“Who is she?” Lewis asked as he swatted her hand away from the check.
“She helped start the French New Wave? But with a very personal style, like, almost documentarian. The films are always about her even if she doesn’t—”
“—Oh, like Woody Allen.”
“Sort of… No, she’s not trapped inside her head. Just aware of her mortality. And they’re very empowering, too—”
“Watch out, I’ve been hearing that word a lot lately.” He cracked a knowing smile, and Sheila gave a little sympathetic snort. He was of course referring to all the palaver and consolation handed out in the name of equity, since they’d gone and given the Palme D’Or to a woman’s work at Cannes that summer.
“I just mean that it’s not just by and about her, it’s by and about the – honey, are you sure I can’t pitch in?”
“You keep asking that.”
“I had most of the wine. Please?”
Lewis set his MasterCard on the tin tray and moved it to the corner farthest from her.
“Would I know any of her works?” he asked.
“Cleo from 5 to 7 is probably the biggest.”
“I wish I’d heard of it before. She sounds like someone we should screen.”
“Lew, I feel bad.”
“I’ll ask Jack. Maybe he knows.”
“You always take me out,” Sheila pressed.
“Yeah; you’re a poor college student. It warms my heart to separate you from a night of bagels and peanut butter.”
“You’re a poor college student.”
“Not as much,” Lewis shrugged, before handing off the receipt. Their waiter wore white gloves, a sign of duty borrowed from the other end of the century. It was pure comedy for him to bow before a college kid wearing rayon and Birkenstocks. Sheila thought it made all the linen and candles seem tacky somehow. Lewis was always playing the tramp whose ship had finally come in.
“Do you know The Umbrellas of Cherbourg?” she asked, folding up her napkin.
“Of course! Jacques Demy – oh, mon dieu! One of the first club screenings I saw. We should watch it sometime.”
“That’s Agnes Varda’s husband.”
“Oh wow,” Lewis intoned. “I think he’s dead now.” They got up from the table and grabbed mints from the big glass bowl on the hostess’s desk.
“And they were both best friends with Jean-Luc Godard,” she threw in, as a bonus.
Outside, the sidewalks were wet and the air smelled like steamed laundry. A fog hung around the tenth story, netting only the tallest of buildings in the direction of Morningside Heights. Lewis slipped his hand into Sheila’s and she clung to him for warmth, shivering beneath her sweater as they headed north. When West End Ave merged into Broadway, Lewis asked:
“So what makes her your idol?”
“What do you mean? She’s spectacular.”
“Yeah, but how do you even come to appreciate someone like that?”
“My aunt lives in Montreal, and would take me to screenings at this French/English art house theater up there. They love Agnes in Montreal.”
“And that’s the project you have in mind, right? To make something Vardian? Vardaesque?”
“Yes, exactly!” Sheila said, “Something that reflects where I am right now. And watching her, I realized that doesn’t have to be simply narrative or documentary, there’s really such a vast cross between them which allows for a really rich level of spontaneity. I mean, I have a full script, of course, but it’s based on real events and I hope all the characters could really be just playing themselves. Obviously including you, if you were up for it. You would basically play my version of you.”
“Huh, I think Martin had a similar treatment for his thesis or something. It’s definitely a cool idea, though.”
“Yeah, I was thinking if you liked the script, then maybe we could show it to Jack together, maybe see what he thinks. You’ve acted in some of the work he’s overseen before, right?”
“Only as an extra,” Lewis said, “You know, they always say you can’t cast your lovers in a film if you want to keep them.”
“Well maybe they can’t, but I think we could handle it. Agnes did it before.”
“If she’s like Woody Allen, I get the appeal. What film student wouldn’t want to be Woody? All’s the guy’s done is play himself sixty-five times, and he’s one of the most respected men working. Of course, I’d rather be Scorsese, or even Coppola, just between the New York Stories guys, but his contribution was moving – in its way. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t give my right leg for Woody Allen’s career, even though I found his one from last year, Husbands and Wives, pretty logorrheic to be honest. And the new one looks terrible…”
As they crossed 111th Street, Sheila’s mind began wandering away from Lew’s words. After what must have been weeks of trying to bring it up, she had somehow managed to downplay her whole project, compressing six months of work into a doe-eyed little footnote on a director he hadn’t even heard of. Like an amateur. She sighed, muddling through his unheard comments. Her script, which was beginning to crowd out space for homework on her dorm room desk, she hadn’t even given a full breath to – as if she was afraid of encouragement, unable to take advantage of the fabulous opportunity still holding her hand. The light turned green, and they continued up Broadway until the gate to Columbia was in view. Lewis was just getting into it. Gingerly, she inserted her voice into his.
