The Life and Death of Sophie Stark (23 page)

And then Abe came back in with the cold air, smelling like smoke, and she went back to being his little cat again.

O
N SET THE PROBLEM
was Veronica. I’d been sort of scared to meet her, because she’d been on the covers of all the big magazines, but when I saw her the first day I just thought,
Oh
. It’d been a long time since I’d lived with one, but I could still spot an alcoholic right away. It was okay in the first few scenes we shot, where she just had to look queenly and pissed off; she had that drunk-lady way of lifting her chin and narrowing her eyes like what were any of us staring at? But when we tried to shoot the scene in her bedroom—the prop guys had hung expensive-looking tapestries in a back room of the church and wheeled in a gigantic bed—she totally fell apart. Our lines were pretty modern-sounding—the screenwriter didn’t want anything flowery—but she still couldn’t deal. She got through the very beginning of the scene okay—Isabella tells Beatriz about her money-grubbing half brother Henry’s latest plan for her marriage, a rich nobleman who will top up Spain’s treasury. Beatriz at first isn’t too sympathetic—the guy’s rich, after all, and he’ll take care of Isabella. But Isabella explains that she’s not going to let herself get shipped out to the countryside to be somebody’s wife, that she’s going to sit on the throne like the queen she is. I liked the speech because it wasn’t about freedom and love like some Disney princess; it was about power. I knew I would’ve nailed it; I practiced it sometimes when no one was around, just to see how it sounded. But Veronica couldn’t handle it.

“I’m not made to be a rich man’s wife,” she said, and then she just paused and stared at me, like I had the lines printed on my face. We
cut. The script guy showed her the line and she nodded and looked annoyed, like she knew it all along. But the next time she got to the same spot and crashed again. The third time she got as far as, “I’m not going to move to Osuna and supervise servants,” before she stopped and looked up at Sophie hopefully, like maybe that was it. The fourth time she said, “I’m not made to be a man’s rich wife,” and instead of laughing she looked like she was going to sob.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I need a minute.” And then she ran to her trailer in her big heavy Isabella dress.

Sophie was scratching her arms. She started to follow Veronica, but she looked exhausted.

“Let me talk to her,” I said.

Sophie looked relieved, but a little dark thought was growing in my brain.

Veronica said, “Come in,” in a thick voice, and when I opened the door, she shoved something behind her mini-fridge. The trailer was full of little-girl stuff—a pink teddy bear and a unicorn poster and a jewelry box with rainbow stickers on it. Veronica lit a scented candle and then lit a cigarette from it.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said. “It’s a tough scene, you know.”

“It’s a tough role,” I said.

She looked at me like she was grateful. She’d rubbed away some of the makeup under her eyes, and the skin there was greenish and shiny.

“I used to have an easier time,” she said.

I remembered just a few years before, when she’d been in her first big movie. They called her “the thinking man’s starlet.” She’d gone to Columbia and spoke three languages and her dad was some kind
of diplomat and she looked so pretty and classy and smart and she always said the right thing in interviews, like she’d gotten the best of everything her whole life but she knew how to be humble about it. Of course I was jealous of her.

“This must be really hard for you,” I said. “All the pressure, the attention.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest. Her big skirt was getting wrinkled, but I didn’t say anything.

“I used to feel like I was in control,” she said. “I’d step out of my house in the morning and think,
Anything I want today, I can have
. Now I don’t even feel like I control my own brain.”

She reached behind the fridge, pulled out a bottle of green tea, drank deeply, and winced.

“You want some?” she asked.

I didn’t, but I said yes. I needed to be on her side. The bottle was about half tea and half vodka. It was disgusting, like lukewarm bitter gasoline. That had always been one of the saddest things about drunks to me—the shit they were willing to put in their mouths. One summer my stepdad quit beer and switched to cough syrup, and that sweet smell in the sticky heat made me heave every time I walked into the house. Even my youngest sister wouldn’t go near him.

“You are in control,” I said, “but not for long.”

She looked pissed off, set the bottle down. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I’m not the only one who knows you have a problem,” I said.

