The Last Guest

by Tess Little

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Part of me was desperate to have an answer, an end to the torment so that Lillie and I could move on. And the only verdict that would have felt final was the absolute verdict: a concrete guilty verdict. A different, less certain part of me didn’t want an ending. This was a part that—despite the stories that had emerged in court, of Tommo as a cruel child, of Tommo as a ruthless, cutthroat businessman—hoped against everything that it was not true. This was a part convinced by the arguments of the defense, because when I asked myself the question as I lay in bed at night, I didn’t know the answer: Could Tommo have done what they were saying?

  This part of me didn’t crave an ending, because without the absolute I could still ask questions. Without an answer, none of it felt real.

  Lillie and I reached her house. I couldn’t tell which half of me would win out, but I would know, in the moment, what I had truly been wishing for. I would know when I felt either disappointment or relief.

  We went straight to the living room. Turned on the news. Didn’t even sit on the couch—just stood, holding hands, a few feet from the screen. It took us a while to understand the scrolling text, the images. When we did, I drew Lillie close.

  Tommo had been found not guilty.

  * * *

  —

  Someone was covering me with a robe, leading me off the set. Nobody said anything about what had just happened. Had they seen what Tyler did to me? But they had seen the way Richard moved my face. They had seen the kick. They had seen Tyler’s boot, pinning me to the floor. Perhaps it was all improvisation. Perhaps I had no right to complain. I did not know. I could not think. The pistol was supposed to stay above the fabric. It was supposed to stay above. Above.

  There were bruises budding, already, on my wrists. The ache where my head hit the floor. A numbness from the cold of the metal barrel.

  As I was wiping my makeup, someone congratulated me on the performance.

  “You were amazing,” she said. “We were blown away.”

  I could not thank her. I tried to smile.

  When I got home that night, I resolved not to speak to Richard—it would be easier that way. He would come home later than me. I could pretend to sleep.

  But he flicked on the bedroom lights as he entered, asking with cheer, “How was your first proper scene, my love? You’re a star. An absolute star.”

  I did not want to reply. I kept my eyes squeezed shut.

  “Elspeth, I can tell you’re awake.”

  I was motionless.

  “Come on, you’re not that good at pretending.” He laughed to himself. I heard him unbuckling his belt, removing his clothes. My weight shifted sideways as he climbed into the bed.

  His hand slid over my stomach. His mouth on my ear. “Did you like the little surprise we arranged for you?”

  It had been his idea.

  The cold of the gun.

  I kept my breath steady, my eyes squeezed shut.

  “Elspeth?”

  He rolled me onto my back. I could not open my eyes. I could not do it.

  “What is this? A game? Talk to me,” he said. “Stop being childish.”

  I kept my body stiff.

  “Elspeth?”

  He gripped me with both hands. Shook my body. I let it flop. I did not open my eyes.

  “Okay,” he said. Then laughed. “Stubborn child. If you want to play a game of statues, let’s play.”

  He lifted my nightgown.

  “Can you feel that? Good girl,” he murmured. “Good girl.”

  I won the game. I did not move until he was finished. Until he had turned off the lights.

  * * *

  —

  We stood before the screen, waiting for an explanation. An anchorwoman described what she believed had been the decisive factor:

  The lab that had tested for Richard’s vomit hadn’t followed proper procedure, and Tommo’s defense had sown doubt among the jury with talk of cross-contamination. As for the fingerprints—we’d all seen Tommo passing around the bottle, pouring champagne into mouths—they were circumstantial. The character assassinations, the financial trail, meant nothing without hard, persuasive evidence.

  “Let’s switch channels,” I said to Lillie, when the anchorwoman started repeating herself. “Let’s turn off our phones and watch a movie.”

  We changed into our pajamas. Piled bedding high on the couch, like I used to when Lillie was sick. She fell asleep twenty minutes into the movie, curled up, resting her head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair from her face. Turned the TV volume low. The picture kept playing, but I was losing focus, until the sequence of images meant nothing to me. Their flickering colors illuminated the room.

  I had thought that if only I could get through the investigation, through the memorial, and then through the court case, maybe I could finally move on. But the memories still came at me, screaming, clawing for space.

  When I’d understood the verdict, I felt neither disappointment nor relief. I realized, then, that I wouldn’t have found certainty no matter the outcome. All I thought, standing in front of the television, was: That makes sense. Doubt and indecision and skepticism—it was a familiar land.

  The film blacked out for a second; I realized I’d been forgetting to blink.

  When the room lit up again, I took my phone—not pen and paper, I was loath to wake Lillie—and began. If I laid it all out, from start to finish, maybe then I could see clearly. How one thing had led to another. The day I met Richard; the terrible experience of filming Anatomy; everything that I had hidden from our daughter during our years of marriage; the lies I told thereafter. I tapped it out, there on the couch.

