Seeing Stars (35 page)

She put her hand on his forearm. “
Please,
” she said again, in a whisper only he could hear.

The skinny woman looked up from her BlackBerry.

“Let me do the scene with Quinn Reilly. I mean, he’s reading for Buddy, and he’s right out there waiting.”

“Look—”

Allison was close enough to kiss him. “
Please.
”

He took one step back and caught both of her wrists in his hands.

F
ROM THE WAITING ROOM
, Q
UINN HEARD
A
LLISON ASKING
if they could read together—the old building’s walls were thick but the glass transom between the rooms was open—and he couldn’t believe it. She was fucking with his audition, his chance, his shot with Gus Van Sant. Fucking Allison, man. But apparently nothing came of it, because the next thing he knew, Allison was leaving the room like she’d been shot from a cannon, and she didn’t look too good.

She was followed almost immediately by Joel Sherman, who called him in and introduced him to the people at the table. Then he started the camera and said, “Go,” and Quinn went, with rage still ringing in his ears. But maybe fury gave his Buddy the extra edge he and Evelyn had been looking for, because when the scene was over he knew by the quick, almost furtive way the producers and Joel Sherman looked at one another that he’d brought that scene home like a perfectly fired missile.

Chapter Twenty-one

R
UTH AND
B
ETHY SAT IN SILENCE IN THE CAR OUTSIDE
Joel Sherman’s building. Ruth knew without even asking that the audition had been a bust. The child looked like she could burst into tears at any moment, and Ruth was filled with a sudden and disproportionate anger toward not only Allison but also Mimi, who’d conned Ruth into doing her bidding one too many times. Carlyle could have been the opportunity of a lifetime for Bethy, and it had been thrown away. And now, when the best thing for them would have been to cut their losses and run, they were stuck sitting at the curb like a hired car, waiting for the one person who’d most directly ruined Bethy’s chances.

“Honey, are you sitting there trying to figure out what to tell me about the audition?” Ruth said.

Bethy nodded mutely.

“It’s okay. You don’t need to,” Ruth told her, and pressed her hand. “I know.”

And then came the tears, a torrent of them. When she could talk again, Bethy said, “I just feel like I let you down.”

“Let
me
down?”

“I mean, this was for the lead, and I know you thought it was really important and I tried, but they weren’t even paying attention. Not Mr. Sherman, but these two other people, I don’t even know who they were, and one of them kept looking at her cell phone and then she started
texting
someone. I forgot a line, and before I could make up for it Mr. Sherman just said, ‘Thank you, honey, you can go.’”

Bethy cried bitterly, and Ruth started crying, too, and they hugged each other, and then Ruth said, before she knew she was going to say it, “I’m starting to wonder whether we should even be doing this,” and by
this
she meant everything. Then Bethy wiped her nose on the back of her hand, and out of habit Ruth gave her a look, and Bethy said, “I’m
sorry
. It’s not like I have a tissue,” so Ruth fished a crumpled one out of her purse and Bethy took it by the extreme corner, like it was a dead rat, and said, “You didn’t already use this, did you?” which was how Ruth knew the worst was over. On the sidewalk a couple of tourists stooped to read the name of the actor whose name was embedded in the star in the sidewalk.

The car door opened and Allison got in. “We can go,” she said, and Ruth thought she looked a little shaky as she settled her tote in her lap.

Ruth started the engine, rolled up the windows, and turned on the air-conditioning. No one said a word until they were back on the 101. When Ruth looked into the rearview mirror, Allison was staring out the window fixedly, petting her upper arm under her T-shirt sleeve. Maybe her callback hadn’t gone well, either, only she didn’t have her mother or even Mimi to comfort her. Despite herself Ruth said, “Honey, are you okay?”

Allison shrugged.

“You don’t seem okay,” Ruth said.

“No, I am.”

Ruth sighed. “Home or the studio?”

“Home, please.”

And that was all any of them said until Ruth pulled into Mimi’s driveway, except that Allison didn’t get out.

“Thank you for the ride,” she said, and then, in a small voice without a hint of attitude, she said, “I’m sorry I’ve been so awful. I don’t know why.”

“Oh, honey,” Ruth said.

“Maybe you could come over sometime,” Allison said to Bethy.

“Really?”

Allison nodded because she was crying, and then they were all crying and then laughing about it, and Allison gave them both an awkward hug from the backseat, and with supreme dignity put on her big movie-star sunglasses, climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and waved like anything as they drove away.

