Inside (30 page)

Diane did get fired, but she didn’t go to Mexico. Instead, she moved Anne into her little house on a winding side street in Los Feliz. Anne liked the neighborhood, which felt cluttered and cozy. Wide-set bungalows with deep, shady porches and slanted roofs were set back from the street, and in the yards there were tangles of spiky desert cacti. They took walks, Diane pointing out the California plants to her, eucalyptus, yucca, bougainvillea, the words like a new language on Anne’s tongue. Sometimes they hiked in Griffith Park, the city spread out beneath them, clothed in smog. Anne went on auditions and took meetings, and Diane went out for lunches and consultations and took meetings. Everybody in L.A. was taking meetings. When Anne drove around the city now and witnessed its sunny leisure—people dawdling beneath umbrellas, sipping smoothies on the beach—she understood that these weren’t vacation days or tourist pastimes, they were all meetings. After her own appointments, she would join Diane and sometimes her personal trainer, who would run them through an exhausting sequence of repetitions. Anne was in better shape than she’d ever been and she felt great. Inextricable from this were her evenings in bed with Diane, their thin, muscled bodies wrestling and twirling in what felt at times like another session with the trainer, at other times something more serious and important, a real
meeting
.

Diane was the first person who ever ran her fingers over the delicate white scar tissue, barely raised now, on her torso, from when she used to cut herself. She shivered as Diane’s index finger traced this old map across her abdomen, replaced then by her mouth and cool tongue. Diane looked up at her. “If they need to,” she said, “they can cover these with makeup.”

Anne took a meeting with a friend of Diane’s, a producer named Adam. He wasn’t handsome, but like everybody else she met in L.A., he’d been exercised and tooth-whitened to the point where he seemed like he was. He was developing a pilot about sexy spies and thought she might fit the bill. After lunch, he said, “I have a script you could look over, but I left it at my house. Why don’t we just swing past there, and I’ll give it to you. Do you have time?”

She did. They had a drink in his living room and kept talking about the pilot. His house was full of modular white furniture and bulbous, fluorescent lamps. Then she asked him how he got started in the business—a question that in L.A. always led to a lengthy answer—so she could have a little time to think.

“It’s a cliché at this point to say that the industry chews you up and spits you out, right? For actresses, of course, it’s worse than anybody else. I mean, this isn’t news to you, I’m sure,” he said as they went into the bedroom; he was nominally giving her a tour of the house. “But I’ve been smart enough to navigate it pretty well so far. I’m not one of those fucks who’s looking for one good hit and then wants to buy some mansion in the Hollywood Hills and retire. Those people are pussies, if you ask me. This game is about risk. About gambling your whole life. Don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Anne said. “I just got here.”

“Yeah, spare me the I-just-got-to-town routine,” Adam said. “You’re an operator, same as me. We’re like computers running the same program. Let’s see your body.”

“Just see it?” she said.

“For now,” he said, and checked his watch. He was lying across his bed, a low futon with a black bedspread. Off to the side, in the bathroom, Anne saw a matching black sink, black shelves, and black towels. Diane’s flowery red shower curtain flashed in her mind, not out of guilt but as a reward, what she’d get back to after she was done with the business at hand.

She expected him to take off his clothes, but he didn’t. Instead he circled her, patting, groping, murmuring to himself. “How old are you?” he said at one point.

“How old do I look?” she answered, as Diane had advised her to.

“Too close to thirty for comfort.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t bother trying to make me feel bad.”

Adam smiled. “I like you.” His hands were on her breasts.

“If you say so,” she said.

Back at Diane’s she took a shower, not because she felt dirty but because she was tired, the same as anyone after a long day at work. When she came out, Diane was cooking dinner. Anne poured herself a glass of wine, and they kissed. It was the closest she had ever been to a domestic life, and it was only three weeks old.

“So how did it go with Adam? Did he give you a naked evaluation?”

“You knew about that?”

