The Actress: A Novel (25 page)

“Are you saying I didn’t have a stride before?”

“I just mean you’re a spy, and you do all this action, but it’s like you’re you at the same time. And everyone loves you.”

“Do you?”

“More than all of your fans put together.”

She felt close to him, connected. He was most pleasant to be around when he liked himself. If Tommy Hall made him feel relevant, funny, and strong, then she would support
The Hall Fixation
and the inevitable sequels.

When she got on top of him, she could feel his erection. He moved his hands on her and took his time, kissing her, sucking her breasts. Maybe it was the champagne at the party, but soon she was close to coming.

He moved her so they were lying on their sides, and then he pivoted her and lifted her haunches so he was taking her from behind. As he thrust himself in and out, she wondered if he was imagining that he was Tommy Hall making love to the girl in the movie, Cherry Rodriguez or Chevy Rodriguez. She still wasn’t clear on the name.

O
ne day in the early fall, Bridget took Steven to lunch.
The Hall Fixation
had taken in a whopping $58 million in its first weekend, continuing to build over the spring and summer. The nation and the world had been swept by Tommy fever. Business sections ran long stories on the long-lead marketing campaign and branding, Steven was swarmed by Tommy fans every time he went out. Critics extolled its performances and pacing; a
New York Times
reviewer called it “a postmodern action film.” Over the past few years, the highbrow reviewers had taken to praising the occasional popcorn film. They would use words like “camp” and “entertaining” to show they knew they were going out on a limb. But even the good reviews made little difference to the box office; films like
The Hall Fixation
were critic-proof.

Apollo Pictures had already green-lit the next adaptation,
The Hall Surprise,
with Bryan Monakhov adapting and directing again. Bridget had read the first draft and liked it better than the first.

“I got an interesting call from Neil Finneran at Apollo today,” she told Steven at the restaurant, after their salads had arrived. “Faye Fontinell in
The Hall Surprise
? He had a really interesting idea about who could play her.”

“Yes?”

She said the name and Steven jerked his head back in surprise, then bit a piece of arugula, chewing and not saying anything. She was anxious about how he would react, because she was already sold. The thing about these franchises was that you kept having to outdo yourself. Each Tommy Hall needed to be bigger, splashier, and better than the one before. And SteMad was the hottest couple in Hollywood. The mere announcement of Maddy’s participation would get audiences primed.

“But when Tommy first sees Faye on that beach in Tulum,” he said, “she’s in a bikini.”

“Maddy’s a beautiful woman.”

“You know what she’ll say: ‘I didn’t get an MFA to wear a bikini.’ She only did all that sex in
Husbandry
because it was Walter.”

“If the bikini is an issue, I’m sure Bryan will be open to rethinking it. Neil feels Maddy will elevate Faye, and he thinks the two of you would make a fantastic combination. Like Andress and Connery. Bryan wants her. He knows her from Mile’s End.”

Steven wasn’t sold on the premise. Maddy was carving out a niche as a dramatic actress capable of period films and English accents. The Tommy films weren’t her brand.

“It’s important for an actress to keep audiences guessing,” Bridget continued. “When you played a small-town cuckold, you didn’t think you’d be headlining an action franchise two years later, but it worked out. You know why? Because you adapted. Smart actors keep switching genres.”

Bridget didn’t want to have to spell it out to him, but it was important that she stay in the good graces of Finneran. She didn’t want to be a manager forever. The effort-reward ratio was demoralizing, increasingly so in an era when costs were being cut. The list of stalled or dead projects grew longer each year. All the great representatives moved on eventually to do what they’d wanted to do all along: make taste. And the boldest way to be a tastemaker was to create entertainment on a global scale. By running a Hollywood studio.

“She’ll be insulted if I ask her,” he said.

“You have to present it to her the right way.”

He was not sure he could. She seemed happy doing long, talky films based on unreadable six-hundred-page books. When she was happy, she
was busy, and he liked her to be busy.