This was a cross between the truth and a lie. I hadn’t actually talked to Sophie or anyone else about Veronica’s drinking. But I was pretty sure they’d pick up on it soon, if they hadn’t already. Veronica looked worried but not convinced. I went on.

“I’m not going to tell anybody,” I said, “but there’s thirty other people working on this movie, and a lot of them are pissed off at you right now. It’s only a matter of time before somebody talks to the press.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, “are you threatening me?”

She was trying to sound cold and unimpressed, but I could hear the fear in her voice. She’d never be able to play Isabella, I told myself; she couldn’t even act powerful with me.

“I’m trying to help you,” I said. “Look, I know you’re going to get it together. You just need a couple of months to clear your head, and you’ll be fine.”

This was what my stepdad always said—he just needed two months of total calm and no distractions, and he’d get sober. Once he even put it on the calendar, a big X on the first of October. But then October came, and my youngest sister got bronchitis and shook the house with a cough that sounded like a wild dog barking, and then she had to get chest X-rays, which meant my stepdad had to take another house-painting gig so we’d have the money, and his Calm Months got postponed. He wasn’t mad about it, just shrugged and said he’d do it in December, in January, in June.

“I know that,” Veronica said. “After this I’m going to go on this meditation retreat in Vermont. I’ve done it before. It totally cleans out your whole system—it’s like being a new person.”

“That’s great,” I said. “You should do it now.”

“I have to finish the movie,” she said. She didn’t sound excited or even indignant; she sounded like she was talking about homework.

“If you drop out now,” I said, “it’ll be news for a day. A few people will wonder about it, and you’ll have to figure out something to tell them.”

“More than a few people,” she said. “I have a contract.”

I didn’t actually know much of anything about being a famous actress or how their contracts worked, but I didn’t think it mattered.

“If you stay, somebody’s going to tell
Us Weekly
that you’re a drunk who can’t say her lines. And that will be news for a lot longer, and it could permanently fuck up your career.”

She didn’t say anything, but I knew I’d gotten to her. Her whole body stiffened.

“I don’t need this from you right now,” she said finally. “You don’t know anything. You’ve been in what, one movie?”

“Suit yourself,” I said, and left her there.

V
ERONICA DIDN’T LEAVE RIGHT AWAY
. She limped along for a few more days, mangling her lines and making the crew roll their eyes every time she opened her mouth. Then, when someone snuck an empty vodka bottle into the shot for her big monologue about Ferdinand (it wasn’t my idea, but I did help the grip find the bottle), she looked at all of us with this kind of ruined pride, more regal than anything she’d shown us before, and stalked off to her trailer. The next day her agent told Sophie she was pulling out.

What I wasn’t prepared for was how Sophie took it. She folded up in my armchair like a sick bird and said in this dull, hollowed-out voice, “It’s over. The movie’s over.”

“It’s not over,” I said. “We’ll find another Isabella.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “The financing was contingent on Veronica. Now the studio will pull out, and we’ll have no money.”

I hadn’t thought about that. When we made
Marianne
, we just did whatever Sophie wanted, and I’d figured this would be the same.
Now I remembered the trailers and the mini-sandwiches on the craft-services table and the five lighting guys, and I realized how dumb I’d been.

“We’ll find someone even better. Veronica was no good, you know that. She could barely read her lines. We’ll find someone who will really impress them.”

Sophie lifted her head. Her face was awful. It was the first time I’d seen her like that, all the lights out behind her eyes.

“Like who?” she asked.

I sent Abe out for some ice cream. He was happy to go; he felt bad for Sophie. He didn’t know it was my fault.

“Like me,” I said when he was gone. “Like you wanted in the first place.”

She looked confused, just for a second, but long enough for me to realize she’d lied to me. She’d never wanted me for Isabella. She’d always thought of me as Beatriz, the maid.

“I’d love that,” she said, her voice so clearly fake it was insulting, “but they’re going to want a big name.”

