Molly Bit

by Dan Bevacqua

  “My sister is why you had the audition,” he said, staring back at her. “It wasn’t because you were in the movie with Harrison. Emily remembered you from that horror movie, that Funhouse. She had a Rolodex in her head of untapped talent, and you were at the front.”

  “I only met her once,” Molly said.

  “She was a force. You would have liked her. If it weren’t for her, I’d be selling cars. She kept saying, ‘Get her in for an audition. I’m telling you. Get her in. I’m telling you. That’s the one.’ What do you want me to say? I had a moment of weakness with Helen Wheeler. I was in shock. She was what I thought I needed. Her reliability turned me on. Her competence. I’m glad she broke her back.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” she said.

  Some smoke lingered in the air. Molly blew it off with a wave of her hand.

  “Maybe,” Leonard said. “But I’ve been in the mood for truth lately. It’s my new thing. All truth, all the time.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “Answer me something then.”

  “Say it.”

  “Do you want me for the part, or am I the only one you think you can get?”

  It had been a long time, maybe even years, since someone had asked Leonard Roth a specific question related to intent. She could see it on his surprised face, in the way his skin tightened around his mouth and eyes. Molly could tell he wanted to come back at her—Temple of Doom her—but her other gut feeling, that she was becoming something other than what she was, registered with him too.

  “Both,” he said. “The answer to that question would have to be both.”

  He took another cigarette from the pack and slipped it between his lips. He was a wonderful smoker. He looked beautiful with a clean, unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “I’m gonna to talk for a while,” Leonard said. “I wanna tell you a story, so don’t interrupt me. Okay? The story goes like this… I grew up in the middle of nowhere. Gray winter sky, people who don’t talk too much, no culture, right? I didn’t go to a concert until I was twenty, and what about you? I think you know what I’m talking about. We grew up with a loneliness that doesn’t exist anymore. These kids with their internet are going to grow up and feel loneliness for the first time and they’re gonna wanna kill themselves. My parents worked all the time. I hardly saw them. I had three things: TV, books, and the movies. You with me? You following? I was a fat kid with bad skin, and no friends, and the only reason I knew about those things—the books, the movies—was because of my sister, cuz she said, ‘Hey, Len. Look at this. What do you think of that? Isn’t that cool?’ She had a natural love and curiosity for art. It was inexplicable. There was no genetic reason for this. It infected me. She read everything. Saw everything. I’ve got nothing without her. Absolutely nothing. Then she dies. She gets blown apart by jet fuel and metal and fire and, every time I see a television, or hear anyone speak, or think a thought, she dies again. So now let me explain something to you. Emily told me about Make It So. She told me I should see it, that you were the girl. I’d seen you in Trust, but honestly I’d thought ‘dime a dozen.’ Emily knew who you were, but I didn’t listen. Helen Wheeler’s boring ass plows into a pine tree, and later that day I get an email: ‘Come to this screener in New Jersey,’ and I go. I go even though I never go to New Jersey. Never. And when I get there, the theater is packed—it’s like everybody forgot about the movies and then all at once they remembered. It’s like I forgot about them too. Like I forgot about my life. About what made it. If I don’t go to the movies, I know something is wrong with me. It means I’m depressed. I knew that, but I didn’t realize I’d forgotten I was alive. It’s you on the screen. That’s part of it, and you’re part of the reason why I felt alive for the first time in a month, but it was more than that. Do you know what it was? Do you?”

  “What?”

  “It was my sister talking to me. I don’t care if you don’t believe me, or if nobody does, and maybe you’re the only person I’ll ever tell, but it felt like my sister was the dark, and that my sister was the projection light, and that she was the seats, and the popcorn smell, and all the other people in the theater. You know the pulse when the houselights go down? It kind of sucks you into the dark? It’s like heroin—you ever done heroin? It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s like that. It’s like getting junk shot into your eye. That’s when it started, and it didn’t stop for two hours, like the air was charged with her, with her ghost or spirit, or whatever the fuck you want to call it, kind of talking without talking, like a big bubble of light and dark swirling around and in and out of itself and going bam-bam-bam-bam-bam on their faces. It was a spiritual moment that I will not apologize for, and do you know what my sister said to me? What she said to me without saying it, because she can’t?”

  Molly didn’t.

  “She said, ‘Get her, Len. She’s the real deal. Don’t let her say no. She’s the whole shebang.’ ”

  * * *

  Leonard was right: it was always cold in San Francisco. Standing out in front of the hotel, Molly wished for a sweater, or some sort of shawl—black, simple. She walked north into Union Square, found Neiman’s, took the escalator up to the second floor, and bought the first thing that caught her eye. It cost three hundred dollars, and wasn’t it a simple pleasure, declining the receipt? She found a coffee shop on the square, ordered a cappuccino, and sat down in a chair by the sun-beat window to call Jared.

  “Hi,” he said, flatly.

  In the background, Molly heard the repetitive crack of hammer blows.

  “Hel—loo,” she said, dragging out the sound, hoping to break him early. “How are things?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m out on the street. Something’s always pounding into something else in this city. You don’t notice it after awhile. The building across from my hotel caught on fire last night.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course. It was a fire.”

