The Actress: A Novel (8 page)

She blushed, unsure whether he was a gay man doing an impersonation of a straight man or the most heterosexual man on the planet. “So does it bother you that Louis is a cuckold? You’re not afraid to play that?”

“You know, when I first read it, Walter and I discussed my playing Paul. The two men were written as closer in age. But I thought it would
be more interesting if she had married someone older and the brothers were ten years apart. And then we found Billy Peck and it was perfect. It’s a great triangle in cinema. Young woman, young man, older man. Walter loved my idea. He thought it would make the affair more motivated. I’m getting older and I want to use that in my work. And I don’t want to do the same things I’ve always done.”

“You’re definitely not.”

“Yeah, these new films are different, aren’t they? What did you think of
The Widower
? You never told me.”

“You never asked.” It excited her that he wanted her opinion. He probably surrounded himself with people who said what he wanted to hear. “I liked it. Especially that walk you did after you kissed that woman. You seemed totally defeated but trying not to seem defeated.”

“I put a lot into that. Todd and I worked on it together.”

“You’re very physical as an actor. I like that about you.” He grinned, and she felt like she had passed some kind of test. She hadn’t been vague and she hadn’t been dishonest.

“So do you think you’re up for playing Ellie?” he asked. “It’s dark stuff.”

“I really think I am. It—the whole thing—just feels right. But I’m going to have to convince Walter Juhasz.”

“I’m sure he’ll be as charmed by you as I am,” Steven said, flashing his black eyes.

The word “charmed” was like a pat on the head. “Charmed?”

“Yes, you’re charming. And brave. And beautiful, of course. But I think what I like most about you is your ambition.” He was blinking at her slowly. The room felt very close. He was staring at her the way he had on the patio in Utah. His gaze was confident and cool and this time unmistakably sexual. She looked back at him, wanting to kiss him but not wanting to be unfaithful to Dan. She trembled, more frightened of herself than of him.

“What’s going on?” she finally asked.

“What do
you
think is going on?” he asked, his smile impermeable. He was making her feel she was delusional to think he was interested. Her discomfort mixed with her disappointment that he had made no move to touch her, and then she felt guilty for being disappointed. What was she thinking? She had a boyfriend. A live-in boyfriend.

“I have to go,” she said, her cheeks burning. She strode purposefully toward the suite door, but it turned out to be the bathroom. She opened it to see a gleaming marble tub, and embarrassed, she spun around, not knowing where to go.

“It’s to the right,” he said. He didn’t get up. She pulled open the door and turned her head to see if he was following her. But the hallway was empty and quiet.

M
addy’s hands were shaking as she slid her card in her door. What she’d felt in that room had been electric and irrefutable.

Or maybe she was just being self-centered. Maybe when he said
What do
you
think is going on?,
he was letting her know he was gay and had no interest. She barely knew the man.

She lay awake awhile before drifting off into a deep sleep. She had an old recurring dream in which she was in the backseat of a car, behind an empty driver’s seat, trying to reach the steering wheel. It was hard to control from a distance, and the car went faster and faster, some unseen force gunning the gas. This time there was someone in the front seat. Steven Weller. As she struggled to reach her hands around the wheel, he turned to her with that fake-innocuous grin, and there was a terrible screech, and she woke up.

T
he next morning Zack called to see if Maddy felt like visiting Marlene Dietrich’s grave. She said yes, curious about him, about Bridget, their relationship. And after what had happened in Steven’s penthouse, she felt Zack might be able to shed light on him. Zack must have known Steven most of his life, which meant he’d seen things other people hadn’t.

Maddy and Zack got off the U-Bahn at the Friedenau stop and headed in search of the cemetery. Dietrich’s grave was simple and dark gray. It read, “
Hier steh ich an den Marken meiner Tage
.” Beneath it was
MARLENE
and the dates of her life.

