Amy Sohn - The Actress

And when she looked at him, she could see the question in his eyes. He said, “I did love you. I had no idea you would leave me. I thought I would spend my life with you.”

“I thought so, too, until I met him. It never seemed complicated to me then. It only got complicated later.”

She stared at him over the table. Their hands were still touching, and he leaned in. His lips on her lips, the whiskey bitter, and the kiss different from the ones at the end. They kept kissing, and she stood and straddled his chair, and soon they were upstairs, his bedroom had blue walls and his bed was clean and made up, which he never used to do, and then they were under the comforter and he was on her, over her, she touched his long slender fingers. His body was different now, he had muscles that were never there before. It was as though he were a stranger, except this stranger knew how to touch her.

He was slower and less morose, and he seemed to appreciate her body, her smell, or maybe he had been appreciative when they were together and she hadn’t wanted to see it because if she didn’t see it, then she could leave. She let him take her, wanting to obliterate the feel of Steven on her body. She wanted Dan to stamp out any memory of her husband, the word “husband,” she didn’t want to think of that, didn’t want to be Steven Weller’s wife, just Maddy . . .

She came twice, the second time with him, and his eyes gleamed in the dim light. Afterward they lay there naked and said nothing. He went to the bathroom and got water for both of them. She drank gratefully. Her head hurt. They got under the covers, though she knew she would not stay. She could hear a party going on down the block, shouting and laughter.

If she told Steven what happened and he divorced her, she would not care. Right at this moment she would not care.

Dan seemed happy, too, and she curled up next to him, her nose against his. “Do you want me to make some food?” he asked. “I’m starving.”

Ten minutes later, he came up with a tray filled with big turkey sandwiches, celery soda, and potato chips and put it on the bed between them. They sat and faced each other, eating naked and smiling.

“I missed you,” he said.

“I missed you, but I didn’t want to ad-miss it,” she said. She wanted to stay here forever, but soon she would have to leave this room and leave this feeling of being open and free, and go back to the house with the iron gate.

“You always loved wordplay,” he said. “You’re a writer even if you don’t think so.”

“I’m more of an assistant.”

“No, you helped me write that movie, and that’s what started everything. I wouldn’t own this house without what you did for me.” He sounded nostalgic.

“You think you’ll ever write anything like that again?”

“What do you mean?

“Respectful of women that comes from the heart?”

“Yeah, I do, actually. The Valentine was embarrassing, so fake and manufactured. All the crying and kissing. And then Hirshman’s Mistake, even when we were testing it and the audiences were going wild, I was disconnected from it all.” Hirshman’s Mistake had become a huge hit over the summer, making a few hundred million dollars. Maddy had seen it in the screening room with Steven and been so embarrassed by it that she’d chosen not to attend the premiere.

“You didn’t know that when you went out with the script?”

“I didn’t realize it till I got on set. I mean, I tried to humanize the characters as much as I could, but in the testing, we cut all that stuff out because it was slowing down the film. Anyway, I’ve been thinking more about what it means. To have my name on something. I want to get back to directing my own work. You know, ‘a film by.’ The whole auteur concept. I haven’t been feeling like much of an auteur. I want to make something character-driven. Something small.”

“I think that’s good,” she said.

“Over the summer, I started writing again, just getting back into it. I haven’t done anything myself since I Used to Know Her, and you and I hammered out the story beats together, so I don’t even know if that counts. So it’s really been three and a half years. I wound up writing this coming-of-age story about a kid growing up in Maryland. I mean, kind of obvious or whatever, but it’s about me being a teenager, and my friends, and my mother. I wrote it in, like, nine days. I’ve never had an experience like that before. I wrote it really small, you know? I sent it to Sharoz, and she wants to produce it. It wouldn’t cost much. I’d do it with a really bare-bones crew. If I can find the right kid.” He seemed to lift up as he spoke, and his face became more beautiful.

“I’ve never heard you like this,” she said.

“I sat down with a line producer, and I think I can do the whole thing for a half-million dollars. I really want to shoot it on film because it’s period, and I want to capture that flat suburban landscape.”

