The Actress: A Novel (4 page)

“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?”

“So much,” Maddy said. “Thank you for having us. I think Dan is still getting over the fact that he was next to Steven.”

“Steven is such a fan of the film.” Maddy smiled, needing to pee but
not wanting to offend Bridget Ostrow by ending the conversation. Bridget continued, “So has Zack pitched himself yet?”

“I’m not sure. I think he wants to sign me, yeah.” She was curious as to what Bridget would say.

“Of course he does. Listen, he’s my son, and I want nothing more than for him to succeed, but he’s very green. And he’s ambivalent about agenting. He’s trying it on for size. I wouldn’t put money on him doing it in five years.” Maddy was surprised by how openly Bridget was undermining her own son. Then again, Zack had just done the same thing. “Maddy, I think you’re very talented, and in case I haven’t made it clear enough, I’d like to work with you.”

So Zack had been right. Bridget Ostrow wanted to work with her. And she didn’t even know if
I Used to Know Her
would be released. It felt like a huge gesture of faith, to think she could have a career. “I—I don’t know what to say,” she stammered. “Thank you.”

“Now, I know it gets a little confusing, the manager-versus-agent thing. Managers produce their clients’ projects and guide their careers. Agents can’t. I think you should relocate, because L.A. is where the work is. I believe in you. I don’t have a lot of clients. Currently seven. A small shop lets me work harder. I don’t do volume. Like that old Robert Klein DJ routine. ‘How do I do it? Volume!’ ” Bridget smiled at her for a beat, and then rested her hand on Maddy’s forearm, near where Zack had. “Anyway, I’m an absolute warhorse, I’ve been doing this forever. You can ask anyone. But you don’t have to decide right now, honey. Think it over.” She slipped her a card.

After Bridget left, Maddy headed for the bathroom. It was occupied, and the half-bath was, too, so she climbed the stairs to the second floor. Upstairs, she wasn’t sure which door led to the bathroom. She pushed against one that was slightly ajar, but when she peered inside, she was startled to see Zack on a huge bed across the room, having sex doggie-style with a shorthaired girl. Neither Zack nor the girl turned, and Maddy shut the door quickly, not sure if he had seen her.

When she found the bathroom, she locked the door and leaned against it. Bridget had been right—he wasn’t serious about being an agent. It wasn’t the sex, it was the flaunting of it. The door open, as though he was
broadcasting that he had come to Mile’s End to party. She thought back to the way he had touched her arm.

Downstairs, she couldn’t find Dan. She wanted to tell him about Bridget. She felt light-headed from the wine and liqueur.

She got her coat, slipped out the front door, and went to the side of the house, hoping the cold air would clear her head. She sat at a cedar patio table, crossing her arms. It was snowing lightly. She remembered being eight or nine, her dad coming into her bedroom one morning, opening the curtains so she could see the thick white clumps.

She heard footsteps coming from the house, and a moment later, Steven Weller was sitting opposite her. She had no idea what to say. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

The silence was uncomfortable. He just looked at her, so she pointed at the sky and said, “That’s the Little Dipper.”

“I know. And Orion. And that’s the Big Dipper. I’m from the Midwest.”

“Oh.” Silence again. She had known he was from the Midwest. She’d known his entire bio since she was a teenager: One of two sons. Polish family. Weller wasn’t his birth name, but she couldn’t remember the real one. “Kenosha, Wisconsin,” she said, trying to recover.

“Yep. On Lake Michigan.”

There was a matchbook on the table, and Weller tore off a match. He held it up between his fingers and said, “One, two, three.” On three, the match vanished.

“How did you do that?” she asked, impressed.

“A magician never tells.”

“Please? One more time!”

He did it again. She puzzled over it and then took the match, fumbling with her fingers, unable to figure it out.

“I meant what I said about your performance,” he said. “You were stellar. Truly.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that. Thank you so much.”

“How’d you get bitten? By the bug?”

“I was a shy kid,” she said. “My mother died when I was young, and it was hard for me. My dad got me into acting. I think he realized it could
help. When I acted, I didn’t feel shy. There’s this Danny Kaye movie I saw as a kid.
Wonder Man
. He’s escaping from gangsters, and he winds up on the stage of an opera, mistaken for one of the performers. Every time he looks in the wings, he sees the gangsters waiting to get him. He’s only safe as long as he’s onstage. That’s kind of how I felt.”

