The Actress: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

time,” she said. “This is a classy party.”
    “Y ou need to watch this right now,” Bridget told Steven in his suite at the Niels Lundtofte Lodge. “ I Used to Know Her, it’s called.” They were standing in his kitchen, and she was holding the DVD in its clear case.
    She had called Ed Handy, immediately after hanging up with Zack, to request the screener. When Ed said Maddy had been at the opening-night party, she remembered Steven watching her with an odd, intent gaze. That look, then Zack’s call. Bridget had been so transfixed, she didn’t stand up until the film was over.
    “Never heard of it,” Steven said from the kitchen island, sipping a green smoothie. “What’s her name?”
    “Maddy Freed.”
    “What makes you think she’s right?”
    “She can handle the material.”
    “The material is very sexual,” he said, “and it needs extreme commitment. A lot of the girls have had trouble with it.”
    “It will make her career. Come on, now. How could any bright, talented actress turn down the role of a lifetime?”
    “I’ll watch it tomorrow,” he said, noticing a ring of water that the smoothie had left on the countertop, and wiping it with his fingers.
    “She’s coming to my dinner party. With her boyfriend. He directed it.I want you to see it before they come.” Bridget knew not to push him too hard. A manager’s job was to walk in the client’s shoes and guide him to the decisions that were best for him, like a therapist teasing out insight from a patient. If he watched this movie and didn’t like the girl, they would be back to the drawing board. But it was his decision to make.
    She looked at Steven evenly for a few seconds. Finally, he sighed. She smiled as she walked past him to the DVD player.
    A s I Used to Know Her began to roll, Steven prepared to be disappointed. He had been to many film festivals and seen a lot of atmospheric shots of toothless men, tetherball courts, and snow—and more than enough protagonist-toting vehicles. But as soon as he saw the girl, he remembered. He had noticed her at the Entertainer. She had a type of beauty that you took in slowly. Striking without being striking. Her eyes were open and widely set, her mouth turned down slightly. She had baby fat around her chin, untrimmed eyebrows, and a mole on one temple that he found fetching.
    The girl greeted her mother. You could sense the ambivalence she felt about coming home for a visit. The mother was talking, the girl frustrated. She moved naturally, a little tomboyish, hunching her shoulders in an adaptation to being tall, and unlike many actresses of her age range, she didn’t fry her voice when she spoke.
    Around the sixty-minute mark, she wasn’t speaking to the best friend, and after an ugly fight with her mother, she stormed out the door and peeled off in her mother’s truck. She met up with a chubby former high school classmate, and they got drunk on bourbon and made love in his car in the parking lot. As she came, there was a hint of sadness behind her eyes, as though the orgasm brought her into contact with her disappointment. She was melancholy. Steven didn’t know how much was the actress and how much the character. He wondered if the girl had the same depth in real life.
    When the movie was over, he said softly, “I want Walter to read her.”
    “I knew you would,” Bridget said. He could tell she wanted to say “I told you so” but was holding herself back.
    He moved to the window, looked out at the mess of pine trees. They’d had several near misses for the role, but casting was ninety percent of a project, and he was unwilling to compromise. Ellie had to show sexiness, determination, and sadness. They couldn’t cast just anyone. Audiences needed to feel there was no one else on earth who could play her.
    It would be hard to make much headway at the party with the boyfriend there to distract her, but he was emboldened by the challenge. Though Steven Weller had many talents, one