“What happened?”
“I put her on the bus. That’s the last I saw of her.”
“Some people are saying she did it herself. How does a person set herself on fire?”
He shakes his head. “No, I don’t believe that.”
“It’s something that happens sometimes in the more religious neighborhoods. Women do it to avoid shaming their families. Either that or their family burns them and makes it look like an accident.”
“That sounds more like it.”
“I feel responsible.”
“She came to us, Hedda. She wanted people to know.”
“Still.” You shake your head. Tears roll down your cheeks.
“She was happy here. She was beautiful. Somebody got to her. She was obviously being watched.”
You cry; you let it out—everything you’ve been holding in for months. Not just about Fatima, but about the film, the uncertainty of your life—Tom.
“Look, you have to remember that it’s in their culture, it’s not something you can necessarily change.”
“I guess I can’t accept it.”
“You can’t accept it because you’re American. Because you live here. Because here you have a voice; you have rights.” He puts his hands on your shoulders, slides them down your arms. “It’s why we made the film, isn’t it?”
“I know.” You look at him, nodding, and perhaps for the first time you accept what you’ve done. “I’m glad we made it.”
On the day you’d met Fatima Kassim you remember thinking how beautiful she looked in her veil. She loved her country; she loved being a Muslim. It was in her heart, she’d told you, it was inside of her. She was devoted to Islam. She had told you that the invasion had changed her beloved country. How before, even though there were many problems, at least things had been better for women. At least a woman could go out without fear. There had been life, joy, in the streets of Baghdad. Not now.
“We just marched in there like some splashy Hollywood production thinking we could dazzle people with special effects.”
“Yeah, well, we’re way over budget at this point.”
“Yeah, and we’re losing our audience. If it were me in charge, I’d shut down the whole production and come home.”
“Why don’t you run for president? I’ll vote for you.”
“Only if you’ll be my running mate.”
You end up in bed.
“This was a mistake,” you say. “You should go.”
“I’m taking you to Bruno’s party. He’s expecting us. Get dressed.” He tosses you your clothes.
But you stay where you are. You watch him as he buttons his shirt, pulls on his trousers. You have become so fond of watching him in these moments.
“I have to ask you something,” you say. “For the record.”
He turns and looks at you.
“Did you set me up?”
“What?” Stalling.
“The film. Running into me that time?”
He hesitates, buckling his belt. “So what if I did? It was a good cause. You’re all going to benefit. You’ll see.” He turns and looks at you. “They’re talking Oscars.”
“Fatima didn’t.”
“No, she didn’t.” He sits down on the edge of the bed, strokes the hair from your face. “Look, Hedda. I wish things were different.”
You shake off his hand. “Don’t insult me.”
“You’re no different than the others.”
“What?”
“You think you’re so fierce, don’t you? So independent. You don’t need anybody, right?”
You get up, pull on your clothes. Your heart is pounding. You refuse to cry. “That’s right, Tom. I don’t need anyone. Not a fucking soul.”
The party is crowded. Everyone from the crew is there. And lots of writers. Bruno likes to hang out with writers because he likes to talk, he likes to sit around drinking and smoking and bullshitting until the wee hours—and who else would put up with that? An Antonioni disciple, Bruno is a visual genius. He was your first choice for Oath of Allegiance and you are convinced that, because of him, the film is a magnificent creation. Born in Sicily, Bruno is earthy and dark, like peasant bread. He has a way of getting people to fess up to their better qualities, even the ones who are hard pressed to find any. His face lights up when you and Tom step through the door. He is glad and perhaps a little relieved that you’ve shown up. In a tight three-way hug, you commiserate about Fatima’s death. “A terrible tragedy,” he says. “Absolutely terrible.” He shakes his head as if he, too, is trying to reckon with his guilt. “We only wanted to tell her story,” he confesses. “It is just another terrible story. We are not in short supply of those, I’m afraid. Come, have a drink. Try to enjoy yourselves.”
You drink too much, talking to all the wrong people, encouraging people you have no interest in working with to call your office for a meeting. They nod and smile like people who have swallowed some mysterious pleasure drug and are just beginning to feel the effects. Tom lingers on the periphery, talking to his wife on his phone. Apparently another emotional crisis. Briefly, you reflect on your lovemaking that afternoon, the pleasure experienced then and the regret you’re experiencing now. Go ahead, speak to your wife. Bruno comes around and puts his arm around you and the two of you disappear together, down to his office to smoke a joint. Smoking pot is not something you do, you don’t believe in doing drugs, but tonight you just might indulge. You feel like you are standing at the edge of a very tall cliff, preparing to jump. You picture your body falling through the air, your arms out, your legs spread.
“I told you you were wasting your time with him,” Bruno says, sucking a hit. “Really, Hedda, you’re too smart to be in this mess.”
You take a hit. The smoke burns your chest, you cough.
“He can’t commit to anyone,” Bruno criticizes—not that he’s any better—he’s notorious for sleeping with the actors in his films, the script girls, the makeup people. “I don’t think it’s in his DNA.”
