“I wasn’t breaking,” she told Weller. “I was playing the contempt instead of the hurt.”

“I hope everyone’s hungry,” Bridget said, gesturing toward the dining room. Zack and Bridget walked ahead, leaving Weller, Dan, and Maddy behind. Maddy could see Zack whispering furiously at his mother, but when Bridget glanced back at Maddy, she smiled.

As they turned toward the dining room, Weller’s arm brushed Maddy’s through his soft blue sweater. Her whole body came awake, even though all she had touched was alpaca.

In the dining room, a long distressed walnut table was set for twenty. Maddy took Dan’s hand and led him toward two empty seats, but Weller said, “Bridget had place cards made up. Dan is next to me.” Dan glanced at Maddy anxiously. “Maddy, you’re next to Lael.”

Weller led Dan toward one end of the table, and Maddy spotted Lael Gordinier at the opposite end. Siberia. She didn’t like that Dan would be so far away. She wanted to experience the party with him. But Lael was a jury member, which meant she would judge the competition films. It could be useful to sit next to her. She could help their film.

After the two women introduced themselves, Maddy said, “I really liked your work in Die Now.” It was a neo-noir in which Lael seduced her ob-gyn into killing her husband. Lael had a reckless bravado that she brought to all her roles. She also brought her voluptuous and much discussed figure.

“I was so fucking young,” Lael said, staring ahead mordantly.

“Wasn’t it, like, two years ago?”

“Yeah, but I was emotionally immature.” Suddenly, Lael pivoted toward Maddy and said, “Your movie rocks. I’m very threatened by you.” She said it like she could be either joking or serious. “It was brave how you didn’t wear makeup.”

“I did wear makeup.”

“Oh.”

At the opposite end of the table, Weller was speaking intently to Dan. Over the din, Maddy heard Weller say, “She’s looking for what’s best and what’s next,” and gathered it was industry-speak. She knew Dan didn’t care about the business—or at least he hadn’t before Mile’s End—but now he seemed transfixed.

Weller caught Maddy’s eye, and she turned toward Lael, not wanting to appear to gawk. On Lael’s other side was a rangy model turned actress, also in her twenties, Taylor Yaccarino. The women were talking about some actor Maddy had never heard of, with whom they had both played recent love scenes. “He always pops wood,” Lael was telling Taylor. “No one told you?”

“No!”

“Oh God, it’s the worst. Then he spreads rumors that the sex was real. It’s disgusting.”

“You think he’s telling people we did it?” Taylor asked, seeming horrified. “That’s crazy. He had a cup.”

“He probably put Vaseline in there to excite himself,” Lael said.

Soon the women had moved on to industry gossip and a film for which they had auditioned. Maddy thought she heard Taylor say “Husbandry.”

“I didn’t know you went in for that,” Lael said.

“Yeah. I thought I would just put myself on tape, but he only does face-to-face, so I flew to London.”

“Me too,” Lael said. “I heard they’ve been casting for a year. I don’t think it’s going to get made.”

Servers were coming around with the amuse-bouche, a creamy squash soup. The table had gotten quiet. Weller was telling a story, and the guests wore the same hyper-alert expression Maddy had seen on the faces at the opening-night party. The story was about a television star named Clay Murphy who had been mocked several years before for having written a novel that became a New York Times best seller despite its abysmal reviews. “So Clay had to give a speech at a book fair,” Weller was saying. “And he asked me for help with his speech. He said he wanted it to be about his love of reading. He told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand.” The group chuckled snarkily. “So he says to me, ‘Steven, I think I’m going to lead with the story about buying my signed first edition of Atlas Shrugged. What do you think?’

“Well, Clay is a sweet guy,” Weller continued, “and I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but I know if he says that, he’s going to look like an idiot in front of these literary types. So I say, ‘Clay, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ He says, ‘Why not?’ I think for a second and I say, ‘It’s still so controversial.’ He pauses a second and goes, ‘I understand.’ ”

Everyone howled with laughter. It was a funny story, obviously delivered many times before. Maddy watched Dan sit higher in his seat as though soaking up adoration by association.

After the four-course dinner, guests mingled in the living room over liqueur and dessert wine. Maddy grabbed a glass, and after spotting Dan alone on a couch, she went to him. “So tell me all about Taylor and Lael,” he said. “That sounds like a folk duo.” He was sipping from a glass of something green.

