Fade To Black Page 4

  “You’re not eating.” Orson looked from the spread to Sloane.

  No, she wasn’t. And not for lack of wanting. She longed to shove handfuls of onion rings into her mouth. She wanted to inhale the burger, crappy as she knew it would be. Jolie suggested that they start their feast with the fruit cocktails first. It wasn’t a novelty for Connor since his mom — former movie star Alexis Belle — brought them to Pirate Pizza all the time. He loved fruit cocktail and was thrilled to follow Jolie’s lead, despite being the elder between them. At first, Sloane played off like she was being polite, waiting for the children to finish their appetizers before they all dug into the banquet together. Now she was abstaining for no apparent reason.

  “I’m not hungry.” That wasn’t technically a lie. Sloane wanted to eat, but that didn’t mean she was hungry.

  Orson eyed the spread with an actor’s mock disbelief. “Really?”

  He took a fry, popped it into his mouth, offered her a performative smile, then followed that first fry with a proper handful, obnoxiously chewing while their children both laughed.

  She wanted to join him. Few things would soothe her fraying nerves better than fast food. Specifically fries and ice cream — both on the table and waiting for her gluttonous attention. She wasn’t delusional. Years of therapy had left Sloane with plenty of insight about how her own bullshit factory operated. But sometimes she needed the thing that got her from here to there, and fast food was better than a bottle of wine. Or pills.

  Orson started in on one of the burgers.

  Sloane picked up the other one, unwrapping the trash as her heart began to beat faster.

  “Dominic and Melinda never let me eat like this.” Orson shook his head, laughing, already halfway through his burger and reaching for an onion ring.

  “Are you going to get in trouble?” Sloane asked.

  Orson pulled a face.

  She assumed he meant Are you kidding me? and raised her eyebrows.

  He put the burger down and wiped his mouth. It was a two-napkin job. “It’s not like it used to be for me with them.”

  “You mean now that everyone thinks you’ll be the first actor to break the thirty-million mark?”

  “The fact that there’s a conversation around it, sure. But that’s not going to happen. I’m not worth thirty-million. It’s a waste of money, and I can’t see me ever accepting it.”

  “What?” Sloane was shocked. The kids were oblivious, arguing over who would win in a battle between Batman and Wonder Woman, with each child fighting for the opposite gender. “Why wouldn’t you take it?”

  “Because the kind of project that would pay me that kind of money would be the kind of project I wouldn’t want to make.”

  “You mean something with a budget massive enough to cover a payday that big?”

  “Exactly,” Orson said. “A movie like that is a product.”

  “Aren’t all movies?”

  “Yes. Of course. But a movie like that is mostly a product.” He shrugged. “What’s the difference between a million and thirty-million?”

  The burger stopped halfway to her mouth. “The second one is thirty times more than the first. Exactly.”

  “I already have more money than I can ever spend. More money than Connor or his great grandchildren can spend, even given some very long lives. I’ve made my string of romcoms and super hero epics. I’m absurdly proud of the work I’ve done, but now I can afford to make what I want to for the rest of my life.”

  “Aren’t you a little young to pull a Bill Murray?”

  Orson smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think you’re ever too young to pull a Bill Murray.”

  “Maybe not.” She smiled back, wondering if he was stuffing his face just to make her feel better.

  “I know you think I agreed to do West Hollywood Sunset as a favor to Dominic and Melinda, but that’s not true.”

  “It’s not?” That’s exactly what she had thought.

  “They can think it …” Another shrug. “But I would have done this for free.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I love the script, I love the story, and I loved you in—“

  “Don’t say it.”

  “A Prayer for Alice Tremble.”

  “Oh.” Sloane didn’t know what else to say.

  “You expected me to say Remaking Christmas?” Orson asked.

  “Everyone says Remaking Christmas.” She felt her cheeks flushing, a direct result of her yearning to disappear. Sloane swallowed and looked over at Jolie and Connor, now discussing the hierarchy of ice cream flavors. “No one ever says A Prayer for Alice Tremble.”

  “Sounds like the theme of that movie.” He smiled.

  She smiled back, hard.

  Sloane was the director. This was a perfectly appropriate conversation to have with one of her actors. They were even with their children.

  But … they were even with their children.

  “That was my favorite film I’ve ever worked on,” Sloane admitted.

  “I can tell.”

  Her phone rang. Glad for the distraction, she pulled it out, looked at the screen, made a face and scanned the message before returning the phone to her pocket.

  “Bad news?” Orson asked.

  “Not at all.” She shook her head. “Just something I don’t want to do.”

  “Something the Shellys have assured you will be a great move for your career?”

  She gave him a knowing smile. It was a salve to feel so understood. “Something like that.”

  “You’ve known them a lot longer than I have.” He shrugged. “I imagine you’ve seen some stuff.”

  Sloane nodded, glancing again at the children, too enraptured by magical anecdotes to invest in what the adults were saying.

  “Anything you want to talk about?” Orson asked.

  She looked back at him, considering. It was a good offer — an understanding ear on a day when she needed it most. But wanting the conversation made her feel week.