“That’s a lousy excuse,” you say. “Can’t you come up with something more original?”
Bruno shrugs. “He’s never going to commit to you. Married men never leave their wives. I know you know this.” He shrugs again like the Italian that he is, as if you’re an impossible adolescent. “You’re a woman,” he says. “You should know better. Where are your pretty fangs?” He reaches out and touches your cheek, gently, like a brother.
The door opens, a sudden intrusion. A man you don’t know stands there, his eyes prickling with insinuation. You can’t help thinking he has the look of someone who is marginally deranged. He is taller and slimmer than Bruno, with the shadow of a beard, a not unattractive man, you think, and yet there is something disarming about his presence. He has an angry face, you decide, as he surveys the two of you with what looks like contempt—or maybe he just needs a bathroom. “Down the hall on the left,” Bruno instructs, and you assume that they are friends, that he is a guest you have never met.
Sufficiently stoned, Tom takes you home. He parks out front and walks you to the door, but does not come in. “I better go,” he says. “I have to get home.” Just that word home makes you cringe.
“I don’t get it,” you say. “This sudden devotion to her. You’re suddenly so . . . so married. You didn’t seem so devoted to her at five o’clock this afternoon.”
“I didn’t want to tell you, but I don’t see that I have much of a choice at this point.”
“Tell me what?”
“She’s pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
He watches you closely as if you are a subject in one of his documentaries, savoring your reaction. But you learned long ago to keep your feelings to yourself. It is an essential skill in a town like this and you have mastered it.
You save your tantrum for when you are inside, alone. The first thing you do is pour yourself a very large glass of vodka. It’s childish, you realize, to behave this way, but you can’t seem to help yo
urself. And you know he loves you! Why is it that you’re always the one who ends up with nothing? You’re supposed to be so smart, such a success, but your life is joyless and isolated. Your existence is almost arbitrary. When it comes right down to it you have little to show for all your hard work. Nobody cares! Not really they don’t. They’re all so involved in their own little cubicle lives. Somehow, you can’t help feeling used. If you dropped out of the world tomorrow, nobody would even care! Well—your parents would care, of course. And Harold—he and Mitchell might be a little sad. But nobody else! And certainly not Tom!
Son of a bitch!
Staggering into the kitchen you try to find something to eat. It would be nice to have some food here, but you haven’t been to the market in weeks. You rarely eat at home; you rarely enjoy a meal, period. It’s true, you are enviably thin—but so what? You are so fucking hungry. You could eat an elephant right now. No wonder you can’t think straight! And the irony is that your entire existence revolves around meals—not that you actually eat much. Breakfast meetings, ridiculously expensive lunches and dinners—with your photographic memory you have memorized all the menus, and how pathetic that you don’t even taste the food. Because of course it’s not even about the food. It’s about getting what you want, what you need, by the time dessert comes around.
Hoping you won’t throw up, you stumble into your room. Clearly, it is time to go to bed. You are too tired, too flustered, to wash your face and you fall into bed and sleep. You wake an hour or so later with the light glaring down in your face like some sort of vile interrogation. You turn it off and fall into dreams. Again, you dream of Inez, the exquisite dead wife of the magician who once owned your car. She is waiting for you, now, her gloved hand outstretched. She is your guide, to the desert inside your soul, where nothing grows.
13
In the morning, your alarm fails—you had forgotten to set it. You wake at eleven. Jumping around the house in an attempt to get dressed, your cell phone continues to ring and the sound is like an electric drill to your head, boring deeper and deeper into your hangover. Armand is calling to give you the rundown of the morning’s catastrophes, for there are always catastrophes. “What?” you say.
“I have news.”
“Hit me.”
“Charlie Rose wants to interview you. They think there’s something going on because of the film. The Muslim girl who died. They want to talk about her, how you found her, the process of making the film, et cetera. They’re going to have on a terrorist expert.”
A wave of nausea. “That’s good news,” you manage. “I have to go. Can you let Harold know before he leaves?”
“You okay? You don’t sound too good.”
“Russian jet lag. It sure as hell looked like water.”
“Poor baby. Should I cancel your lunch?”
“What lunch?”
“Mary Gage? Harold wants her for First Chair.”
“Shit. No, it’s all right. I’ll go.”
“Drive safe.”
Outside, the light is sharp, vicious. It slams a nail into your brain.
A man emerges from the darkness of the garage. At first you don’t recognize him. He is tall, wearing a dark suit. He looks like a Bible salesman, you think, although you have never met a Bible salesman, but if you had this is what he would look like. Then it hits you: He was at Bruno’s party. “Good morning, Ms. Chase.” He smiles like a cartoon hyena.
“What?” You think back to the night before—when he’d opened the door to Bruno’s office. Bruno had assumed he was looking for the bathroom. Thinking back on it now, you’re not certain that Bruno even knew this man. He could have come with somebody else; he could have been somebody’s date.
“I wonder if I could have a moment.”
“I’m late,” you say. “Whatever you’re selling—”
“I’m not selling anything, Ms. Chase. I just want to talk.”
“What about?”
