The House Guest by Mark Edwards(5)

‘Why aren’t you in rehearsals?’ I asked.

‘I’m not needed today. Sally keeps reworking the script and my part has shrunk from tiny to infinitesimal.’

‘Oh dear.’

She shrugged. ‘That’s showbiz.’

‘But you’re still Ruth’s understudy, right?’

‘Yeah. Again. But unless she gets struck down by a mystery virus . . .’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, I’ve gotta run. I need to buy a birthday present for my sister. She’s sent me a wish list full of words like Tiffany’s and Saks. But why don’t I give you my number? We could go for a drink or something.’

‘That would be . . .’ I wasn’t sure how Ruth would feel about me going for a drink with Cara. But I took the phone she offered me and tapped my number into it.

‘I’ll call you,’ she said, and she disappeared into the store, turning at the last moment to give me a little wave.

By the time I reached Central Park I was coated in sweat, but it was a little cooler and quieter beneath the trees, away from the sunbathers and children clutching helium balloons. I sat on a bench and flicked through my script. Sam hadn’t even made any notes on it. I doubted he’d looked at it.

I got up and put it in a bin, laughing at myself even as I did it. I mean, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have a copy saved on my laptop. As I sat back down I tried to ignore the whisper of panic, the voice that told me I was wasting my time, that I wasn’t good enough. I had been writing for years, since I was at college, and apart from a couple of amateur plays put on with friends, I had got nowhere. And there were no signs that I was going anywhere, either. I didn’t even enjoy the act of writing anymore. Maybe it was time—

I stood up. This was ridiculous. I was in New York, the greatest city in the world. It was a beautiful day. I was young. Sam Mendoza was a dickhead who wouldn’t recognise talent if it sank its teeth into his behind. And I had Ruth. I still had Ruth.

As five o’clock approached, I headed towards Tavern on the Green, where she and I had arranged to meet. There were a lot of people around: joggers, dog-walkers, families with kids. Walking past the lake, I got the peculiar sensation of eyes crawling over my skin, but when I turned there was no one looking at me, just a pair of young women in Lycra, running slowly in tandem. Behind them, an elderly man had a stall set up beside the path, selling paintings. He blinked at me with milky eyes and I took a closer look at his work, expecting to see portraits of tourists or etchings of local landmarks. Instead, the paintings depicted crowds fleeing down Manhattan’s avenues, pursued by screaming flocks of mutant seagulls; children weeping as their parents were led away by faceless figures in black uniforms; boiling seas and dying mermaids and scorched landscapes littered with bones and plastic Coke bottles.

‘See anything you like?’ he asked.

I hurried away.

I took a seat outside the Tavern and waited for Ruth, keen to tell her about my meeting with Sam – figuring out how I could put a comical spin on it – and the man with the frightening paintings.

Here she came, walking coolly down the path towards me. She had headphones in and a little bag over her shoulder. A plain white T-shirt and a knee-length skirt. Shoulder-length blonde hair. No different to the hundreds of other young women who were roaming Central Park right now.

But as she passed, people stopped mid-conversation. They turned their heads, men and women alike, to watch her. To stare. Why? Because there was an energy coming off her. Something invisible; something that crackled silently, shifting the molecules in the air around her. No one recognised her – her movie had been a small critical success, seen mostly by hardcore horror buffs and industry insiders – but they recognised something. A sun that shone from within her. The sense that here was someone on the cusp; someone who had been sprinkled with magic dust but hadn’t yet learned to stretch her wings. Like Marilyn Monroe in 1951, Madonna in 1982, Beyoncé right before she joined Destiny’s Child. I watched the faces of the people she passed and I knew that soon she would belong among the stars.

‘Hey,’ she said, kissing me lightly on the lips. A waiter appeared almost immediately and took her drinks order. Her beer arrived quickly and she held the icy bottle against her cheek for a moment. ‘Oh my God, I need this. What a day. I have to keep reminding myself I’m living the dream.’

‘You are.’

She told me about the rehearsal, about how Sally had made her and the lead actor, a guy named Alex, act out the same scene over and over until they’d got it ‘almost’ right.

‘It’s so hard, Adam. Sally is such a . . .’

‘Bitch?’

‘No!’ She grinned. ‘I was going to say “visionary”. A perfectionist too.’

‘She’s a tyrant. I saw the way she talked to you and the other actors on the cruise.’

‘I know she can be a little tough – but, well, it’s tough love. She’s making us into better actors. Creating better art. I feel like . . . you know, it’s often like being part of a family, being with the cast and the crew, and then at the end you all disperse and you never see half of them again, but this time, I don’t know, it feels different.’

I didn’t point out that she always said this.

‘Sally hasn’t said so but I really think she values me. And Alex is so good, it’s ridiculous. I was struggling so much to capture the agony of the scene, to truly feel it, you know? But he helped me. We did this exercise that . . .’ She stopped herself. ‘How was your meeting?’