“Hey, Lew?”
“Oh God, I’m talking too much.”
“No, no. I just… can I give you some money for the meal tonight? Or at least the wine?”
“Let me treat you, just the one time. Thou doth protest too much.”
“Okay, but when it’s on dates I end up feeling like I owe you something.”
“If that’s how you feel, you can only imagine how indebted I am, to be out and about with such a beautiful girl on such a beautiful night.”
Sheila rolled her eyes and leaned into him. “I’m serious.”
“So am I! If I treat you well, it’s because I really do feel like I’ve struck gold, finding someone who can actually keep up. You know, when I tried dating Angela Rogers we had the same conversation about Nora Ephron every night for a week.”
“Yeah, because God forbid you ask her about molecular biology or whatever she studies.”
“Astrophysics,” Lewis said coolly, “But my point still stands – you can see past the glasses and the theory and the trust fund bullshit. Do you know what I mean about keeping up?”
Sheila knew exactly what he meant. When she’d met Lewis, at the year’s opening session of the Columbia Cinematics Society, he hadn’t been such a tough nut to crack – not discounting the fact that her first impression was a lot of shell. Lewis was already a high-ranking member of the society when Sheila joined – an expert when it came to foreign action films, cross-fades, and generally speaking in jargon. “It’s incongruous that Truffaut monopolized on the culture of nuit américiane since he always left sequencing to his second unit.” That kind of stuff. But there was another side to him that was small, sweet, and exceedingly vulnerable – the essence he was always looking to hide. And getting it out of him meant putting a face on all the fantastic, seemingly inhuman qualities of cinematic expertise she’d been trying to emulate since she had awakened to her calling.
During her first summer home from college, she’d been largely alone, and, after a month of complacently watching hometown friendships disappear in the rift between state and private school education, Sheila began spending her days at the local cineplexes, sitting with a handful of others in the dark theater, dormant and safe as a womb. Between hostessing and the occasional family trip, she would spread herself thin across Philadelphia’s art houses, seeing two or three screenings a day, at times not knowing anything about the movies. She got a job babysitting just to mitigate the ticket costs. One afternoon, after watching Blow-Up at the Ambler, she spent an hour debriefing with the concessions stand manager about the whole thing, and had the realization that some lucky people could actually make a living studying films the way Sheila was now. She also went out and bought a camera.
That fall, she’d discovered the film club through a few tenuous connections, and managed to sit in on a meeting. She asked to join the next week, the fourth woman to attempt to do so in the Society’s seventy-year reign of prestige. Her first conversation with Lewis began as a brief introduction to Neorealism, and ended in a bitter argument over the theme of nobility in Bill Murray’s oeuvre. In fact, it seemed there was very little she couldn’t banter about with him. He was two years older, a research assistant for a professor engaged in the “psychology of televised violence,” and he was suave with words she was just starting to integrate into her vocabulary. But what attracted Sheila the most was something just underneath the mask, the sense he inadvertently gave that he could carry on endlessly about some subjects to avoid all mention of others. She would watch him as the credits rolled during screenings – his face small and poorly lit, his eyes scanning the names as if to memorize them.
It was only after the Cinesciety Halloween party, as the tension had built over beer and an extended cut of Suspiria, that he finally asked if she wanted to come over to his dorm and see his Bolex. He led her by hand to senior housing and onto his bed, from under which he slid out a large black case, like one for a typewriter. It was monographed in cursive script: A gift to Jack De Laurentis.
“This was a nineteenth birthday present from my father. Regifted, actually. Claude Chabrol used this exact camera for a lot of his early work.”
The relationship began that night.
Lewis made her swear to secrecy that she wouldn’t give him away, but it seemed that everybody else in Cinesciety must have already known. Her ignorance on the matter reminded Sheila how much more she had still to learn about her field. As it turned out, Lewis’ name was synonymous with one of the greatest production houses in contemporary American cinema, and only a quick glance through the club’s Golden Movie Encyclopedia told her just how much his father had influenced filmmaking in the past twenty years. This not only meant that Lewis was surely one of the richest people she knew, but also that, just by growing up in proximity to his father’s phone calls, he had probably more knowledge of the mechanics of the industry than all her film professors combined. Sheila had been under the impression that this boy was merely at a more advanced point on the same open circuit, a course through the educational pipeline with the hope of filming for real, but that couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Lewis’ circle was closed, and engineered for him. His whole presence at Columbia suddenly seemed a formality, a detour on the path to Hollywood. Perhaps it was just a way to pick up girls.