  I didn’t send it to Lillie, although on a whim—with her breathing softly on my shoulder, with our conversation in the car weighing upon my conscience—I’d addressed it to her. Instead, I emailed it to myself for safekeeping. It shouldn’t have alleviated my anxieties, sitting inert in my inbox. But it did. It was there: a record. Out of my mind and on the device.

  After I sent it, I lifted my head, found that the credits had ended.

  I must have fallen asleep with the phone in my hand not long after that, because its buzzing awoke me in the dark. It was a text message from an unknown number: We need to talk, it said, now that the trial is over. Can we meet?

  For a terrible moment, I thought it might be Tommo. And then the second text arrived: This is Kei. I need to tell you something.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, Richard presented me with a bouquet of flowers.

  “They were supposed to arrive yesterday.” He smiled, sheepish. “I wanted you to know—I’m so proud.”

  I did not take the flowers. He laid them beside me, on the bed. A card was attached. I did not read it.

  I waited for Richard to leave the room. Then pulled on my clothes, numb. Found him waiting by the front door.

  “I thought we could drive in together,” he said, “now you’ve found your feet.”

  In the car, I did not speak. As we neared the studio, Richard found this increasingly irritating. Chastised me for “sulking”—I was behaving like a child. I would have to get used to direction if I wanted to go anywhere in the industry.

  “And after the mess on your first day…” He shook his head, troubled. “Honestly, Elspeth, I didn’t know whether you’d be able to perform the argument scene. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been, for both of us, if I’d had to replace you with someone else? Someone more experienced?”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m sorry I had to surprise you like that, darling, I am. But would you want that? Would you want your scenes to end up on the cutting-room floor? Did you want to disappoint me?”

  Together we had made something truly authentic, he told me. The critics would love
it. Was that not what I had wanted? Was that not what I had longed for?

  On set, the praise continued. I became everyone’s best friend. More than a rookie now, more than the director’s arm candy. It was difficult to hold on to my belief that what had happened was wrong. Because what Richard had said made absolute sense. I had not been acting well, not until Tyler went off script. And now…

  How could I have felt that it was wrong, when everyone else behaved as though it were nothing? When Tyler joked around like we were schoolmates? When Joan apologized for being rude on my first day?

  And so my hurt became a sting of shame. It had been my fault. I was talentless. Richard was right. It was his job to make difficult decisions like that.

  I did not really understand what Richard had been doing, not until I saw the final cut of Anatomy, not until I read the reviews. Elspeth Bell, as Cassandra DiSotta, embodies a female fragility, they wrote. Fierce vulnerability. He had wanted my fear as Tyler threw me around, but he had also wanted the determination as I soldiered through the scene. He’d wanted my embarrassment, the tears in my eyes, but he had wanted pride and outrage as well. He had known that even as a prop gun violated me before a room of spectators, I would continue.

  Maybe it was that same pride that carried me through the viewing, through all of the praise that followed.

  “Such sparkling talent,” Richard said, in bed, the night after we watched the final cut. He kissed my shoulder. “A world-class talent. I knew you would be when I first saw you. The gold dress, the manhattan…Do you remember our first conversation?”

  “I remember, Richard.” It was still our joke—he would smile, without fail, every time I used his name.

  He traced his finger up and down my arm.

  “When I saw you sitting by the pool, alone,” he said, “I knew we were the same. Neither of us was loved as a child, were we? But it didn’t break us—that’s how we became resilient. And I could see it in your eyes when I found you at that party. It was like looking into a mirror.”

  I raised my eyebrows, skeptical. “I don’t remember that. You seemed so confident. You came right up to me, with that drink in your hand.”

  “That was the game,” said Richard. “Bravado. And you were playing it too. The little trick you pulled with the cab?”

  “I almost bankrupted myself with that clever trick.” I laughed.

  “That’s what I mean. We were both so strong, so confident—and it was all a charade. But later, as we talked, we could reveal our true selves to each other, we could be vulnerable together. Do you remember? I told you everything, my darkest secrets. You told me your hopes and fears. That’s why we need each other: because we’re both so strong, we can only be vulnerable together. I need you, darling, and you need me too.” Richard propped himself up on his elbow, to look down at me, beneath him. “I think, perhaps, you’re the only true friend I’ve ever had.”

  I stroked his arm. It was warmer, more solid than mine.

  “I never had a best friend, growing up,” I said. “I was always fascinated by those friendships of two halves fitting together. But I don’t think I recognized that in you at first. I didn’t know you were my person then.”

  “No,” said Richard, “neither did I. That would’ve been too much to hope for. There was something, though. Something I found in you, something of myself in that girl sitting alone, watching the crowds. But, tell me, when did you know?”

  My hand found the nape of his neck, my fingers laced through his hair.

  “That you were mine? I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was later that night, or maybe the next morning, when the sun rose and we still hadn’t slept.”

  Richard closed his eyes. “I’ve never opened up every part of myself to anyone before. My heart, my work, my life.” Then he looked at me and said, as though realizing for the first time, “If you ever abandoned me, there would be nothing left at all.”

