Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (23 page)

The doorbell rings and I go to answer it,
not bothering to respond to Danna’s bullshit.

I open the door to find Emma standing there.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says. “I should have called,
but I wanted to see you.”

“Come on in,” I tell her.

She comes in and Danna comes out of the
kitchen to see who’s here, slowing to a stop when she sees that it’s Emma.

“Hey, Danna,” Emma says. “How’s your night
going?”

Danna doesn’t say anything; she just
crosses her arms and glares at Emma.

Emma shrugs it off and looks back at me.
“I was thinking of taking you to dinner,” she says, and looks over to Danna
who’s still giving her the crooked eye, “both of you. I thought it might be
nice to get out and just kind of take our minds off of everything.”

“Sounds good to me,” I answer.

Danna doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want to go to dinner with us,
Danna?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer me.

“It’s fine,” Emma says. “Start thinking
about where you’d like to eat. I’m so hungry, I could eat anything.”

“I don’t know,” I answer, looking at my
sister. “What do you think, Danna? What are you in the mood for?”

Danna doesn’t answer and I’m fucking sick
of it.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I ask
her. “You can’t answer when someone’s fucking talking to you?”

Danna just gives me a closed-mouth smile
and walks out of the room.

“I am so sorry about that,” I tell Emma.

“Really,” Emma says, her confidence
clearly shaken, “
it’s
okay.”

Danna comes back into the room a minute
later, pulling a wheeled suitcase.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I’m getting out of here,” she says. “You
don’t want to listen to me and you apparently have no desire to save your
career, so I think we’re pretty much done.”

“You’re leaving?” I ask.

“Yep,” she says. “I’ll have someone come
by and pick up the rest of my stuff. If you need to get ahold of me, I’ll be
staying at the Steam Hills Motel.”

“Why does that sound familiar?” I ask.

“Because it’s where my dad’s staying,”
Emma says.

“Ta-ta,” Danna says and walks out the
front door.

I could catch up to her at the curb if I
really wanted to, but I don’t.

Something strange happens to me as Danna
walks out the door, and I just kind of slump down onto the back of my couch.

“Are you all right?” Danna asks.

I
nod
and then I
shrug. I really don’t know.

They say that twins have a strange
connection with one another but, while Danna and I have always been close,
we’ve never been the twins who wear matching outfits that you see going
everywhere in public together.

We’ve lived apart for most of our adult
lives, but still, seeing her just walk out like that as if it wasn’t even a big
thing. I don’t know, it’s just kind of hitting me in a way that I didn’t
expect.

“What’s wrong?” Emma asks.

I don’t know what to tell her. On the one
hand, I’m pissed at Danna for the way she’s acting, but on the other hand,
that’s my twin sister and she’s out there waiting for a cab to take her away
from me.

“Oh,” Emma scoffs, “so now
you’re
not going to talk to me, either?”

I understand her frustration, but I simply
have nothing to offer her right now.

My parents left, Danna left… Give it a few
more minutes of me and the inadvertent silent treatment, and I bet I can get
Emma to leave, too.

“Fine,” she says. “Whenever you’ve figured
out how to fucking talk to me, give me a call. Until then, I don’t even want to
see you.”

She walks out of the house.

Yep, I’ve still got it.

There’s nothing left for me to do but just
sit here and reflect over how wonderfully tragic our charmed lives really are.

The phone rings and at least I’m with it
enough to answer, only it’s the last person in the world I want to talk to.

Rita, if that’s really her name, is
breathing heavily on the other end of the phone, and I’m tempted to hang up for
a moment, but decide in all of my fool’s glory that I might just be able to
make a difference in one area of my life today.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “I’m sure
this isn’t something that you’ve just always done. Something happened, right?”
I ask. “Something happened that took away your sense of control over your life
and now you feel like the only way you can feel safe, the only way you can feel
secure is if you take control over someone else’s life, well I have to tell you,
that doesn’t work.”

She’s breathing heavy and I just keep
talking.