A
LL AROUND HER, THE HOUSE WAS SILENT
. G
RATEFUL,
Allison closed and locked the front door, went into her bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and stood looking at herself in the mirror. Her mother had had the same size boobs as Allison would probably wind up with—a 34B, probably—before Chet-the-Oilman bought her a new pair a couple of Christmases ago. Allison thought they looked like someone had slipped big, hard doughnuts inside her chest. They came at you suddenly, too. Flat back, no underarm fat, bony chest, suddenly one boob, then nothing over the breastbone, then another sudden boob, then flat over the rest of the rib cage and other underarm. Her mom thought she looked great, though. Ever since she’d gotten them, she hardly ever wore anything except a thong when she was just hanging around the house, especially if Chet was home. Allison thought it was sad, because she didn’t look half as good as she thought she did. Her butt was flat and saggy at the bottom; she had a lot of little moles. Allison thought Chet didn’t have very high standards. Or maybe he did, and that was why he’d done what he’d done to her in the cabana.

Before him, her mom had been okay with the regular men at the lounge where she used to work. She called it a lounge, but it was a strip club. Allison had known that for years, even though her mother thought she didn’t. She used to go into her mom’s bureau and closet sometimes when she wasn’t home and look at all her stuff. She never tried any of it on, though. She didn’t even actually touch any of it; she only used the hangers or a tissue to move it around, as though the clothes were radioactive or coated with poison. There were these clear acrylic shoes about a foot tall, and bikini underwear with no crotches. There were bras that were nothing but a couple of feathers and some string. One of her mom’s girlfriends had made it all. Her name was Cynthia, but she called herself Delicious. That’s how she’d answer her phone:
Hi, this is Delicious Delight! How can I help you?
She had a laugh like a mule. The year after Allison’s mom got her faux boobs, Cynthia had gotten them, too, and the next time she came over to the house she took off her top to show Denise and Allison. “Go on,” she’d told Allison. “You can touch them if you want to.” Allison hadn’t wanted to.

Now she stood in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, watching her reflection raise her arms high over her head. The undersides were crisscrossed with so many cuts, if you squinted a little bit they all ran together. Before Allison had started on them, her arms had been white white white, with blue veins that looked like they were about a millimeter below the skin. Sometimes when she cut there, she’d pierce the veins without even trying. You heard a little pop—or maybe you just felt it—and then they bled for a little while, but not for as long as you’d think, before they clotted. When she did that, she just blotted up the blood with toilet paper and flushed it so no one would see bloody stuff in the wastebasket and ask questions.

Now she turned on the water in the bathtub, got the temperature just right, and poured in some aromatic bath salts she’d bought the other day. Then, while the tub was filling, she dug her box cutter out of the back of a drawer, sat on the covered toilet, and spread her legs wide.

After the first cut, she didn’t feel a thing.

T
HAT NIGHT
H
UGH WAS WASHING UP HIS MEAGER SUPPER
dishes—he’d eaten what he’d come to think of as his white meal: a baked potato, boneless, skinless chicken breast, and steamed cauliflower—when Ruth called for a long talk, something she hadn’t initiated in weeks. Apparently there had been some disaster with an audition, though he was a little shaky on the details; and for the first time he detected a pure note of doubt. Mostly he just let her talk. “Of course I understand that she’s not going to book everything, I mean, my God, the competition’s just overwhelming and there are so many
kids
,” she was saying. “But the thing is, you can only hear
no
so many times.”

“I know that, Ruthie. I’ve been saying that.”

“Well, I must not have been ready to listen, then. I keep trying to tell myself she’s serving an apprenticeship, just like if she were becoming a carpenter or a welder or something, but the difference is, normal apprentices get to
work
, don’t they, even if it’s at entry-level stuff. I mean, they’d at least get to solder a piece of metal to another piece of metal, or hammer two boards together, you know?”

Hugh smiled and nodded. He suspected it was all a little more complicated than that, but it was best never to stop Ruth in the middle of one of her analogies.

“Don’t you
see
?” she was saying, as though he’d been arguing a point instead of quietly clipping his fingernails over the kitchen sink. “It’s an impossible system, just impossible,” she said. “And she told me she thought she’d let me down.
Me.
And I found that chilling, I really did.”

“I can see why,” Hugh said.

“And these people they audition for, none of them must have children of their own or they couldn’t possibly treat the kids the way they do. Texting someone in the middle of her audition, I mean, really, it’s just too much.”

“Texting?”

“Bethy said one of the people she auditioned for was texting on her cell phone.”

“Oh.”

“That can’t possibly have been necessary.”

“I’d think not,” Hugh said mildly.

“Well, I just don’t know.”