She told Weller that when she was nine, her father had told her to audition for Elmer Rice’s
Street Scene
at the Potter Players, their local theater. A small role, just a few lines, but she loved every moment of the rehearsals, the blocking, the lights, and later, the period costume. When she walked onto the bright stage on opening night, she got a rush. The thrill of the moment, the potential for mishaps, the breathing of the audience, whom you could see. There was a murder toward the end of the play. Backstage, she could smell the smoke.

After the show closed, she asked her father if she could take acting class. He shuttled her to a children’s theater in Lyndonville, where she did improv drills, Shakespeare scenes, theater games, and original monologues. He suggested she try an arts camp in upstate New York. The other kids had names like Masha and Pippin and did unironic productions of Agatha Christie. In the company of these weird precocious kids, she wanted to be better.

Throughout her childhood, during school vacations or over long weekends, Jake would drive her the long six hours into the city, where they would check in to a hotel and see plays. Shanley, Ives, Albee, Wasserstein, Durang. Stephen Schwartz and Jonathan Larson, A. R. Gurney, musical revivals. Actors could create worlds out of nothing, summon real tears. They could turn psychology into behavior.

“What does your father think of the movie?” Weller asked on the patio.

“He died right after we wrapped. A heart attack.” He had been cross-country skiing alone. A guy on a snowmobile had found him.

Weller reached forward and put his hand on top of hers. “Maddy, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right.” She didn’t like saying that, but she didn’t want to talk about it.

The day she got the call from Tanya O’Neill, their next-door neighbor, she had been on her way to an audition for a regional
Room Service
revival. She was walking in midtown when her cell phone rang. Tanya said only, “Your daddy . . .” Maddy knew immediately. The word “daddy.” Maddy felt like she had been shot. Because her mother had died young, it had never occurred to Maddy that her father could go early, too.

To change the subject, she said to Weller, “How did you get into acting?”

“Tenth grade, I got a knee injury during a football game,” he said. “Had to quit the team. Started getting into trouble because I had too much free time. My English teacher suggested I try out for the school production of
Our Town
. I read George’s monologue to Emily in the soda shop. I was blown away by the writing. That was it. I auditioned. I got George. Later, when my knee got better, I tried to do both football and acting, but I kept having to miss practice. My coach said, ‘Steve, you gonna play football or you gonna do that fag acting?’ ” Weller laughed. “I said, ‘I think I’m gonna do the acting, Coach.’ It was no contest. Acting marshaled me.”

Marshaled
. Acting had marshaled her shyness, and it had marshaled his energy. He understood. Acting could save you from the pain of being yourself.

“I love acting,” he said, “but I hate most actors.”

“What’s wrong with actors?”

“Aside from the falsity and braggadocio? Most of them lack personhood. They’re stunted. And prone to illeism.”

“Illeism?”

“They speak about themselves in the third person. People who do that are missing an ‘I.’ They don’t know who they are. I prefer people who know who they are.” He was looking at her like he wanted to eat her. She looked down and then up again so she could catch her breath.

“Bridget offered to sign me,” she said. She wanted to know everything about Bridget. Whether he felt he owed his career to her.

“And what did you tell her?” he asked. His smile had deepened.

“I haven’t made up my mind. Maybe Bridget’s too big for me.”

“She wouldn’t want to work for you if she weren’t committed to helping you.”

Work for you
. It was so easy to lose sight of this simple truth: If Maddy signed with her, Bridget Ostrow would be working for her, not the other way around. “Bridget was the one who discovered you, right?”

“Yep. It was the 1980s and she was one of the few women in the talent department of OTA, and she saw me in
Bus Stop
at the Duse Repertory Company on El Centro. That was where I got my start. We used to do eight shows a year. I learned everything from Shakespeare to Beckett to Inge. She waited by the door, and asked me to have a drink. I said no, since I was supposed to be meeting a bunch of guy buddies to watch a Tyson fight, but she went along with us. Spent the night at a sports bar. When the last friend left, she said, ‘I want to work with you.’ ”

“And what did you say?”

“I said, ‘You’re a woman. How do I know you’ll be aggressive?’ ” He chuckled. “She loves to remind me of that. I was young. I had no experience with powerful women. She said, ‘I’m twice as aggressive as any man,’ and I signed with her a week later.”