  He stroked my cheek. “My angel, my Cassandra.”

  “My Richard,” I said, and he grimaced. Reached for my stomach to blow a raspberry.

  * * *

  —

  I could not see, in those early days, that his love was a tool. That Richard was the craftsman and people were his materials. Not inanimate objects to hack at and stick together—he was far too clever for that. Rather, he appreciated the fact that we were human; he used it against us. Like a carpenter understands that pine is more pliable than oak, Richard knew us: our fears, our desires; our secrets and the masks we wore to hide them. He selected the perfect tools for each manipulation. This was how he possessed.

  He charmed Miguel so the insecure little brother would idolize him. He poked fun at Charlie to make the proud boy prove himself. He competed with Tommo until his school friend went too far; he knew Tommo would self-sabotage.

  And with me and Honey, he alternated his methods. Humiliation one day, glory the next. I did not forget that terrible day of filming, not ever, but neither did I forget the months, the years of acclaim that followed. I did not forget his reasoning—it became my own. I did not forget his love, which could not be doubted. Not when he held my hand on every red carpet; not when he proposed, one month into the publicity circuit; not when he had given me everything, everything, every part of my life.

  * * *

  —

  I had replied to Kei’s message almost immediately—Of course, I was hoping you’d get in touch—but received nothing back.

  Where do you want to meet? I texted, to remind her a few days later. Still nothing.

  I told myself it was not worth worrying about—Kei would answer when she was ready. But it was ominous, and I remembered it every now and then, found myself rereading the text.

  This is Kei. I need to tell you something.

  Another unanswered question, another nasty hangover from the trial.

  Lillie and I were doing our best to move on from such questions. We went for long walks at dawn, watched cooking shows—tried to re-create the elaborate dishes ourselves. We visited galleries in sunglasses and baseball caps, just before closing time, when they were at their emptiest. I took Lillie to a grief therapist; we both attended a support group for families affected by addiction. And she met Jerry’s friend for coffee. Came back talking as fast as she could: They had sound stages and postproduction suites, and there were screening rooms that could fit hundreds, although maybe she should look at some programs at other colleges too, but she didn’t know what she would major in—writing or production—and would I go to a campus information session with her next month?

  We explored the USC website, watched students’ showreels. At one point I asked whether she was certain she wanted to stay on the West Coast.

  “I guess it hasn’t been great living here,” she said. “I thought I would be busy with work and I’d meet new people, but I haven’t really, not like I thought. I spent a lot of time on set, when I didn’t need to be there. And when I wasn’t on set or busy with publicity after the release, I was kind of lost. My friends from when I was younger and stayed with Dad—most of them have moved away for college or they’re here but they have their own thing.”

  “I hadn’t realized.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you,” Lillie admitted. “Because you were so sure it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

  She was clicking through the website as she talked, flipping through testimonials of former students without reading.

  “Maybe it was a good idea, though,” I said. “It helped you realize what you wanted to do, didn’t it? If you’d gone to college and studied something else, you might still have thought that acting was for you.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “And I wouldn’t change anything. I needed that time with Dad.”

  We fell asleep together, watching films on the couch, each night. It was almost everything I had hoped fo
r when I stepped off the plane six months, and one death, ago. I knew I should start to think about leaving, what life would be like on my return to New York.

  October had turned to November, November went on, and I was still living with Lillie, accidentally dozing on the couch one evening when the buzzer awoke me. I dragged myself up to check the monitor, expecting to find Lillie onscreen, perhaps having misplaced her keys. I was startled by the sight of someone else.

  The figure at the gate was unrecognizable in the evening light. Was it the paparazzi again? A delivery? The person wasn’t carrying anything. Their body language was odd. Agitated—shifting from one foot to the other. My finger hesitated over the speaker button. Lillie would have told me if she was expecting someone. Then the visitor lifted their head and pressed the buzzer again. I caught the face on the monitor: Kei.

  “I wasn’t sure whether you’d ever reply to me,” I called from the doorway as she crunched across the gravel. “Thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth.”

  As she got closer, I could see she wasn’t smiling.

  “It’s good to see you,” I went on. It was, despite her ominous text, despite the unexpectedness of her visit. I didn’t care that I was dressed in sweatpants, hair scraped into a ponytail. “I think there are a couple of beers in the fridge, we could—”

  “Would you mind if we didn’t?” Kei was hanging back from the door. “My Jeep’s still outside.”

  “Bring it in.”

  “You want to go for a ride?”

  There was a pause as I tried to think it through, sluggish from my nap.

  “Okay. Sure. Let me leave a note for Lillie and change my shoes.”

  When I came back, Kei had returned to her car. She was sitting at the wheel, engine running, rolling a half-made cigarette between her fingers, over and over. Her hands trembled. I buckled up. Kei scrunched her creation into a ball, tossed it behind.

  “Wasn’t perfect,” she muttered, pulling onto the road.