“I’m sure that on some level you know
what’s really going on here,” I tell the woman who may or may not be
masturbating on the other end of the phone. “Part of you, I think, is reaching
out, but you’re doing it in a way you have to know is only going to lead to a
harder rejection. So, why do you do this? Am I the first person you’ve done it
to or have there been a lot of us? What’s your end game here if I don’t decide
that the person who’s been disrupting every part of my life more than any other
is my one true love? What happens then? Do you really think this is the way to
get to me?” I ask. “This is how you’re going to get me to hate you,” I tell
her. “I’m not sure that I don’t already.”

Something changes in the way that she’s
breathing, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Maybe it’s not your fault, I don’t know.
Maybe you’re like the rest of us and just have more in your past than you’d
like to talk about with people,” I tell her. “Not to get too personal here,
because frankly, you scare the bejesus out of me, but I think I can understand
what you’re doing on some level. I don’t see the point in it myself, but really
what you’re doing is that you’re lashing out. Something’s happened in your life
that’s made you feel like this is the only way you can get a sense of control.
Maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe you’re just so afraid of actually making a
positive connection with someone that you feel the need to torture someone you
admire and say that it’s because of love.”

Her breath is uneven now, but she keeps
her silence.

“What
is
your fault,” I tell her, “is what you do with those feelings that you
have. You can choose to inflict them upon someone else, trying to push back
against whatever it was that made you go off your rocker, but is that really
going to make you happy? Maybe you don’t see what you’re doing as wrong. Maybe
you really do think that this is the way to express your love or whatever it is
that you’re calling it—I can tell you right now that it has nothing to do with
love.”

I don’t know why I’m still talking, but
it’s all my body knows how to do right now.

“When you take something away from someone
else, you are exerting power,” I tell her. “The ability to take something away
from someone places you above that person. That person immediately becomes your
inferior because you were able to take from them. I get the temptation. To be
able to take away someone’s peace of mind, now that’s got to be even more
tempting for you. Even better, why not make it someone in the public eye? Why
not make it someone that everyone knows. That way, you can have power over all
of them!” I shout. “Is that it?”

She’s still breathing loudly into the
phone, but every now and then, little torn pieces of voice come through.

“Problem is, every single one of them is
going to see themselves so superior to you when they find out what you’ve
done,” I tell her. “Every single one of them is going to think that you’re just
the leftover of someone else’s nothing. If
it’s
attention
you want, though, you’re going to get plenty of that.”

Rita’s now openly sobbing on the other end
of the line and part of me actually wants to feel sorry for her.

“I know that you’re pissed off and you
think that if you can just get control over one thing, your life is going to
fall back into place and everything’s going to work out better for you, but
you’re just fooling yourself,” I tell her, though I’m talking just as much to
myself. “People get whatever they get. You can fight it, but you’re going to go
crazy trying as I think we can both agree is pretty evidently the case here.
Whatever happened to you happened to you and there’s nothing you can do to
change it. Making other people miserable isn’t going to fix anything, you’re
just being that prime mover for someone else’s misery so, really, you’re no
better than the situation that put you here. It doesn’t have to be like that,
though,” I tell her. “You can decide to grow up and start responding to life
rather than running away from it. When bad things happen, and they will, you
can decide to deal with it. Or, you can keep making my life and the lives of
others a total hell so you can see the story on TV. I don’t know who you are,
so it’s not like I can really stop you at the moment.”

I’m hoping for some sort of real change,
some sort of response. I’m hoping to hear her say that she’s sorry or to say
anything, but she doesn’t.

The only time I hear her voice is when
it’s coming through in sobs.

“The thing you want more than all else is
the thing you will tirelessly work to prevent yourself from getting,” I say. “It’s
the very fact of wanting it so much that does it. Wanting something like that
is an addiction. The only thing that you ever really feed is that want. It’s
all you know how to do. I should know,” I tell her, “I’m the same way. It comes
out a lot differently with me than it does, obviously, with you, but it’s that
same kind of want. I’ve had that want for well over a decade now,” I tell her,
“but would you like to know what I’ve found in all that time?”