It happened towards winter, as the club was mulling over plans for the final field trip of the semester. Reels from past screenings hung on the dusty bookshelf, presided over by the watchful eyes of Eastwood on a technicolor poster for Dirty Harry. At least she thought it was Dirty Harry; the poster was in Japanese. Sheila and several others were arguing in favor of going to the Renoir restoration at Film Forum over a discount screening of Mrs. Doubtfire, “in the context of gender confusion as a Shakespearean plot device,” when Lewis, unusually silent up to that point, offered a suggestion:
“I don’t know how many people I could get in, but there’s this play on 42nd Street I’ve been really trying to see.”
“What do you mean?” Wilson asked, “like a stage play? A screening of a stage play?”
“Isn’t 42nd Street just sex shops now?” Jamie cut in.
“You guys all saw My Dinner with Andre, right?” Lewis asked. Looking around the room, Sheila saw nearly every head nod, with varying degrees of earnestness. “Well, there’s this play happening right now in this old abandoned theater on 42nd and Eighth, and it’s by the same people who did My Dinner with Andre. Actually, it’s more like a rehearsal for a play that’s never going to be really fully performed, which makes total sense if you actually saw the movie, and you understand Andre Gregory’s whole method, but anyway they’re thinking of a making a film out of it, exact same guys, and so instead of seeing a movie for once we could all go to this thing and then compare it to the movie version when that comes out. It’d be like being on set.”
Everyone nodded, more or less sluggish to take on an idea that didn’t involve a screen, until Peter, who was treasurer, pointed out that Columbia would only reimburse them for tickets to movies.
“Yeah, and what do you mean that maybe not all of us could get in?” Wilson asked.
“Well like I said,” Lewis equivocated, “it’s not a full production, just a rehearsal. So no cost for tickets, or anything. And it’s super intimate once we’re there, like, we’d sit and eat with all the actors when they’re not on stage. They just usually don’t let members of the public watch, but I—I’m pretty sure I could get us all seats.”
“How?” Sheila asked, unmooring herself from her spot at the wall. The posse, all crowded around Lewis now, turned to look at her.
“Uhh,” Lewis began, “Well my dad’s taking a look at it. He might hop on board,” He looked like he’d been forced to spoil the secret of a magic trick and his eyes told Sheila plainly what he couldn’t say in mixed company: she should have known better than to ask.
“Holy shit!” cried Stefano.
“That’s actually awesome,” Everett chimed, “So we could be a part of his production, then.”
“Would we be watching it with him?” asked Jamie.
“No – no, no, no,” Lewis griped, “He saw it already. This was an idea for us, and Jack has nothing to do with it except maybe opening access, but this would be very much a club activity. Actually, I shouldn’t have brought it up, it’s not even cinema.”
“Well I’d love to see it anyway,” Peter said with authority, “If you could make that happen, of course. Let’s all brainstorm a backup and let Lew talk to his father about dates.”
Lewis didn’t say a word for the rest of the meeting, and he came up afterward looking for a fight. “You know how shitty that feels, when it seems like all your friends are just there to use you? I wish I could explain to you how much I hate that.”
“You know what else feels shitty?” Sheila found herself saying, “Not telling your girlfriend that your dad’s in town.”
His fixed expression unspooled into one of confusion. “What?” he asked.
“I guess I just thought we were there at this point; I mean we’ve been going out for months now.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I just thought you’d want him to meet me when that chance finally came. But maybe we’re not there yet.” Sheila’s remark caught herself off guard. Lewis squirmed, seeming to forget about his fear of being used.
“I didn’t even know you’re thinking like that.”
“I didn’t realize you weren’t.”
“Well, no, you know I’m very serious about us,” Lewis began mumbling, “I think we’re great together and I want you to be a bigger part of my life. I guess I just didn’t think about it because my father’s not, like, a normal person. He doesn’t just meet other people for the pleasure of it. He’s in this world,” Lewis flapped his hands like the world was very shaky, “and the only people he talks to are a part of it too – it’s like the fucking mafia! So it just wouldn’t make sense to meet him, I’m sorry. I feel bad it came off as hurtful.”
“Have you been staying with him lately?” Sheila pressed.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well that’s part of why I was so upset. I called your dorm phone last night and Elijah said you weren’t there. I was gonna bring it up with you after the meeting, but I didn’t know how, because I just didn’t know where you could have been sleeping.”
“Oh, my God!” Lewis cried, “I didn’t even think of that. I just always stay with him when he’s at The Plaza, it’s so routine I didn’t even think to tell you. God, you probably didn’t know what to think, that’s totally fucked. Look, Sheel, I feel terrible—”
“Are you staying there again tonight?” she cut in.
