“You mean, other than your husband?”
She sticks out her pink tongue. “I said long-term, not long-distance.”
He looks at her for a second, asking silently:Are we going to go there?Susie’s husband is the drainpipe that all their conversations circle around. But for the moment, she swirls away, back to the here and now.
“I just want to do right by Margie, that’s all. I still have so much to learn from her.”
Orson smiles, because how can he not? For Susie, Margie is more than just a voice, a wardrobe, a posture. She is flesh and blood, a cause for crusade. A villain miscast and misunderstood, knocked again and again by life but endlessly brazen, endlessly resilient.
“You’re such a pro, Susie. I’ve got more loyalty to my left shoe than I do to Joe.”
“Well, Margie keeps me honest.”
“Ironically. For a serial liar.”
“Come on, are you really saying you don’t love that? Knowing someone else so deeply that the sense of yourself slips away? Feeling what someone else feels? Wanting what they want? I’d do it for free.”
No one on set is realer than Susie, no one works harder than she does. Yesterday morning at seven, Rip handed her thirty dreaded pink pages: last-minute rewrites. Most people (Orson included) would have laid them out all over the floor of the set, pinned them to the wall, sneaking glances mid-take. But Susie went into a fugue state, somehow memorizing all of it before cameras started rolling. Afterward, he got down on his knees and bowed to her.If there’s no eye contact, they don’t buy it, kiddo, she said. It’s enough to make you feel like a fraud.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I’m just not very ‘method.’ They’re just roles to me. And I’m ready for the next one.”
“One day. We should do a play together!”
“God, I don’t know if I could get on a stage again,” he says. “The audience, the pressure…”
“Well, at least with theatre it’s all gone after the curtain comes down.”
“That’s even worse. Half the point of getting famous is being remembered.”
“Aw, but Orson. I’ll never forget you.”
And when she looks at him, he can tell she means it, that this isn’t just a bit. She’s as real about this as she is about anything.What did he do to deserve this?
“Do you have to go home this weekend?”
She nods her head, pulls on the bags under her eyes. Shit, maybe Mark is right.
I’m worried about her, Flowers said earlier.People aren’t tuning in for her anymore. This flying is affecting her looks. She’s supposed to look like you can fuck her from all directions.
Mark grinned then like he had imagined it personally, like Orson was supposed to agree. It made him sick. But he bit his tongue, because more than anything, he needs Mark to like him.
“He’s a lucky guy, your man,” Orson says. “Married to a celebrity.”
“Sometimes I’m not so sure.”
If she knows what’s good for her, she’ll dump him, be out here full-time. Talk to her. She trusts you.
The worst part is that Orson agrees. If Susie weren’t flying all the time, she could be auditioning more. “Why doesn’t he move out here?”
“He will. It’s just not the right time for him, I guess. With the tenure stuff, and the college cycle. But when we have kids…”
“It seems like you’re always the one compromising,” he says softly.
She closes her eyes. Like opening them might give away the part of her that agrees. “I’m never compromising as long as I get to do this.”
When she looks at him again, it’s with a bright, clear conscience, a need to redirect. “What are your plans for the weekend, then?”
“Oh, me? Do nothing. Sit on the beach. Write some bad poems. Think about calling my parents, decide not to. Think about cooking, decide not to. Drive around Hollywood Hills, maybe break into a house, steal someone’s identity.”
