Amy Sohn - The Actress

Maddy was driving too fast; she had to be careful, her mind was racing with fear and excitement. “Did you listen to him?”

“Sometimes I did. Now I regret it.”

“Why?”

“Because I was just beginning my career, and he had no right to make me suffer just because it was happening more slowly for him. Is everything all right?”

“I don’t know yet.”

After she clicked off, she kept driving, with no idea where to go. She could stay in a hotel for a couple of days, but the press might find out, and she wanted to be alone. She thought about calling Zack, but she was embarrassed. She was starting a business relationship with him; she couldn’t have him thinking that she was nuts, that her marriage was on the rocks. After three and a half years in Los Angeles, she felt like she hadn’t made any real, meaningful friendships. And then she had an idea.

Kira’s house was a charming Tudor cottage in Silver Lake, on the Eastside. Maddy drove up in the Prius and let herself in with the key in the planter, as per the instructions Kira had given her on the phone. In the living room, there was a poster from Rondelay, an indie-rock record collection, a flokati rug, and a tabby cat.

Maddy turned on the TV, and flipped channels. An action movie came on starring a young Steven. She stared into his eyes during an action sequence in which he ran from a moving train onto the roof of a passing SUV. She wanted the Steven in the movie to tell her whether to stay with him. Whether to do The Moon and the Stars.

When Kira came in from an audition, she fixed Maddy a vodka tonic from her 1930s-era bar in the corner, lay on the couch with her feet up, and said, “Tell me everything.” When Maddy had finished, Kira said, “So basically, he doesn’t want you to do it because it’s about a closeted gay man?”

Maddy nodded bleakly. She was in a potato-chip chair catty-corner to the couch. “He says Walter hates him and wants me to do the movie because it will make a mockery of our marriage.”

“That’s an awfully expensive way to make a mockery of a marriage,” Kira said. “Finance an international feature.”

“Maybe, given everything he’s been through, with the press and the whole thing with The Weekly Report, he’s right to be concerned. And I’m being selfish to want to ignore him.”

“I don’t think you’re selfish. It must be a good script. I mean, I don’t know. Do you have it here?”

“I left it at home,” Maddy said, though it was still in her bag. “Maybe I should just turn it down. If the roles were reversed—”

“If the roles were reversed, you’d send him off to London. Because you have respect for him as an actor. Though I have never been entirely sure why.” Kira cocked one eyebrow.

“Come on,” Maddy said.

“If you want to do this movie,” Kira said, “I mean really want to, you have to do it.”

“What if Steven leaves me?”

“Then you’ll be a wealthy divorcée with a two-million-dollar quote and an awesome settlement.”

“How do you know my quote?”

“It was in the Reporter. But thanks for confirming.”

“Do you think I’m disgusting for doing The Hall Surprise?” Maddy asked.

“It’s not out yet.”

“It’s pretty embarrassing. I say the word ‘cockfight.’ And the bikini, oh my God, the bikini. Kira, it’s horrible, you should have seen the stuff they had inside it to try to make me look buxom. You should have done it, your breasts would have looked much better. But you wouldn’t have played Faye Fontinell, not even for two million dollars. Because you’re not a sellout. You’re so much braver than I am.”

“Are you fucking kidding? I’m wearing a push-up bra right now. I gave up chocolate. And I have hair down to my shoulders.”

“But you don’t pretend to be straight.”

“You think this industry takes my lesbianism seriously? The young guys, the really hot-shit directors? To them, it’s a turn-on. They just see it as a challenge.”

“But would you wear a bikini in a movie?”

“Only if a woman ran the studio.”

“There are no female studio chiefs right now.”

“I know,” Kira said. “It’s so sad.”

They got dinner at an expensive Japanese place in Beverly Hills, where the host found Maddy a table, and then they called a car to take them to Havana in Hollywood. The photographers called out Maddy’s name as they entered. A few shouted “Kira!” and Maddy was startled by it, not aware that Kira was first-name famous. The press knew Kira because of her roles in Barry Hiller’s Loins and Rondelay and two other mid-budget features that had been released in the past year. Maddy had been known since the moment she moved to L.A., because of Steven. Kira was known because of her work.

