The Actress: A Novel Read online

  2

  On the bed, Dan was typing furiously into his phone as Maddy unpacked. To save money, they had rented a condo twenty minutes from town; Kira and Sharoz were in the one next door. The apartment looked like it hadn’t been altered since the 1970s, complete with old board games, linoleum floors, and a cream-colored fridge.

  Maddy removed the jeans and slouchy sweaters she had brought along—Dan and Sharoz had told her that in Mile’s End, it was gauche to be anything but casual—and lay down beside him. He was emailing their hired publicist, Reid Rasmussen, about the first screening, trying to make sure they got bodies. She took one of his hands. He had long pale fingers, and she loved to lace them through hers. “I think we’re going to win Dramatic,” she said.

  “Ahh! Don’t say that. I don’t want to jinx it.”

  “What’s the point of being here if we can’t fantasize?” Maddy loved doing theater, but since graduation she had done mostly Off-Off-Broadway, and Actors’ Equity showcases and staged readings, and regional theater productions in depressing small towns. She was hoping the festival would expand her horizons. Even if I Used to Know Her failed to get distribution, she wanted to use her time in Utah to make connections and meet talented people with whom she could collaborate on other indie films like the one they had made, films that didn’t speak down to their audiences.

  “We’re not going to win,” he said, taking his hand away so he could type. “Dramatic will go to the one about the suburban New Jersey boy whose stepmother comes on to him. Or Rap Sheet. Anyway, distribution is way more important than awards.”

  “Well, whatever happens with I Used to Know Her,” she said, rubbing his belly, “I’ll still think you’re the most talented man in the universe.”

  She had met him three years ago, during her final year of grad school, at an Irish dive bar after a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest. He’d come up to her while she was waiting for her drink and said, “Best Gwendolen I’ve ever seen.” She’d thought the bump in his nose was cute; she had always been drawn to Jewish guys, maybe because they reminded her of her father.

  Her dreadlocked classmate Sal, who had played Algernon, said, “You’re the only Gwendolen he’s ever seen. He’s a movie snob. He’s complimenting you because he thinks you’re pretty.” Dan had directed Sal, who’d invited him to the play, in a short.

  “That is not true,” Dan said. “I love Wilde. I’m wild about Wilde.”

  “Oh my God, he’s lying,” Sal said. “Maddy, stay away from this guy. He has a thing for actresses.”

  “Is that true?” she asked, aware that she was flirting.

  Dan said, “I’m trying to rehabilitate myself. I had a bad breakup with one a couple years ago and swore I’d only date civilians. Then I dated a ballet dancer, and now actresses seem like a pillar of sanity.”

  The three of them sat in a corner by the window. After an hour Sal cut out, giving them an accusatory look before he left. As they watched people’s feet pass above the window, they talked about movies. Dan was a movie buff the way Peter Bogdanovich was, his knowledge obsessive, exhaustive. He told her about Ernst Lubitsch’s musicals, Godard, Fellini, and Truffaut. He told her about his favorite Fassbinder film, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. He said theater would be irrelevant one day. She made a great show of being offended to mask the fact that she was offended.

  Still, there was something in his ambition that appealed to her, and when he said he would ride the L with her to East Williamsburg, where she lived in a graduate-housing loft, she said yes. In front of the steel door, he kissed her, murmuring, “I’m afraid of what I might do if I come up.” When he headed off, she had to shout to him that the subway stop was the other way. He called the next morning to say he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She moved into his Fort Greene apartment a few months later.

  In the condo now she delicately removed the phone from his hand and placed it on the bedside table. She planted her knees on either side of his hips and kissed him languorously. “I think I’m too distracted,” he said, putting his palms against her shoulders. Maddy’s sex drive had gone down the first months after her father died, and then something strange had happened: She wanted it all the time. It confused her, because she worried it meant she wasn’t properly grieving.

  “That’s a great reason to do it,” she said, grinding herself against him. “It’ll focus you.” She was an inch taller than he was, five-ten to his five-nine, and she had broad shoulders and ash-blond hair that she wore to her chin. As a teenager, she had been self-conscious about her height, but in acting it was an advantage; it allowed her to measure up to men during dramatic scenes.

