After the Reunion (27 page)

“Of course,” Emily said. “And private nurses.”

“Fine, Mrs. Buchman. See you in ten days.”

She had two months. That was more than enough time for everything. Emily looked in the mirror of her compact and imagined herself looking like something on the order of Joan Collins. She wondered if Ken had gone to Hawaii alone, or if he had taken someone. She couldn’t care less. Fine, Mrs. Buchman. Of course, Mrs. Buchman. I’ve just found a cancellation and can fit you in, Mrs. Buchman. Aren’t you lucky, Mrs. Buchman!

Emily smiled at her image in the mirror.
This is the last time I’ll ever have to say I’m Ken’s wife to get what I want
, she thought.
The next time I’ll get it because I’m Emily
.

Chapter Twenty-three

At the beginning of December Kit found out that Zack Shepard was casting a new movie. She made her agent get her the script, and as soon as she read it she knew that she had to have the supporting role, she had to be that girl; if she couldn’t have that part she would die. It was her. It wasn’t one of those airhead bimbos she was always playing, or those smartass teenagers—it was a real person, with layers and layers of complexity, strengths, weaknesses, everything. When she read the script she almost cried she wanted that part so much. Before, she’d always had to improve a part with her own complexities, but these were right here. Even the movie she’d finished last month was shit compared to this.

The truth was she was a little disappointed about the last movie. She wondered what would happen when it was released. The director had kept cutting her part because the fat bitch star she had most of her scenes with was jealous. The bitch kept saying: “Oh, I can’t say that line. What’s my motivation?”

Your motivation
, Kit wanted to say,
is that you’re here
.

But the director was a weakling who wanted everybody to love him, especially stars, and he kept letting the bitch change the lines, or making the screenwriter do it. The poor screenwriter kept chewing Maalox, and he always had a white rim around his mouth. When the scene was rewritten to everyone’s satisfaction (except Kit’s, of course), it naturally turned out that Kit’s best lines were the ones that had to go so the star could have her motivation.

On her list of the things she would have when she herself became a powerful star, Kit added “Approval of cast, director, and script at all times.” Well, she could dream, couldn’t she?

Right now her dream was that new Zack Shepard movie. She wondered if he remembered her from the part she’d read for but didn’t get. He probably saw thousands of actresses. He was reputed to be thorough. She remembered
him
very well. He was dark: dark hair, dark crackling eyes, and slim but very nicely built, with an intensity that was intellectual and sexual and something else she couldn’t quite read. She thought it might have to do with his dedication to his private artistic furies. She liked that idea. He was only about five feet ten, but that was because he hadn’t grown up in California. He was extremely attractive, in a way you wouldn’t get easily tired of. She thought she could be perfectly happy living with him. He would make her a star, and their life together would never be boring.

She would even marry him …

Her fantasies were, she realized, getting out of hand. She wouldn’t mind fucking him, anyway. That, at least, was plausible. But more vital was getting a reading. Her agent arranged it without any trouble.

Everyone was auditioning the same scene; a confrontation between mother and daughter. It was the confrontation Kit had never had, but was certainly prepared for. She had been prepared for it all her life. In the short scene the two women talked about how they had betrayed each other, the mother doing it when the girl was a child, the daughter doing it to her in return when she grew up. Kit was aware that she wasn’t a very loving daughter in her own life, but it was something she had never bothered to think about until she began rehearsing this scene. What a part! It was the supporting role, but it was just as important as the lead. She knew that if she got it and some egomaniac got the mother’s part, Zack Shepard wouldn’t let that actress start messing around with the script.
He
had balls.

She arrived at the reading looking fantastic. Zack Shepard seemed to remember her right away; he smiled and stood up to shake hands and said it was nice to see her again. He made her feel comfortable and talented. Kit knew that was probably one of his own talents, and that she didn’t mean anything to him, but it worked just the same by making her loosen up and do what she thought was her best work. Afterward he said, “Terrific!” and smiled again when he dismissed her, but Kit knew most of them did that. It was the same kind of polite, meaningless shit like kissing people hello and good-bye. Still, she felt high. She’d been good, she knew she had been good. She drove home in a fog.

