“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.