  Dan pushed her away gently. “I feel like I shouldn’t let any go before we screen.”

  “My boyfriend is Muhammad Ali,” she said, rolling off.

  “It worked out pretty well for him,” he said, and reached for his phone.

  The opening shot of I Used to Know Her was a bus coming down a highway with MONTREAL on the top. When Maddy saw it on the enormous screen, she felt a mix of pride and dread. Pride because they had worked so hard to make the film, and she was seeing it for the first time in a theater. And dread because the theater was only a quarter full. Ed Handy and Reid had tried valiantly to chat up the critics (The New York Times, L.A. Times, Variety) before the screening, but they had looked morose nonetheless, hungover and reluctant.

  Maddy had fantasized about watching it here, in Mile’s End, with her father beside her, but he had never seen even the rough cut. The shoot had taken place the January before, in Potter, a small town on the Vermont/Canada border, famed for its majestic Yarrow Lake. Her dad, on vacation from his teaching job, was the production’s unofficial mayor—doing carpentry, cooking big spaghetti dinners. Friends offered meals, homes, and locations for free, thrilled to have a movie shoot in town, no matter how low-budget.

  The last time she had seen her dad was at the end of the shoot. He had hugged her tightly and pronounced, “I’ve said it before, but watching you up close, I really got it. This is what you were meant to do.” Though she thanked him, she wasn’t paying attention; Dan was worried about traffic and wanted to get on the road. She had since replayed that goodbye hundreds of times, wishing she’d said “I love you” or told him it was his faith that had made her dream big.

  Maddy tried to focus on the screen, the second-unit shots of the Potter cornfields, the gas station, the country store, and a couple of old guys (real Potterians she’d known her whole life) smoking cigarettes on a porch. Finally, she saw herself, not herself but Alice, looking out the window and listening to headphones. It was bizarre to see her face blown up so big. All those moments spent in front of the camera—crying, inhabiting her body, fighting with Kira in character—were about to be made public and about to be judged.

  It was amazing that the film had gotten written, much less made, given Dan’s mental state a year and a half ago. His most recent film, Closure, had been his third not to get distribution. He would complain about his day job, pouring beer in a Gramercy Park sports bar that he said catered to date rapists. He would stay up late watching European films, and he lost interest in sex. One night Maddy came home from her restaurant, La Cloche, to find him drunk on Jameson, watching Rohmer’s Claire’s Knee.

  “You should write a movie we can shoot in Potter,” she said, squeezing next to him on their weathered green couch, “and I’ll act in it.”

  They had been dating two years by that point but had never worked together. He hadn’t wanted to cast her in his other films, even though Closure had a well-drawn, troubled female lead; he said a collaboration could create stress in their relationship. Though hurt, she had decided not to fight him.

  So she was surprised when he turned away from the TV and said, “What would the film be about?”

  “What about the time I went to Lacey Rooney’s wedding?”

  A childhood friend of M
addy’s, a girl up the road, had married a jerk. Maddy had gone home for the wedding, and the two friends had argued at the rehearsal dinner. Lacey thought she was a snob for wanting to act, and Maddy worried she was marrying a dangerous man. (Maddy had wondered what would happen when word got back to Lacey that they would be in Potter filming a movie based on their story, but Lacey, by then divorced, came to the set and posed for photos with Kira, joking that she herself was better-looking.)

  As Maddy told Dan about Lacey that night, he listened, though he didn’t seem very excited. But when she came in the next night, he said, “I wrote eleven pages.” They read them aloud and Maddy talked more, gave some notes on the scenes. They continued to work this way until one night she arrived home from work and he handed her a thick sheaf of pages bound by paper fasteners. When she read it for the first time, with “story by Maddy Freed and Dan Ellenberg” and “screenplay by Dan Ellenberg” on the title page, she got giddy, thinking it could be a turning point for both of them. After an early reading of the screenplay, a former classmate of Dan’s commented, “It’s about that moment you realize the person you love most in the world is a stranger.”

