“It’s a woman’s story, Maddy, just a different kind.” She wondered if she had been too hard on him, not understanding the toll of all those years of struggle.

Whenever Maddy wasn’t preparing her scenes, she toured Venice with Steven. He took her to Santa Maria della Salute and the Guggenheim. They walked backstreets of the city and dined in small trattorias. He translated snippets of the newspaper aloud for her, explaining that the Italian penchant for exasperation was apparent even in the construction of sentences.

At first she was uncomfortable spending so much time with him, but he was so gallant, she told herself he was merely being a good host. If she allowed herself to believe that he wanted to sleep with her, then she had to believe that the audition was somehow illegitimate. And she had to believe that it was legitimate in order to want to get it.

As she came to know him better, she realized she enjoyed being with him, as a person, not a movie star. He was witty and theatrical, observant and intelligent. At Caffè Florian, he told her a story about the Canadian actor Joe Wiseman. In the late 1950s, Wiseman had starred in Viva Zapata! on Broadway opposite Marlon Brando. “Every night the cast was mobbed for autographs,” Steven said, setting down his espresso with a smirk. “It was the hottest ticket in town. One night on the street, this boy calls out, ‘Mr. Wiseman, Mr. Wiseman!’ Joe just wants to go home, so he walks away. The kid follows him up the block. Wiseman’s walk becomes a run. He circles the block. The kid’s on his heels. Finally, he ducks into an alleyway, thinking he’s lost him, but the kid comes in. Joe’s trapped. He figures he’ll just give an autograph and get out of there. He approaches the kid. The boy says, ‘Mr. Wiseman! What’s Marlon Brando like?’ ”

She laughed. A young Italian couple walked by, and Steven murmured imagined conversation between them, a lover’s spat.

“I love this city,” he said. “The press leaves me alone here.” He told her about the many intrusions over the years. The magazine that got a shot of Cady Pearce sunbathing naked on the deck of Jo, and the one that reported Steven and a prior girlfriend were seeing a sex therapist. Once, a gay bodybuilder had told the supermarket tabloid The Weekly Report that Steven had paid him to have sex. He claimed to know Steven’s identifying characteristics. Steven had sued and settled with the magazine, which retracted the story. He had donated the settlement money, $500,000, to a children’s charity. “It’s important to send a message,” he told Maddy at the café.

Maddy had always been skeptical when she read actors’ tirades on the paparazzi. Though she had found it jolting to face the press at the Berlinale Palast, she felt that acting was a public career, and if you chose it, you had to be willing to sacrifice some privacy.

“But papers have always printed lies about famous people,” she said. “Why not just ignore it?”

“Because the lies get reprinted until they become a sort of truth,” he said, leaning intensely over the table. “They become the story. I want to tell my own story.”

“What kind of lies bother you the most?”

“That I’ll never marry. That I’m a womanizer. That I can’t commit. That I’m a playboy or gay.”

She peered closely down into her own espresso as she asked, “Why do you think—why do you think they say that about you?”

“Type in any male actor’s name on the Internet, and the word ‘gay’ pops up right after. Type in any actress’s name and you get ‘divorced.’ Think about who’s doing the searching. Women are pessimists and men are optimists. Maybe it’s because I collect art, or have a strong hairline, or own property in Italy. Or because I’m divorced and haven’t remarried.”

She was watching his face, trying to figure out what he was saying. Was he denying the rumors or acknowledging them?

“Well, what do you think?” he asked.

“About what?”

“You asked about my marriage to Julia, so obviously, you’re curious. Do I seem gay to you?” His smile turned the question into a flirtation.

“It’s none of my business,” she mumbled.

“You’re being clever now,” he said.

“I’m not clever,” she said. “I’m an actress in need of a job.”


The morning of the audition, Bridget called from Bulgaria and told Maddy, “I have no doubts about you.” When she clicked off, Maddy felt a little abandoned, but she decided to take it as a sign of faith that Bridget didn’t feel the need to be there for the reading.

She ate lunch at Florian alone, and when she returned to Palazzo Mastrototaro, Steven said Juhasz had arrived and was resting. He said to meet them in the sitting room on the piano nobile at four.