But
The Hall Fixation
had changed the way he thought of himself. He liked being on top again. It would help to have someone high-profile as Faye. “What’s he offering?”

“Two million. For two weeks’ work.”

He leaned back in his seat, considering it. He and his wife were an object of fascination, due in part to that hellish Christian Bernard affair. There were infertility stories and constant items that one or the other was cheating with costars, or they were in couples therapy.

He had spent years hating the press but had never questioned the importance of public relations. If Maddy did Faye Fontinell, audiences would go nuts. The prurient thrill of watching them make love on screen. At all the press appearances, she would be by his side, in her own right, as a star and not just a supporter.

He brought it up over a quiet dinner at a four-star Italian restaurant inside a two-star Beverly Hills hotel. He waited until dessert. Tiramisu. Maddy had a bit of cake on the corner of her lip and was so unsuspecting that he almost felt guilty. He eased into it, telling her how excited he was about Monakhov’s first draft. And then he told her about Faye Fontinell. He explained that they first meet on a beach, but she goes on to be a real sparring partner for Tommy, an intellectual equal. He chose not to mention that Faye was a stripper before she joined the NSA.

And then he landed it: “Neil Finneran wants you to be Faye.”

“What?”

“Think about it. We’d get to work together. Be in the same city. The same home.”

She shook her head slowly. “But Corinna’s role was demeaning,” she said. “I know you don’t think so, but I do. Faye sounds like she’s only in the script to give teenage boys boners.”

“I can make you an associate producer. We can rework the scenes. I promise you. We can get it into the contract.”

“They meet on a beach. So she must be wearing a bikini.”

“We’ll make it boy shorts. We’re in a very strong bargaining position, with
The Hall Fixation
being such a success.”

“How can I say it more clearly? I love that you’re happy playing Tommy, but this isn’t the kind of project I see for myself.”

His face became cross. She hadn’t seen this look in a while. The last time was after he went off on
Jo
and told her she had to get well. “If you loved me, you would do it.”

“Steven.” She sighed. “That’s not what this is about.”

“It is. Neil wants you, and I want to make him happy. It’s important that I maintain a good relationship with the studio.” He paused. “They’re offering you two million. For two weeks’ work.”

“Jesus. All to prance around on a beach.”

“You already have legitimacy. All those nominations and awards. There will be more when this awards season comes around. You can afford to play with your image. Audiences already have respect for you.”

“So I can afford to lose some? Is that what you’re saying?”

“This will be seen as meta, not desperate.” He flashed her his Tommy Hall eyes. “Honey, don’t you want to spend time with me while we’re working?”

“You know I do.”

“Then say you’ll do it.”

Maddy gazed at him as he placed his palm on top of hers. She had been feeling close to him since
The Hall Fixation
was released. He was happy these days. She was thinking about starting a family. She wanted him to stay happy and she worried he would become cruel if she said no. Maybe he was right about switching genres. No one thought of her as a comedic actress, and this film could change that, give her a chance to show she could laugh at herself. And she and Steven would be sleeping in the same bed. It could be like a working vacation. She wanted him to need her emotionally, but if he needed her professionally, that had to be a step in the right direction.

5

The moment Maddy peeled off the wet bikini in her trailer was the lowest she had experienced in her career. The bikini was orange, and underneath it there was elaborate padding and double-sided tape to keep it stuck to her boobs. She’d had to run down the beach, dodging machine-gun fire. Steven had been in jeans and a T-shirt because there was a running joke that Tommy Hall hated the sun.

The bikini had been custom-designed by a rising French designer whose name would be in the opening credits. The department stores would copy it so every woman in America could pretend she was Faye Fontinell. When Maddy did the scene, she could feel her breasts—or, more accurately, her pads—bouncing. In between shots, a bikini wrangler, a costume assistant, adjusted her tape and nipples. There were hundreds of fans gathered to watch. She had been working diligently with a personal trainer paid for by the studio, and she was muscled, svelte, and tan, but she didn’t care.