She wished Emma was working on this picture too so she could ask her how she’d done, but with the credit from the last Zack Shepard film Emma had gone right into a low-budget picture as Production Manager. She wanted the big credit. You had to make choices: you could stay with one person and work your way up if that person liked you, or you could keep moving around and move up that way. Emma was impatient. Besides, she said Zack Shepard told her she could always come back another time.

Now the hard thing started: the waiting.

Kit called her agent every day. He liked her or he wouldn’t have put up with it. Had anybody said anything about her reading? Had the part been cast? Were there going to be call-backs? No, no, and he didn’t know. Kit told herself Zack (she was thinking of him as that now, “Zack, my friend”) had to cast the mother first before he could cast the daughter. The mother was the starring part, and they had to be a good mix.

But she was so perfect—she’d be perfect with anybody.

Maybe he didn’t like her after all.

Maybe she should have dressed for the part, like a frump, instead of looking like herself. The actress who had read before her was wearing a sloppy dress with embroidery on the yoke and had long hair under her arms.
Red
hair. Maybe they wanted a redhead, not someone with dark hair like her. But she had such fair skin, and gray eyes; she could color her hair if they wanted that. What difference did it make? It was the quality that counted, wasn’t it?

Kit thought it was a good thing she was between boyfriends because she was so irritable and single-minded these days that she wouldn’t have been able to stand having anyone around. Whenever she needed some recreational sex she found it how and where she always did; easily, and at parties. Seth from class had told everyone about the cop walking in on them in almost flagrante delicto, but it hadn’t dried up her source of supply there either. Maybe they were hoping to get shot.

In the midst of this anxious musing about her career, Kit received an invitation to a fancy poolside brunch party in Bel-Air given by a producer she knew. Everybody was pretending it was winter, just because Christmas was coming. Santa Claus and silver stars were flying over Rodeo Drive. Kit knew there would be poinsettia plants beside the pool, and that the water would be properly heated so they could swim. She wore her bikini, with a gauzy sarong wrapped around her waist.

She walked out to the pool, and there among the Christmas decorations and the pâté and champagne and fresh fruit and glossy turkey the size of a small child, and the fifty people who had been chosen for their fame or ability or beauty or charm, was Zack Shepard.

She had never seen him in real life, since she considered auditions not real life at all but simply an extension of that other dimension which was the movies. Here he was, right in front of her, in his tiny little swim trunks: both the god of the casting office and the mortal with his clothes off. The people he was talking to turned away to greet some other people, and in that split second when he was alone and looking at her, Kit smiled. He smiled back in a friendly way. She walked over to him. Not only did he not have a girl friend hanging on his arm, she didn’t see one who was talking to anyone else with her eyes darting around in that aggressive, paranoid way girl friends had whenever their tenuous property talked to someone attractive.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

A waiter came by carrying a tray of glasses filled with champagne. She took one. Zack put his empty glass on the tray and took a full one. He looked perfectly sober, but relaxed. “I’m Kit Barnett,” Kit said.

“I remember.”

For just an instant she panicked. She had never had to go after a man who was very important to her life. Then she remembered that no man had ever rejected her either, unless he was patently worthless and she hadn’t wanted him much anyway, and she drew herself together and proceeded to be herself. “Those plants are said to be poisonous,” she said, gesturing at the red-flowered poinsettias.

“I didn’t plan to eat them,” Zack said.

“No,” she said. “You wouldn’t.” Then she met his eyes with a look that plainly said she could think of something else he would much rather eat, and if he wanted to it was available.

“Kit Barnett,” he said noncommittally, almost to himself.

“Yes,” Kit said. She let her eyes travel down his body and back to his face. “Are you having a good time?”

