“I love you,” she says.
“I love you,” he repeats. Do any other words have such hold over the present tense?
But the steaming California tarmac dissipates all thoughts of Al. Aproduction assistant whisks her off to Rodeo Drive to pick out clothes for her character, Margie. She had discussed the wardrobe beforehand with Sadie: black. Leather and lace. Madonna meets… Minnesota.
Maybe you’ll get to kiss Richard Matlock!Sadie had squealed.Or Ali Alvarez, oh my God.
Susan had rolled her eyes and impishly said,Maybe. She thinks of her sister as she thumbs blouses at Giorgio, her heart wild with initiation, with the unwritten. Her life opens up onto a parallel infinity.
That evening, a courier arrives at her motel to drop off the script for the next day, and a piece of that infinity breaks off and becomes concrete. Susan tears open the parcel, scans for Margie. There: entering the bar, a cousin from out of town. She inhales the scene, counts twenty lines—not bad for an hour episode. Everything is suggestive; a whisper in her ear, a hand on her thigh. With sudden terror, it hits her: this will be televised. Al and seven million other Americans will sit by while she is manhandled, will judge her with the same ease that she has always judged the characters.
It’s not a betrayal, she tells herself.It’s your job.But she worries he won’t see it for what it is. That it will wound him.
In the morning, a taxi takes her to the studio. She says her name and is allowed inside. A cavernous complex unfolds, both familiar and strange. So many well-worn rooms clustered on top of each other, home to so many heartbreaks and heated arguments. It’s loud already, with a roar of machinery and industry and voices calling this world into being, and here she is, part of it. All around her, people rush past paying no notice, until a harried-looking assistant director spots her, confirms her name.
“Thanks for reminding me,” Susan says. “I had almost forgotten who I was.”
The woman looks her over as though this isn’t the first time she has dealt with amnesia on set. “One of the directors will be over to chat,” she says, but fifteen minutes pass and no one comes. In fact, no one is acknowledging Susan at all. She’s sure she is supposed to be doingsomething, getting makeup or a studio tour, but the whole place feels like a well-oiled machine in no need of a spare cog. She flips through the script again, trying to look like she’s in the right place, to dispel the onset of doubt.
“I hear you’re the prostitute.”
“Sorry?”
She nearly doesn’t recognize him because of the accent, rounded and Celtic, but looking at his face (brooding, angular), she places him as the barman, Joe.
“You’re going to be shagging Glen over there, aren’t you?” he says, pointing at the rugged older man in an eye patch.
“One-Eye Stokes, you mean?”
“Sorry, was that a spoiler? I was drinking with the writers last night, they may have slipped some intel.”
Across the room Glen folds and unfolds his hand, which she once watched him wrap mercilessly around a woman’s neck. Susan inhales sharply.
“No, it’s fine,” she says bravely, though the thought of his rough, creased skin on her body is not simple to swallow. “I’ve always wanted to sleep with a killer.”
“Don’t worry,” the barman says. “He’s a sweetheart. Not one for the ladies, anyway.”
Funny how you can get a fixed notion about someone. How little it takes to dispel it. When she looks at Glen again, he smiles gently in a way that One-Eye never would and she is rushed with tenderness, a wonder at how much of his life he has had to spend acting, in one way or another. Strange how many hours she has spent with these people to find she hardly knows them. The bartender, for instance, is young, but not nearly as young as he looks on screen. Twenty-one maybe. A few years younger than Sadie.
“Anyway, congratulations on being cast and all. I swear they only picked me because I could actually make a drink, unlike anyone else they got in. I mean, they are willing to forgive my horrific accent.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not so bad.”
“Well, thanks very much,” he says, putting it on, a drawling almost-Texan twang. There’s room for improvement, but she doesn’t need to say so. “By the way,” he asks. “Have you got any cigarettes? These Los Angeles types are so holy about things.”
She does. She shouldn’t, but she does. Picked them up at the airport in a fit of nerves. It’s a blessing to give one away. They have to be gone before she goes back to Al on Friday.
“Ach, what a pal!” he says, tucking it behind his ear. “I hope they don’t kill you off or anything. That’s always the worst, you make a new friend around here and the next day they’re force-fed a poisoned donut and stuffed into an armoire.”
“Jesus.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t come back though. Why, Nancy over there has been killed about five times,” he says, pointing to the show’s grande dame, preening into a compact mirror. “Wardrobe down that way,” he gestures. “They don’t give you much of a manual, so, you know. If you need any help.”
“You’ll trade tips for cigarettes?”
He smiles, cheeky and boyish, and turns toward the stage door. “I’m easily bought.”
Three hours later, she has transformed into Margie, hair piled high, eyes shadowed green, the will to misbehave gaining ground inside her. ROLLING in three—two—One-Eye Stokes has put his mask on too, is sidling up to her and slipping his hand onto her thigh, rumpling her thin synthetic skirt. She is too deep now to think about the space between skirt and thigh, between herself and the character, about Al or anyone else, about how she will be seen and whether she will be loved. The lines are coming out of her as though they have always been in her.