She had ignored her professional instincts all because of Steven, and it was dangerous to do that. She wasn’t some over-the-hill former ingenue in a slump. As Steven had predicted, the past winter she had received critics’ nominations for both the Elkan Hocky and
The Pharmacist’s Daughter
. She’d done the awards ceremonies on both coasts, scooping up three prizes. But as she thanked her directors and praised her screenwriters, all she could think about was playing Faye Fontinell. In February, when she had been passed over again for any Oscar nominations, she felt that Faye had jinxed her before shooting had even begun.

A wardrobe girl was at the door. Maddy handed her the suit, feel
ing like it was prison garb. She took a long hot shower, imagining that the water was a processing chemical spilling onto the film footage and bleaching the images.

Steven had two more months of work, but she would fly home. She wanted to be away from people, away from the industry, to hole up and forget she had ever done
The Hall Surprise
. The sex scenes had been nothing like the ones in
Husbandry.
These were scenes where the camera was the man, moving down her body lecherously. She could see it from her peripheral vision, with Bryan behind it, gleeful. It wasn’t that the
Husbandry
scenes were candles and roses, but they showed her pleasure, they showed Ellie dominant and vulnerable, both. Nothing about her scenes in
The Hall Surprise
showed character.

She’d sold herself out to make her husband happy. Her only consolation was that the film wouldn’t be out for another year, long enough to convince herself it had all been an awful dream.

B
ack in Los Angeles, Maddy had booked a female-oriented thriller called
Amnesia
. Two weeks before she was to start, the director was fired, and the new one wanted rewrites, so the project went into turnaround. She found herself with a hole in her schedule; her next job, a Mary Cassatt biopic to be directed by Tim Heller, was four long months away.

She was getting constant job offers, but because of Faye Fontinell, most were for action films, based on preexisting graphic novels or comic books, and the roles were as demeaning as Faye. Again and again she declined, even though Bridget urged her to take one, to capitalize on what she told Maddy would be the inevitable success of
The Hall Surprise
.

One night in August, Maddy called Dan, busy promoting his new film,
Silver Spring
, in New York, where it had opened in limited release. After receiving her check, he had written to thank her, saying he was “shocked but pleased.”

“Do you think I should take one of these movies,” she asked Dan on the phone, “just because I can?”

“Not if that’s not how you see yourself.”

“But what if that’s what I’m meant to do and I just didn’t know it all
those years in scene study, memorizing my Fornés and Genet?”

“Do you really think it’s what you were meant to do?”

“No. But I’m not working, and Bridget thinks I should be working.”

“What about Nancy at OTA?”

“She doesn’t give career advice. She lets Bridget handle all that.”

“You can take some time to regroup. I never would have written
Silver Spring
if I hadn’t.”

She wasn’t sure what it meant to regroup besides read, swim, and miss Steven. She thought about flying back to Tulum, but didn’t want to be on that set again.

After Steven finished
The Hall Surprise
, he flew straight to Wilmington, North Carolina, to begin a buddy comedy called
Office Mate,
about the rivalry between two guys at a Web-design firm. His costar was Ryan Costello, who had been working consistently ever since
Stick Shift
did bonanza business. In that film, Ryan had gotten attention for improvising lines like “Hug it out” and “Walk it off,” and some of them were printed on T-shirts worn by teenage boys.

At night Maddy would talk to Steven on Skype, but he seemed distant and disinterested. She would hear men’s voices in the background, and he would say, “I’ll be there in a minute, brah.” His behavior was growing increasingly fratty.