  Sloane retreated, wishing she could sink into her booth.

  Orson wasn’t prying. He seemed genuinely happy to listen, or not, whatever was best for her.

  “You know the Treadwells?” she asked.

  “Sure. John and Vicky do a lot of work with the Shellys. They’re ghosting your memoir, right?”

  “Oh, that’s right. Of course you would know.” Sloane felt herself flush again. “Melinda showed me the final cut of Close to Home. It’s amazing.”

  “That’s what they’re best at.” Orson shook his head in apparent adoration. “They’re always pairing artists with material that’s perfect for them. Selena Nash is an excellent example. She knocked it out of the park and had the Shellys’ full support to make it happen. I’m sure John and Vicky will get the best out of you and deliver a book you’ll be proud of.”

  “Even if I didn’t write it,” Sloane said, still hating the idea. She changed the subject, sort of. “That was Vicky, messaging me with a list of topics they’d like to cover.”

  “The satanic panic from the 80s?” Orson looked at her seriously.

  “No.” She laughed. “I wish.”

  “Anything’s better than the bullshit you want to bury, right?” Another knowing smile.

  Orson was gorgeous. And that was a perfectly appropriate thought, seeing as she was his director.

  She looked down at what remained of their spread and took inventory of their collective gluttony. It was hard to say who had eaten what. The shoveling had been a constant once she finally acquiesced and began stuffing her face along with everyone else.

  Sloane grabbed another handful of fries. “It’s just a lot of talking about myself, and I don’t want to hear anything I have to say.”

  “I doubt that.” Orson shook his head and went for the last of the onion rings. “You’re just sick of people only pretending to listen. You won’t get that from John and Vicky. They’re good people.”

  “Was The Secrets We Keep really based o
n them?”

  He nodded. “Far as I know, yeah. True story, more or less.”

  “Wow.” She shook her head. “That’s nuts.”

  Orson shrugged, maybe he was just more used to it. “Same for Close to Home. I figure it’s only a matter of time before they make a biopic about me. It doesn’t matter that I’m barely marching toward forty. I’m sure they’ll want to make a movie about the dark side of my rise to stardom. Can’t you see it? Red Carpet Black.”

  She could. That was exactly the kind of thing the Shellys would do.

  He changed the subject. Sort of. “It was hard enough in my twenties. I can’t imagine what it was like for you as a kid.”

  “Probably exactly like you can imagine.” Sloane glanced at Jolie, then felt embarrassed by her involuntary reaction, as if she had broadcast her worst fears in neon to Orson.

  “It’s a crazy business.”

  “Marylin Monroe nailed it,” Sloane said.

  “How’s that?”

  “You know the quote?” Maybe he didn’t. “‘Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.”

  “Ouch.” Orson swallowed. “But also, yeah.”

  Now they even had their silence in common.

  She grabbed one of the few remaining fries, now cold and nowhere close to good. But it turned out, she didn’t order too much.

  “I have the nanny deal with some of Connor’s friends’ moms. They just …”

  “Won’t stop throwing themselves at you?”

  “Something like that,” Orson said.

  “Everyone is always in love with him!” Connor paused his conversation with Jolie to interject.

  Then Jolie said, “Every time we go to Provisions, someone asks my mom if she’s the little girl from Remaking Christmas all grown up, no matter how she wears her hair.”

  Sloane drowned in another wave of embarrassment.

  Connor and Jolie returned to their rat-a-tat conversation.

  Orson nodded at Connor and mouthed his next words to Sloane more than actually saying them. She strained to hear. “I worry about his skewed reality.”

  She took a second to decode what he’d said, then replied too loudly. “I know exactly what you mean. I can’t stop worrying about it.” Then she leaned across the table and spoke in a much softer voice. “Jolie just started talking about wanting to be an actress, and I can’t stand the idea of letting her go through anything close to what I did. But I also don’t want to …”

  “I know.” Orson nodded. “Same for me.”

  Sloane couldn’t remember another conversation where there had been so much both said and unsaid. In their moment of relative silence — the children were still yapping away, and the sounds of pre-adolescence at its loudest caromed against the Pirate Pizza walls — she decided to ask something that had been on her mind ever since Orson Beck had agreed to a bit part in her stupid little movie.

  Your art of catharsis, Dominic redirected in her memory and mind.

  “Why did you say yes to West Hollywood Sunset, if it wasn’t a favor?”

  “I already told you. I loved the script and the story. It was something I wanted to be a part of as soon as—”

  “I get scaling down from tentpole projects, but you’re still a lead, and Casper is a supporting role. Why would you take that?”

  “You know what my favorite Tom Cruise performance is?” Orson asked.

  “You’re going to say Magnolia.”

  “Because it’s his best?”

  “No. Because it’s his smallest, and therefore the one that will prove your point right now.”

  Orson shook his head. “That would be Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. But Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia feels like a real person. That’s how I felt about Casper. Honestly, when I saw the offer, I wondered what you would see in a ‘movie star’ like me.”