“Horrifying,” Maddy said quietly. “They spent half the time talking about how awful it was to do sex scenes and the other half talking about every famous guy in Hollywood they’ve fucked. But Lael loves our movie.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. What did Weller talk about?”

“Oh, the glory days of the Hotel Bel-Air, his antipoverty work, and the history of his beaux arts mansion in Hancock Park.”

“What’s Hancock Park?”

“Some tony part of L.A., I guess. I think I have a bro crush. I’ve never had one on a gay guy.”

“You said he wasn’t gay.”

“I changed my mind. I think he had a thing for me. That’s why he wanted me near him. Gay men like me because of my feminine fingers.” Dan seemed drunk. He always got Pinocchio circles on his cheeks when he imbibed.

Maddy indicated a backless bench across the room where Weller was chatting with Munro Heming. “You should lower your voice,” she said. “He might hear you.”

“I’m sure everyone at this party knows it,” he said. “That’s why he didn’t bring Cady. She flew back to L.A. He said they broke up weeks ago. I said, ‘Why’d she come to Mile’s End?’ He said she loves indie film. Obviously, she was just arm candy.”

Dan went off to find the bathroom, and Maddy sat alone for a moment, sipping liqueur, before Zack Ostrow plopped down beside her. “My mom’s going to pitch herself to you tonight,” he said.

“What? I don’t think so. I’m not famous.” Though Bridget’s words about the film had been kind, that didn’t mean Bridget wanted to work for her.

“She’ll tell you not to consider me,” Zack said, ignoring the interruption. “Say I’m volatile and young. I’m not. Well, okay, I’m young. But you should consider me. Bentley Howard has been around since the eighteen hundreds, and you’ll be in very good hands.” Maddy wasn’t sure she trusted him. Who knew if he was even a full-fledged agent? Maybe he worked in the mail room. While he talked, he kept glancing around the room and flicking his eyes back at her. It seemed an affectation designed to convince her he wasn’t overly interested, which seemed strange for a man pitching his services.

“My mom and I do things very differently. She’s interested in setting up projects that make money. I’m interested in setting up projects that are good.”

“Can’t something be both?” she said.

“That’s my hope. That’s why I do it. If you really want to build a career, long-term, you should be with someone like me. I take time with my clients. With my mother, you’d get lost in the shuffle. Who’ve you met with here?” She told him about Nancy and Galt—it was important to let him know that other agents were interested. Immediately afterward, she regretted it, thinking two wasn’t enough to seem impressive.

“I know them both very well, and you’d be fine with either one,” Zack said. “But they’ll want you to move out to L.A.” Dan always said he would never live in Los Angeles, and though Maddy was open to it, she couldn’t imagine being apart from him. “You don’t have to move,” Zack added. “Better to be that intense, really good actress who lives in New York rather than another dime-a-dozen in L.A.”

“Did you just call me a dime-a-dozen?” Maddy asked, grinning.

“No. That’s the point. You have the goods.” As he said it, he gently clasped her forearm. She couldn’t tell if he was hitting on her. If he was, it seemed a stupid way to go about getting her as a client.

“If you’re right, and your mother is going to make me an offer,” Maddy said, extracting her arm, “why couldn’t I—I mean hypothetically speaking—sign with both of you? Since she’s a manager and you’re an agent?”

“Because I only work with people who are moving the needle.”

“Bridget isn’t?”

“You don’t have to whisper. She knows what I think. She operates under the old business model. Nothing wrong with that, except she thinks it’s still viable.”

“What’s the old model?”

“Where you put a star in a movie and it makes hundreds of millions of dollars. That was the ’80s. These days stars don’t sell movies.”

“What does?”

“Stories. That’s the future of entertainment. If an audience can dig in to a story, they’ll come out to the theaters. Mile’s End has created a world in which directors can be household names. Moviegoers are finally beginning to follow the storytellers. If you sign with me, I’ll pair you with them. She doesn’t even know who they are.” He stood up and crossed the room to the bar.

She sat there for a moment, dazed. It was a good pitch, although she didn’t know how much of it was true; Weller was clearly working with storytellers, such as Todd Lewitt, and surely Bridget had something to do with those roles.

Maddy stood up to find a bathroom. As she moved out of the living room, she ran into Bridget, coming out of the kitchen. “Are you enjoying yourself?”