“But how did you find the palazzo?”

“I went online to find the address, and when I got here, I said I was your boyfriend, and one of the guys got Steven. He was really cool about it.”

She kissed him again. The handholding in Berlin and Steven’s strange looks were meaningless now. Dan would stay for her audition, help her prepare. They were “partners on screen and in life,” read the headline of a blog piece about them that had come out during Mile’s End.

He wanted to take a bath. She went into the bathroom with him. Matching marble columns connected the ceiling to the tub and on one wall was a framed etching of an egg.

“What made you decide to come here all of a sudden?” she asked from the tub ledge, stroking his hair.

“I missed you, and I just didn’t see the point in staying in Brooklyn. We can write here. I quit the bar. I don’t need it anymore. I’m a director now.”

She climbed into the bath with him. Held his cock in her hand. It was like the finger of a musical man. Pale and long. It stiffened in the water.

She soaped his body, massaged him. They kissed and then rose, wet, moving to the bed. Their sex at Mile’s End had been strange, not connected. Now he was present and she was, too. He got on top of her. She had a fantasy of Steven taking her on the window seat of his suite in the Hotel Concorde and pushing her legs up into the air. She imagined the cleft in his chin and the feel of his stubble as it rubbed against her mouth, turning it raw.

When she came, she cried out loudly. Dan came soon after. “That was intense,” he said.

He dozed for a few minutes and then woke up and said he was wired. “I want you to read this,” she said, handing him the Husbandry script.

She moved around the room anxiously, unpacking his things, while he read it on the couch. When he finished, he breathed in deeply through his nose and closed the script. She darted over and sat next to him. “So?”

“It’s really good,” he said.

“Do you really think so? I know the language is poetic, and it’s not a real American city. You don’t think it’s too . . . Euro? Pretentious?”

“It’s sexy, it’s dark, it’s Juhasz’s European take on an American marriage. He’s going to turn this small town into a horror show.”

“So you think I should read?”

“Of course you should. You’re going to nail this. You have that combination of sadness and raw sexuality.” He bit her earlobe playfully.

“I feel like I get this character. But Juhasz might hate me.”

“He already loved I Used to Know Her. Just do what you always do. Prepare, be confident, and show him who you are.” He kissed her. There was an ornate mirror across the room, and in it she could see them nuzzling.

“How do you think I would look with a shag?” she asked, angling her head so she could better see her reflection.

“What?”

“Nothing.”


In the library Steven was lying on a couch, his head facing away from Bridget as though she were his shrink. She was in a dark blue armchair. The light from the canal made patterns on the ceiling.

She had to keep Steven on task. Focused on the future and not the present.

The boyfriend had been an unexpected hitch in the plan. It took balls to crash at Steven Weller’s palazzo. Maddy and Dan had come down for a late lunch, both with wet hair. Steven had been gracious with Dan, asking about his flight, the room. Now the couple had gone on a walk, “exploring the town.”

“Maybe she’s too complicated,” Steven said. In Berlin, in his suite, he had been beguiled by Maddy, certain she was the one they’d been looking for. The frisson between them would enliven the project. But now the boyfriend was here, and he felt as though he were running a youth hostel.

“It’s good that she’s complicated,” Bridget said. “We already know that not just any pretty face will do. You need a costar who can be an equal.”

“He’s probably read the script. All the sex scenes. It could be a problem for him.”

“He went to NYU! He’s not a Mormon! You’re forgetting the sex scene in his movie.”

“Even if he encourages her to do this, I’m not sure I feel the requisite . . . passion for her. I need to feel that the girl is the only one who could possibly play the part.” He sat up and adjusted a stack of architectural and art books on the table so they were lined up perfectly. One was a study of eighteenth-century German coins.

Bridget crossed her left leg over her right so her body was facing him, and bounced her foot up and down slowly. “I know I don’t usually talk to you this way,” she said, “but we’ve been in each other’s lives a very long time.”

“Yes.”

“And I have to—I’m frustrated with the way you’re handling all this. I watched you fight so hard to do The Widower, and I don’t know what happened to that spirit. Don’t you want this to happen?”

“I’m not sure. My enthusiasm has waned.”

“Why give up now?”

“This has been a long process, and I’m tired.”

