I'm Glad About You(42)

“Does anyone have any, in their trailer or anything?” asked the skinny blonde, drunk herself but ever hopeful.

“No no no, she has to tell the rest right now, right now. Get it off your chest,” Bradley insisted.

“I have to save up some secrets,” Alison informed him.

“Not from me,” Bradley grinned. There was no question why he was a TV star. He had thick dirty blonde hair and crazy brown eyes, actual gold flecks in them, a crooked smile. The smallest of scars ran along the right side of his jaw, the souvenir of a bike accident when he was seven. “I’m your destiny, baby,” he said. Rob had already dropped that destiny line on Tara about twenty times. Alison thought it sounded idiotic but the writers seemed to love it. Destiny. Tara and Rob were each other’s destiny.

Whatever that meant, Bradley did stick around after everyone split that night, and he and Alison of course ended up having sex in her trailer. They were quiet, more or less, but it was a tiny three-banger which rocked mightily, so there was no question that the security guards and the teamsters and the craft service people all knew what was going on in there. Certainly the next day there were enough crew members who were being overtly discreet, in the way that people who know secrets are. And then somebody phoned in a tip to Page Six about the two of them, which ran next to a picture of them innocently talking on a street corner. Alison felt completely shamed, just as she had when she came home from her ill-fated tryst with that feckless Irish shithead only to find Kyle waiting for her on her doorstep.

Well, that was then. Her showmance with Bradley fizzled as soon as it started—it was actually more of a one-night stand than a showmance, the rumor mill notwithstanding. And without any further ado Alison fell into the spectacular life that luck had handed her. Being a pretty girl on network television was more work than she had imagined, but it was more fun too. She was invited to gallery openings and screenings and parties at private clubs, where her picture was snapped relentlessly. She was interviewed by morning talk hosts and late-night comedians. She was given free clothes and jewelry from designers who wanted their wares seen draping her body. She was pursued by total strangers, both men and women.

The anonymity of it all was startling. She was constantly surrounded by people, but none of them seemed to want to talk about anything other than parties and dresses and sex. For a while she wondered if these people had forgotten that there was a real life, aside from what was printed in the cheap glossy magazines which more or less passed as female pornography these days. Certainly when Alison tried to make fun of those things, no one reacted very well, and when she heard one of the writers murmuring behind a door that Alison was “really smart,” she understood that brains were not necessarily a good thing around here. Not that you weren’t allowed to be smart—there were plenty of people, especially the crew guys, who were shrewd enough, God knows. But more and more she realized that people judged her as they saw her—a pretty girl, who looked good in clothes, who photographed well, and who knew how to lift her leg for men and sparkle with a saucy wit for the women who wanted those men put in their place. What was that word? Manqué. She was a phony person, a manqué. Lying on her bed, alone in her apartment, the word popped into her head and made her laugh, and she thought briefly about that idiot reporter who thought she didn’t understand the word “demimonde.”

The lights shifted; the scene was about to start. Alison took a breath. Bradley was suddenly at her side, leaning over her, intent.

“Are you following me, Tara?”

“I was here first, Rob, which kind of suggests that you’re following me.”

“This was supposed to be a private party. It’s Sheila’s birthday. And you weren’t invited.”

“I didn’t have to be invited because this is a public place, you moron.” A flash of humor passed through Bradley’s eyes. That “moron” was not in the script.

“What happened to Paris?”

“It’s still there, last I checked. Hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“You were supposed to be on that plane.”

“I postponed.”

“Why?”

“You know what, Rob? You don’t get to ask. You’re here with Sheila on her birthday and you and I are done. And we’ve been done for long enough that I don’t have to tell you anything about anything ever again.” This was another new line; she was supposed to say something inane about questions and the past, which honestly made no sense at all. His cue was completely screwed up, but he loved it when she messed with the words; Bradley actually was so bored with acting that he loved being thrown off balance. She decided not to wait to see what he improvised in response and just started moving. As she took a step away from him he grabbed her wrist and yanked her back. She staggered with a sudden impetuous anger, tried to pull away. The physical contact was intoxicating.

“Get your hands off me,” she warned him.

He didn’t comply. “This isn’t done,” he informed her, simply and inexorably going back to the script.

“It is,” she said. But her resolve was weakening as quickly as it had built. Still gripping her arm, Bradley took a step inward, which surprised her and threatened to push her off balance, but she held her ground and they ended up in an intimate close-up instead. At moments like this her height was a real advantage; no other leading lady could go toe to toe with Bradley, who hovered, in stocking feet, above six foot two. But her five foot ten plus heels made a shaky clinch the easiest thing in the world to shoot. She wobbled but Bradley’s left arm caught and held her around the waist. The Steadicam operator crept in, danced around them, capturing the moment of indecision.