“I don’t know yet.”

They sipped their champagne, still looking at each other. She was standing very close to him.

“Do you want to go swimming with me?” she said.

“Now?”

“Why not? Can you swim?”

“I can swim,” he said, looking amused.

She dropped her sarong and kicked off her shoes. Now he was looking at
her
body; good. “I’ll race you,” she said. They drained their glasses and walked to the edge of the pool together and dove in.

She was giddy from the champagne and the euphoria of her conquest. His hair was streaming out under the water, and his long, lean legs moved sinuously as he swam, edged with tiny bubbles. They surfaced, shaking the water from their faces, and went for the other end of the pool. She was planning to let him win, but she didn’t have to; he was fast.

“Gotcha!” he said.

Kit smiled.

They began swimming again, but this time slowly. She dove under the surface of the water and swam through his moving legs, graceful as a porpoise. When she surfaced again she could see that he was impressed. She let her hair fan out like a mermaid’s, and then she did a back flip and swam underneath him again, breathing out slowly, feeling the sensuality of the water and their movements together, and the beginning of arousal. Ah … She really wanted him now, not just as Zack Shepard, but as a man. She put her hand out and gently cupped his cock.

He swam away. Not just away as in a game, but really away: he left her and climbed out of the pool. Kit looked at his trunks and he wasn’t the slightest bit aroused, and then she looked at his face, and the expression there sent her into terror.
It was disdain
.

He was looking at her as if he’d had every beautiful girl in the world and she was nothing but some kind of sleazy hooker. He looked as if she were not attractive at all, and worse; pushy, inept, unwanted. He looked at her as if she were a kid. Then he picked up a towel and turned and walked away.

Kit felt as if she’d forgotten how to swim. Her arms and legs felt heavy, the water was getting into her nose and mouth, she was sinking, out of control. She thrashed in that terrible terror, soundlessly, afraid to scream, and knowing it would do no good anyway because she was alone. And then the moment passed, and she rose up safely, sputtering, her heart pounding wildly. They were all still eating and drinking there at the side of the pool and they hadn’t noticed anything unusual at all.

She swam to the edge and held on until her heartbeats and breathing were under control. She looked up and saw Zack standing drying his hair, talking to a group of people, nodding and even laughing, accepting a glass of champagne. She had blown it. She would never get the part now. It was over. He might have entertained some thoughts of using her once, but now he never would.

She got through the rest of the party because the thought of going home by herself to brood on how stupid she had been was intolerable. She avoided Zack Shepard, which was easy because everyone wanted to talk to him and he didn’t want to talk to her. She wrapped her hair in a towel and let the sun dry the rest of her, and was nice to the producer who was the host. There was nobody there she wanted to have sex with: she felt completely empty and without desires of any kind. When people finally started to leave, Kit did too.

She went home and huddled in front of the television set all night, wrapped in her quilt, watching
MTV
. In her head she rewrote the scenario of her scene with Zack Shepard, who was no longer, and never would be again, “Zack, my friend,” and in this new script they swam and laughed and played innocently, and she never touched him. She swam through his legs and ran away. No, better, she didn’t even do that at all—they just had a race and he won.

Of course he won. She should have known before she even started to try to get him that he was way out of her world and she was a damn fool.
How could she have been so unprofessional
?

The next day, thank God, was Monday, and she could go back to her normal life of classes that filled up her time and kept her fit when she wasn’t working. She did not call her agent. She kept her ears open to hear about other pictures that were casting or about to.

On Tuesday her agent called. “Are you sitting down?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You have the part in the new Zack Shepard film.”

“What? You’re kidding!” She started to scream with joy. “Oh, I can’t believe it! Oh, my God!” She was so excited she forgot to listen when he told her how much money she was getting and then she had to ask him all over again. “What did he say about me?”

“What did he have to say? Obviously you were the right one for the part.”

Obviously. In spite of everything else.

“Who’s the mother?” Kit said.