by Leah Stewart
“I try to be social on set,” Cecelia says in a low voice. “But it’s always about standing around the food, and then I end up eating crap, and then I feel like crap.”
“That Oreo milkshake sounds pretty damn good to me. When’s the last time I had an Oreo milkshake?”
“I give up.”
“High school, I think.”
When Josie was a kid, her favorite treat was an Oreo shake from a regional chain called the Taco Box. This was in Clovis, New Mexico, where Josie grew up with a single mother who worked on the nearby airbase. Once, in an interview with the Albuquerque Journal, she reminisced about the Taco Box, and when she went home to visit her mother, she heard they’d framed the article and hung it on the wall. At the time, her show had still been on. If it had been five years later, after two unaired pilots followed by a completely barren pilot season, she might not have done what she did, which was to go over there thinking she’d offer to sign the article and give them a thrill. The kid behind the counter had looked at her with blank suspicion, and said, “We don’t usually let people deface the artwork.”
“It’s not artwork,” Josie said, taken aback. “It’s an article. About me.” Behind her, a man in a cowboy hat shifted impatiently, anxious for his burrito.
“I’ll have to get my manager,” the kid said. He disappeared into the back, abandoning the cash register. The man behind Josie groaned audibly. She turned, flashed him an apologetic smile, and then fled before the manager could emerge. Later, this became a useful self-deprecating anecdote. She even told it on a talk show, complete with hyperbolic imitations of the kid’s suspicion and the man’s annoyance. She multiplied the man into a long impatient line. She got big laughs. That was at the height of her fame, when ego-pricking humiliation could become a hilarious incongruity. Now a moment like that would seem considerably less funny.
“I mean, Josie,” Cecelia says, “it’s been twenty years since Alter Ego.”
“I know.”
“And it’s still the main thing people care about.”
“I know.” Josie sighs. “But wait, really? Even now with this show?”
“Yes, absolutely. When people come up to me, Alter Ego is almost always what they want to talk about.”
“But this show is a huge hit.”
“Different demographic,” Cecelia says. “Not the culty types. People who like this show like me on it, but they don’t adore me. There’s no reason to adore me. I’m not angsty and magical. I’m dedicated and professional.”
“I think about myself back then and I feel a little hostile,” Josie says. “Look at you, all plump and dewy and no inkling how lucky you are. And you’re right, twenty years later everybody still loves that version of me the most. She’s my main competition. Unappreciative little brat.”
Cecelia laughs. “You weren’t unappreciative.”
“I wasn’t?”
Cecelia shakes her head. “You were pretty good.”
“I complained.”
“We all complained. The night shoots! Jesus. All the crying.”
“We did a lot of crying.”
“You and Max especially.”
“Max didn’t cry so much as look like he was trying really hard not to cry,” Josie says.
“He produced an occasional manly tear.”
“Yes, the solitary tear. Very effective.” Despite her tone, Josie’s not being sarcastic. She’s warding off a riot of confused feelings about Max. He played her tortured on-and-off love, whose name was the rather dramatic Malachi. Josie hasn’t seen him in a while. A couple of years ago, she ran into him at a restaurant in Silver Lake, where he was having brunch with his wife. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled low and a set expression of unhappiness, which dropped from his face the moment he saw Josie. He and his wife have since divorced. When Josie goes to the convention, there he’ll be. And suddenly she, too, is single. Josie tugs on Cecelia’s sleeve. “Let’s get in the line,” she says.
“Oreo shake?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the way I’m going, yes.” She moves to the back of the line, and Cecelia follows with reluctant steps.
“I’m standing here for moral support,” Cecelia says. “Don’t think you can peer pressure me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Sometimes dedicated and professional feels a little boring.”
“Shhh,” Josie says. Cecelia’s phone chimes, and while she tends to it, moving away, Josie tries not to feel irritated by her friend’s complaint. Cecelia has every right to be bored. She plays one interrogation scene after another. She tells bad guy after bad guy to put his hands in the air. Three seasons into this show, Josie would probably be bored, too, but right now that’s hard for her to believe. Right now Josie’s fervent wish for steady employment means she’d be more than happy to point a gun, week after week after week, wearing a suit with implausible cleavage and a pair of uncomfortable, unrealistic heels.
It’s Josie’s turn to order. “Feel free to add extra Oreos,” she says. The ice cream guy winks at her. He’s young and cute, and she feels grateful for the wink. When he hands her the shake, he says, “I added extra everything.”
“I believe you,” she says. “It feels like it weighs twenty pounds.”
“Enjoy.”
“Thanks.” They smile at each other for a lingering moment, and the pleasure she takes in this most minor of minor flirtations gives her a premonition of terrifying loneliness.
Josie rejoins Cecelia, who looks at Josie’s shake with an exaggerated expression of longing. “Sometimes it’s good not to have a job,” Josie says.
“I have a half-naked scene next episode,” Cecelia says.
“Love scene?”