“I was planning on it but no,” he said, “We can spend the night together if you want. Let’s just be together.”
“No,” she sniffed, “That’s sweet, it’s just I have some homework to take care of. Maybe I’ll come by later.”
“Okay, of course,” Lewis replied, thoroughly perplexed at this point, “Whatever works. Just – are we okay?”
“Yeah, we’re all good. I’m sorry I freaked out, or whatever, I just really wasn’t sure where we were for a second.”
“Of course. Of course. And, look, that’s my fault too. I’ve just never been this serious with someone before, so I don’t know what any of the steps are for relationship stuff. Like, meeting the parents – that just didn’t cross my mind because it doesn’t make sense in our situation. Not with him.”
Sheila nodded, and wiped away what could have been a tear. In the time spent arguing they had left the humanities building and crossed campus following the soft glow of the library, their typical point to part ways. “I don’t take it personally,” she said, “I know whatever stuff you two have is complicated.”
The best Lewis could do was shrug, “I’d still like to see you tonight. My dad’s in meetings and stuff tonight anyway, so I’ll be staying up here.”
“I’ll let you know,” she sighed, and kissed him before turning off in the direction of her dorm, although that wasn’t her real destination tonight. After stopping back home to grab her script, Sheila boarded the subway and headed downtown.
She had realized it after their dinner a few weeks prior: it was worth risking Lewis for the exposure. She couldn’t wait around for him to take her seriously. So scared of being used, he had built her a bridge to Hollywood and now he zealously guarded it, blind to her talent. The risks were high – there was no way that Jack De Laurentis could read a script by his son’s girlfriend and not mention it to him – and so Lewis would inevitably be mad, even livid, that she went behind his back, and that might mean the end of everything completely. But if Jack liked the script, if he found her to be really something special, there’d be nothing Lewis could do about that. She might even bring him closer with his father, Sheila reasoned, since they would now have a thing in common.
Really, the whole gamble came down to the fact that her script was actually very good, and her film professor had seen it and approved, and Jack was a businessman after all. He existed to be charmed into generosity, so why worry? Sheila knew how to be charming.
She took the subway down to Columbus Circle and walked across the bottom of the great park, weaving around tourists and restless carriage horses. The 150-page sheaf of papers was curled in a u-shape in her hand. Sheila had never been in The Plaza, and she wracked her brains for some cultural context that imbued it with such status. Of course, she thought, Home Alone 2. With Tim Curry as the leering concierge. She suddenly imagined a blond young Lewis De Laurentis making his way into a stretch limo with a large cheese pizza, or booking himself a place with his father’s credit card. The thought made her stifle a laugh, covering her mouth for fear of being side-eyed or solicited. But no one on the street paid her any attention.
The lobby was so big that it took her some time to find the front desk, which didn’t look at all like Tim Curry’s. She strode confidently forth as asked for De Laurentis, and the perfectly unfazed concierge asked if she was expected before giving her a room number on the eighteenth floor. In the elevator, Sheila steadied herself on her heels and studied herself in the large mirror. She had curly hair, around shoulder-length, and pale, softly freckled skin which contrasted the hair on her forearms. She was tall for nineteen, and came to nearly six feet with her plain heeled sandals, which made her taller than Lewis and she feared the same probably went for his father. Sheila had on a grey knitted sweater over a plain black dress that went to just above her knees. She felt she was walking the line between not enough and too much, between meek and overconfident, and how he would read her had everything to do with how he would read her script. Should she have it in her hand, under her arm? What would seem casual, yet to the point, since she was really just stopping by to give her boyfriend some new work, an update on his role. If pressed, she’d admit she hadn’t known if he’d be here tonight, but he hadn’t answered his doorbell and she’d wagered a guess. She wouldn’t have to stay long. But she could have a drink, if necessary. More than anything, she wanted to be engaging, stimulating, stunning if she could. Sheila owed it to Lewis. Any right she had to be there, in his father’s presence, would get drawn back to the idea that he had somehow picked her. ‘You know how to pick em’ – that’s the type of thing she imagined his father would say.
When the doors dinged open, she walked down the hallway, counting up, until she reached his number. She was surprised to find the door ajar, ever so slightly. It could have been unclosed by accident; the sliver of darkness wedged between the gilt frame was hardly wider than an eye. It made Sheila suddenly upset that something so small could completely throw her off. Her shroud of daring fell and exposed its scaffolding, flimsy and broad, more pipe dream than plan. Peering into the gap, she realized that she would have to say something to Jack De Laurentis that was more than a solicitation, if he were home. It involved him speaking back. So she stood in silence for what seemed a very long time, fighting the feeling that she’d gone too far already. And since she had, she willed herself on.