“With the money you’ve made the last couple years, you could fund it yourself, couldn’t you?”

“I’m going to put money in. People say never to invest your own money in your film, but that’s bullshit. I mean, if you care about something, you have to. I’m going to put in a hundred grand.” They sat in silence, and she’d opened her mouth to ask him something about the script when he jumped in. “To get the rest, I’ve been going to people, just a few people, who I feel know me and know what I’m about, and I’m asking each of them for twenty-five thousand . . . What do you think?”

She waited for him to say something else, but he was quiet and she was confused. “Are you asking me for money?” she said. Of course he wasn’t; he was just telling her about his plans.

He looked surprised by her confusion. “Well, yeah. I respect you. And your opinion of my work. You have money now, and I need your help.”

She got the same feeling she had when Steven told her about the Christian Bernard article. It was worse than dread, it was slow, heavy doom, and it started at her chest and moved down into the pit of her stomach.

“I can’t believe you,” she said. “You asked me to give you my rights and now you want my money. You don’t care about me. Just what I can do for you.”

“Of course I care about you.”

She was backing away from him. She grabbed the sheet off the bed and held it to her front. “You just wanted to get me into bed to butter me up so I’d invest in your movie.”

“Get you into bed? I had no idea this was going to happen. You think I planned this? You called me.”

“But you invited me to your house.”

“You didn’t want to go to London House. I had no idea we’d wind up in this room. I was so worried about you when you came in. You looked like a ghost. I wanted to help you. I still do. You’re going back to this jerk, and I’m sitting here knowing that moment’s going to come, and we’re naked and eating and I feel good and you feel good and I just . . . didn’t see the point in waiting a week to send you an email.”

“Are you asking me to pay you twenty-five grand for having sex with me? Because the sex was not that special.”

“I thought it was.”

She started dressing, quickly, turning her back so he couldn’t see her breasts. He stood, still buck-naked, looking befuddled. “Maddy . . . what happened between us . . . I wanted it to. I’m sorry about the timing of my ask, but—”

“Your ask? Is that what I am to you? You see me as a backer?”

“You’re confusing things. I loved what we just did. I’m post-orgasmically retarded right now, you can’t hold my timing against me. It’s because I feel so safe around you that I thought we could just . . . switch gears.”

“I gotta get out of here,” she muttered, crawling on the floor in search of a flat. When she had gathered all her things, he reached for her and she recoiled as if he were hot. “Leave me alone!” she shouted. “You’re just like him. I thought you were different, but you’re exactly the same.”

In the car, her mind was racing. When she loved a man, made herself vulnerable to him, he betrayed her, and her father had betrayed her by leaving her so soon, leaving her when she still needed him, when she was barely an adult. She couldn’t believe she had been stupid enough to go to bed with Dan. Steven and Dan were wheeler-dealers.

When she got home, it was around midnight. She found Steven in the bathroom, the door wide open. He was standing in front of the vanity mirror, using an electric clipper on his nose hair. His mouth was open slightly, his eyes intent and focused.

She waited for him to ask where she had been, but he said nothing. At first it looked like he was grinning, but he was only tightening his lips to get the best angle into his nose.

Over the next few days, Dan texted her ill-written apologies. After she did not respond, the texts stopped. She told herself this was a good thing, she could forget about it and pretend it hadn’t happened.

But to forget was not so easy. Her body would come alive as she remembered the way Dan had touched her, and then the guilt would follow the arousal and she would resolve to tell Steven. A few times she opened her mouth to blurt it out, before shutting it for fear he would leave her if she did. Hoping that he would force her into a confession, she waited for him to ask about that night, but he never did. His lack of suspicion had the effect of making her feel less trusting than she already did. Any man who was faithful to his wife would expect fidelity in return. She became certain that he’d had sex on Jo, though with whom she did not know. Every time he went on the boat, she decided, dozens of times since they had met, he was fucking. Terry, another man, a woman, Corinna Mestre, many men, many women, the possibilities multiplied in her head until he was betraying her with half the industry. His directors, his trainers, his accountant, even Edward Rosenman of Rosenman Kogan LLP.