  Molly took a sip of her cappuccino. It was the best fucking cappuccino she’d ever had in her entire life.

  “Maybe you miss sleeping next to me,” she said.

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m sorry. Okay? Don’t be mad at me. I’ve got news.”

  “I think I’m calling you, and I get Diane.”

  “I know.”

  “It was embarrassing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t you think that’s telling?”

  “Of what?”

  “What do you think?” Jared said. “Hold on.”

  An ambulance or a fire truck sirened past Jared loud enough that Molly had to move her phone away from her ear. She wanted to end the phone call. She could pretend later that her service had been bad.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “I want to tell you something.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know about what?”

  “Nothing,” Jared said. “What is it? What’s the big news?”

  “The Human Variable. I got the part.”

  He was confused, and she explained it to him: Roth, Helen Wheeler, the dead sister who was a movie theater. She explained the catch to him as well, the new shoot date, how it would probably hurt Abigail’s feelings.

  “Hurt her feelings?” Jared said. “It’ll destroy her. I mean actually.”

  “We’ll reschedule,” Molly said.

  “Reschedule? That girl’s barely hanging on,” Jared said. “There is no way she’ll keep it together another three months. I hate her fucking guts, but I don’t want her to be homeless.”

  “She won’t be homeless,” Molly said.

  “Come on. No you, no movie,” Jared said. “What about the crew? You know half of them.”

  That was true. She and Jared had babysat for the director of photography last
year. But that was before everything. Back when there’d been time.

  “Why are you pretending to not understand this?” Jared asked.

  “Why are you pretending to not understand this?” Molly asked. “You read the Human script. You know how good it is. I’m perfect for it. And Hydrogen does a major awards push. I could get nominated.”

  “For an Oscar?”

  “Not for an Oscar. I’m not saying that,” Molly said. “But a Globe maybe.”

  From behind the front counter at the other end of the coffee shop, the barista was staring at her.

  “Is this about the phone? Is that what this is about? I said I was sorry.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Jared said, and hung up.

  * * *

  Molly wanted to say it as soon as she got back, but Abigail was still asleep—or her door was closed, at least. Molly heard the house phone ring, and either the person on the other end had hung up, or Abigail had answered in a whisper that Molly couldn’t hear. She wanted to tell Abigail when her door opened, but then the shower came on. She wanted to say it when Abigail approached her in the living room, but talk of food intervened. Finally, the time to tell had passed, or so it seemed, and she decided to wait. The moment would present itself eventually, and then she would say it.

  They chose the new Mexican place.

  Walking in the neon dark of the neighborhood, Molly felt alive again. It was a moneyed street, and chic. In the elaborate facial hair designs of the men, and in the short little boots of the women, Molly saw the excesses of fine arts degrees. It seemed to her that every stranger they passed glanced her way. She was not being paranoid. These people had the time and the money to go to the movies. They knew who she was. Hers was the ambition they whispered about. Molly had spent years wondering what it—fame, or the first creakings of the machinery of it—would be like, and the answer was simple: it was fantastic. It felt like something you wanted to hold onto.

  Abigail ordered a Corona, and when it came she said, “Please, a toast. To being the worst hostess of my generation.”

  Molly raised her glass to that.

  In the slightly green light of the Mexican restaurant, Abigail looked as ill as she claimed to be. Her left eye twitched, and her lips were thin and purple, like worms. The night was good, though, Molly felt, one of those early fall evenings when the air seems to get warmer in the city as the sun goes down.

  “Where’d you go this morning?” Abigail asked.

  “Down to Union Square.”

  “For what?”

  “To shop a little,” Molly said. “Move around.”

  “That sounds nice. That sounds like just the thing.”

  Abigail finished one beer and then drank another. The color in her face balanced, went from splotchy to a low throb of even red. Before Molly could stop her, she started in on the preproduction talk. She said that all the locations, but for two, were secured. Molly would have to meet with the set designer next week, and there was a conference call on Thursday they’d both have to be in on. They needed to make a casting decision on the last two supporting roles. Did Molly have any idea about who she might want for that? There was still the matter of the third act to think on, because that version certainly wasn’t going to cut it. Did she and James want to rehearse at all—or just get in there, and do it? How were they going to find the money for the crane shot on the bridge in Pasadena? Abigail had an idea. Molly might not like it, but Abigail wanted Molly to hear her out, let it sink in, take effect.

  “Why don’t you just ask Leonard Roth for the money? Since you’re friends now. Since you eat lunch with him in my city and lie to me about it.”

  Molly didn’t say a word. She wanted Abigail to disappear, to cease to exist entirely.

  “I know the manager. Short little gay guy? Glasses? Him.”

  “Okay,” Molly said, in that curt way people do, as if the evidence brought against them remains insufficient for indictment.

  “Are you doing a movie with him?”

  “Yes,” Molly said.

  “When?”

  She looked down at the table. There was a cartoon donkey with protruding front teeth. The teeth were almost horizontal. Squiggled lines of laughter blew out between the top and bottom rows.