I’m waiting for an answer, but one doesn’t
come.

“I’ve found,” I continue, “that that want
is just a lie. It’s impossible and you’re the one that made it impossible.
Before that want existed, you might have had a shot at some kind of normal
life, but it’s there now and it’s not going away. The world you live in isn’t
the world that everyone else lives in because you’ve separated yourself from
everything and everyone that doesn’t fit into your narrative. It doesn’t work,”
I tell her. “Your best bet is just to stop trying and realize that life just
fucking sucks.”

One last time, I wait for an answer. The
woman, assumedly Rita, is still crying, but it’s more controlled now.

“If you want to make a real difference in
someone’s life, make a real impact that’s going to show you just how much power
you’ve got?” I ask. “Leave me, my friends, and my family alone,” I tell her.
“You will have absolutely changed my life.”

For once, the line is silent, but I don’t
hang up. It’s just kind of nice having someone to talk to.

Chapter Seventeen

The Talk Show

Emma

It had to happen at some point, but I was
hoping to actually be well on the other side of this whole thing before it did.

I’m standing in the green room of Ida!,
the upstart, feel-good talk show that’s supposed to replace Oprah, even though
we all know that that’s never going to happen.

Nobody replaces Oprah.

I’m on in a few minutes and they’ve
devoted the whole show to talking about the second worst period of my life.

This should be something really special.

There’s a TV in here, tuned to the station
Ida!
gets
broadcast on and the promo comes on the
screen, “Today, on Ida…”

The music is very somber, even a little
tense at times.

“Jesus,” I mutter to myself, “I’m the
fucking Hollywood sob story.”

The promo continues, “…after a long road
to fame and fortune, Emma Roxy…” and I just tune out.

This feels like a bad sitcom where the
writers decide they’re going to show their range and do a sad episode, only it
almost never works out. They did a couple of those episodes on
Fresh Prince
that weren’t bad, but
that’s really neither here nor there.

“Emma?” a man in a very busy sweater says,
speaking as if he’s interrupting a funeral.

“Yeah?” I respond, facing him.

“We’re about ready for you. I’ll escort
you to where you’re just on stage and I’ll cue you when it’s time to go out.
Did you have a chance to walk over the set and kind of get an idea where you’re
going?”

“Yeah,” I lie. I didn’t need a tour of the
set. It’s actually a guilty pleasure of mine.

“Great,” he says. “If you’ll just follow
me…”

We walk down the hallways and everyone I
pass either gives me the kind of smile people give when you’re a kid and your
dog just died. It’s that smile that’s supposed to communicate, “I know you’re
going through a rough time, kiddo,” but always comes across more like, “When
can I get out of here? This whole thing is really bumming me out.”

Smiles are rather expressive, you know.

We get to the side of the stage, just out
of view of the cameras and the audience, and the man in the sweater takes my
hand in both of his and says, “Because we’re taping this for later, commercial
breaks are going to be pretty short, usually just a couple of minutes for Ida
to go over her notes, that sort of thing. If you need to take a break, let Ida
know and they’ll stop filming until you’ve had a chance to collect yourself. I’m
going to be right here with you while you’re waiting, I’ll be standing right
here while you’re on and I’ll be right here when you’re done, okay?”

They really know how to do the sympathy
thing around here, don’t they?

A couple of minutes go by and I’m waiting.
I was kind of hoping to meet Ida Falcone before I went out there, but it’s not
my set.

There’s the uproar of applause and my
heart starts pounding hard and fast.

Sweater guy isn’t helping things, as he’s
still holding my hand and gripping it a little tighter as every second passes,
bringing ever closer my no doubt heartbreaking tale of abuse and blackmail. I
can see why they’d think it’d make for good television.

From off set I can hear Ida starting the
show.