Sheila readied her fist for the door, but scared to hold it tight she could only give the faintest knock without it swinging inward, and it gave way even so. She knocked again; it swung wider, surprisingly light on its oiled brass hinges, to reveal a hallway. The threshold below her was also brass, scuffed enough to only reflect the contours of her legs and dress, and Sheila looked down at it as if she suspected a booby-trap. Crossing it was extreme, but she couldn’t just leave the script outside like shoes in need of shining. The dark hallway beyond gave every indication of no one being home.
There was really no way to progress except to leave her work somewhere Jack could find it and wait for something to happen. That she wouldn’t get to meet him and ensure the script in his hands was equal parts disappointment and relief, but any move she made was better than giving up, turning around and going back to campus, where she was just as ambitious and stagnant as everybody else making distant plans and hoping the world stayed patient.
Darkness clung to the foyer hall like velvet curtains, and the thick carpet captured the sound of her footsteps so Sheila could first and foremost hear the beating of her heart, absurdly loud. At the end of the hall was a small side-table crowded by a large swath of lilies, and she approached it with the hopes leaning her sheaf of papers against the vase. To the right of the flowers was a doorway, and she craned her neck as she got closer, catching a glimpse of a plush green armchair, silhouetted against a pane of black. It was the abyss of Central Park South, stretched below, and lights from the Upper East Side lined it like a landing strip. A soft light was coming from the room, as if from a fire. She would have to stand in the doorway to set her script down, and Sheila began leaning slowly over to peer around the corner when the sound of voices made her freeze.
They were very muffled and faint, dissipating into every silken crevice of the suite like cockroaches. Mostly, she could make out the tenor; he was stern. She caught a word of rejection every now and then, parenthesized by a stream of repudiation – some haggling over business.
But it was a woman’s voice to respond. Higher, and with greater range, she spoke calmly with an edge. The golden glow of the room seemed to flicker from her faint words. “I think I’d better call myself a cab,” she murmured.
“You’re being a child, Angel.” the first voice replied, “You’ll make a fool of yourself if you walk away.” It stopped Sheila cold because it sounded just like Lewis when he was angry, when he got husky and low. She hadn’t heard it very often, but she knew it instantly as the voice he forgot himself with, in which he left Columbia and returned to a place of orders being taken and given. It could easily have been him.
“I thought you wanted to be a star…”
Sheila wanted to leave very badly. She had made a bad gamble and needed now to run back over the line she’d crossed, to pretend she was never here before they heard her. But she found she couldn’t move, gripped with a penetrating fear that kept her feet pinned to the floor. The talking had again subsided into the cracks in the walls. The faint string of sounds around the corner had a tone of urgency to them, of desperation, and seemed so low and cautious that she imagined them being spoken directly from his mouth to her ear. The same few syllables emerged from the clandestine whispering like images in smoke. It chained her where she was, and she stood with eyes wide, imagining only one thing.
She was freed from her trance then by a muffled cry, and the clap of skin smacking skin.
Nearly tripping on the carpet, Sheila shuddered backwards and caught herself, spinning around and making haste. Her shoes scraped into the floor and the rustle of her dress was like a death knell but the commotion in the next room masked it completely, as the man with Lewis’ voice was now barking, barking like an angry dog every hurtful and diminishing word, loud enough to pull Sheila back swiftly to the golden frame which marked the exit she had entered, and racing out she caught the porcelain doorknob and twisted herself around into the gap. She’d been carrying the script like a football, in the crook of her arm, and looking at it now her once-great monument of sacrifice seemed as out of place as an egg in a foxhole. She dropped it on the ground and kicked it upright with the side of her shoe to fit it like a doorstop in the gap of the gilded entryway, the best consolation she could get for her mistaken journey. She cursed herself for having gone so far out of her way for what she realized now was a very early draft.
Sheila wanted to leave as fast as possible, but the script slumped out of its binder clip and the first pages curled onto the floor, and the door wouldn’t close right. As she bent down to fix it, the last thing she could do for her own sake, she leaned forward and locked eyes with a woman who must have been Angel, who was staggering up the hallway with shoes in hand, golden hair streaming down bronzed shoulders. She was crying through her makeup and her cheeks had too much rouge but she was truly, Sheila thought, truly a beautiful thing – the summation of starlet, the spectacle of every great show. In the living room, not so far behind, Jack De Laurentis was calling for her.