by Amy Sohn
“I wish I had more time with the script. Not just to prepare, but what if I hate it? If I hate it, I’m not going to read.”
“It’s Walter Juhasz. It’s all in the execution, anyway.” He was quiet a second and then added, “I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. I wish you were here. I went to the Brecht House. You would have liked it.” As she started to tell him about the rooms, he had an idea. There was no reason he had to stay in Brooklyn just to go back and forth on deal points with Apollo Classics. Though he hadn’t yet told Maddy, he had quit his bartending job, in anticipation of the on-signing money he had coming to him.
What if he surprised Maddy in Venice? If they were together, he could stop worrying about Weller. They would work on The Nest in the palazzo. She knew how to motivate him. She was the lead in The Nest. She was his muse. He imagined the words popping up on his laptop as if he were a stenographer, which was what had happened when he started I Used to Know Her. The atmosphere would help him, the atmosphere and the sex, and being in the company of Maddy. All Americans wrote better in Europe. They crossed the ocean, and every word they wrote was brilliant.
“There’s someone at my door,” Maddy was saying. “I have to go.”
When she opened the door, she found a bellboy holding a brown envelope. Inside was Husbandry with a Post-it note: “At long last. Call when you’ve read.—SW.” She wanted to dig right in, but she walked to a café a few blocks away. Old ladies with violet hair sat and ate cakes. She ordered a hot cocoa and opened the script, which was in blue-and-white binding that said OSTROW PRODUCTIONS on the front.
Ellie is a young housewife in an unnamed American suburb. Her husband, Louis, is an estate lawyer who makes love to her regularly and without passion. One day Louis’s younger brother, Paul, who has just gotten out of jail, comes to visit. Paul and Ellie, who have never met, are instantly and wildly attracted. That night on the porch, after Louis goes to bed, Ellie tells Paul about her loneliness. They kiss.
Paul moves in temporarily. During the day, when Louis is at work, Paul and Ellie make love in her bed. Something is awakened in her, but Paul has problems. He owes money to bad guys. One night he gets in a bar brawl and is hauled off to jail. After bailing him out, Louis demands that Paul move out. Paul finds a motel in town. Louis goes away on business. The affair continues, in the bed, in the motel. When Louis returns, the lovers can’t tell if he suspects.
As she keeps her affair secret, her paranoia grows. She gets confused and fearful. She tries to break it off, but Paul stalks her, unable to admit that it’s over. Confused, she confesses everything to Louis. He calls her a whore and puts his fist through a wall. Convinced that she must end the affair, she goes to the cops and gets a restraining order against Paul. She cries as she fills out the paperwork. The couple returns to their sad life, Paul now living in a trailer on the other side of the tracks.
Louis guilts her every day about the affair. She becomes numb. He speaks to her coldly, like a robot. She discovers she is pregnant. She knows it is Paul’s. She sneaks out to see Paul and tells him. He begs her to leave Louis. She resumes the affair. One day Louis follows her to Paul’s trailer and comes through the door with a gun. A struggle ensues and the gun falls. Ellie grabs the gun and Louis jumps her. Trying to shoot Louis, she kills Paul.
After she has the baby, Louis and Ellie throw a party. The night of the party, they make love, Ellie unable to look at Louis. The baby wails in the night. When she goes to hold the baby, a boy, she realizes he cannot be consoled.
Maddy closed the script, deeply moved. Everyone around her was speaking German, which allowed her to think without distraction. The film reminded her of great French films from the 1960s in the way it dealt with female sexuality, and it contained the best of what Juhasz brought to the cinema: the dread and alienation of being human.
Maddy was intrigued by Ellie’s dread. And she thought it was good that Ellie got to stay alive. Too often in movies, strong or adulterous women ended up dead.
She wished Dan were here with her. It was the kind of screenplay that made you want to talk about it: what it meant to be a woman, to be in a relationship but feel lonely. It was about someone who woke up one morning and realized the life she’d built for herself was a prison.
She had to get this role. The reason she had gone to grad school, the reason she greeted Eurotrash at a hostess station for $21 an hour, was so someday she might play a role like this: strong, complex, layered, and undeniably the center of the film.
From the café, she tried Dan. Voice mail. She walked down Kurfürstendamm, past the glittery designer shops with their blank-looking mannequins. At the hotel, she went straight to the VIP restaurant, ordered venison and pinot blanc, and read the script again, liking it even more the second time.
Back in her room, she called the front desk. She asked for Steven by name, and the clerk said he wasn’t staying there. She remembered Steven had told her on the plane that his pseudonym was Gerber Stan, an inversion of his Briefs name. She called back. “Gerber Stan’s room, please.”
“Just one moment, miss.”
His voice was husky when he said hello. “I read it,” she said.
“And?”
“I love it.”
“I knew you would.” She started to say something, but she was so excited, it came out sounding like a Swedish vowel. She tried again. This one was more like a French vowel. “Do you want to come up for a minute to talk about it?” he asked.
His suite was twice the size of hers. The windows met at an angle, and she realized that they were in the penthouse, in the wedge-shaped apex of the building.
He poured two glasses of red wine, and they sat on a white couch. “So you liked it,” he said.
“I liked it and it terrified me. I wish it could have had a happier ending, but Juhasz doesn’t do them.”
“No. He’s interested in the way we create our own hell. Louis thinks he’s getting Ellie back by cutting Paul out of their life, but instead he has the baby to live with forever, the ghost of his brother.”
“Exactly,” Maddy said. “In constructing a jail for her, he winds up constructing one for himself.”
“Are you okay with all the sex scenes?”
“I don’t know if I would say I’m okay with them, but I mean, the way they would be shot, the nudity, that could all be negotiated, right?”
“Yes, and Bridget will be there as producer. So you would have a wonderful advocate in her.” He swirled his tan fingers around the rim of the wineglass.
“How is it possible you haven’t cast Ellie yet?” she asked.
“Different reasons. The younger, edgier actresses had trouble with Walter’s language. We read some girls who were great with the material but didn’t have the right look. He wants Ellie to look real. He wants someone without plastic surgery.”
The wine must have been going to Maddy’s head because she said, “Are you trying to say I’m right for it because my breasts are small?”
“I didn’t say anything about that. You’re the one bringing your breasts into the conversation.”
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 di
fferent, 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.
Maddy’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.
The 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 Körner. 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.”
