Free The Actress: A Novel by Amy Sohn Page B

him. And yet the gesture didn’t feel smarmy or inappropriate. It felt correct, and his palm was big. She remembered the way it had felt that night at Bridget’s lodge, when he had greeted her.
    He was looking over Maddy’s shoulder, and when Maddy glanced in the same direction, she saw Bridget give a tiny nod. Maddy instantly understood. It was Bridget who had wanted this for Maddy, this moment. Bridget was managing even when she did not appear to be.
    The voices were deafening, the camera flashes like a strobe. “Turn this way, please!” and “Over here, Mr. Weller!”
    Maddy heard Steven saying, “This is Maddy Freed. M-A-D-D-Y F-R-E-E-D. She just won a Special Jury Prize at the Mile’s End Film Festival. Keep your eye on this one, she’ll be a lot more famous than I am soon. And she takes a much better picture.”
    She began to feel less intimidated, to relax. As her confidence grew, she turned her face this way and that. “Ms. Freed, Ms. Freed! Here, Ms. Freed!” She was high. It was different from her feeling when she’d wonthe Jury Prize. That had been about her work. This was about her.
    F rom the foot of the carpet, Zack stared at the V that Maddy and Steven’s hands formed. He didn’t like that V.
    Zack was familiar with a certain cynical type of girl. He met them at premiere parties or nightclubs, the models/actresses—anoractresses, he called them. At first glance, they would blow him off, but when they found out he was an agent, everything changed. His diminutiveness was no object. Suddenly, they were touching his arm, moving their lips near his. Shameless.
    In his first year as an agent, he had enjoyed the attention—it was a trip to walk into a Michelin restaurant with a knockout on his arm—but at the end of the night, it was just him and the girl in his loft. Because none of the girls was interested in talking, it felt a lot like bringing home dolls. Coke helped, but eventually that bored him, too.
    He didn’t know Maddy well, but he never would have put her in that category of girl. Now he wasn’t sure. She was vamping, hamming it up in that ridiculous dress, a dress you wore only if you had a movie in the festival, not if you were someone’s date. Berlin wasn’t the Academy Awards; there were different rules. He couldn’t reconcile the girl on the carpet with the girl he had seen in I Used to Know Her , the serious dramatic actress. Who could not only act but write. Maddy was smart. What was she thinking?
    “It seems like a lot of trouble to bring her to Berlin for one audition,” he murmured to his mother.
    “Not when your director refuses to leave the continent.”
    “That’s a very fancy dress.”
    “This is a very important premiere.”
    “What’s your plan for her?”
    “To break her in. Zachary, please. I don’t need to educate you on the value of advance publicity. You’re an agent, for God’s sake.”
    He shook his head and watched the V grow tighter.
    M addy could hear a woman calling her name in a thick accent. Thewoman was in a parka, standing next to a guy with a videocamera. “Ms. Freed, I am Gisela Moor. I’m from a German television show?”
    “Hey there,” Maddy said. Steven had released her hand and was talking to another reporter a few steps away.
    “What is your film in the festival?” the woman in the parka was asking Maddy.
    “Oh, I don’t have one. But I’m in a movie that just premiered at Mile’s End, in the U.S. It should be out by Christmas in the States, and we’re hoping for a release in Europe. It’s called I Used to Know Her . By a great new director named—”
    “How long have you and Mr. Weller been involved?”
    “Oh, we’re not—he isn’t—we just met. My boyfriend is the director of my movie, and he’s actually named Dan—”
    Bridget was there, standing next to her. “That’s all for now,” she said. She ushered Maddy inside the theater. Maddy was flushed from the adrenaline of the past ten minutes and embarrassed