Maddy looked down at her guidebook. “ ‘Here I stand upon the border of my days,’ ” she read. “It’s adapted from a sonnet by Theodor K
ö
rner. It
says he wrote it after he got a head wound during the Napoleonic Wars and thought he was going to die in the forest. That’s awful.”

“Obviously, the guy lived,” Zack said, “or he wouldn’t have written the poem. So he was wrong.”

“But he never forgot the fear, the hours he was in the cold, waiting to go.”

She thought again of her father lying there in the snow. And no one coming to save him.

Right after she’d gotten the news, she’d found herself unable to sleep. She would lie awake, replaying the last moments of his life, as though she could rewind and bring him back. The insomnia continued in Vermont, where she and Dan drove to make arrangements. She became convinced that if she had been with him the day he died, she would have skied with him and he wouldn’t be dead. It had been the weekend of Presidents’ Day. He had invited her and Dan up to visit, but she was working extra hours to make up for her time off during production, so she’d said no.

By the time they held the memorial a few days later, she was a basket case, not having slept one wink since she got the news. She’d made Dan do the driving because she was so frayed, she thought she’d have an accident.

She told Dan about the insomnia, and when they got back to Brooklyn, he made her see a Fort Greene psychiatrist named Larson Wells. Larson helped Maddy realize that her father’s death hadn’t been her fault. The lorazepam and Zoloft she prescribed had helped, too. Soon she could sleep, and after a week, when the Zoloft had kicked in, she became less obsessive. Instead of lying awake, replaying the end of Jake’s life for hours, she would do it for a few minutes and it would cease to engage her.

But while on the antidepressant, she went on a few auditions and felt off her game, unable to access her emotions. There was a part of her that felt she was cheating herself of the very valid agony caused by his death. She stopped the drug and terminated therapy, against Dan’s wishes.

As she and Zack walked down the paths, they talked about films. Zack had always liked art films but when she asked if his mother had gotten him into moviegoing, he said, “God, no. Bridget likes mainstream stuff.
She can’t stand anything with subtitles or anything more than eighty-five minutes long.”

Clearly, he was trying to carve out a separate career, but when you worked in opposition to someone, it meant that person still controlled you. “Was she one of those working mothers who doesn’t miss a school event?”

He let out a high-pitched laugh, and lit a cigarette. “She missed a lot. I don’t think she ever really wanted to be a mother. She wanted to have a child. They’re not the same thing.”

“I’m sure she wanted you.”

“It always seemed like there were places she would rather be. She was always on the phone. I must have had six nannies by the time I was ten. Polish, Tibetan, Mexican, there were even a couple of hot au pairs from Scandinavia.”

“Did you ever feel resentful of her work?”

“No.”

“You didn’t think Steven was pulling her away from you? Any boy would have felt rivalrous. It’s very Oedipal.”

“You sound like the shrink I went to as a teenager. It’s funny you ask about Steven. When I was, like, ten, I had this fantasy that Steven was my real father. My dad had remarried by then and had two other kids, and I was angry about it. Steven was the biggest force in my mother’s life, and I thought how great it would be if he were my real dad. I used to stare at pictures of him and tell myself we resembled each other.”

“Did you ever ask Bridget?”

“I remember we were out at an Italian restaurant. She had just won some ‘women in business’ award and dragged me along. I burst out with the question and she doubled over laughing. ‘I can promise you Steven is not your father,’ she said. I got so pissed, I ran out of the restaurant. Later she apologized, said she hadn’t meant to hurt me. She said my dad had taken a test proving that he was my father and she could show me the results. I said no. I didn’t look at them till years later.” He shook his head bitterly. “It’s weird to think about that. I can’t believe I wanted Steven to be my dad, but the thing about Steven is, everyone wants him to fill the hole we have in our lives.”

“Do you guys get along?”