“No,” said Hugh, and left it at that. He knew better than to expect the conversation to conclude with any sort of resolution. He had learned a long time ago that you couldn’t lead Ruth to a conclusion before she was ready, no matter how obvious it might be to those around her. Her earnestness, her willingness to take on life’s hard work herself instead of taking someone else’s word for it, was a quality that he found endearing. (His mother, on the other hand, who drew her scathing conclusions directly from other people’s folly, had always found it maddening. “What,” Helene liked to say, “you have to jump in the river to know you can drown?”)

“And you?” Ruth was saying.

“What?”

“How are you?”

Hugh washed the fingernail clippings down the drain. Six months ago he would never have dreamed of clipping his fingernails in the kitchen sink. It was only one of a growing list of ways he was slowly but steadily sinking into domestic torpor, but what was the point of bringing it up? She was agitated enough. So he just said, “My numbers have been good. Manny’s pleased.”

“Oh, honey. Does the testing still hurt? I can’t imagine sticking my fingertips all day. Especially with the work you do.”

“I’m fine,” he said.

“I miss you,” she said abruptly, and he could tell she meant it.

“I know, honey; I miss you, too. Is there anything I can do? Should I talk to Bethy?”

“I just dropped her off at Mimi’s for a couple of hours. She and Allison have made up. At least that’s one good thing.”

“Well, sure,” he said. “I like the girl.”

After they’d said good night, Hugh closely examined the crease in his slacks. Were they too far gone to wear again tomorrow? Probably so. On the other hand, he thought if he put on a fresh shirt to tease the eye upward, he could probably get away with them for one more day.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON, FEELING LIKE AN IDIOT
, R
UTH
inched down Barham Boulevard in a bolus of traffic. Consulting her directions, she turned onto Lake Hollywood Drive and then snaked up the hill. The higher she drove, the more beautiful the houses: mullioned windows and window boxes planted with ivy and lavender, wrought iron detailing, cobbled driveways, and the unmistakable smell of money. Ruth sighed. The psychic had told her that her house was behind a wooden fence.

Ruth found the fence and snugged the car into the curb between a snappy Mercedes coupe and a Nissan Sentra with metal fatigue, which probably belonged to the hired help. She locked the car door, clearing her throat and rearranging Allison’s beautiful Gucci scarf around her throat. She pushed open a warped door in the fence, half expecting an alarm system to go off, though it didn’t; inside, there was a deeply shaded little courtyard paved in mossy bricks and haphazardly furnished with weathered wooden Adirondack chairs and a table made from an overturned industrial cable spool. Beyond was a screen door, and beyond that was a wooden door, which Ruth opened hesitantly. Nowhere was there a sign indicating that an office lay within. But when she pushed open the door a woman’s voice, lightly accented, called out, “Ruth? Come on in and close the door hard, really slam it. It sticks. I’ll be ready in a minute.” Ruth slammed the door, which didn’t quite close. She pulled the last inch to and the door gave in with a splintery sigh.

Ruth expected to find a tacky beaded curtain or smells of burning sage or incense, but in actuality the room was cheerfully neutral: blond Scandinavian furniture, wheat-colored upholstery, bright orange walls, glossy white chair rail and mopboards, wood blinds at the windows. Some kind of noise was playing: ocean waves and seabirds. Ruth had expected the place to be ridiculous, but it wasn’t. It was straightforward and reassuring and oddly, even clinically, professional. Ruth couldn’t tell if this was the waiting room or—what would it be called?—the séance room itself. She sat on the edge of a stiff loveseat.

“Whew.” A tall woman came in rubbing her wet hair with a towel. She looked like a Pilates instructor—blond, fit, mid-forties, laugh lines. She reached into a small refrigerator in a corner of the room and pulled out a container and a plastic spoon. “I’m sorry—my yoga class ran late, and then there was the traffic, always the traffic.” She raised the container in her hand like a toast. “Yogurt,” she said. “Would you like some? No? I can’t seem to get enough of it. What do you think that means?”

The woman was a psychic; shouldn’t she know? While Ruth tried to come up with something insightful, the woman sat in a chair, pulled off the container’s foil top, and sank in a spoon. Ruth’s stomach growled. She was dieting again, and it wasn’t going well. There was every possibility that she’d leave here and go straight to Porto’s for something big and fat-laden, a brownie or a wedge of red velvet cake.

The woman had evidently said something Ruth had missed, because she seemed to be waiting for an answer.

“I said I’m glad you’re here,” she said, clamping her spoon between her teeth and reaching across to shake Ruth’s hand. “I’m Elva. Elva Morganstern.”