Three Women in a Mirror (26 page)

“As for Lassie,” continued Johanna, “I could find you a load of actors who are the animal of choice at any given moment. Of course I wouldn't put you in this animal category, Anny, because you know how amazed I am by your dramatic sensibility. However, I have to keep your interests in mind and be brutal when I speak to you. Canceling your appointments because you're feeling low, that I can understand. But once. Not twice. These last weeks you haven't kept any of your engagements, and as a result I am the most reviled agent in Hollywood, a superlative I could do without, needless to say.”

Anny slid down along the mirror, and crouched on the floor. The pain was becoming intolerable.

“In short, you have to get a grip. We need you to promote
The Girl with the Red Glasses.
You won't hate me if I tell you that there are days when you are unfilmable and inaudible.”

Anny would have liked to reply that she was so aware of this that she was canceling her appointments with the media in order to hide it. But to have such a dialogue with her agent, they would have to be in another dimension, another planet where Anny would could actually say the things her mind came up with out loud.

Just then Johanna fell silent because the dress designer and store manager came in to help Anny dress.

“Well, ladies?” he asked in his Italo-Lebanese accent.

On the verge of passing out, still shielded from her judges by the heavy velvet curtain, Anny stared at the gold lamé dress she was supposed to put on, so light and fine and tight that it would be like wearing a splendiferous second skin over her own. Orlando, Hollywood's darling, claimed to have designed and conceived this marvel just for her.

“Anny, don't make me wait! Lemme see how you is a look like mermaid.”

Anny wanted to satisfy this creative genius, she really did, she was burning with impatience to resemble a scaly fish but her belly was on fire, and she could see stars before her eyes. She thought she might pass out.

“You wanna Dora she come help you put it on?”

Anny moved her lips to mutter “no”, and it was a lethal gesture: a powerful spray of vomit burst out of her mouth.

In three seconds, the mermaid dress, which had taken three Asian embroiderers specialized in stitching with golden thread one hundred hours to make, was submerged in a sticky mixture of corn flakes, coffee, and half-digested tropical fruit, to which had now been added, still intact and immaculate, various pills ingested during breakfast.

“Phew, that's better . . . ” sighed Anny, her vision suddenly clearer, her head released from its vice.

Behind the curtain, Orlando, who had taken this declaration for a cry of admiration, could no longer resist: “Can we come in?”

Without waiting, he pulled back the velvet curtain and found Anny in her underwear, crouching over a stinking magma where he could just make out a few unsoiled folds of the precious gown.

Johanna also came over.

They were distraught, and so was Anny.

She tried to use her charm to beg their forgiveness, with a ghost of a smile.

“Forgive me . . . I . . . had a little bit to drink, last night.”

As she spoke, she realized to her horror that her voice was croaking and her breath smelled like a Turkish toilet.

 

A few hours later, energetically repatriated by her agent, Anny was sipping a mint decoction with Johanna.

Johanna had managed the crisis very efficiently. Without making a scene, she had organized Anny's departure, pacified Orlando, and canceled the hairdresser and makeup artists who were next on Anny's agenda.

Anny felt a sense of well-being: Johanna was like the perfect mother.

Although she felt weak, she had recovered, and now she sat down next to her agent.

“Thank you.”

Johanna was startled. Evidently she had been waiting for that word—as if it were a green light—to launch into her diatribe again.

“Now you're going to be a good girl and recover, sweetheart, and make sure you don't put us in this situation again. You have to realize that your latest movie is already enjoying some very flattering buzz in the industry: there are people who think you just might get an award for your performance. With
The Girl with the Red Glasses,
you are headed for consecration, I can tell . . . and you know I've got a keen nose! So please don't spoil it for me. Why do you drink? Why do you take drugs?”

Although she had come straight out with her questions, Anny had to think before giving an honest answer.

To her, the combination of sex, drugs and alcohol had always stood for adult privilege. Because she had entered show business as a kid, the moment she reached puberty she had rushed to explore these obvious signs of maturity. It had never occurred to her that growing up meant learning boundaries, balance, and thoughtfulness; quite the contrary, extreme freedom, getting stoned and boundless audacity had seemed to her like models for success. So she'd gone after booze, narcotics, and men as if they were so many trophies, proving her worth; they would assure her, in massive quantities, of a sort of excellence.

To which she had added a penchant for risk. Flirting with the abyss, endangering her life behind the wheel, coming close to an overdose, taking one lover after another until she didn't even know who she was waking up with—all this, to her, was proof of elegance. There was nothing attractive about caution, no panache, and safety bored her; only danger could surround her existence with a bright gold frame, only peril could transform her into a work of art.

Now Anny surmised that she had made an incorrect diagnosis in starting her adult life. Her pathways to freedom—above all alcohol and drugs—had turned out to be dead ends. She had thought that by having one experience after another she would acquire more power and intelligence, but in fact she had lost. She was rarely lucid, she was always in search of some substance or liquid, and she lived in a state of withdrawal and deprivation rather than fulfillment. Perpetually frustrated, except when she was getting drunk or snorting a line of coke, she could no longer stand the painful, exaggerated anxiety that made up the true thread of her days.

While at the age of eleven she had had no problems—just desires which collided with obstacles—now she was wrestling with her demons, the countless addictions she inflicted upon herself.

“You see, Johanna, I've gone astray.”

“I won't have you talking that way.”

Her agent reacted forcefully, as if at any moment the room would fill with journalists; now she hammered her point home: “I forbid it. You are the best-paid actress your age in Hollywood. You have to be aware of your status, don't open yourself to doubt. I know only too well where that can lead in the media: tolerable self-criticism becomes insulting when it becomes actual criticism. Don't give them arguments they can use against you.”