“Not really. He’s a seducer. It’s why he’s so successful. He manipulates people, and he’s so skilled at it that they don’t realize they’re being manipulated.” He began to talk about
The Widower
. He had hated it. He said Steven’s performance was phony and thin. As he delineated everything he disliked about the characterization, she saw his face grow hard. “So what did
you
think?” he asked with a hint of a sneer.

“His performance wasn’t perfect, but I guess I feel like he doesn’t get enough credit as an actor because his work is very subtle. To me, that’s the essence of great film acting. When it doesn’t feel like a performance.”

“Maybe you just have a thing for him. I saw you holding his hand at the premiere.”

“He took mine,” she said, her cheeks growing hot. She was no longer sure what had happened on the press line, not after what he had said in his suite.

“Whatever,” Zack said. “I saw the way you looked at him.” They had stopped under a tree covered with snow. A gust of wind moved through, and little flakes fell on their shoulders. “Maddy. You probably think I have a problem with Steven because of some unresolved anger against my mom. But I don’t. I’m not angry. And I don’t hate him. So when I say what I’m going to say, I want you to listen and not ignore it because of the source. I have known this guy most of my life, and this is not a role you want to play.”

Maddy was confused. “What role?”

“Girlfriend of Steven Weller.”

“I’m in love with Dan,” she protested.

“I know. But with you and Steven both being Bridget’s clients, you’re going to run into each other, whether or not you book this role. And if someday your situation with Dan changes, I wouldn’t want . . . How can I put this? Steven doesn’t respect women.”

“He has a woman as his manager. How can he not respect them?”

“She’s the only one. And that’s business. In his personal life, he likes his women pretty, dumb, and quiet. And he doesn’t like any for more than a year.”

She nodded slowly, trying to read Zack’s eyes.
Doesn’t like any for more than a year
. Maybe he was warning her that Steven was gay because he guessed she had a crush, and he didn’t want her to develop feelings. He was being protective. Or maybe he was just calling him a womanizer.

“Can I ask you something?” Maddy said.

“Sure.”

“Promise not to tell your mother?”

“I have no problem keeping secrets from my mother. I do it all the time.”

“Dan has a theory that Bridget and Steven invited me here so he’d have someone to see movies with. Because he’s gay.”

Zack had lit another cigarette and was examining the tip. “And?” he said.

“Well, there must have been parties at your house, I figure you saw people. Friends of his. I mean, it’s not like I care one way or the other, I’m just curious.”

“What are you asking?”

“Did he ever, like, come to your stuff at school?”

“You mean when I was in
Peter Pan
at eleven, playing the dog, did he bring some muscular guy with a Tom of Finland tattoo and a handkerchief hanging out of his jeans pocket?”

“So he brought girls, then?” She felt like an idiot as she was asking it, classless, overeager.

“The times he came to see me in plays, he was with my mother.”

Zack began walking more quickly, and she had to run to catch up despite his stubby legs. Not only had she failed to get anything out of him, but it seemed she had offended him with her questions. Whether he was being dense or merely protective of his mother’s star client, she could not tell. They walked in silence for a while, and when they neared the cemetery’s exit, he said, “If you’re so sure you’re not interested in him, why do you care if he’s gay or straight?”

“I don’t,” she said. Her cheeks reddened and she was ashamed. He knew her interest in his sexuality had more to do with her than with Steven. Whether Steven slept with men or women made no difference, because nothing was going to happen between them, except an audition. She would read with him and do everything she could to get the role. That was what she needed to focus on. In one day’s time she would be in Venice, preparing to meet Walter Juhasz.

7

Venice was like a fairy tale, with the thick February fog hovering over the Grand Canal. They flew from Berlin to Marco Polo Airport on Steven’s plane, and to Palazzo Mastrototaro by private motorboat. Steven greeted the grizzled captain with enthusiasm and introduced him as Giorgio.

They sat inside the boat because it was so cold and windy. As they made their way through the lagoon, Steven pointed out the island of Murano and the legendary Harry’s Bar. The palazzi were pink and decayed. Maddy was excited to see the city, which she knew only from movies. In film, Venice always represented love, death, or both. She could see why: It was a city of decay.