Some people just turn away when someone disrespects them. They don’t give that person a second chance. But I’ve always been the kind who stands and tries to show the other person where they went wrong. This has gotten me in a lot of trouble.

I got right up in her face. She blinked. I hoped she was afraid of me.

“Who do you think made
Marianne
great?” I said. “Do you think it was you? It wasn’t even your story to begin with.”

“I know,” she said. Her voice was so small. Later I’d look back and realize I’d never heard her so weak before. But I kept right on going.

“You need me,” I said. “And not to be your maid. Not to hold your
fucking hand. You need me to star in this movie, because it’s the only way it’s going to be any good.”

I didn’t know until right then that I believed that, but it was true.

Sophie looked at me, and her face was exhausted, like after you cry and you just want to lie down by yourself for a while, but her eyes were completely dry.

“You’re right,” she said, and soon Abe came back with the ice cream, and we ate it and watched
The Blair Witch Project
, and I wasn’t sure I’d won at all.

T
HE NEXT DAY
on the subway platform, in the morning, while we waited for the train that would take us to Sophie’s meeting with the producer, Sophie got a look in her eye like an animal hunting. I was looking down the tunnel for the train’s first light, and she pushed me up against the dirty wall with everyone watching, put her mouth on my mouth, her hand up my shirt. I should’ve punched her; she knew what it meant to come at me like that, without warning. But she didn’t pin my arms—I could’ve pushed her away. Instead I put a hand in her hair and pulled her closer into me. What can I say, except her smell, the taste of her breath. The memory of every single thing we’d done when we were together, and all the years I told myself we’d never do any of it again. The way we knew how to move against each other even after all that time.

E
VERYONE WAS PANICKING
. The screenwriter and a guy named George, who Sophie said was an executive producer in L.A., were
calling her every day to yell at her. The studio gave Sophie a list of names, people she could replace Veronica with. My name wasn’t on it. We made a tape of my marriage speech, and I said those lines like I was made to say them, but they weren’t interested. So we started sending the tape around to other independent studios and to rich people Sophie knew who had liked
Marianne
and
Woods
. We waited.

I saw my friend Irina, the girl who’d booked me in the storytelling show years back. I told her Sophie and I were working together again, and she raised an eyebrow and asked if we were
together
together too. I said of course not, I was with Abe. She said that was good, he was a kind person, and Sophie wasn’t kind. I nodded, pretended that I agreed with her. I didn’t tell her I was realizing I wasn’t very kind either. Or that Sophie and I had already fucked secretly in a cab (coming back from a failed meeting with a rich movie buff) and in the alley behind a Crown Heights bar (after drinking whiskey to cover up the failure). Just that morning I’d snuck into the bathroom while she was showering, pretending to bring her a towel, really licking the water off her skin. It felt right to do it in bathrooms and alleys, without telling anyone. I was ashamed of cheating on Abe and manipulating Veronica; sneaking around and looking over my shoulder and never getting to lie in bed with Sophie on a lazy morning felt like the appropriate price to pay for the things I wanted. And when sex was a secret, the movie almost felt like a secret too, something the two of us could enjoy together without anyone else messing it up.

After a couple of weeks we did get an offer, about a quarter of what the studio had promised. We’d have to lose a lot of the crew
and the nonspeaking cast—the footmen and scullery maids, Columbus’s sailors. We’d have to cut all the scenes with ships and horses. And we’d lose the big old church that had made me want to play Isabella in the first place. Sophie took a week to think about it. I was afraid she’d give up. We went to old buildings we could use cheaply, warehouses and restaurants where Sophie knew people, but none of them looked right. Then we found the old bottle factory. The floor was covered in broken glass, and the walls were full of holes where the equipment had been ripped out. I figured we should move on to the next place on our list, which was a high school gym, but Sophie got a look in her eyes like when a dog smells something on the wind, and then she went crunching around in the glass in her little expensive shoes, muttering to herself. Finally she turned to me.

“Let’s just get rid of Spain,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s not going to look right no matter what. Let’s just put it in New York and use whatever locations we want.”