“Johanna, I'm only talking to you. There are no journalists under the carpet as far as I know.”

Johanna shrugged.

“Once you let yourself go, you always let yourself go. A leopard never changes its spots, as I don't need to remind you.”

“Johanna, I'm talking to you as a friend.”

“Exactly, a true friend cannot allow this.”

“Johanna, I'm not talking to you about Anny Lee, the actress, I'm talking to you about my everyday life. So I have a successful career, fair enough. Do I have a successful life?”

Johanna looked her up and down, a mask of scorn immobilizing her face.

“What's the difference?”

Anny shrugged. You might as well try to explain colors to a blind person. She knew she ought to end this conversation, but she couldn't quite bring herself to: “Unlike you, Johanna, I'm not prepared to accept an utterly rotten private life.”

“I will not let you speak like that. Cindy and I—”

“Cindy and you are perfect for each other because you're associates. And what you have in common is your ambition. Your drug is work, and your goal is money.”

Johanna fidgeted on her seat.

“There's nothing wrong with that. What is your goal, Anny?”

“It's not money.”

“You can say that because you earn a lot.”

“And if I didn't you would claim I'm saying it out of spite.”

“Fine. So what is your goal?”

“Well, that's just the problem, I don't know.”

Johanna stared at her, wondering if she was provoking her or making fun of her. When she realized that Anny was sincere, she let out a sigh.

Anny knew that it wasn't a sigh of compassion; it was because she was thinking,
What a job!
However, Anny would be underestimating the shark if she thought she'd give up a fight.

“Anny, you're turning into a wreck. Up until now, your youth has kept your body from reflecting your unhealthy lifestyle, but soon enough—”

“Soon enough I'll be dead.”

“Is that so? Is that your plan? You want to play the comet, like James Dean or Marilyn Monroe? To add to the ‘they left us at the height of their glory' genre, create a legend for yourself?”

“Why not? I get the impression that those two were just as lost as I am.”

“That I can confirm. But don't forget that before they died they went to the trouble of making enough movies to leave a legacy. If you don't make two or three masterpieces, four or five decent features, and a few dozen flops, you'll risk dying for nothing, sweetheart. Your baggage for eternity is still pretty light.”

She gave a laugh.

For Johanna, tough talk was straight talk. She was pragmatic and fussy in business, and was so afraid of pity and false love, hypocritical favors, and beaming optimism that she practiced insensitivity as a virtue. For her, nastiness was simply authenticity in dealing with people: it allowed her to make it absolutely clear she was not lying. She used brutality at every moment like a proof of honesty, and pessimism as a sign of intelligence.

That night she brought Anny the opposite of what she needed.

Particularly as Anny didn't want to respond anymore: it wasn't just that she hated arguing—in Johanna's cynical mouth the subjects that mattered to her seemed dirty.

“All right, Anny. Let's not go any further, we'll end up getting mad at each other, which is the last thing I want. Let's stick to what's concrete.”

“All right.”

“Do you promise to stop drinking?”

“I'd like to.”

“And drugs?”

“Even more so.”

Johanna smiled.

“Well there we are. It's no more complicated than that. Now that you know what you want, you can get it.”

For her agent, Anny's behavior was whimsical: her client took drugs to attract attention, she drank to be scolded. Like a child . . .

“I suggest I start coaching you right now. In three days, we've got the premiere of
The Girl with the Red Glasses.
I managed to persuade Orlando not to send his lawyers, just the dress: so as far as your look goes, you'll be back on your feet. But you've got to keep your head clear. In three days the movie reporters, photographers, critics, and journalists will be there. You absolutely have to show up alert, on the ball, and bursting with energy.”

“I promise.”

Anny walked with her to the door, kissed her, gave her the refrain about how finding her was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to her, that their friendship had changed her life, and she sent her tender regards to Cindy.

Johanna almost blushed under her frosting of beige cream.

A few seconds after she had left, Anny went into the living room. She opened the door to the bar and counted the bottles. With the Bourbon, scotch, Armagnac, gin, and sherry, there were still six full bottles.

Perfect.

She put them in the basket that ordinarily was used for firewood in the winter, tucked it under her arm, and went back to her bedroom.

There she put her stock beside the bed and lay down.

Her goal?

If she didn't know what her life's goal was in general, she did know for the near future.

Three days . . .

She uncorked the Bourbon to start with.

In three days she had time to reach her goal: to get so wasted she'd slip into a coma.

Anne was beginning to enjoy her conversations with Braindor.
To be sure, from the moment they first met she had liked him, this blond wolf, this starving monk; beneath his worn cloak she had sensed a soul as soft as bread dough. Beneath his threatening appearance, abnormal size, bony face, and imperious voice, the pilgrim hid, despite his determined strength, an astonished, curious spirit.

While she had thought their conversations would consist of long silences, she was discovering just the opposite; for the first time, here was a human being who was passionately interested in her, who asked her to talk about herself, to describe her impressions of the world. The taciturn young woman became loquacious, even voluble; she began to feel, if not intelligent, at least more interesting.

They met every day to converse, the three of them—the third element being the linden tree that offered them protection where they sat. It was inconceivable for Anne to share what was most important to her without being in nature. Although she enjoyed her little house in the beguinage, she began to languish inside the walls; in order to think, she needed the embrace of fresh air, the feeling of clay beneath her toes, of grass in her fingers, the sky as the horizon where she wrote her thoughts, bathed in light, be it that of the sun or the moon. If she did not expose her body to the elements, she could not form her opinions.

There, between the moss and the branches, gazing up at the rising star, she shared with the monk her joys and indignations.

“I do not like the notion of hierarchy, Braindor.”

“And yet you obey so easily.”

“I'm not referring to human hierarchy, but to that which separates mankind from the animals. We think we are superior.”