“Venice is ‘the most beautiful of tombs,’ ” Steven said, as though reading her mind. “Henry James wrote that. He was more astute on this city than anyone else.” It was a little pretentious, but his passion seemed genuine.

“Henry James is Steven’s favorite writer,” Bridget said. “Bores the fuck out of me. Some of it’s okay, but mostly, I’m like, skip, skip, skip.”

“How’d you get into Henry James?” Maddy asked Steven.

“I was in my twenties. A friend gave me a copy of
The Ambassadors
, and I went crazy for it. That’s my favorite of all of his novels. Since then I’ve read everything he wrote.”

“All I’ve read is
The Heiress,
for grad school, plus
Washington Square
. What should I read next?”

“Definitely
The Portrait of a Lady
. You in particular would like that book.”

They coasted to a stop in front of a grand yellow-white building, its windows shaped like suns. Young, handsome butlers collected their lug
gage as Steven greeted them in Italian. Everyone seemed happy to see him, as in a scene from a Victorian costume drama where all the servants loved the masters. They went up the stone stairs to the door.

“Would you like a tour?” Steven asked Maddy inside, after Bridget disappeared to make some phone calls. Maddy was overcome by the majesty of the palazzo but also found it spooky. She nodded.

“This is the
pianterréno,
” Steven said, “but it’s really the cellar.” They climbed a flight of wide marble stairs to a spacious main room. “This is the
mezzanine,
where the kitchen is, and the servants’ apartments. I’ve converted some of them to guest rooms, because most of my staff doesn’t live here.”

They climbed another flight. In the wide hallways, colorful chandeliers hung from beamed ceilings. It was glittery and otherworldly. The walls were done in marigold. “The
piano nobile,
” he said, “where the noblemen lived.” He led her down a wide hall to an enormous ballroom with marble columns.

“Do you have parties here?” she asked.

“I’m having one tonight.”

“Who’s coming?” she asked, getting excited despite herself. As anxious as she was about the audition, there was something magical about a party at a private Venetian palazzo.

“A cross section. Some writers, some painters, some actors. You’ll enjoy it.”

They left the ballroom, and he showed her a library with bookcases containing a mix of bound first editions of English classics, including several volumes of Henry James, and hardcovers of 1960s and 1970s American novels. He offered her a black copy of
Portrait
whose pages were so thin she had no idea how she’d be able to hold them between her fingers. The walls were covered with monochromatic modern paintings and photographs, a lot of squares and lines, no people. She approached one of them. “You like that?” he asked from behind her.

“Yeah.”

“That’s by Ed Ruscha.” He pronounced it “RooSHAY.” When she had seen the name in print, she had always read it as “ROOSH-a.” She was embarrassed by her mistake.

“Are you a serious art collector?” she asked, pivoting around.

“I would never call myself a collector,” he said. “I just know what I like. Why don’t you unpack, and then we can go to L’Accademia? I always visit
La Tempesta
on my first day.”

Her bedroom had an adjoining living room. A fire roared in the fireplace. She had brought the Marchesa from Berlin and hung it in the closet. Bridget had not asked for it back. It might be the most beautiful piece that Maddy ever owned, and she felt it was her duty to keep it, for if she and Dan ever had a daughter.

Out the window was a private garden that she imagined was resplendent in summer. Her father and mother had honeymooned in Venice. She had seen pictures in their album. They had probably passed this very palazzo, maybe posed in front of it for a photo. And now she was inside it. She imagined her father watching her from up above. (She always imagined him looking down on her, even though he had been a secular humanist who didn’t believe in God or heaven.) He would want her to soak up everything, the fog on the canal, the cold air, the Academy. She
would
soak it up, for him. She had to appreciate everything wonderful that happened to her.