They danced by the banquette to the DJ’s mix of Morrissey and Kanye West. She felt as though she were getting her spark back. Somewhere along the way she had lost it. It was the exhaustion of being with Steven. Who hadn’t made her feel beautiful in months, even though she had seventeen percent body fat from her training for The Hall Surprise. She and Steven lived like monks because Steven hated the press. He had been keeping her prisoner. And she had let him.

Maddy held a Seabreeze in one hand and waved the other above her head. She wasn’t even drunk, just tipsy, but she was happy and free. They stayed a couple of hours, dancing with strangers. For so long Steven had made her feel that she was a drag, and maybe she was. She was insecure near him, and it turned her into someone she didn’t want to be. A killjoy.

I am a joyous person who has been living joylessly. A husband was supposed to increase your pleasure, not decrease it. She had married Steven because she’d believed he would encourage her to live out her dreams, and now he wanted to squash them. All that talk about respecting her as an actress, and he was telling her what roles to take, like David O. Selznick with Jennifer Jones. Yes, the press had attacked Steven, but he had to be smart enough to know I Used to Know Her wasn’t about him. Audiences could understand the difference between real and pretend.

Lael Gordinier came in with Munro Heming, whom she was dating, and Maddy greeted them. Munro got up to chat with some other Young Hollywoodites, and Maddy invited Lael to their table. Each congratulated the other on her recent films and gossiped about executives and directors. It turned out Zack was representing Lael now, too. Maddy was reminded of the friends she’d had at The New School, united by reckless ambition.

Lael and Maddy caught up about their projects, and Maddy remembered the dinner party in Mile’s End, where Lael and Taylor had spoken about their own auditions for Husbandry. “You and Taylor went in for Husbandry, right?” Maddy said.

“I wouldn’t call it auditioning,” Lael said.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t get to read. I got the sides and worked on them for days. They flew me out to London on the studio’s dime, put me up in a really nice hotel, and summoned me to an audition room. For this ridiculously long time, I had to shmooze with Walter, Bridget, Steven, and some casting director I never heard of before or after that, and then they left. I never read the scene.”

“What do you mean they left?”

“Everyone except Steven. I sat there and talked to him for about half an hour. I mentioned that I was into kiteboarding, and we wound up talking about different boards and where I had done it. It wasn’t until Mile’s End that I found out Taylor had almost exactly the same experience, except they talked about Brazilian jiujitsu. Every girl who went in had these long conversations with Steven about their hobbies or his art collection or, like, Kie´slowski. Isn’t that how it went for you?”

“Not at all,” Maddy said. “I read two scenes. With Steven. On camera.” She thought back to that strange audition in Venice, with Walter not telling her till the restaurant. As though it had been preordained.

“You know, that’s really good to hear,” Lael said. “Because I never believed the stuff people said.”

“What stuff?”

“We all thought Husbandry was going to be bogus. Either put into turnaround or straight-to-video. A high-budget wife-finder. But when it came out and you were so amazing in it, I was like, What? And then I figured you guys must have fallen in love, which, you know, was a bit of a shocker. But anything’s possible, right? I thought maybe Walter really was just trying to cast the best Ellie. In his own way. Maybe he was spying on all of us with a camera while we were schmoozing with Steven, to see about the chemistry. So no matter what people say about how it all went down, I think you deserve everything fucking awesome that’s come to you.”

Maddy nodded absently. It was stupid to put stock in anything that Lael said—she was nutty and probably competitive—but Maddy found it odd that they hadn’t read Lael or Taylor. And then Kira was coming toward them and yelling that they both had to dance, and Maddy stood up and went to the floor.

You need to get some perspective,” Bridget said to Steven. They were lying on two of the chaises by the pool.

A separation was never good for a career, especially not one that made the man look cruel. It was one thing to play a womanizing asshole—you could win awards for that—and another thing to be one. The Hall Surprise would be released in just seven months, and Bridget didn’t want any bad publicity before then. A film was like a baby. You had to be extremely careful until the birth.