Five

She had known, since it was Bakersfield, not to expect anything fancy, but as the driver took them through the center of the city, it became clear to the Actress that all she was getting was a room, plain and simple. She didn’t need anything more, really, though she imagined there were people in the industry who begrudged everything. The driver stopped the car at a building that wasn’t more than four stories or so, flat at the top and made of brick, and they got out. She opened the door on her own, the driver rushing to her side, but she let him know implicitly that he needn’t be at her beck and call. They walked together through the plain glass doors of the lobby—no bellhops, no concierge, but more important, no Director. She had somewhat expected him to be waiting in the hallway lined with striped wallpaper that served as the lobby, sitting at one of the two tidy love seats and examining the fresh flowers set on a long table: the hotel was small, but the effort of small-town pride came through. It was only nine thirty in the morning, and the meeting wasn’t set until ten. She asked at the front desk if anyone from Los Angeles had checked in, but the clerk told her no.

“Are you expecting someone?” the clerk asked.

“A fellow traveler,” she answered, aware that the Director might try to shield himself from scrutiny.

Her room was ready, and the driver accompanied her to the top floor in the tiny elevator, her overnight bag in his hand. At her door, he scurried inside her room and placed the bag on her bed so quickly that she barely had time to open her purse for a tip. “No bother, ma’am,” he told her. “The studio asks that I not take tips. I’ll be with you the entire trip anyway.” He gave her a slight nod and made to exit. “I’ll be waiting in the car after you freshen up. I’ll have the front desk ring you if the Director shows up.”

He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the room. Nothing fancy, as she had suspected: a tidy double bed, a nightstand with a lamp and a radio, and a desk tucked in the corner. Enough space for the Los Angeles and San Francisco oilmen to come to town, make their deals, and get some rest. The air felt a little trapped and still, as if no one had actually been in the room, not even to turn down the sheets and check the towels. But this didn’t surprise her—if it had been her job to go from unused room to unused room, she wouldn’t bother with these tasks either; she would kick off her shoes instead and listen to the radio, the minutes of each work morning slowly passing by.

That’s what she was thinking of—what it would be like to be a cleaning woman in a small hotel in an inconsequential city, the daily humdrum of that kind of life. Her mind circled around that scenario as she unzipped her overnight bag and set aside her belongings, giving tomorrow’s blouse a quick snap before putting it on a hanger. She imagined the uniform and the soft shoes, pushing a cart along the narrow corridor she’d just walked along, the quiet red carpet, and the discreet closet at the end where the cart would be hidden away overnight. There was more, she knew, as she emptied her toiletries and set them around the bathroom sink, confident no one would come in to clean: say, for example, the awkward moment when a hotel maid politely knocked on the door and, hearing no one, came in even though the guest was sleeping. Or the curiosity around a stranger’s suitcase sitting like a diary in the corner of a room, the temptation to unzip it and rummage around. Or the toiletries kit left in the bathroom, the inside pocket holding a vial of pills that spoke of nerves, of insomnia, of depression, of a lingering sexual disease.

In her movie script, she had read the description of her character: secretary. She had read the setting: Phoenix. At a leisurely lunch, the Director had told her how he’d already sent a set crew to Arizona to find young women working as secretaries, interviewing them to see how much they made a year, how they dressed, what they ate for lunch, where they ate it, if they had husbands or lived alone or with girlfriends, what their apartments looked like, how they furnished them.

For what? she had asked, because the scenes that took place in the office and the woman’s apartment were brief.

To get it right, the Director had told her, taking a long sip of wine. I want it to look like a girl’s apartment, you see. Right down to the cheap dresser.

It was a pity, she had thought as she looked over her salad, that she hadn’t been invited along, if only to witness how the set decorators found these young women and how they engaged them in conversations that, frankly, could slip into the nakedly personal without much effort. She didn’t let on to the Director that she’d been disappointed about missing such a trip. That wasn’t the purpose, she knew. Listening to him explain the purpose of a set—the information conveyed by the atmosphere of the walls, the correct wallpaper, the furniture just so—made her feel that her own concerns about who a secretary might really be had no place at their lunch table.

The Actress knew the answer even now, staring at the clock in her hotel room, five minutes to ten. Smoothing her dress and looking at herself one more time in the mirror, she saw her own incomparable face, the size of her head, her eyes set apart, her breasts, her hair. A singularity. There was no one else like her, for better or worse, and she had been picked for the part for the sum of these attributes, and maybe nothing more. The Actress gathered her pocketbook and headed down to the lobby. She knew the answer, and it would take only a hotel maid to appear in the hallway to confirm it, two women passing silently by each other without knowing a single bit of the other’s history: it was a costume, she realized, not a complexity, a job for the character to have, not a way to explore how she’d come to that point, a single woman in Arizona, of all places.