“Shower. There’s a bad guy in the house and I don’t know it. Water’s running, I’m stripping, the audience says, ‘Look out!’ One of those.” Cecelia makes a rueful face. “A real acting challenge.”
“Ah,” Josie says. She should commiserate as a good and loyal friend. She’s failing. She’d welcome the stupid scene, acting challenge or not. But later she has her own scene and for the moment she has this shake. She pulls the straw out and licks ice cream off the sides in a greedy way that makes her look sheepishly at Cecelia. Cecelia is gazing past her at the view: the flat paved lot; the ice cream truck; the clusters of crew members with their cones and shakes; the guy who plays the kidnapper now demonstrating a retro dance move to the makeup artist, who watches intently and then imitates him; and, farther off, the rows of trailers and the enormous nondescript building that is a wonder palace of make-believe—Agent Corbett’s living room with its tasteful couch cushions; an FBI office with blinds and desks and recycling bins—but looks from the outside like a place where you might store auto parts.
Cecelia is still thinking about the Alter Ego reunion. It’ll be at a convention, a panel discussion in honor of the show’s twenty-fifth anniversary, and they’ll film a separate group conversation for a one-hour special on Syfy. Cecelia played Josie’s best friend, Genevieve, aka Vivi. In a later season, Cecelia’s favorite, Vivi suffered tragedy, went bad, and became Josie’s nemesis. There were passionate speeches and stage punches. Cecelia had such fun being evil that after her character reawakened to her inner goodness, she found herself feeling restless and confined.
Before she was cast as Vivi, Cecelia auditioned for the role of Bronwyn Kyle, which was the lead, the part Josie got. Once, at a bar, a drunken former casting assistant told Cecelia she should’ve gotten the part, but the decision-makers lacked the bravery to give a black girl the lead. At the time, this seemed a dangerous invitation to bitterness: It was the first year after the show ended, and Josie was a hot property while Cecelia had gone several months without even an audition. Now, when she thinks of that claim, which she mostly doesn’t, life having recently been good, she wonders how the show would have done with
a black actress as the superhero, the world being what it was—and is. Who knows? A thousand things happen, or don’t. When will it ever come to pass that no one has to ask such questions?
“This is our life,” Cecelia says.
“We’re lucky,” Josie says.
“Of course we are.”
Before Josie’s done with her milkshake, the PA comes to say they’re ready for her. She hands the milkshake to Cecelia, who shakes her head and says, “I’m not going to finish it, but I will throw it away for you.”
“Not in front of me,” Josie says. “It’s too sad.” Then she follows the PA inside to a folding chair in the hall. She’s not quite comfortable in the wardrobe they’ve given her. The waistband on her pants felt a bit too tight even before the encounter with the milkshake. The discomfort might work to her advantage in the performance, but while she waits in the chair for them to set up the lights, it just adds to her anxious impatience. She puts her earbuds in, dark, dramatic music cued up. She’s asked the PA not to speak to her, just to tap her on the knee when it’s time to go on. This has long been Josie’s method for emotional scenes. In general, she withdraws on set, and in this she is very unlike Charlie, who treats a set like a cocktail party, making sure he knows everybody’s names. He’s frank about the fact that this isn’t entirely the result of kindness; to do his best work he needs to feel the support of the room. So he makes sure he gets it. To do her best work Josie needs a kind of privacy.
One of the things she doesn’t like about doing guest spots is explaining her ways to a production assistant she doesn’t know, a new solicitous young person who will do whatever she asks but God knows what she’s thinking or what she’ll tell her boyfriend later, rolling her eyes. There’s an unspoken rule on set that you don’t act like a fan, you don’t run up to an actor to rave about her previous roles, you make chitchat only if she seems amenable, you don’t ask her to be her public self, you do your job and let her do hers. This is how it works. And yet it’s a reflex for Josie to wonder if the production assistant has any idea who she is. She’d like to know, but she can’t, because anything the girl said, good or bad, would mess with her head. In fact, the girl does know. In fact, the girl is thrilled, and happy for this glimpse of Josie’s approach, and all she’ll say to her boyfriend later is that Josie was very nice and that her hair color appears to be natural. She waits near Josie now, alert for the moment when she’ll need to tap her knee.
The director of the episode is a former actor, a tall and handsome black man ten or twelve years older than Josie, and recognizable from the ensemble casts of two very popular shows that aired about fifteen years apart. In both cases, his character was kinetic and moody but capable of intense, almost frightening concentration. Josie knows better than to assume that this is who he is in real life, and yet their conversations today have ratified the impression that that’s exactly who he is. She wants to be good for him. She doesn’t like to imagine him watching her in the video village, muttering in angry disappointment at the monitor, turning to the script supervisor to complain that she flubbed a line. She turns her music up and closes her eyes.
The tap comes. She takes her earbuds out and hands the iPod to the PA. Then she walks onto the set, trying to keep her mind blank. She sits and is chained to a chair, trying not to register the jocular fellow in a Simpsons T-shirt who does the chaining. The buzzer sounds. Silence falls. The director shouts, “Action!”