“He always does it. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you, but he doesn’t like it when people are tipped off. I know he’s a creep, Annie, but he’s a successful creep. If it went well, which I know it must have because you’re gorgeous, he’ll get you in somewhere.”

Anne studied her as she flaked salmon into a bowl of salad. Feeling a swell of warmth, she put her arms around Diane and rested her head on her shoulder. They were around the same height, the same weight. The comfort of a double. “He’s a freak,” she said. “He didn’t even want to have sex. Just to grope and look.”

Diane laughed, gently disengaged herself, and carried the salad to the table. “You sound offended.”

“It was a power play. It wasn’t about getting laid. It was about making me feel like shit.”

“Well, obviously.”

“You think I should be grateful for the opportunity.”

“I think, let’s hope it works.”

While eating, they talked about the screenplay Diane was writing, a black comedy about a woman manipulator, an
All About Eve
for the present day.

“Totally unsellable,” Diane said. “The market doesn’t like black comedies, and it doesn’t like vehicles for women, but what the hell? Now’s the time to take a chance.”

Anne half listened to this jumble of wishes, paying more attention to Diane’s body as it rustled and slid across from her. That night, lying in bed with their legs tangled together, she repeated the words
let’s hope
to herself. She had a loose, sweet feeling in her body, the sense of a future she might be able to hold on to, and of the risks associated with that future—of landing a job or not, of being with Diane in this strange constellation of sex and friendship without knowing exactly what it meant. It was the feeling of knowing nothing this good could last, of getting away with it for now, for as long as she possibly could.
Let’s hope
.

A week later, she got a phone call from Adam.

“It’s Mr. Feeler-Upper,” he said cheerfully. “I want you for my pilot. You’re the sexy one. You’ll show some skin, but not too much. It’s a family show.”

Anne rubbed her forehead. Some part of her that distantly remembered her theatrical career was giving her a headache.

Adam was still talking, giving her instructions on where to go and when. “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to you,” he said, “so get ready.” Then he hung up.

When she turned around, Diane had her arms outstretched. “I knew it,” she said, her eyes warm and bright. “This is it. The big time.”

Anne accepted the hug, but
the big time
puzzled her. Did Diane really talk like this? Did she actually
believe
it? She felt the first separation yawn between them, like a candle snuffing itself out. But then Diane kissed her neck, and she lit up again.

One thing you had to give the television people: they knew what they were doing in the looks department. Techniques and materials had been refined. They were working at the cutting edge. They did her hair, her clothes, her makeup, her skin tone, and she looked like a different person, unrecognizable to herself, a transformation that brought her nothing but pleasure. She looked beautiful, if more generic; she could’ve been any one of the millions of shiny-haired L.A. girls.

Firmly, dictatorially, Adam took over her life, telling her what to wear both on the set and off it, cultivating her soon-to-be celebrity life. “Holistic oversight,” he called it, and made appointments with a dentist, a dermatologist, a nutritionist.

“You’re welcome,” he said, though she hadn’t thanked him. “I’m all about details.”

Once filming started, Diane sometimes came to the set to watch. The first scenes were shot at night, on bone-dry streets that had been hosed down to look like the rain-slickened avenues of New York. She had always loved rehearsals, going over the same lines again and again, each time locating some new modulation or nuance; she and the other actors would argue over blocking and interpretation, over the meaning of a line, or even a word, for hours. But the repetitions of television were entirely different. The mechanics were so elaborate that no one paid any attention to what she said or how she said it; it was all about the camera tracking and how she looked in front of a tree or a stop sign. Over and over she walked out of a building, stood in the street, and looked confused. One, two, three steps, look confused. This went on for five hours, then a break.

Her character was a college student whose father was killed by some evil spies in a case of mistaken identity, so she became a spy herself in order to track them down. In the meantime, as a cover, she worked as a photographer, a job that enabled her to travel to exotic locations and walk around with a camera around her neck, its straps framing her breasts, staring poutily into the distance. Each episode was supposed to focus on a different “photo assignment,” which usually involved her flirting with a man who either turned out to be no good or, if he was good, died.