Down at the lobby, the Director was still not there. “Has there been a call?” she asked the clerk. “We were expecting another party from Los Angeles.”

The clerk shook his head. “Early morning traffic from Los Angeles can be very heavy some days,” he said in a voice that was meant, she thought, to allay some concern. She turned to sit on one of the love seats and looked out through the plain glass doors at the street’s light traffic. She waited as patiently as she could for twenty minutes, at which point she rose and walked to the glass doors, not exiting but peering out of them as if the Director were only moments down the sidewalk.

Inside the sedan, her driver sat engrossed in a newspaper, its pages folded compact and neat so that he could hold it in one hand, flipping it when the column ran out of text. With no traffic and not enough people on the sidewalks to disturb his reading, he carried on without once glancing at her. The paper was thick, probably the Los Angeles Times and not the local, and she wondered what he might be reading—an article about the troubling political changes in Cuba, the sports section, the satellites being sent up into space one after the other. She didn’t want to interrupt him, but there was nothing else to do, and across the way was a café with large plate-glass windows through which she could see if a car that looked like it belonged in Los Angeles came along the avenue.

As soon as she opened the hotel door, the driver glimpsed the bit of motion, set his paper down, and rushed to her side of the car. “Oh, I’ve got nowhere to go,” she told him. “I was just going to go across the street for a bite to eat.”

“I suppose you don’t need to be driven there,” he said, laughing. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Actually,” she said, this time looking away from him and over at the café, “why not come along and keep me company?”

He hesitated, as if contemplating what it might look like if he left his post, but the Actress waited through his caution, letting her face go blank, no anticipation, no hint of persuasion, though she knew it wouldn’t be a prudent thing for him to do, the way the studio frowned upon anything beyond the call of obligation and service. But it was her invitation, her decision to bring him along, and she wanted to open her mouth and assure him, It’s okay, but instead she stood and waited for his inevitable yes, wondering how she looked to him, her face impossible to read.

They did not enter arm in arm, but the two men seated at the front counter didn’t seem to notice. The hostess locked eyes with them for just enough time that the Actress wondered if she’d been recognized, but the driver quickly snapped the hostess to attention, asking to be seated. The hostess gave them a booth, the Actress with her back to the sidewalk because she knew the driver would be more attentive to the car they were expecting. The café smelled thick of disinfectant, a moist, greasy feel to the air, but not unpleasant once she recognized it—it was the smell of any diner in Los Angeles, and soon enough, she knew, would come the smell of coffee and eggs and frying bacon and their masking familiarity. She studied the menu, feeling eyes on her. She should have worn dark glasses, but she’d long dismissed the idea, a pair of shades feeling, to her, like a prop inviting attention. Perhaps the eyes were taking in the driver, in his crisp white shirt and slacks unlike any of the other men in the place, with their scuffed boots and jeans.

When the hostess took their order, the Actress tensed at her scrutiny and did her best to divert the attention to the driver, the man at the table, as if she deferred to him in everything. He may not have understood the role she had imposed on him, but the way he cheerfully ordered a full breakfast plate did the trick. The driver looked over at her sheepishly when he placed his order. She’d had an orange juice and a croissant to tide her over, but she realized that he had had nothing, and even after arriving at the hotel, he was still at the call of duty, waiting in case she came out to be driven somewhere. A break was some time off, perhaps when he knew the Director would be taking up a good chunk of her afternoon.

“I should have realized you hadn’t any time for a decent breakfast,” she told him. “We should have come down here as soon as I’d checked into the room.”

“Ma’am, my responsibility isn’t over until your Director takes you away. And even then, it would be the professional thing to stay around in case you need something. A bite to eat if you don’t like what’s on set. Or some aspirin from the drugstore.” He spoke with a light, cheerful clip in his voice, but it was still deep and masculine, his face lined here and there on the forehead, someone who raised his eyes a lot and smiled handsomely.

“You mentioned your wife on the drive over. How long have you been married, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Not very long. Three years,” he answered.

“You have children?”

“No, not yet,” said the driver, but he didn’t add anything more, and in that lack of continuation, the Actress held her eyes on his, not wanting to look away and reveal her immediate wonder about his wife: if she could bear children, if she came from a religious family, if she was ill, if she had been the right woman to marry.

“Someday,” he offered, the single word still feeble despite the confidence in his deep voice, hard lined and rigid straight like the horizon of his shoulders. “It must be tough for you as a mother to be on these shoots.”