“I’m Hugh Waters.”
Vaguely, the name rings a bell. You shake your head, you cough.
“I’m Hugh Waters,” he says again, as if he’s surprised you don’t remember him. “The Adjuster?”
That awful Cory Rogers script, the one Harold set fire to when you’d threatened to quit. A dull throbbing spreads inside your skull. Your tongue grows fur. This is the absolutely last thing you feel like dealing with. This . . . this person . . . this odd ball . . . this loser—it is entirely inappropriate for him to be here now, on your property—what fucking balls—it’s an invasion of privacy, that’s what it is!
“You didn’t return any of my calls.”
Yeah, that’s right; I don’t return calls to lunatics. “Look, call my office. I’ll make sure to fit you in.” Instead, you’ll notify studio security and have this creep banned from the lot.
“I read that letter you wrote. You said some horrible things about me.”
You don’t recall what you said in the letter—you had dictated something to Armand. You admit, sometimes Armand takes liberties.
“I just want to talk.”
“It’s not possible.” You bustle toward the car, but he grabs your arm, hard. It comes to you rather swiftly that no is not the answer he wants to hear.
“Look, I’ve come all this way.”
That’s when you feel the gun in your back. This is it, you think. You have known all along that this would eventually happen, a kind of psychic premonition. They say if you think about something enough you are actually channeling the universe to make it happen. One of the reasons that you didn’t want to make a film like his in the first place.
“We’ll go inside and have our meeting. And then I’ll go.”
You nod to let him know that you’re okay with this even though you are most definitely not okay, and you don’t want this creep, this psychopath in your house. But there’s a gun in the small of your back. Somehow he gets you up the stairs of your porch. Your body begins to respond, your adrenaline fires up, but not exactly in the way you would like. Instead of becoming stronger, you feel enervated, weak. Breathless. You feel like you’re going to be sick. Maybe if you throw up he’ll become disgusted and leave you alone. If only you could bring up that vodka, the muddy coffee you drank earlier.
“Give me your keys.”
“This is ridiculous,” you say, groping around in your bag for your keys. “This isn’t happening.” But there’s that gun again. You try to stall, hoping to encounter the keypad of your BlackBerry—you will dial 911 and they will send the cops and take this asshole away. But he grabs your bag and shakes out the keys. Your thirty-dollar lipstick slips through the wooden slats and disappears in the dirt. He unlocks the door and yanks you inside. He pushes you, jams the gun into your back. “Pour us some coffee.”
He stands behind you, too close. You can smell him; a strong smell like tar or dead skunk. Trembling, you take down two cups. Your movements are slow, methodical. You worry you may drop the cups. It is as if you are on some slow-motion drug. It’s strange being here, in your own house, and feeling so threatened. He’s the one in control, not you.
He takes your hand and maneuvers it onto the coffeepot, just in case you are thinking of throwing it at him, which, you admit, occurred to you a second ago. Outside, your neighbor is having an argument with his brother. If only you could get their attention, but they turn and move around toward the front of the house. Their mother is inside, an old woman who speaks no English. A chainsaw rattles the air.
“Bring the coffee,” he says, flapping the pistol in the air; you pray it doesn’t go off because it is pointing right at you. The coffee spills over the top of the cups, burning your fingers, but you set them down, making small puddles on the surface of the table. You wonder what it will be like being dead.
“Sit.” Using the gun, he points to the chair.
You sit, a force of gravity draining into your feet. “Look,” you attempt to ingratiate him. “I’m sorry about what happened, all right? It’s not l
ike it’s a big deal, it happens all the time. Rogers and I had different ideas. We had different ideas about things. Anyway, he’s dead.”
“And you’re in charge.”
“That’s right.”
“We had a deal,” he says.
You realize you are going to have to attempt to mollify him in some way. You are going to have to negotiate very carefully in order to get him to see things your way. You talk to him in your baby the actor voice, a tone you use with difficult actors who don’t always get what they want. You speak as if there is a sleeping child in the room.
Gently, you break the news to him about his script. The ending is the problem, you tell him, the scenes at the airport. “I had a hard time believing that nobody heard her.”
“She was in the trunk.”
“Screaming!”
“Your point?”
You explain how the device of the trunk is overused.
Everyone has one, he argues. Then smiles and says how ironic it is. The smile upsets you immeasurably. The phone rings. You make a move to answer it, but he raises his gun.
Your machine picks up. The two of you sit there, listening to Armand’s message.
You consider running to the door. It’s a risk; he could shoot you. He could kill you and vanish. Nobody would ever know.
Nobody would know.
He gets up and takes the phone off the hook. You admit that the sound is terrifying. Somewhat feebly, you press on. “You don’t understand my boss. He gets insulted if I’m even a second late. He takes it personally.” Now your cell phone begins to vibrate inside your pocketbook. “Look, I really need to get to work.”
“You’re not going to work today.”
“Look,” you say, speaking very slowly, deliberately, as if he is a foreigner who does not speak your language. “You need to go. We’ve had our meeting. There’s nothing more to say. You said you would go.”