  “Are you kidding?” Sloane laughed. “I’ve been in love with your work ever since that interview you did with Hollywood Hunted.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Don’t wave it away, Orson. That was one hell of a show of honesty and integrity.”

  And it was. That right there made Sloane wonder whether she wanted Orson for his acting ability, marquee status, or ability to light her up in numerous ways. He was a man’s man who followed his passion and erred on the side of art.

  The perfect actor for Casper — Sloane couldn’t allow herself to see Orson as anything more than that. It didn’t matter that he was calm and down to Earth and grounded in a way that a world-famous actor who might someday command thirty-million a film and was the favorite to front the rebooted Fatal Attraction.

  Orson still hadn’t responded.

  Again, she looked at the remains of their gluttony to give herself an excuse for breaking their gaze. The food was embarrassingly all gone and the natives were now getting restless.

  He finally spoke. “This is going to be my A Prayer for Alice Tremble.”

  “You mean a box office footnote that Roger Ebert called, ‘A Hallmark card with none of the subtlety.’?”

  “I mean, ‘my favorite movie making experience.’”

  “That’s a lot to live up to,” Sloane said.

  “You can do it.” Orson grinned then slapped his hands on the table and addressed the children. “Let’s eat these ice creams, play some skee-ball, then get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a great day.”

  Orson might be right, if Sloane could find a way to escape her appointment with—

  Chapter Six

  Sloane

  John and Vicky were perfectly kind, but Sloane still wanted to be anywhere else in the world other than in her trailer with the Treadwells for their interrogation.

  “So, you were eleven years old when your innocence was stolen from you?”

  Instead of answering Vicky’s question, Sloane looked down at her phone then back up at them. “Do you mind I if take this?”

  John and Vicky nodded in tandem.

  Sloane pretended to answer the call, feeling like an idiot, and kind of an asshole. It hadn’t even been ringing. Her phone had buzzed with a text, which was enough to prompt her into the charade. Anything was better than answering these questions. She felt done, and they had barely started.

  “Uh-huh …” Sloane nodded, talking to no one. “Whatever you think.”

  She pretended to listen, looking at her interviewers with a captive expression.

  Of course they knew what she was doing.

  “Tell them I’m on it.” Sloane sighed. “After my interview is over, of course.”

  She nodded at nothing while smiling at the Treadwells then ended her imaginary call.

  “All taken care of?” John asked.

  “All taken care of,” Sloane repeated, then explained something irrelevant but true to cover her lie. “Yesterday was sort of a disaster, for a few reasons. We need to reshoot one scene because Cassidy’s accent is noticeable enough to throw it off. We have her working with a dialogue coach this morning while I’m in here with you.”

  “We appreciate the attention.” John nodded and queued up his wife.

  “But would you mind turning that off for the rest of the interview?” Vicky nodded at Sloane’s phone. “We understand you’re busy, but we can get most of what we need to frame the basics if you’re really with us.”

  “I understand.” Sloane smiled and shut off her phone.

  Of course, Vicky was right. She wasn’t trying to be disrespectful, but the interview was only just starting and yet it already felt acutely uncomfortable.

  “So, you were saying?” she asked Vicky.

  “I was asking about your age when all of this started. You were eleven years old, right?”

  Sloane nodded. “A few weeks from turning twelve. Liam used to tell me I looked like ‘quite the little teenager.’”

  Vicky nodded. John wrote something down.

  Sloane wished for something to eat. Cheetos would
be nice. A jumbo bag, the biggest they made. Right about now, she would love to shove as much artificial cheese into her mouth as she possibly could. She needed the orange dust narcotic — or anything similar — to deal with these questions.

  The Treadwells weren’t trying to be invasive or dredge up old and painful memories, at least not any more than they needed to do their jobs. But that’s exactly what was happening, and their queries might have been easier to answer if they were being hostile. Maybe then Sloane could tap into her rage instead of floating in this salty sea of unrelenting vulnerability.

  “A few weeks from turning twelve,” Vicky repeated.

  “And how old was Nicole?” John asked.

  “She’s two months older than me. Couldn’t you get that off of her IMDb page?”

  “Of course.” John gave Sloane the kind of smile that would have made her feel sure he had a daughter, even if she didn’t already know that part of his story. “But the more we hear from you, the better our context and understanding.”

  “Okay, sure,” Sloane said.

  “You’re doing great,” Vicky told her.

  “Liam was the producer of the movie, right?” John asked.

  “Yes.” One-word responses were fair when they already knew the answers.

  “Did you audition for the role?”

  Sloane turned from John to Vicky. “Everyone auditions, but Nicole and I were personally selected for the movie. He told us both that we were ‘perfect by ourselves’ and ‘even more perfect together.’”

  John scribbled something else on his tablet.

  “Did that make you uncomfortable?” Vicky asked. “Or did you like the attention.”

  “Initially, I liked the attention,” Sloane admitted. “But only because I didn’t know any better. He was really nice at first, even insisting that I call him by his first name. He always had treats for me. After he found out that I really liked Japanese candy, he usually had something in his pocket. I was little and didn’t know any better. So of course I trusted him.”