seat, trying to reach the steering wheel. It was hard to control from a distance, and the car went faster and faster, some unseen force gunning the gas. This time there was someone in the front seat. Steven Weller. As she struggled to reach her hands around the wheel, he turned to her with that fake-innocuous grin, and there was a terrible screech, and she woke up.


The next morning Zack called to see if Maddy felt like visiting Marlene Dietrich’s grave. She said yes, curious about him, about Bridget, their relationship. And after what had happened in Steven’s penthouse, she felt Zack might be able to shed light on him. Zack must have known Steven most of his life, which meant he’d seen things other people hadn’t.

Maddy and Zack got off the U-Bahn at the Friedenau stop and headed in search of the cemetery. Dietrich’s grave was simple and dark gray. It read, “Hier steh ich an den Marken meiner Tage.” Beneath it was MARLENE and the dates of her life.

Maddy looked down at her guidebook. “ ‘Here I stand upon the border of my days,’ ” she read. “It’s adapted from a sonnet by Theodor Körner. It says he wrote it after he got a head wound during the Napoleonic Wars and thought he was going to die in the forest. That’s awful.”

“Obviously, the guy lived,” Zack said, “or he wouldn’t have written the poem. So he was wrong.”

“But he never forgot the fear, the hours he was in the cold, waiting to go.”

She thought again of her father lying there in the snow. And no one coming to save him.

Right after she’d gotten the news, she’d found herself unable to sleep. She would lie awake, replaying the last moments of his life, as though she could rewind and bring him back. The insomnia continued in Vermont, where she and Dan drove to make arrangements. She became convinced that if she had been with him the day he died, she would have skied with him and he wouldn’t be dead. It had been the weekend of Presidents’ Day. He had invited her and Dan up to visit, but she was working extra hours to make up for her time off during production, so she’d said no.

By the time they held the memorial a few days later, she was a basket case, not having slept one wink since she got the news. She’d made Dan do the driving because she was so frayed, she thought she’d have an accident.

She told Dan about the insomnia, and when they got back to Brooklyn, he made her see a Fort Greene psychiatrist named Larson Wells. Larson helped Maddy realize that her father’s death hadn’t been her fault. The lorazepam and Zoloft she prescribed had helped, too. Soon she could sleep, and after a week, when the Zoloft had kicked in, she became less obsessive. Instead of lying awake, replaying the end of Jake’s life for hours, she would do it for a few minutes and it would cease to engage her.

But while on the antidepressant, she went on a few auditions and felt off her game, unable to access her emotions. There was a part of her that felt she was cheating herself of the very valid agony caused by his death. She stopped the drug and terminated therapy, against Dan’s wishes.

As she and Zack walked down the paths, they talked about films. Zack had always liked art films but when she asked if his mother had gotten him into moviegoing, he said, “God, no. Bridget likes mainstream stuff. She can’t stand anything with subtitles or anything more than eighty-five minutes long.”

Clearly, he was trying to carve out a separate career, but when you worked in opposition to someone, it meant that person still controlled you. “Was she one of those working mothers who doesn’t miss a school event?”

He let out a high-pitched laugh, and lit a cigarette. “She missed a lot. I don’t think she ever really wanted to be a mother. She wanted to have a child. They’re not the same thing.”

“I’m sure she wanted you.”

“It always seemed like there were places she would rather be. She was always on the phone. I must have had six nannies by the time I was ten. Polish, Tibetan, Mexican, there were even a couple of hot au pairs from Scandinavia.”

“Did you ever feel resentful of her work?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think Steven was pulling her away from you? Any boy would have felt rivalrous. It’s very Oedipal.”

“You sound like the shrink I went to as a teenager. It’s funny you ask about Steven. When I was, like, ten, I had this fantasy that Steven was my real father. My dad had remarried by then and had two other kids, and I was angry about it. Steven was the biggest force in my mother’s life, and I thought how great it would be if he were my real dad. I used to stare at pictures of him and tell myself we resembled each other.”

“Did you ever ask Bridget?”

“I remember we were out at an Italian restaurant. She had just won some ‘women in business’ award and dragged me along. I burst out with the question and she doubled over laughing. ‘I can promise you Steven is not your father,’ she said. I got so pissed, I ran out of the restaurant. Later she apologized, said she hadn’t meant to hurt me. She said my dad had taken a test proving that he was my father and she could show me the results. I said no. I didn’t look at them till years later.” He shook his head bitterly. “It’s weird to think about that. I can’t believe I wanted Steven to be my dad, but the thing about Steven is, everyone wants him to fill the hole we have in our lives.”

“Do you guys get along?”

“Not really. He’s a seducer. It’s why he’s so successful. He manipulates people, and he’s so skilled at it that they don’t realize they’re being manipulated.” He began to talk about The Widower. He had hated it. He said Steven’s performance was phony and thin. As he delineated everything he disliked about the characterization, she saw his face grow hard. “So what did you think?” he asked with a hint of a sneer.

“His performance wasn’t perfect, but I guess I feel like he doesn’t get enough credit as an actor because his work is very subtle. To me, that’s the essence of great film acting. When it doesn’t feel like a performance.”

“Maybe you just have a thing for him. I saw you holding his hand at the premiere.”

“He took mine,” she said, her cheeks growing hot. She was no longer sure what had happened on the press line, not after what he had said in his suite.

“Whatever,” Zack said. “I saw the way you looked at him.” They had stopped under a tree covered with snow. A gust of wind moved through, and little flakes fell on their shoulders. “Maddy. You probably think I have a problem with Steven because of some unresolved anger against my mom. But I don’t. I’m not angry. And I don’t hate him. So when I say what I’m going to say, I want you to listen and not ignore it because of the source. I have known this guy most of my life, and this is not a role you want to play.”

Maddy was confused. “What role?”

“Girlfriend of Steven Weller.”

“I’m in love with Dan,” she protested.

“I know. But with you and Steven both being Bridget’s clients, you’re going to run into each other, whether or not you book this role. And if someday your situation with Dan changes, I wouldn’t want . . . How can I put this? Steven doesn’t respect women.”

“He has a woman as his manager. How can he not respect them?”

“She’s the only one. And that’s business. In his personal life, he likes his women pretty, dumb, and quiet. And he doesn’t like any for more than a year.”

She nodded slowly, trying to read Zack’s eyes. Doesn’t like any for more than a year. Maybe he was warning her that Steven was gay because he guessed she had a crush, and he didn’t want her to develop feelings. He was being protective. Or maybe he was just calling him a womanizer.

“Can I ask you something?” Maddy said.

“Sure.”

“Promise not to tell your mother?”

“I have no problem keeping secrets from my mother. I do it all the time.”

“Dan has a theory that Bridget and Steven invited me here so he’d have someone to see movies with. Because he’s gay.”

Zack had lit another cigarette and was examining the tip. “And?” he said.

“Well, there must have been parties at your house, I figure you saw people. Friends of his. I mean, it’s not like I care one way or the other, I’m just curious.”

“What are you asking?”

“Did he ever, like, come to your stuff at school?”

“You mean when I was in Peter Pan at eleven, playing the dog, did he bring some muscular guy with a Tom of Finland tattoo and a handkerchief hanging out of his jeans pocket?”

“So he brought girls, then?” She felt like an idiot as she was asking it, classless, overeager.

“The times he came to see me in plays, he was with my mother.”