At five minutes to four, she went down. She was wearing a flowing white blouse over jeans. She was as confident as she could rightly be, given the limited time she’d had to prepare. She was completely off-book, which she tried to be for every audition, because it freed her up to take direction.

The two men were standing and talking. Juhasz wore a black button-down shirt and black flat-front pants. He was short with white hair and a long nose with a dent in its tip. He had merry wrinkles around his eyes that made him appear to be laughing all the time. He kissed her on each cheek, then held her hands. “Lovely,” he said. Did he mean her or the moment?

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Juhasz,” she said.

“What did you think of my script?” He had a mild Hungarian accent and a higher voice than she had imagined.

“Extremely gripping. Thank you for writing such a rich female character.”

“I am sorry I couldn’t get it in shape before Berlin, but I hate Berlin anyway. Venice is a much more scenic place to meet.”

“Well, I’m honored to have a chance to read for you.”

“I have a terrible track record with women in real life, but not in my films. Perhaps it is because in my scripts, the women cannot talk back to me.” She wasn’t sure she liked this and said nothing. He slapped his thighs and said, “I can see that you are ready to work. Let us begin.”

There was a digital camera set up on a tripod in the center of the gigantic room. Juhasz and Steven sat in two chairs behind the camera, and Maddy sat in the straight-backed wooden chair facing it. Steven had a copy of the script in his lap. “You two will do the Louis-Ellie scene in the car,” Juhasz said, fiddling with the camera. “Steven, you can begin with ‘You look tired.’ ” Maddy had the pages on one knee for safekeeping, just in case she drew a blank. “Whenever you’re ready,” Juhasz said.

A red light was glaring at her. She breathed in a few times, then nodded slightly at Steven to let him know she was ready. In the scene, Louis tells Ellie he’s disappointed in her because she has stopped putting effort into her appearance, and she tells him she no longer respects him.

Steven read in a flat tone—maybe he was trying to be neutral—that made it hard for Maddy to know how to play her response. The scene culminated in a short monologue from Ellie: “I was a possession. You wanted to show me off. To add me to your collection. You’re angry because you can’t do that anymore.” She looked up at Juhasz. The red light went off.

“Excellent,” Juhasz said. “Let’s move on to the scene after Ellie and Paul make love for the first time. Just the monologue. Since Billy Peck is not here with us.”

“You don’t want us to do the scene again? You don’t want to see it any other way?” She had come all this way for one take. Maybe he had hated her and didn’t see the point in wasting more time.

“I liked your choices in the scene. I wanted to get a sense of the chemistry between you and Mr. Weller. Now, for this monologue, we need to feel that Ellie is constantly afraid of the feelings. I want you to show me the vulnerability. She is almost like a child. Like Laura in The Glass Menagerie. Start with ‘The sky is so dark.’ Whenever you’re ready.”

“Good,” said Juhasz, when she finished. “Now I want you to take it again from the top, and this time play the grief and not the euphoria. I see that you can play the high of the new feelings. Now I want to see that you can play the pain.”

She was relieved to get some direction. She loved the way you could transform the meaning of a scene with how you played it. She tried the monologue again. By the end, she was crying. She had learned to do it in school, with relaxation and breath work. She hoped the tears would make him think she was a professional, but then feared it had been too show-offy.

Juhasz came toward her. She thought he might hug her or hit her. He opened and closed his fists by the sides of his face like a Bob Fosse dancer. Was he rendering his verdict? Had she been cast or not? In New York they just said “Thanks so much,” but he seemed to be communicating something of great importance without words. She tried to see Steven’s face, but it was blocked by the camera.

“Shall we eat?” Juhasz finally asked.

She had no idea if this meant she had booked it or if she would find out in a few days that she hadn’t. Maybe he would call Bridget, and Bridget would call her. She was supposed to fly back to New York in the morning and couldn’t face the possibility that she might go home not knowing if Ellie was hers.

“Absolutely,” Maddy said, pretending everything that had happened so far was ordinary, that she went on auditions this strange all the time. “I’m famished.”


The boat trip was cold and quiet. Steven had said their destination was a surprise. They rode about forty minutes before Giorgio docked the boat. “Welcome to Torcello,” Steven said. “This was the original Venice. It was wiped out by malaria. Now almost no one lives here year-round.” He pointed out a small cathedral. “Santa Fosca.”