Every artist is chasing those moments when their skill feels equal to their vision. They are beautiful and rare. This is one of those moments for Josie. God knows why, as the odds are against it—it’s the first take, this character is new and underdeveloped and fleeting, and as the scene starts, Josie’s still conscious that her pants are a little too tight. But she plays the scene and makes it true. When it’s over, she can feel the spell she’s cast, everyone’s attention riveted to her. Every one of these people had a hand in creating the scene she just performed, and yet for its duration, she convinced them it was real. She smiles. For a brief exhilarating moment she doesn’t remember that she’ll have to do it again.
The director comes in. He crouches beside her so he can look her in the eye. She tenses even as she registers and appreciates his empathetic eye contact, his voice pitched low so only she can hear. “I have to tell you, that was good work,” he says.
“Thank you,” she says, full of wary gratitude.
He sighs his reluctance to say what he’s about to say. “The thing is, it’s not right for this show.”
She nods, waiting.
“You played it real,” he says, “but this show doesn’t play it real. Can you do it less raw?”
“But she’s been kidnapped,” she says, though an exasperated part of her asks why she’s bothering to argue.
“I know, I know. You’re absolutely right. But for this show you can’t play it like, Anne Hathaway as Fantine.”
“Oh.”
“Okay?” he asks, kindly, but with the kindness one shows the powerless, an animal or a child.
Guest spots, she thinks. “Okay,” she says.
“Thank you,” he says, touching her lightly on the arm. Then loudly, “Let’s go again,” rising to his feet.
She tones it down. And then she tones it down some more. By the end, her exhilaration is utterly gone and it seems to her that she’s playing the scene as if being kidnapped were an annoyance on the order of bad customer service. She says the lines. They do close-ups. She says the lines. They change the camera setup and shoot again. She says the lines. The script supervisor notices that her hair, which was behind her shoulder at the start, has now fallen forward, and someone comes in to fix that. She says the lines. In the show, the scene will last less than two minutes. It’s been more than two hours since she started saying the lines. Sometimes she sees acting as a noble profession fulfilling a crucial role in the culture. Right now she thinks it’s self-flagellation for masochists.
The director comes in again, this time for words with the kidnapper. Josie stares in blank weariness down at her chained wrists and longs for Charlie. Maybe this is a long-distance psychic connection, as when Mr. Rochester calls out for his Jane Eyre. Reach out for him, Josie! Don’t you hear him calling you? You’d never believe it now, but you can be the one to save him.
The necklace Charlie gave her is on the desk in her trailer near the pile of her actual clothes, and she pictures it there as though the image alone could summon it to her. She associates it with Charlie to a degree she’d find embarrassing were anyone else to know, so when she wears it in public, she usually tucks the pendant inside her collar so she’ll never have to answer even the question of where she got it, about which she would lie. It is Charlie, this necklace. Or more precisely, it’s his love for her. Objects are magical even in our real-life world, containing as they do the magic of our creating thoughts, the conjurations wrought by our insistent feelings. When Josie settles the small cool dome of the pendant inside the palm of her hand, she feels what it is to be loved.
After they started dating, Charlie ordered the pendant, a glass bubble containing a fragment of the play they acted the first time they met: the word Beatrice clearly visible on one side, Benedick on the other. Until recently, she wore it every day. She had developed a habit of lifting the pendant off her chest between her thumb and finger, stroking its smooth surface, wearing an inward smile. Sometimes she’d even press it to her lips. Since the article, she can hardly stand to own it. She hides it from herself, then finds it, then hides it again. This morning, half-awake in the quiet dimness of her house, she rescued it from the giveaway box by the front door and put it on.
For a moment, chained to that chair with the cameras pointed at her, she is not the kidnapped lawyer Karen Woodward nor is she the actress Josie Lamar. She is Beatrice. She is Beatrice, and she kisses Benedick. The chemistry she and Charlie had from word one—well, actors tell the truth when
they say that might not translate to affection in what we call real life. But when Benedick and Beatrice kissed, so did Charlie and Josie, and there was for them and for everyone watching that alchemy that erases the distance between the make-believe and the real. Peace! I will stop your mouth. A cartoonist might have drawn a little sparkle of light at their lips. You can never be sure, of course, that such a thing, real or not, will linger. But when the play was done and the cocktails were in hand, she looked at him and he looked at her and it was still there. The light.
II.
Further, endeavor to penetrate the psychology of persons around you toward whom you feel unsympathetic. Try to find in them some good, positive qualities which you perhaps failed to notice before. Make an attempt to experience what they experience; ask yourself why they feel or act the way they do.
—MICHAEL CHEKHOV, To the Actor
One.
The house where they take him is blue and white, alone against thickening vegetation, one story, in need of paint. He sees the house with a spotlit clarity, stumbling toward it, though he’s having a hard time registering details about the people hustling him inside. They are shorter than he is. They speak their own language in hushed and urgent voices. What does any of that matter? The point is that they have guns. They are brute force personified. They are the monsters in a dream.