“Welcome everyone to a very special show.
Tonight, we’re going to be talking to Emma Roxy who—” she’s interrupted by a
strange applause. “Yeah,” she says as every member of the audience tries to
show just how kindhearted and sympathetic they are for supporting a wretch like
me. “As you all know,” she says, “Emma’s filming a new movie with Damian
Jones—” another applause break and I stop listening.

“Tell me when it’s time for me to go on,
will you?” I ask.

“Of course,” Sweater Guy says and I walk
away from the stage entrance a little to pour myself a cup of water from a
nearby water cooler.

I take a sip.

Usually, when I get nervous, I try to
battle my nerves and work through the situation, but now, I’m just trying to
clear my mind. I’ve gone over the story enough times in my head and in my house
by myself that I think I’m comfortable with whatever she can throw at me, but
that doesn’t change any part of the story I’m going to have to tell.

“Emma?” Sweater Guy says and I set my cup
down and walk over to him. “It’s just going to be a few seconds,” he says. “Are
you ready?”

“Nope,” I answer.

On the stage, Ida announces, “Miss Emma
Roxy!” and I pat Sweater Guy on the shoulder as I walk past him and onto the
stage, waving at the drama-thirsty audience as I make my way toward Ida.

She gives me a big hug that I have to bend
down for, as she’s a lot shorter in real life than she looks on TV, and I just
wish everyone in the audience would just drop right fucking dead.

I’m sure they’re decent people, but the
fact of the matter is that they’re in this room with me right now and because
of that, I hate everything about them.

“I’m so glad you could make it,” Ida says
through the continuing cacophony and I smile and I nod my head.

“I’m glad to be here,” I respond, though
I’m sure not even Ida could hear it.

We sit down and the applause slowly dies
down.

“Emma,” Ida says, “I know we’re going to
be talking about a lot of harrowing things today, and I would just like to tell
you that I admire you, so much—” the audience starts in again with their
fucking clapping and I’m trying to hide my contempt. “Really,” Ida says. “I
think that you are a strong role model for our children, and I am so excited
that you’ve got your entire career ahead of you.”

“Thanks,” I answer.

“Now, this all started just a few months
ago after you started on your new film, right?” she asks.

“That’s when I first heard from him,” I
tell her. “I hadn’t spoken to him for about a year before that.”

“Did you ever suspect that he might do
something like this?” she asks.

“With people like him,” I tell her, “you
learn to expect the worst at all times. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind
that he would do this specific thing, but—”

“—but he was just that kind of guy, huh?”
she interrupts.

“You could say that,” I tell her. “I think
I always knew, even after we broke up, that he wasn’t just going to let me go—”

“He was controlling?” Ida interrupts again
and she’s really starting to irritate me with all the interrupting.

“Very controlling,” I answer. “Everything
always had to be exactly the way that he wanted it, and that everything
included me. For a while there,” I tell her, the studio audience and a couple
million viewers at home, “I was, effectively, his captive. Even when he wasn’t
around, he—”

“So, if you don’t mind talking about it—”
Ida starts.

“That’s why I’m here,” I interrupt out of
spite, hoping she takes the hint and learns how to let me finish a sentence.

“How did the two of you first meet?” she
asks. “You and Mr. Cole, that is.”

“I first met Ben a couple years ago,” I
start. “I was doing made-for-TV movies and he was the first guy I met in a bar
who’d actually seen one of them. That was a pretty big deal for me at the time.”

The audience laughs.

“So you met him in a bar?” Ida asks and
it’s really difficult to tell through all that makeup if she’s being judgmental
or not.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I was there for a
wrap party with the cast of one of my movies and he recognized me. We started
talking and one thing led to another—”

“So how long into the relationship was it
before you knew that Ben had this side?” Ida asks.

I want to scream.

“It’s not a side,” I tell her. “It’s him. The
abuse, the whole nightmare, that’s just who he is. He’s a person that enjoys
hurting people. The charming guy I met in the bar—it wasn’t a side. It was an
act.”

“So it happened pretty quickly then?” Ida
asks. She’s pushing for more information and she’s trying to do it in a way
that nobody but me knows just what a bitch she’s being.