Sometimes she would go online, type “Steven Weller,” and wait to see what gray words appeared after his name. It was always “Steven Weller Ryan Costello” or “Steven Weller Tommy Hall” or “Steven Weller Office Mate.” Though relieved that the first mentions were no longer of
The Weekly Report
or Christian Bernard, she had mixed feelings about the Ryan Costello hits. Articles said Steven and Ryan were having a “bromance.” They had been spotted at a dive bar outside Wilmington, playing darts, and had bought drinks for the whole bar. Some of the entertainment-gossip sites said they were having an affair.

One night she was sitting by the pool, talking to Steven on her cell. She could hear Ryan’s voice in the background. Steven laughed at something. “Do you miss me at all?” she asked.

“Sure I do. Oh God, I miss you a lot.”

“Yeah?” she said.

“Honey, someone’s calling me. I’m sorry, I can’t talk anymore right now.”

In the morning she went to take her birth control pill, and after she swallowed it, she threw out the rest of the pack. Maybe Steven had become this hyper-masculine man, this guy’s guy, because he felt distant. And maybe he felt distant because he didn’t believe she was committed—either because he suspected she had slept with Dan or because she hadn’t gone off the pill after three years of marriage. The more she thought about it, the more certain she felt. The key to the Ryan Costello problem was to start a family. If she were pregnant, Steven would know she was committed and maybe, just maybe, he would come back to her.

M
addy went right from the Wilmington airport to Steven’s sprawling eight-bedroom rental in Wrightsville Beach. She put down her luggage and drove to the soundstage.

A production assistant let her in, and she found Bridget by Video Village. “What are you doing here?” Bridget asked.

“I wanted to see Steven.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“No, but he won’t be surprised. He misses me.”

“Honey, you should have told me you were coming.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t want to interrupt the flow of things.”

“I didn’t come here to see you. I came to see my husband.”

On the monitors, Maddy watched Steven rehearse a scene with Ryan. The two men were horsing around, and Ryan kept saying things under his breath to Steven, who would laugh raucously, as the director tried to walk them through their staging.

When Steven took a break, he spotted Maddy, frowned, and strode over. His expression was annoyed, not exuberant. He kissed her, but it was chaste. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Of course. I wanted to see you. I loved being with you in Tulum.”

Steven turned to Bridget. “Did she tell you she was doing this?” Brid
get shook her head ominously.

“Aren’t you happy to see me?” Maddy asked. She could see Ryan behind him, joking with a grip.

“Of course I am,” he said.

Maddy stayed at the set a few hours. At lunch, Ryan greeted her but beyond that made no effort to include her in the conversation with the cast and crew, even though she was sitting right next to Steven. Her husband was his new best friend; it seemed in Ryan’s interest to be decent. But Ryan’s rudeness and Steven’s obliviousness, real or faked, made her worry that Steven had spoken about her in a demeaning way.

That night Steven took her out to dinner at a fancy French restaurant. He was distracted and antsy. She asked if he was doing coke and he said, “No, Maddy,” as if the question were ridiculous. “I haven’t done coke since the ’eighties.”

“Okay, fine, but what’s going on with you? Why are you being so cold to me?”

“I don’t like us to be on each other’s sets. Not for more than a couple of days. Couples shouldn’t go to each other’s place of work. It’s too distracting.”

“I didn’t distract you today,” she said. “Ryan did. You wasted thousands of feet of film.”

“I wasn’t prepared for this.”

“But you said you missed me, and I’m your family.”

“Sometimes I don’t like to mix family with work.”

“I thought you’d like us being in the same city. You said if I did Faye, then we would get to be together, and I did, and we were.”

“We were both working then. It’s different when only one of us is.”

“You’re not making sense.”

The waiter came to refill their wineglasses, and though he was gallant, the couple could not look at each other. Steven’s coldness made even less sense to Maddy given the sacrifice she had just made for him. She had done
The Hall Surprise
to make him happy, and he was ungrateful. It was as though, in giving in to his wishes, she had made him hate her.

O
n the soundstage the next day, she sat by Bridget and watched. Ryan kept making the grips and gaffers laugh. Between takes, both men would rib each other.