Her theatrical adventures had been thrilling to him, the quirky film actor who came backstage to compliment her after a production of
the dreamer examines his pillow
or the famous guest lecturers at The New School. He salivated for all the details, and she relished sharing them. He had been practical so she could be impractical, and because she was impractical, she was here.

G
iorgio, the captain, was waiting in front with the motorboat. Bridget was busy, Steven said, so he and Maddy took off on their own. The Academy was only a short ride. No doubt they could have walked, but she guessed that Steven wanted her to experience the water.

As they entered the Academy, she noticed a few American tourists. They recognized Steven and whispered to each other. He walked past them casually. She waited to see if they would swarm him for autographs, but they watched from afar, pointing and gesturing. He acted like he wasn’t aware of it, but he had to be aware, he had to be used to this, it was his life.

La Tempesta
by Giorgione was a startling, confusing image. A naked
woman breast-fed her baby. The baby looked one way; the woman looked at the viewer. To the woman’s right, at a distance, a dandyish man stared at her, leaning on a staff. Behind them were a white city and a bolt of lightning in the midst of clouds. “What do you make of it?” Steven asked.

She was struck by the expressive sexuality in the work. The Peeping Tom. The dark woods. “There’s a lot going on,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Nothing is as it seems. A Madonna who is not a Madonna. A voyeur whom she may or may not know is spying. It’s quintessentially Venetian.”

“Why is that?”

“Because everything about Venice is a trick.” As Maddy stared at the painting, Steven glanced at her to observe her reaction. She felt self-conscious being watched, and then he was saying something: “In Berlin . . . in my suite . . .”

“Yes?” She stared at the painting, unable to face him.

“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.” She turned. So he was admitting there had been something for a moment. It was a relief to know she hadn’t imagined it.

“It’s okay.” She didn’t want to talk too much about it. If she did, it would be more awkward, and she didn’t want to sully her chances of booking
Husbandry
. “I was just—confused.” He nodded and turned, moving swiftly toward the next gallery.

B
ack at Palazzo Mastrototaro, she sat in her living room and reread the
Husbandry
script, trying to unlock Ellie. Maddy wanted to make the character bolder and braver than she seemed on the page. She remembered a mantra from school: “Be interested, not interesting.” It was about the importance of listening, not doing. With Ellie, Maddy felt the key was to play not the lack of sex or the boredom, but the interest in Paul. Ellie had to come alive when she was with him.

She was so engrossed in the script that when her phone rang, she jumped. “I miss you so much,” Dan said.

“Oh God, I miss you, too. I can’t believe I’m in Venice without you.”

“So you made it.”

“Yeah, we got here a couple hours ago.” She didn’t want to tell him she had gone to the Academy with Steven alone. It didn’t sound right. “I wish you were here with me.” She wanted him nearby, so she could remember everything she loved about him.

There was a knock on her door. “Hold on a second,” she said, “there’s someone at the d—”

When she pulled it open, she was face-to-face with Dan, his skin smudged and sweaty, a duffel bag slung over his chest. “What’s going on?” she cried out, kissing him. “How did you get here?”

“I flew. Just like you did. Probably not as nice a plane, though.”

“But how did you find the palazzo?”

“I went online to find the address, and when I got here, I said I was your boyfriend, and one of the guys got Steven. He was really cool about it.”

She kissed him again. The handholding in Berlin and Steven’s strange looks were meaningless now. Dan would stay for her audition, help her prepare. They were “partners on screen and in life,” read the headline of a blog piece about them that had come out during Mile’s End.

He wanted to take a bath. She went into the bathroom with him. Matching marble columns connected the ceiling to the tub and on one wall was a framed etching of an egg.

“What made you decide to come here all of a sudden?” she asked from the tub ledge, stroking his hair.

“I missed you, and I just didn’t see the point in staying in Brooklyn. We can write here. I quit the bar. I don’t need it anymore. I’m a director now.”

