4
The sushi restaurant where Maddy went to meet Bridget in Hollywood turned out to be at a strip mall, two doors down from a Domino’s Pizza. When Maddy pulled up, she was certain she had the wrong address—it was so grungy-looking, she couldn’t imagine Bridget would eat there. But then she saw her waving from a back table. Sitting next to her was Steven Weller. Bridget hadn’t mentioned that he was coming.
Maddy had already gone to Bridget’s office in Beverly Hills and been impressed by the small staff, just one assistant and a constantly ringing phone. Though she was planning to meet Zack in New York as a courtesy, she was leaning toward signing with Bridget as her manager and with Nancy Watson-Eckstein at OTA as her agent. She had not expected to see Bridget again before she flew home to Brooklyn and had been surprised by the lunch invitation.
Maddy and Dan had been crashing at the Laurel Canyon home of a film-school buddy of his, driving to meetings with executives and prospective reps. (Kira had opted not to come to L.A. just yet, which was a relief to Maddy, who needed a break from the awkwardness.)
Standing over the restaurant table, she shook Bridget and Weller’s hands, immediately feeling overformal. Weller looked her up and down, making her self-conscious. He was at a point in his career where he could leer openly and women didn’t get offended. It was the license of having been voted the Sexiest Man Alive. Twice.
“This place looks like nothing on the outside,” Bridget said as they sat, “but it’s the best sushi in L.A. I came here years before it got written up. Yuki takes very good care of me.” She gestured to a man behind the sushi bar who was wearing a folded bandana around his head and working intently.
Maddy suspected the sushi would be phenomenal, but the place was such a dump that she wondered if Bridget brought people here to show them she didn’t need to impress them. Only someone at her level could lunch in a place like this.
“Congratulations on your Jury Prize,” Weller said, tossing back a shot of sake.
“I was totally taken aback,” Maddy said.
“Were you really?”
“Of course. Our acquisition was ultimately pretty small potatoes, even though it’s still completely amazing, and there were so many buzzy performances at the festival. I just—I didn’t think anyone would notice my work.”
“They always notice what’s exceptional,” Weller said.
There were no menus. Bridget told the waitress to bring whatever Yuki wanted, and soon there was a spread of sashimi, sushi, and grilled octopus tentacles, which sounded disgusting but turned out to be delicious. It was the best sushi Maddy had ever tasted. Midway through the lunch, Bridget took a sip of sparkling water and said, “The reason I wanted to see you again is this. In a few weeks, Steven and I will be going to the Berlin Film Festival with The Widower. Walter Juhasz is going to be there. Steven is doing his next film and coproducing with me. Walter is interested in you for the female lead, and we’d like you to come with us, so you can meet him.”
Maddy couldn’t believe it. Juhasz was a famous Hungarian director who had been big in the 1970s in the States but now shot entirely in Europe. He was said to be reclusive and agoraphobic. He lived in London, and all of his films had a strange, dislocated feeling, theoretically set in America but totally un-American. His actress wife had left him in the late 1970s for a famous music producer, and Juhasz had a crack-up and flew to London, never to return to the States.
“How does Walter Juhasz even know who I am?”
“We sent him a DVD of I Used to Know Her,” Weller said. “He was bowled over by your performance.”
“The film is called Husbandry,” Bridget said.
So this was the movie that Lael and Taylor had talked about at Bridget’s dinner. She remembered Lael saying that they’d been casting for a year. Was it possible? How could Bridget, Weller, and Juhasz think she was at the same professional level as Lael?
“It’s about a woman, her husband, and his troubled younger brother,” Bridget went on. “Steven will be playing the husband. The brother will be played by Billy Peck.” Peck was a notorious English bad boy who often got into bar brawls. “The lead role, Ellie, is unlike anything I’ve seen for a woman. She’s complicated and alive. Every major actress in Hollywood has read for her, but none was right.”
“I’d love to read the script,” Maddy said. “Absolutely.” She could be face-to-face with Walter Juhasz in less than a month. Every time she felt her life could not grow stranger, something happened to make her think she had been wrong.
“I’ll try to get it to you before Berlin,” Bridget said, “but he’s doing a polish, so you may have to wait to read it until the festival.”
“It will be a useful trip,” Weller chimed in. “All the European companies will be there, and you can talk up I Used to Know Her. It’s an unusual city. The art scene is fantastic, and the youth culture. We really hope you’ll consider it.”
“Of course I’ll consider it,” Maddy said. “It’s Walter Freaking Juhasz.”
Dan and Maddy were in his rented Prius on their way to see a friend’s indie feature at the ArcLight. “I definitely think you should go,” he was saying.
“Obviously, you don’t,” Maddy responded. “What’s going on?”
Dan kept his eyes on the road, unsure whether to tell her what he really thought: that there might be something more to the offer. The girlfriend, Cady, was kaput, and a guy like Weller couldn’t stay single for long. He needed new arm candy, an attractive female for all the Berlin premieres. Maddy fit the bilclass="underline" pretty, independent, young, and most important, buzz-worthy. Dan’s theory was that Weller wanted her to act like they were together but was smart enough to realize Maddy would say no if he asked her outright. So he and Bridget had come up with an “audition.” Walter Juhasz went five years between movies these days; he was not known for being prolific.
“It’s just . . . What if Steven’s looking for a date?” he said. “For the festival.”
“You think they’re inviting me as some kind of . . . whore?” He glanced at her quickly in the passenger seat. She was pouting.
“Not a whore, no. A date, for appearances. Think about it. What are the two things Weller lacks? Heterosexual legitimacy and intellectual credibility. You bring him both.”
“Jesus. You think Steven Weller needs me? I don’t even have a career yet. I’ve won one award.”
“He knows you’re going to pop. I just don’t want you to be upset if you go to Berlin and Walter Juhasz never shows up.”
“He’ll show up, okay? I heard Lael and Taylor talking about his movie. They both auditioned.”
“Well, there you go. I figured I was reading it wrong. You know I don’t have the greatest faith in the Hollywood machine. You should go.”
She put her feet up on the dashboard, wishing Dan hadn’t said what he’d just said. If he were right, it seemed a sick proposal. To be a red-carpet escort for Steven Weller—that went against everything she was about.
Maybe Dan was only pretending to think Weller was gay to convince her they were using her and give her a reason to say no, because he was jealous. She had felt it bubbling up between them after the awards ceremony. Maybe he didn’t like the idea of her landing a Walter Juhasz film on the tails of I Used to Know Her, and despite all his lip service over the years about wanting her to succeed, he wanted her to succeed only at the same pace as he did. If that was true, it meant their relationship had been built on nothing. She felt a wave of carsickness and cracked the window. It vibrated loudly on the freeway. No one opened the windows in L.A.