While Ryan and Steven were doing a rehearsal, Bridget leaned over and passed Maddy a Tootsie Roll she had gotten from Craft Services. Maddy held her hand up to say no, then changed her mind and took it.

“It’s beautiful here in summer, isn’t it?” Bridget asked.

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t spent much time outside.”

“Why don’t you go running? Or take a long walk by the beach? You don’t want to sit here all day.”

“I came here to see Steven. You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?”

“Honey, no. I just want you to enjoy yourself. You look bored.”

As Bridget regarded her chewing on the candy, Maddy seemed almost childlike to her, her lips pursed insouciantly. All wives watched their husbands. That was not unusual. But Maddy was watching Steven with her entire being, and that was a dangerous thing.

“I’m not bored,” Maddy said sullenly.

Bridget looked ahead at the men rehearsing their scene. It was a bit involving a stapler, and the director wanted the choreography just right. There was a stunt coordinator making sure no one got hurt. “Do you remember,” Bridget asked, keeping her eyes on the men as they worked out their action, “when you were doing
Husbandry,
and you had those scenes with Billy, and Steven started coming to set?”

“How could I forget? It was horrible.”

“Do you remember how you felt like you couldn’t work?”

“Everyone felt that way. Not just me. I don’t like to think about that time.”

Bridget turned toward her. “I want you to listen to me very closely. I know I don’t usually talk to you this way, but we’ve been in each other’s lives a few years now, and there are times when I feel I cannot beat around the bush. On
Husbandry,
on that set, Steven wasn’t giving you the freedom to create. You needed to have intimacy with Billy to achieve the wonderful things you achieved, and Steven wasn’t allowing you any.”

“What would he say if he heard you talking to me like this?”

“He would agree.”

“I needed intimacy with Billy then, but that was a drama. This is a comedy.”

“Even for a comedy, there is a rhythm, a mood on set. This is a comedy targeted toward men, and half the time
I
feel like an interloper, even though I’m one of the producers. Don’t you wonder why Steven’s acting the way he’s been acting? These stupid pranks?”

“Yes, it’s not like him at all. Steven said ‘brosef’ to Ryan this morning. I don’t even know what that means.”

“He’s trying to get into character, just like Billy would stay in his American accent all day. It’s not to be taken seriously, and it certainly won’t last. You have to let it pass you. Observe it, take it in, but don’t get involved. It’s Method, pure and simple.”

“It’s not just the pranks. It’s the way he acts around Ryan. They have all these secrets. It’s like—the two of them against the world.”

Bridget pitied the girl and at the same time was frustrated by her immaturity. She needed to be careful with Maddy, as cautious as she had been with Steven at the very beginning, in Venice. “This friendship won’t last. It’s a set friendship.”

“I’m worried it will,” Maddy said with a sigh. “Do you think it’s possible that a man can have too many friends?”

“Not if they give him something he needs.”

“What does he need from Ryan?” Maddy’s eyes were wild. “You understand men better than I do.”

“Sometimes it’s easier for men to be around people like themselves.”

“But Ryan’s nothing like him!”

“He has a playful side. Steven likes that. He’s enjoying the ability to horse around. Tommy Hall has freed him to be lighter.”

“That’s well and good, but Ryan’s an asshole. You see that as well as I do.”

“It doesn’t matter what you and I think of the guy. He’s your husband’s friend. You need to let up on Steven or you’ll ruin this.”

Maddy wasn’t sure what Bridget meant she would ruin: the film or something bigger. On the soundstage, they were about to roll. Maddy sat for a moment before walking out and driving to the beach. She watched the waves, hiding under a big sun hat. The problem was that she was
looking to Steven to solve her frustration about her own career. She had come here to replace her emptiness with Steven, but he had no room for her now, just as she’d had no room for him on
Husbandry
. Even on a comedy, she had to respect his process, though she wasn’t sure what it was.