“And now it’s going to pay off, all the work we’ve done to get here. You’ve been persuasive. She wants to do this. I saw the way you two connected on the patio.” He glanced at her sharply. “You know I see everything. Now stop. You cannot be so fear-based.”

“You’re forgetting that I’m the one who has to work with her.”

“I’ll be working with her, too. And she is right for it. You’ve been doing such a good job. Let me do mine.”

“What can you do about this situation?”

“Well, I was thinking.” She had a vein that ran down the center of her forehead that throbbed when she was excited. With age, it had gotten bluer. “Dan is such a skilled director, particularly with female-friendly material. That was an unusual film he made.”

“And?”

“He’s responsible. Obviously professional. Well trained. He wouldn’t need to learn on the job.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Valentine. My film in Bulgaria. They’ve been having so many problems. Patrick Fitzsimmons is a disaster. It’s a serious love story, and I’m getting reports that this guy has no facility with actors. The cast is miserable. And Dan wants to work. I want to go out on a limb for him, the way I always do for people I care about.”

There was a kind of love you could feel for your manager that surpassed even the love of a child for his parents. “He does want to work,” Steven said, smoothing the jacket of one of the art books and examining his palm for dust. None.

“I want to help the boy. I like matching talented people with important projects.”

“Of course you do,” he said, patting her on the knee. “It’s what you do for a living.”

“It’s more than a living. It’s who I am.”


For the party Maddy chose a black wool boatneck dress. Dressy but not too much. She wanted to be herself. Dan had noticed the Marchesa in the closet and fingered it, wolf-whistling. “This must have cost ten thousand dollars,” he said. “More.”

“You know rich people get everything for nothing,” she said. “I’m sure they gave it to Bridget for free.”

When the couple arrived in the ballroom, they found a dozen or so dinner guests, all in expensive sweaters, speaking accented English. A handsome Spanish actor was there, and a man she recognized as a Soho art dealer. A British memoirist with prematurely gray hair was talking to a 1970s-era comedian whom Maddy’s father had loved.

“Oh my God,” Dan murmured as they came in together.

“I know,” she whispered. “It’s like every subset of the creative world.”

She took in the details of the room, the incredible sparkling chandeliers (ca’rezzonico, Steven had told her they were called), the live chamber quartet—all the things she would have mentioned to her father if she could have called him.

A server offered Maddy and Dan colorful drinks. They took glasses, clinked. The drink was sweet and refreshing. “What is this?” Maddy asked.

“Venetian spreetz,” the server said. “Prosecco, Aperol, and sparkling water.”

Bridget swooped over, accompanied by a thirtysomething woman with dark eyebrows. “I wanted to introduce you to Rachel Huber,” Bridget said. “Rachel is the head of production for Worldwide Films. We’re working together on The Valentine.”

“I just saw I Used to Know Her,” Rachel said to Dan. “I loved it.”

“Thank you so much,” Dan said.

“You know, even though I work for the devil now, I actually started in indie film myself.” Rachel dropped the names of a couple of now-defunct New York–based companies.

A server was calling them inside for dinner. There was a long handcrafted table, with place cards that indicated Maddy was next to Dan. Rachel was on his other side. Steven was bracketed by a tall, glamorous Italian woman and the old comedian. Steven was in his element, his skin luminous in the candlelight.

Throughout dinner, Rachel asked Dan a lot of questions about I Used to Know Her, and several times Maddy noticed that she tapped him on the arm for emphasis. He mentioned some names of NYU classmates, and then they began gossiping about indie-film people. Dan drank Prosecco, and the Pinocchio circles began to appear. He would say something funny, and Rachel’s gray eyes would glint. Maddy felt something greater than irritation and less than jealousy.

Throughout the meal, Steven told show-business anecdotes. One was a famous story that he attributed to Gore Vidal, which required him to imitate Vidal imitating the characters. Jack Kennedy and Tennessee Williams had met at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach in 1957. JFK was shooting a target and offered the gun to Williams. Williams took the gun with great confidence and got three bull’s-eyes in a row. “ ‘Very good,’ ” said Steven, as a Boston-accented Kennedy. “ ‘Yes,’ ” said Steven, in an exaggerated Southern drawl, as Williams. “ ‘Considering I was using my blind eye.’ ”