  For the first ten minutes, the Alpine Theater was quiet. She glanced down the row at her fellow actors. Ellen Cone, who played Maddy’s mother, clutched her own breast, an affectation that was either a reaction to the film or a result of living alone a long time. A snuffle emanated from one of the front rows. Maddy feared it had come from the Variety critic. As the movie went on and Kira had a funny bit with a dog, Maddy began to hear more laughs. Later, when the emotional pitch rose and the women had their big fight, the audience went silent.

  When the end credits rolled over an indie-pop song, there was a long beat, and then the moviegoers began to applaud, a few at a time. The reviewers dashed out. Maddy tried to read their body language. Were they rushing to call long-lost childhood friends, or running late for their next screenings?

  The house lights came on and the Know Her team went to the stage for the Q and A. Each chair had a bottle of water on it, and Maddy drank gratefully, feeling dizzy and hoping not to faint from the mountain altitude. Sharoz had informed Maddy that you had to be clever and witty at the panel discussions if you wanted people to spread the word about the film.

  The moderator introduced the panel and Dan began fielding questions. A grandmotherly woman raised her hand. “Maddy, I was so impressed by your performance,” she said. Was she an agent? A financier? “What kind of training do you have?”

  “Um, I studied at the New School,” Maddy said, and noticed, next to the woman, a young man nodding vigorously. It was Zack Ostrow. He had come. At ten in the morning. He was a man of his word. Maddy squinted to see if he was with his mother, but on his other side was a blond guy in a bulky parka. “I mostly do theater,” she continued, “but of course, Dan and I watch a lot of movies at home, so I had a good film education. I always tell people I studied at the Dan Ellenberg School of Filmmaking.”

  “So you two are a couple?”

  “Oh. Yeah,” Maddy said. “The film was shot in my hometown in Vermont, and Dan and I came up with the story together.”

  Someone else asked if Dan considered it a women’s film. “Not at all,” he said. “I want my work to resonate with all kinds of people. I’m interested in human stories.”

  Kira spoke into her mike. “Dan gave us a gift. He writes women so well, it’s almost like he has a vagina.” Everyone laughed. “And in a sense, he does. Maddy’s vagina.” They laughed harder. Maddy stiffened. She knew Kira wasn’t trying to upstage her, but Kira was easygoing and goofy, and Maddy knew she’d seemed remote by comparison. Or maybe the oxygen deprivation was turning her paranoid.

  Kira had arrived late to her audition for I Used to Know Her, in a rented rehearsal room in midtown, just as Dan, Maddy, Sharoz, and their casting director were packing up to go. Kira said she had subway problems, and Maddy noticed that her makeup was smudged, either artfully or accidentally. Dan had already read sixty girls for Heather, the character based on Lacey, and was beginning to lose hope that he would be able to find the right actress.

  Maddy had been turned off by Kira’s lateness, which felt unprofessional. But then they played the scene in which Heather and Alice argue on the rock where they used to go as children, and she was so brilliant and compelling that Dan cast her on the spot.

  Another hand shot up, an overserious bony guy. “I’m wondering what the acting process was like for the two of you. Was there any improvisation?”

  Maddy started to answer, but Kira jumped in. “You know, the script was really tight, so Dan discouraged any improv. It was hard for me, because I have a more fluid way of working than Maddy does. She comes from the thee-ah-tuh, where the script is God. I’m more moment-to-moment.” The audience murmured appreciatively, and Maddy felt that Kira had scored yet another point.

  On the street after the screening, as Dan and Maddy headed up Mountain Way, a voice came from behind them. “Maddy, you were sensational.” Zack Ostrow.

  “Thanks for coming, man,” Dan said. “We needed every audience member we could get. Was your mom there, too?”

  “No, I’m sure she’ll come to another one,” Zack said, clearly accustomed to people using him to get to his mother. “Dan, I don’t represent directors,” he said, “but if you’ll let me, I’ll put you in touch with one of my colleagues. And Maddy, I would love to get a coffee with you and discuss career possibilities. BHA has incredible reach.”

