Victor grinned so broadly dimples grooved in his dark brown cheeks. “Oh, yes.”
I arched a brow, and he tsked before laughing. Victor was a brilliant agent, but he was also a man in his fifties with an unfortunate predilection for puns, poor jokes, and mischievous provocation.
“Would blacklisting her across the industry help make up for the fact I remember her but not you?” he offered.
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to.” I was ready to levy some low blows, not be downright underhanded.
“Good. Just because I could doesn’t mean I would. Come on then, let’s beat her where it counts. I’ve met with somedirectors lately, and there are some parts I think you’d be perfect for.”
———
I took a minor role inDouble Down,a Disney film where I played the evil stepmother of the protagonists—which mostly just meant I was hot, young, and after their father’s money. I played it with plenty of Harper’s mannerisms. I knew no one else would catch it, but it thoroughly delighted me, especially every time I tossed my hair back behind a shoulder. And clearly it enraged her from the way she kicked off inGlitzmagazine about the evil-stepmother trope a month after the film premiered in ’98.
But my main role in ’96 wasMaldon, which I almost didn’t try out for. That still shocks me. I thought I’d developed a finely attuned radar for opportunity. But I supposed there was no harm in auditioning, and when I got offered the role I considered turning it down. The shoot would take me away from Los Angeles, and as such, away from Harper. But her threats had turned out to be more or less idle, even asCity Girlspicked up steam.
She was clearlytrying.
My assistant Lana and I started each day with a selection of magazines, flicking through them all for traces of whispers, or else lounging in the garden with Ruchi on speaker. Sometimes both.
Lana was older than me, though not by much, and she’d come by before dropping her toddler off at day care, and thismorning routine became something precious for us both, sunning ourselves in the garden and indulging in the game of Hollywood. (I liked her. I liked the way she hummed when she made the coffee and the way her son’s footsteps pounded on the stairs. I liked the way the house filled with noise. I liked when it wasn’t so very quiet.)
“Oh, here’s something,” she said one summer morning, waving a copy ofHollywood Whispererat me. She cleared her throat before she read: “Nadine Hey-would-you-look-at-that-nose?”
“What?” I choked on my laughter, hauling myself up to snatch the magazine from her.
The page was filled with blurry photos of me at college—notably not the very clear headshot I’d supplied, in which the story they were trying to tell would be demonstrably false. They compared the photos to me at events, with my whole face shadowed and shaded with makeup.
I had, so far, resisted the lure of plastic surgery. I’d considered it, of course, but right now I was playing the “in it for the acting” role a bit too well, and any suggestion of caring about my looks too rather than accidentally tripping and stumbling into hair salons or makeup artists’ chairs would be too much. Yet here I was, supposedly having had a nose job with pictures they’d obtained from only one possible source, given theBlood Weddingrehearsal shot included.
There were more rumors: that I was having an affair with a Kennedy (oddly beneficial), that I had chlamydia (which ended asolely for the camerasflirtation with Tex Cassidy),and that I dropped out of CADS because I’d been sleeping with one of the teachers (which was clearly a favored lie of Harper’s).Mypersonal favorite was that I was some sort of hippy-witch who charged crystals in her vagina for luck.
“My vagina, really?” I’d asked when Harper phoned as she did every now and then. I liked to think she couldn’t resist. Like each rumor was an effort to drive me out of the private sphere and into the public, and when I didn’t she had to find me herself.
“I know, one of my more creative suggestions. When are you going to start playing?”
“Who says I’m not?”
I wasn’t above being petty—in exchange for the crystals we’d carefully dropped that Harper used a face cream that contained fox urine.
But I had bigger plans. For now, Harper was ineffectual. She had to play at all these small lies because no one would believe the bigger ones. We weren’t in the same spheres. But that was going to end. I listened to the rumors. And Victor and Ruchi had their ears to the ground too—there were directors interested in her.
If she joined me here, she could start doing real damage.
So I had to maintain my advantage. I had to win some awards.
And I cared about the films. Obviously.
“Anyway,” Harper said, a whininess to her voice like I’d ignored her a little too long. “I was just ringing to tell you to tune into MTV tomorrow. I think you’ll enjoy the show.”
I didn’t have a publicity engagement that night, which wasthe only real reason I ventured out in the evenings anymore. So instead I settled into my ordinary routine: a long bath as I flicked through scripts, warming up the dinner my caterers had delivered and curling up in the back corner of the eight-seater sofa to flick on the TV. But instead of my usual golden-age classic, I turned the channel to the promised show.
And there she was: Harper making out with Caleb Krause at a nightclub in West Hollywood. Apparently the two had confirmed they were dating.
I laughed right at the TV screen, before reaching across for my phone, curling its cord about a finger and readying to punch in Ruchi’s number so we could unpack it as we did all Harper-related drama. She’d clearly seen us flirting at the Oscars and evidently thought she was winning something.
