But it was crushingly lonely. You’d think I’d be used to that by now, but it was a different sort—to be so constantly surrounded by people and still feel so devoid of connection.
Strangely, I thought of Harper and her posse. Was that another point where she was winning? Were they actually close? Or did she feel some semblance of this too?
Harper and Joel dominated the headlines. They were fame’s wet dream. Beautiful, talented, and young. And they knew how to put on a show.
For their first date, Joel flew Harper to Venice and they ate cheese and drank sparkling wine while a gondola steered them through the city to the delight of the thousands of tourists whose cameras turned from historic beauty to this contemporary alternative.
I thought of Harper at CADS, the bright lights dimmed to a moonlit glow, reflecting off the stage like it might be the waters of Venice streaming beneath. Her voice soft: “But love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.” I’d been so pleased to be cast as Portia inThe Merchant of Venice, a much bigger role—but I’d watched in the wings as Harper took to Jessica with tenderness and youthful hope, and I thought of what she told me over drinks a few years ago:“I know what I’m like when I’m blinded by love—I’ll do anything. I’d give it all up in an instant.”
And I knew we were in trouble, that she would fall for all this without hesitation.
She was front row at Joel’s next football game, and heran right up when the whistle blew for intermission—or whatever it is they call it—and kissed her in front of the watching audience. He hit the front pages a few weeks later, paying for a star to be named after her, and I thought of Abel Griffin showing her constellations and wondered why men always thought the universe would bend to their whims, could be commandeered into gestures of their own when they were indifferent gas fires and the true majesty was the woman who stood before them, fate not resting in their hands but hers.
Harper and Joel were so inseparably and obviously in love, but still I didn’t believe it—anyone could make grand public gestures, what were they like alone? Harper’s mother had spent years publicly declaring her love, after all, while giving her very little of it. Perhaps this had the same ring of disappointment.
But I was not a viewer from the outside, flipping through pages for tidbits.
This was my world. My sphere. And at every party, no matter how numb I made myself, how blurred I drew the lines of the world around me, someone would mention her.
At the launch of a new members’ club, Kayla Alexander declared that she’d never seen Harper so happy. When the Oscars announced their nominations and nearly everyone inThe Dollhousewas nominated except for Harper—a clear snub given her admittedly wonderful performance—Amos said a friend had been commissioned to make an outfit fora counter-party Joel was throwing for Harper on award night. Days later, Lana said that an assistant she knew had to organize a mass clean-up for thousands of violets sent to Harper’s house, because purple was her favorite color.
But it wasn’t—anyone could see that. Harper’s scarlet nails and darker stained lips, the crimson art hung on her walls, the berry-red pop of her Lamborghini. Harper wanted to see the world bleed. She wanted it bright and loud and daring.
And given her penchant for messages in flowers, it should have been red carnations, speckled with baby’s breath.My heart aches for you. This love is everlasting.
Did Harper not see how amateur this all was? It was embarrassing, this self-titled mastermind of my misery, succumbing so quickly to such weak affectation. All she’d wanted was the public performance of love to match the private, but could she not raise that bar higher? So what Joel was doing that for her? Couldn’t she want more? Couldn’t she crave something as interesting as she was?
Then, in March, just three months after their first kiss: their wedding.
A secret ceremony thatsomehowleaked anyway (my money was on Greta Liao, hovering in the background of every shot). The photos were just blurry enough to entice and just clear enough to make you feel you were part of it.
I think I still have them, somewhere.
They followed it with a double-page spread in some magazine or other about their married life and the bliss ofit all. The comfort of knowing, at the age of twenty-six, that you’d found your soulmate.
I’d never found Harper so vexing—a distraction that didn’t come in a pill or tab or line but one that consumed me all the same. Even if false, her veneer of joy provoked me. I wanted to send it crashing down.
So I set my investigator to find out what was really going on.
———
The thing about drugs, pretty universally, is that they’re good until they’re not. It’s under control until it’s not. It’s a secret until it’s not.
I managed, just, in New York. I thought of my bracing fear when I found that cocaine in my bag all those years ago as I now rubbed it into my gums the moment the curtain fell. I still wouldn’t let myself perform high, one of my little rules that were beginning to seem less and less important, like if they couldn’t be broken they might at least be teased at. By the time I was back in LA, they were fraying at the edges—maybe I couldn’t perform high, but I could power through a comedown, shaking in my chair at the edge of the set and pretending I just wasn’t feeling well.
I knew someone would find out eventually. Ruchi, especially, discovered every secret in Hollywood. But I didn’t expect it to come out like this.
I had a small role lined up for production in autumn, and I’d just finished a few weeks filming forRigged,a political sagaairing early next year. Like my stint on Broadway and that role inStarborn, I was trying to be experimental with the projects I took on, and I hadn’t done any TV work for a while.
But most of spring was whiled away reading through scripts, trying to draw up a shortlist of things I was interested in auditioning for. I didn’t hear the car on the drive—by this point I’d told my security to let Harper through whenever she deigned to visit, given she kept getting through anyway—and she forewent the doorbell in favor of rapping sharply at the door.
She strutted in the moment I opened it and threw an envelope down on my table, dual rings gleaming on her finger. She leaned against the table edge, wearing low-rise cargo trousers in a deep khaki green and a lace-edged crop top that skimmed her midriff. The bones of her hips were stark, her skin smooth, and I wondered if Joel took in these details, if he labored over her as I did or if he dismissed their appreciation in favor of their conquering.
I reached over her for the envelope, my hair brushing at her nose, and I caught her quick inhale, like she needed to memorize every part of me in turn—like we could only beat one another if we knew every tiny facet of each other.
I didn’t pause slitting the envelope open to wonder what I’d find.
Inside were pictures, dozens of them. Me. White powder dusting my lip or rolled note in hand. Dear god, there was even one of me laughing in a club, a half-dissolved tab on my tongue.