  Maddy was flattered that he was thinking on those terms—she hadn’t come in search of a new agent, but Dan had said there would be hundreds at the festival, seeking new discoveries. “Absolutely,” she said.

  “Come to think of it,” said Zack, “my mom is having this dinner at her lodge tomorrow. You guys should come. I’ll help you drum up audience for the other screenings.”

  “We’ll be there,” Dan said, so quickly that Maddy was almost embarrassed.

  “Do you have a car here?”

  “No,” Maddy said. “We ride El Cheapo. The festival bus.” Dan glared at her, as though not wanting Zack to know they were losers, but she didn’t understand the accusation; it had been his decision not to ask the backers to cover a car rental.

  “Then we’ll send one to get you,” Zack said. After he headed away, their condo address in his phone, she wondered who “we” was. Zack, his mother, or his agency?

  It didn’t make a difference. They were going.

  Having been to many films and bad Off-Broadway theater in his time at Bentley Howard, and countless premieres with his mother as a teenager, Zack was not easily impressed by actresses. But Maddy was different. Her performance had been luminous, thoroughly unself-conscious, and he was intrigued by her figure, which was un-Hollywood, with its small, natural breasts and enormous shoulders.

  Zack had been at Bentley Howard since right after graduating from Skidmore. His primary responsibility was to serve the needs of his boss’s clients. George Zeger was a sloppy, corduroy-wearing man who had been at the agency nearly forty years. As an assistant, Zack had listened in on George’s calls and heard him negotiate, manipulate, and rage when dealing with employers, but speak softly and gently to his clients.

  In addition to George’s clients, Zack had a handful of his own, most referred to him by Bridget, but he had come to the festival in search of more. George had said Zack could go if he paid for his own lodging. Reluctantly, he had asked his mother if he could crash. He made $49,000 a year at Bentley Howard, which meant that his mother paid the rent on his loft in Tribeca and thus kept him under her thumb, inasmuch as she could from Brentwood. He would not have access to his trust fund until he turned twenty-eight, four long years away. For his entire childhood, the contingency age had been twenty-one, but at Skidmore he’d run into problems with coke, and when he wound up at Silver Hill, she changed it.

  Zack was dizzy as he headed up
the street, dialing his phone. He had stayed till five A.M. at the Rap Sheet party, playing foosball and doing tequila shots, and then a young, dorky network-comedy star offered him a few bumps, and because of the bumps, he couldn’t sleep. By the time nine A.M. rolled around, he’d decided to get a coffee in town and see the movie.

  When his mother answered, he told her about the extra invitations. “I’ll have to redo the seating arrangement,” she said with a sigh. “Who are they again?”

  “The girl from that Vermont movie. Maddy Freed. You met her at the Entertainer. And her boyfriend. He’s the director.”

  “Was she the blonde?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you trying to sleep with her?” she said.

  “I am not trying to sleep with her, Mom,” he said. “I want to sign her.” It was scary, what she picked up on. Zack had always had an intense relationship with his mother. As his many shrinks had reminded him, it was a by-product of his father being out of the picture. There were lots of nannies, and he had resented her absences. Lately, he was working on resenting her less. He had been in therapy on and off since he was ten, for being antisocial and later for doing drugs, and he was enjoying not being in therapy for the first time in many years.

  “Just let me have them over, Mom,” he said. “You won’t have to do anything. I’ll make sure they have a good time.”

  “Not too good a time,” she said. “This is a classy party.”

  “You need to watch this right now,” Bridget told Steven in his suite at the Niels Lundtofte Lodge. “I Used to Know Her, it’s called.” They were standing in his kitchen, and she was holding the DVD in its clear case.

  She had called Ed Handy, immediately after hanging up with Zack, to request the screener. When Ed said Maddy had been at the opening-night party, she remembered Steven watching her with an odd, intent gaze. That look, then Zack’s call. Bridget had been so transfixed, she didn’t stand up until the film was over.