Amy Sohn - The Actress

Bridget read it at a stoplight on Avenue of the Stars and cast her device on the passenger seat. What the fuck? Maddy owed her entire career to her. You built them up and then they forgot how it happened.

Maddy was making a mistake. Bridget had been a good representative to her, steered the most appropriate work her way. If clients knew half the things said about them behind their backs, the things good reps withheld, they would have to institutionalize themselves. Maddy didn’t realize that some producers saw her as strained. Inaccessible. Forced. Snobbish. Bridget had protected her from all of this.

If Maddy thought Bridget had been neglectful, she was wrong. She had introduced her to her husband, for one. Maddy didn’t know how many strings Bridget had pulled for her. The guest spot on Jen. The psychological thriller right after she moved to L.A., so Maddy would feel confident in her ability to book. She’d needed that, just before Husbandry.

And now Maddy was on top, but there was no gratitude. Bridget had believed The Hall Surprise would be good for Maddy. Maddy didn’t get that today’s brightest stars went from big-budget to indie and back dozens of times.

Clearly, she was falling apart. When entertainers began firing their representatives for no good reason, it was usually an indication of a precarious mental state. Bridget hoped Maddy wouldn’t do something stupid and leave the marriage, abandon everything she had built with Steven. Bridget hadn’t liked what she had seen in Wilmington, the desperation, all brought on by boredom because Maddy wasn’t working.

Bridget was furious that Zack had poached her. He’d been selling himself to Maddy from the start. It was personal for him. He had seen her first, he had said. So what? Bridget had a project for her. A lifetime’s worth of work. Zack had nothing.

She pressed the button on the phone and dialed. “Zack Ostrow’s office,” said Natalie. Bridget had met her once when she went to pick up Zack at the office, a pretty Jewish girl with Japanese-straightened hair.

“It’s Bridget,” she said.

“Hi, Bridget,” said Natalie, betraying nothing. A good assistant always acted in the dark. “Let me see if I can get him.”

The phone went silent for several long seconds, and Bridget prepared her speech. She would remind him of the sacrifices she had made so she could be a manager and a mother at the same time. The business dinners she’d skipped for those excruciatingly boring parent-teacher conferences, the trips she hadn’t gone on, the promotions that had taken years longer than they should have. As his mother, she wanted him to be aggressive, it would make him a good agent, but he had been wrong to pursue one of her clients.

“I couldn’t get him,” said Natalie. “Can he return?” Never before had the girl spoken these words to Bridget. He always took her calls.

“I know he’ll take this. Try again.”

“Just one moment,” Natalie said, and Bridget detected a hardening of tone.

She was driving faster now, conscious of the trees passing, the seconds going by. She had been the agent on the other side of this call hundreds of times and could see the scene playing out: Natalie was reporting to Zack that Bridget wanted her to ask again. And what was he saying to Natalie in response? What words were being spoken during the silence? Was he wrapping up another call and stalling for time?

He was challenging her now, not to lose her cool. She had taught him to play Scrabble when he was about eight, and on vacations they would take a travel set. Back then she could make up words, and because he was so young, all he could do was believe her. She would devise long, complicated combinations of vowels and consonants to score bingos again and again, but by the time he was twelve or so, he’d begun packing a dictionary. From then on, he’d challenged her. Half the time she was right but the other half she was wrong, and she could still see his desperate, hopeful face as he thumbed through the pages, and she could always tell the result by his expression. Sometimes he didn’t want to believe it; he would flip the page back and forth as though he had missed something, as though there was an entire colony of words between BI- and BIB-.

“Bridget?” Natalie said. “I just can’t reach him right now.”

She wanted to curse the girl out, but Natalie didn’t work for her, she worked for Zack, and she wasn’t insolent, she was being a good assistant, doing what she had been trained to do, what Zack had been trained to do by George Zeger, and Bridget before him with Jack Keil. Above all, it was important to remain professional: To yell at an assistant was to yell at a wall. And she didn’t need Natalie reporting that she had become “hysterical.”