  “When?” Abigail asked again.

  “Three weeks,” Molly said. “Less than.”

  “You cocksucker.”

  “It’s a matter of recasting,” Molly said. “There are other actresses.”

  “There are other actresses.”

  “There are.”

  “This is the story you’re telling?” Abigail asked. She wore the sad, confused face of the sold-out bad guy in the movie—the one who goes in for the hug, but gets a knife in the gut.

  “It’s not a story.”

  “It is. You’re telling yourself a lie, and you want me to believe it. You’re deluded.”

  “Me?” Molly asked. “You’re not even here. You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “Do I need to say that you are the movie? That you’re everything?” Abigail asked. “Is that the kind of shit you need to hear now? Is that what this is? Fine. Fine. You’re a gift to the world, Molly. Please, oh please, be in my movie. I’m nothing compared to you.”

  “You can reschedule,” Molly said. “I’m still co-executive. You should be happy for me. Why aren’t you understanding this?”

  “Because you’re ruining my life.”

  “You can’t blame me for that,” Molly said. “You’re doing a fine job of that on your own.”

  Abigail let out a small, creepy laugh. She hopped up and went to the bathroom. Like a mind reader, the waitress brought over the bill. The waitress stood and waited as Molly placed her credit card down inside the black plastic tray, and then she stepped back to run it through the machine. The whole process took no more than a minute, but Molly sat there for another five. Finally, she went outside, and lit a cigarette. There was some metal and plywood construction scaffolding attached to the front of the building, and Molly was glad for the cover. The night had turned to fog. A steel bar ran horizontal between two posts. Molly put her elbows on it, and looked out into the street. In her body there was something like sympathy—there was the feeling of it, like heat—but her mind pressed down upon it with the weight of a promise she’d long ago made to herself. She had set out to do something, and she was going to do it. She breathed in the Pacific air. She smoked.

  Abigail came out of the restaurant, her eyes like two eight-balls.

  “You’re out,” she said. “I’ll get another actress by tomorrow, and then I’ll shake off all the absolute shit you’ve put on me over the years. But I want you to know something. You think that you’ve done this for your career. You think you’ve done this because it’s business. It isn’t business. It’s personal. Everything is personal. Movies are. I am. I’m a wreck, but I’m personal. You used to be. But not anymore. What are you going to be if you aren’t personal? What will that even look like?”

  Abigail stared Molly down.

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  Molly handed her one.

  “I need a lighter.”

  Molly handed her that too.

  Abigail put her hands on the cross bar, and jumped up onto it. She twisted in the air, so that her back was to the street. Using both hands, she went to light the cigarette. Molly saw the whole thing coming. Abigail said, “Uh, oh”—her balance was gone—and then she went backward down off the cross bar four feet until her head cracked against the greasy road.

  * * *

  Because all Molly ever did was watch movies and television, and because she spent most of her time with other Hollywood types who, like her, confused the manic pulse of drama with the feeling of life, she thought Abigail was dead. She quickly fantasized about the morgue, the police inquiry, the Minnesota funeral home. But Abigail wasn’t dead. There was only a lot of blood. It poured out of Abigail’s head like wine. The kitchen guys knew what to do. They were even casual
about it. Towel to the back of the head. Phone call. Didn’t otherwise touch Abigail.

  The ambulance started and stopped, and then weaved south. Molly sat beside the EMTs in the boxy deadlight.

  “Six staples.”

  “Five.”

  “Six. Possible hematoma.”

  “No way. Five and nothing. Maybe a concussion.”

  “You look familiar to me,” the one said to Molly. “I’m telling you six. Maybe seven.”

  It took nine. The waiting area at SF General was not exactly clean. Around midnight, they let Molly into Abigail’s room.

  “I’m not allowed to sleep,” Abigail said. She sat up in bed eating applesauce out of a plastic cup. Whatever fluids they were pumping into her arm had her looking almost human. “I have a level-three concussion. If I sleep, I die.”

  After that, Abigail refused to say a single word. Molly took a seat. They seethed there for two hours watching television until a nurse came in and did some bloodwork. She was a black woman in her late forties, pretty and exhausted. She looked at Molly.

  “Am I supposed to recognize you?” she asked. “Is that what this is?”

  Through the booming sound of infomercials (Abigail kept turning the volume up on the TV), Molly read tabloids until she was bored and soul sick. There was a picture of Leonard in US. In it, he wore the same button-down shirt he’d worn to lunch with her. The tagline under the blurry photograph was “Leonard’s Grief.” He was smoking a cigarette in front of a restaurant in Manhattan. She didn’t bother to read the article, but it shouted at her anyway. All the important words were capitalized and in bold. SADNESS. VICTIM. TERROR. PLANE.

  At four in the morning, Molly wandered the halls and found an empty conference room. She stretched out across a couch, but soon a janitor arrived. He ran a feather duster over the blinds, waking Molly from a dream that, as soon as she reached for it, escaped her. The man was formless in the dark, like she’d made him up, and it took a blink or two, a drowning moment, for her to realize he was saying, “I know who you are.”