Free The Actress: A Novel by Amy Sohn Page A

there was something improper about the trip, just as Dan had? “So how’ve you been since Mile’s End?” she asked, sitting down beside him.
    “Really busy, actually. I signed three new clients. Did she tell you?”
    “Who?”
    “Kira. She signed with me just last week.”
    “Really?” asked Maddy. “That’s fantastic. She didn’t mention anything about . . . I didn’t even know you guys had met in Mile’s End. I mean after the opening-night party.” In the condo, Kira had mocked him. But maybeit was all a decoy. Maybe they’d already had a meeting by then, and she didn’t want Maddy to know.
    “Yeah, we had a coffee the afternoon of your first screening. I was so impressed with her performance. I knew I could help her, and luckily, she felt the same way.” The last Maddy had seen of Kira was a few days before, at Irina’s party. Cast and crew, plus Maddy and Dan’s circle of friends, all trekked out to fete them, but the night had been so hectic that she and Kira had barely spoken.
    Bridget, Weller, and Flora came off the elevators. Zack and Maddy stood to greet them. Weller examined her in the dress as though she were an expensive cut of steak. She blushed. “You are wondrous,” he said.
    “Thank you,” she said, self-conscious again. What kind of man said “wondrous” who wasn’t gay or eighty?
    Maddy and Weller were put inside a car. In the front passenger seat was an enormous bald man who Weller said was a bodyguard paid for by Apollo Classics. Maddy was amazed by all the ways the rich and famous really did live up to the clichés. It was like the bodyguard was part of the swag.
    She could see the Berlinale Palast rising high as they approached, the big red bear, the festival mascot, standing up on the side of the atrium. On one side of the car path, forming a T with the red carpet that led into the theater, hundreds of fans were packed tightly behind stanchions. A sea of people with no apparent end.
    When their car door opened, there was an intake of breath as the fans waited to see who would emerge. Maddy stepped out, and a few seconds later, Weller followed. That was when she heard the roar. Weller took it in stride, smiled, pivoted to wave. The cries were hysterical and continuous, and then Bridget was beside Maddy, whispering, “Come.” She ushered her to the foot of the red carpet, beside Zack. Todd Lewitt and Weller’s costar, Henry Berryman, had already arrived and were posing for pictures. Berryman was a gracious English actor pushing eighty-five, a known lifelong alcoholic.
    As Weller and the bodyguard headed straight to the stanchions, fans thrust things at Weller—festival programs, head shots of him—and he signed them with a Sharpie. Those lucky enough to receive autographsclutched them to their breasts like boys at baseball games who had caught foul balls. Others held up cell phone cameras. All the while, Weller indulged them, as if they were friends, equals. She wondered if he was speaking German; a guy like him probably spoke half a dozen languages. The German fans seemed more grateful and less hysterical than American fans, admiring but not cloying.
    After fifteen long minutes, Weller crossed to the red carpet. He embraced Berryman, clapping him on the back a few times, and the two men worked the press and photo lines, thrusting their arms around each other’s backs and posing with and without Lewitt. Then Weller turned and came toward them as though he had something to ask Bridget.
    “You enjoying yourself?” he asked in Maddy’s ear.
    “Very much,” she said, nodding enthusiastically.
    She felt him slip the cape off her shoulders. He handed it to Bridget and led her toward the press. Henry Berryman was facing the photographers on the opposite side.
    As Steven laced his fingers through hers, everything went into slow motion. She felt a combination of horror—that Dan’s prediction was coming true—and arousal. Steven had taken her hand, like she belonged to