“And what do you know, anyway?” he asked later, when they were having drinks at the outdoor tiki bar in the hotel. “It’s only your second movie.”
“I’m a fast learner,” she said. “How about you?”
He ordered two shots of tequila, then two more. There was a pool table in the back of the bar, and they used every excuse to accidentally touch each other. The first kiss happened outside the bathroom, located in a little hut. When she came out, he was waiting for her. “I was thinking about what you said, about how Hollywood corrupts.”
She leaned back against the rough wood of the hut and laughed. “You don’t have to take everything I say at face value. Sometimes I say things just to hear how they sound. Any crime in that?”
“No,” he said, putting his hand on the wall above her shoulder. “But it means I’m never going to know when you’re serious.” Her head was tilted back to look at him, although he wasn’t so much taller than she was—maybe six inches. But then his arm was around her back, and they were kissing, and his mouth was so soft. They were both startled and broke away, then went back to the bar and had another tequila shot, but the line had been crossed, and soon they were kissing at the bar and putting their hands on each other’s faces and backs until the bartender said, “Get a room.”
She laughed. “Oh, we have one.”
Back in her room, they engaged in the long, delicious process of getting to know each other’s bodies. When they took off their shirts and pressed together, the sensation of skin on skin was a revelation. They lay together for a while, like high school kids who have all the time in the world and don’t need to go too far too fast; then they took off their pants and pantomimed sex—his penis touching her vagina through their undergarments. All through the night, they touched and kissed, dozing off and waking to the joy of finding the other in the bed, and then the kissing started again, and finally, in the early morning when it was right, he entered her. There was nothing like that first push, and it so overwhelmed them that he stopped, just let his penis be inside her, while they absorbed the miracle of two pieces that fit perfectly together.
She had a seven A.M. call, but at ten A.M., during a break in shooting, he was in her trailer and they were doing it on the small bed in the back with the polyester sheets. They did it three more times that day, and during dinner with the crew, she sat with her leg over his, and he kept putting his hand under her shirt to touch her waist. By then the whole crew knew, but set romances were a given in the intimacy and stress of getting a movie made. Though they usually ended when the movie wrapped, Philip came to L.A. and moved into her bungalow. They played house like any other young couple discovering the wonders of companionship, when the mundane was new and even a trip to the supermarket could be an adventure. Their anonymous bliss lasted only a short while, however, because then the movie came out, and it was huge.
Their relationship was suddenly public. They rented a bigger house with a gate in the Hollywood Hills, but they couldn’t keep the outside world from creeping in, and that started the trouble.
Their first fight was over an article in a magazine that featured her on the cover. In the piece, she was quoted as saying, “I can’t take making movies too seriously. In the end, it’s not that different from what little girls do when they’re playing dress-up.” She came home from a meeting one afternoon and found the magazine on the coffee table and Philip in a foul mood over her quote. “Is that what you think about my work?” he said.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“That’s right,” he said, “because everything is about you. Did you ever consider the fact that it’s my movie you were talking about?”
“Don’t take yourself so seriously. It’s not attractive.” But she had, it seemed, irrevocably bruised his ego. They continued on for a little longer, then he moved back to New York. A miserable month passed before he called her. “I’ve been thinking. It’s not us. It’s Hollywood. Why don’t you come to New York?”
She’d been twenty-four then, willing to take on any adventure. But that was over twenty years ago, she thought now, staring at her reflection in the makeup mirror. In the harsh light of the bare bulbs, there was no denying that she no longer looked like that girl. Her face had matured; it was more angular and hollow, and no one would mistake her for an ingenue. But she knew a lot more about what she wanted from life and what no longer mattered.
But did Philip know? Leaning in to the mirror to check her makeup, she wondered what he’d thought when she’d run into him in the elevator. Did he see her as middle-aged? Did he still find her attractive?
The last time she’d seen him had been ten years ago. She’d been in New York doing publicity for a movie when she ran into Philip in the lobby of One Fifth. They hadn’t talked in over a year, but they immediately fell into their old habits, and when she’d finished her last interview, they’d met for dinner at Da Silvano. At eleven o’clock there was a terrific thunderstorm, trapping everyone inside, and the waiters cleared away the tables and turned up the music, and everyone danced. “I love you,” Philip said. “You’re my best friend.”
“You’re my best friend, too.”
“We understand each other. We’ll always be friends.”
They went back to her apartment. She had an antique four-poster bed she’d had shipped from England; that year she’d spent two months in London doing a play and become enamored with the idea of English country houses. Philip was propped up on his arms above her, his hair falling into her face. They made love hard and seriously, astounded by how good it still was, which once again brought up the issue of being together. He asked about her schedule. She was flying to Europe and was supposed to go directly back to L.A. but said she’d make
a detour and spend at least a few days in New York. Then she went to Europe and got stuck there for an extra two weeks and had to go directly back to L.A. Then she started a movie that was shooting in Vancouver and India. Six months passed, and she heard from someone that Philip was getting married. She got on a plane and flew to New York to confront him.
“You can’t get married,” she said.
“Why not?”
“What about us?”
“There is no us.”
“Only because you don’t want there to be.”
“Whether I want it or not is irrelevant. It doesn’t exist.”
“Who is she?” Schiffer demanded. “What does she do?”
Her name was Susan, and she taught at a private school in Manhattan. When Schiffer insisted, he showed her a photograph. She was twenty-six, pretty, and utterly bland. “After all the women you’ve been with, why her?” she asked.
“I’m in love with her. She’s nice,” Philip said.
Schiffer raged and then begged. “What does she have that I don’t have?”