“I understand,” Bridget said. She clicked off, then slammed her hand against the dashboard and let out a sound that was anguished and macabre.

Steven was reading the last page of The Moon and the Stars. Maddy had left him alone, and forty-five minutes later, returned to the study. She was standing, too amped-up to sit, periodically glancing over at him at the desk.

It was late August, a week and a half after her return from London. He had wrapped Office Mate and flown home from Wilmington.

The layout in his new study was exactly the same as in the old. The Mediterranean house was finally beginning to seem finished, and though it was marginally warmer in color tone, his study was a replica. He had taken his creepy busts, ornate mirrors, and silk walls and transported them from one house to the other. She often felt as though she might as well be living in the mansion.

Steven looked up at her, his eyes narrow and angry. “If you do this movie, our marriage is over.”

“But I did The Hall Surprise for you,” she said.

“That film wasn’t about our marriage.”

“Of course it was,” she said. “It was capitalizing on our marriage. The studio wouldn’t have wanted me if I weren’t your wife.”

“This project is an insult,” he said, rising from the seat. “It’s a kick in the stomach.”

“It’s a role. It’s fiction. You won’t even be in it.”

“It makes no difference. I can see the headline now: ‘Maddy Freed Stars in Biopic About Own Husband.’ ”

“It’s a strong role. It’s period. It’s Walter. It’s by a really good screenwriter who’s going somewhere. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to be doing.”

“Do you remember our wedding vows? ‘I am your biggest fan, most loyal advocate.’ Did that mean nothing to you?”

“But this movie isn’t about you and me. Unless you’re saying it is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s going on between you and Ryan?”

“Oh my God, are we into this? What did I tell you about not trusting me? What did I say it would do to our marriage? I said you have the power to poison us. Do you want to poison us?”

“Of course not.”

“I am asking you, as my wife, not to do this job. You saw what I went through with The Weekly Report. This would be low-hanging fruit for them. You don’t want to do action films, fine. I’ll help you do the movies you want to do. I was going to say Bridget will help, but she said you fired her. I can’t believe you did it without speaking to me. You’ve gone off the reservation.”

“It was my decision to make. I should have done it years ago.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Firing your manager. Keeping secrets. And going with Zack, who is still so unproven that I don’t know what you could be thinking. You know he’s been to rehab.”

“You didn’t tell me about the Tommy movies until it was a done deal. You didn’t consult with me. Why should I consult with you?”

“This is another level. I think you’re unstable. Do you have your period or something?”

“I don’t have my period! I went off the pill right before I went to Wilmington, and it hasn’t come yet.”

“You went off? But I thought you weren’t ready.”

“I thought if we made a family together that things would be better. But they’re awful. You don’t understand me. I would go back on it right now if it wouldn’t mess up my system.”

“I knew something was going on. It’s the hormonal drop making you do this. Why do you want to have a baby with me if you don’t respect me?”

“I do respect you.”

“Then say no to this film. Walter hates me. He wants you to do this so he can make a fool of me again. And you’re enlisting.”

“You’re wrong. This is a good role. I’m saying yes. Whether or not you want me to.”

She had taken the script from his desk. It was the only copy she had, and she didn’t trust Steven to hold on to it. He didn’t stop her.

Steven wasn’t her partner. Maybe he had never been her partner.

“I think I need to go away,” she said, moving slowly toward the door.

“Go wherever you want!” he screamed, his face wrenched and ugly. “I don’t give a shit anymore!”

“Good!” she cried. She ran upstairs, threw some clothes and the script into a bag. She went outside and got in the Prius. Her cell phone rang but she ignored it. She drove, with no destination.

Who was this man? How could he be so domineering when he owed her?

She made a few calls to get the number, and then Julia answered. “It’s Maddy Freed.”

“Hi, Maddy.” Julia’s voice was calm, indicating nothing.

“Did Steven ever tell you what jobs to take when you were married?”

“All the time. He was competitive with me, and he read my scripts more closely than I did. He hated me doing anything he deemed objectifying. Which, in the ’eighties, was pretty much every script with a woman in it.”