She climbed into the bath with him. Held his cock in her hand. It was like the finger of a musical man. Pale and long. It stiffened in the water.

She soaped his body, massaged him. They kissed and then rose, wet, moving to the bed. Their sex at Mile’s End had been strange, not connected. Now he was present and she was, too. He got on top of her. She had a fantasy of Steven taking her on the window seat of his suite in the Hotel Concorde and pushing her legs up into the air. She imagined the cleft in his chin and the feel of his stubble as it rubbed against her mouth, turning it raw.

When she came, she cried out loudly. Dan came soon after. “That was
intense,” he said.

He dozed for a few minutes and then woke up and said he was wired. “I want you to read this,” she said, handing him the
Husbandry
script.

She moved around the room anxiously, unpacking his things, while he read it on the couch. When he finished, he breathed in deeply through his nose and closed the script. She darted over and sat next to him. “So?”

“It’s really good,” he said.

“Do you really think so? I know the language is poetic, and it’s not a real American city. You don’t think it’s too . . . Euro? Pretentious?”

“It’s sexy, it’s dark, it’s Juhasz’s European take on an American marriage. He’s going to turn this small town into a horror show.”

“So you think I should read?”

“Of course you should. You’re going to nail this. You have that combination of sadness and raw sexuality.” He bit her earlobe playfully.

“I feel like I get this character. But Juhasz might hate me.”

“He already loved
I Used to Know Her
. Just do what you always do. Prepare, be confident, and show him who you are.” He kissed her. There was an ornate mirror across the room, and in it she could see them nuzzling.

“How do you think I would look with a shag?” she asked, angling her head so she could better see her reflection.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I
n the library Steven was lying on a couch, his head facing away from Bridget as though she were his shrink. She was in a dark blue armchair. The light from the canal made patterns on the ceiling.

She had to keep Steven on task. Focused on the future and not the present.

The boyfriend had been an unexpected hitch in the plan. It took balls to crash at Steven Weller’s palazzo. Maddy and Dan had come down for a late lunch, both with wet hair. Steven had been gracious with Dan, asking about his flight, the room. Now the couple had gone on a walk, “exploring the town.”

“Maybe she’s too complicated,” Steven said. In Berlin, in his suite, he
had been beguiled by Maddy, certain she was the one they’d been looking for. The frisson between them would enliven the project. But now the boyfriend was here, and he felt as though he were running a youth hostel.

“It’s good that she’s complicated,” Bridget said. “We already know that not just any pretty face will do. You need a costar who can be an equal.”

“He’s probably read the script. All the sex scenes. It could be a problem for him.”

“He went to NYU! He’s not a Mormon! You’re forgetting the sex scene in his movie.”

“Even if he encourages her to do this, I’m not sure I feel the requisite . . . passion for her. I need to feel that the girl is the only one who could possibly play the part.” He sat up and adjusted a stack of architectural and art books on the table so they were lined up perfectly. One was a study of eighteenth-century German coins.

Bridget crossed her left leg over her right so her body was facing him, and bounced her foot up and down slowly. “I know I don’t usually talk to you this way,” she said, “but we’ve been in each other’s lives a very long time.”

“Yes.”

“And I have to—I’m frustrated with the way you’re handling all this. I watched you fight so hard to do
The Widower
, and I don’t know what happened to that spirit. Don’t you want this to happen?”

“I’m not sure. My enthusiasm has waned.”

“Why give up now?”

“This has been a long process, and I’m tired.”

“And now it’s going to pay off, all the work we’ve done to get here. You’ve been persuasive. She wants to do this. I saw the way you two connected on the patio.” He glanced at her sharply. “You know I see everything. Now stop. You cannot be so fear-based.”

“You’re forgetting that I’m the one who has to work with her.”

“I’ll be working with her, too. And she is right for it. You’ve been doing such a good job. Let me do mine.”

“What can you do about this situation?”