Now that he’d cast her, Adam took no more interest in her body. Neither did the director, a happily married father of three who often played with his kids during breaks. The only ones who did pay attention to her body were the professionals who tended to it, the hair and makeup people, who were all women and gay men. It felt safe but sexless. Anne had always needed chemistry—the glint in the other person’s eye, the tactical, pheromonal equation—but now her only partner was the camera, and she felt like she was floating in space,
unwanted and untethered. She heard herself delivering lines with a cardboard flatness that, coming from another actor’s mouth, she would have cringed at. But nobody noticed, or else they simply didn’t care.

The hours were irregular and insane. Sometimes she was out all night and other times she needed to be on set at five in the morning. She had to work out enough to keep her stomach flat but not so much that her breasts got smaller. Some days she barely saw Diane, or else she was at home all afternoon lounging on the couch, doing her nails, while Diane, annoyed, tried to work on her script. When Anne tried to get back on her good side—sex being her strategy—Diane would push her away and sigh, saying, “It’s not always about that, Annie. I need you to support me on this.”

“Support you how?”

“Read the draft. Tell me what you think.”

“But I don’t know anything about character arcs and whatever,” Anne said. “I’m just a puppet.” She mimed as if her arms were held up by invisible strings. “I’m a marionette.”

“You just think it’s too much work,” Diane said.

Anne started to protest, but they both knew it was true. “I’m not much of a reader,” she said.

“It’s a
script
. You’re an actor. Come on.”

So Anne read it, and it was terrible. Diane, so sophisticated and well educated, turned out to be a clumsy, fumbling, primitive writer. Without a doubt, producing was exactly the right job for her, not writing. Her script was corny, the dialogue boring, and the characters unsympathetic, with nothing redeemable or exciting about them. It had all the flaws of a commercial movie and none of its virtues.

Of course, Diane walked into the room right as Anne turned the final page. Sidling up to the fridge, not making eye contact as she poured herself some iced jasmine tea, she was so transparent, so endearing.

Without thinking, Anne said, “I love you.”

Diane came over, set her glass down, and put her arms around Anne. “But not the script.”

“God, no.”

Diane snorted. “I can’t believe you won’t even pretend to like it.”

Anne was surprised. How could she? Didn’t somebody this smart know when a script was bad? She felt wetness on her shoulder, and realized Diane was crying. “Do
you
like it?”

“That’s not the point,” Diane said, wiping her nose on the sleeve of Anne’s T-shirt. “The point is, if you love me, you should support me.”

“By saying the script’s good when it isn’t? What would that accomplish?”

“When you love someone,” Diane said, her lips trembling, “you don’t tell them their script sucks. You give them some
notes
. You point to a particular detail that you do like. You say, I think it’s got
potential
but it’s not quite there yet. That’s what you say if you aren’t some robot or a person who was raised in a
barn
.”

“I’m sorry,” Anne said, taking her hand, but Diane left the house and didn’t come back that night and this was their first fight, ever.

It upset her more than she would’ve anticipated. She felt off-balance, almost nauseated, and couldn’t sleep, and the next day the makeup girl tutted and shook her head at the dark circles under her eyes. This made her mad at Diane, so instead of going back to her place after they stopped shooting, she went back to her own. She had been spending so much time at Diane’s that she’d practically forgotten she still had the little cottage. She had no stuff there anymore, not even a toothbrush, and compared to Diane’s house it was barren. The hulking villa loomed over her cottage, its emptiness both sterile and ominous. There was life in Los Feliz, people walking their dogs, crowding the parking lot at Trader Joe’s, chatting and drinking tea under the umbrellas at the Alcove Café. Anne missed all of this, and Diane most of all, and in the cottage she felt shabby and exiled.

They made up two days later. Anne invented some positive comments on the script, and Diane admitted that she was better at cajoling work out of others than doing it herself. They drank a bottle of wine, then went to bed and found each other again, newly tender. The fight had given texture to their relationship: they had admitted how much they cared, and now things were deeper, stranger, stronger.