“The formal abuse or whatever you want to
call it,” I tell her, “that took a couple of months, but the warning signs were
all there from the start. He’d get really upset over the smallest things,
things that didn’t even make sense to get upset about, you know? At first, he
would stay quiet about it, but you could just see him shaking from the anger.”

“When did it finally take that turn for
the worse?” Ida asks.

The audience is silent. Nobody’s so much
as wiping their nose.

This is the money shot. This is why everyone’s
here today.

“I think it really took a turn after we
got back from visiting his parents,” I tell her. “We got home and as soon as
the door was closed, he was in my face, screaming at me about how I had been
impolite to his mother by not taking a piece of pie that she offered—it was
always over the stupidest things…”

“Did he hit you?” Ida asks and I can
almost hear her getting wet between the legs thinking about the ratings bump
she’s about to get.

“That was the first night he hit me,” I
tell her. “I told him that he was being stupid and he slapped me across the
face. When I tried to leave, he grabbed me and pulled me to the ground and
that’s when he just started hitting me. I tried to fight him off, but he was
too strong. All I could do was curl up and hope that maybe he’d find it in his
heart to stop.”

I can actually see a tiny smile flash
across Ida’s mouth, but it’s gone so quickly, I doubt the cameras really caught
it.

“What happened next?” she asks.

“He was yelling at me while he was hitting
me,” I tell her. “He was saying that he’d been so patient with me, but that
he’d had enough of my…well, I can’t say the word on TV, but you get the idea. I
don’t remember when he stopped hitting me, how long it was, but I do remember
that he was out the door and his car was peeling out almost as soon as he did.”

“The pictures of you with the bruises…”
she says. “Those were from another time?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “After that first
night, I never knew what was going to set him off. Sometimes, he’d let things
that would make a normal person angry go completely, saying they didn’t bother
him, while other times, he’d fly off the handle about absolutely nothing,
although I do think the pie incident was the most ridiculous reason he ever hit
me. Not that there were any good ones.”

A few of the misery junkies in the
audience applaud and within a second or two, the whole crowd is applauding. The
funny thing is, I’m not quite sure what it is I said they’re showing their
approval for—maybe the “no good reason to hit me” thing?

The crowd calms down again and Ida leans
toward me, saying, “Did you try to leave?”

“That kind of depends on your definition
of the word ‘try,’” I tell her. “I convinced myself a few hundred times—that’s
actually not hyperbole—to leave him, but every time I got close to doing it, I
just felt this huge wave of fear rolling through me. I just imagined him
tracking me down and what he would do if he caught me trying to leave him. It
really wasn’t very easy. Luckily, though, I got—”

“You know,” Ida says, “I hear that so
much, that women in these relationships often
do
want to leave their abusers, but that fear keeps them from doing
it.”

“You feel like your life isn’t yours,” I
tell her. “You feel like you’re a possession of this person who’s just as
likely to put your head through a wall as he is to hold a door open for you.
After that first time, he was so apologetic…” I sigh. “You know, before I was
with Ben, I used to look at women whose boyfriends or husbands treated them
like crap and I used to think they were so weak for going back to them time and
time again, but it’s not weakness. You literally feel like you do not have the
option to leave until that day comes when you finally decide that enough is
enough, and even then, you’re still scared for your life. If anything, you feel
like you’re deciding whether you’d rather stop living like you’re living or
whether you’d like to keep living. That’s really how it feels and too much of
the time, that’s really how it is.”

“What happened that weekend he took those
pictures of you?” Ida asks and it feels like she’s completely ignoring
everything I just said.

I try to move my hands out of camera frame
because they’re clenched into fists.

“It was a few days before we were supposed
to get away and I had just gotten a callback about this role I really wanted,”
I answer. “The problem was, the callback was on the same day we were supposed
to leave for our vacation. I knew it was a mistake before I did it, but I asked
him if he’d be willing to leave a little bit later than we’d planned so that I
could make it to my callback.”

“And that’s what led to…?” she says.