“It is. I’m thinking more and more that I won’t be doing it very much longer. I’d rather be with my children.”

He blushed a little. “I didn’t even ask if you had children. I mean … well … I knew … I’ve read about you in the magazines, so …”

She laughed. “Oh, I understand. But those are just publicity stories,” she said. “Some easy facts. You could never get a true understanding of anyone from those accounts.”

“Of course not,” said the driver. “But you do come across as a very nice lady. People like you in this town. In Hollywood, I mean.”

The early lunch crowd trickled in, yet the sidewalks remained relatively bare otherwise. The waitress who brought their plates wasn’t the same one as before—she was much younger and prepared to chat, staring at the Actress as if she were a puzzle that needed solving, but the hostess who seated them dismissed her quickly. The café began to gather its noise, the waitresses striding by with coffeepots and checks in hand, sliding coins into the pockets of their uniforms. The Actress buttered her toast, a meager little breakfast, aware of the stares on her despite all the activity. The driver splotched some ketchup on his eggs and tore into the bacon with a determined but measured hunger: he still held his knife and fork carefully, as if remembering he was eating with a lady.

“Do you mind if I ask you about the film you’re making?”

Without the benefit of a full plate of food to help her deflect the question, she paused for a moment and pursed her lips. “I’m under orders not to, I’m afraid to say,” she said apologetically.

“I won’t say a word if you don’t,” the driver responded, no food in his mouth, everything politely chewed and swallowed, a man with thick dark hair and manners and laugh lines on his forehead, as if maybe he were living without any anxieties, any second thoughts.

She took a bite of toast, thinking. She stole a glance at one of the customers near the windows, a woman, catching her in the act of being nosy, how they were making everything of her Los Angeles attire, the driver’s crisp white shirt and how strong his back looked to them, the full plate of food, his hearty appetite.

“Well,” she began, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, since you’ve been so kind.”

He smiled and took a bite of eggs, prepared to listen.

“I play a woman—a secretary—who is carrying on a romance with a man who owns a little hardware store here in California. Not Bakersfield necessarily, more in the north, just a little town where you can remain anonymous if you want to, live a life without anybody paying much attention, if you color inside the lines. This secretary, she lives in Phoenix, though, and she doesn’t have a way to be with this man whom she loves so very much.”

“What was the man doing in Phoenix? How did they meet?”

“Good question. I don’t know. A salesman, I suspect, however clichéd that is. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s at the beginning of the movie, so the scenario is just something you accept. Don’t you agree? If a picture starts, and there’s a man and a woman, and they say they’re in love, you believe them. Right? At least, that’s how I’m approaching it.” She didn’t believe that, but she appreciated the driver’s question, tinged as it was with the same urge she had for answers to the lives of characters, even if the answers weren’t very important. “In any case, her lover goes back to California, just about calling off their affair because the situation has become impossible and unbearable. They live in different states and the man has an ex-wife who is taking all of his store profits for alimony. What kind of life could they live together?

“That very afternoon, at the office where she works, her boss makes an extraordinary sale to a wealthy man and asks her to deposit the money in the bank. She agrees and then asks to leave work early because she has a headache, but instead of going to the bank, she goes home, packs a suitcase, and decides to drive to California.”

“She steals the money?”

“Yes, all of it …”

“A bad girl. I don’t think my wife and I have ever seen you play one before.” He looked surprised, the rise in his voice suggesting that he disapproved, so much so that the Actress debated if she should continue.

“It’s a challenge, I admit. To play against type.”

“I’ll say. Aren’t you afraid people will have a negative reaction to you playing that kind of woman? A thief?”

“She’s more than a thief …”

“An adulterer. I forgot about that part.”

“It’s a complex moral dilemma. That’s the way I like to think about it.” She took a sip of her tea, a sharply bitter black tea with a strange taste. She set down the cup. “I also believe that audiences are sophisticated and wise enough to separate you from the role you play.”

“To a degree,” said the driver. “But if it’s the wrong part … I mean, if people remember you so strongly in that role, people may not ever forget you in it. Do you remember that picture from a few years ago? I don’t remember the name … It was about the little girl who envied things so much she killed people to get them.”

“The Bad Seed. Interesting play, to say the least. I saw it in New York, but I never saw the film.”

“Yes, that’s the title. Last year, I bought a television set for my wife, and we like to watch those theater shows, the playhouse specials. You know the ones? And whenever that little girl shows up, no matter what the role, my wife makes me change the station. She really hates that little girl!”

The Actress laughed. “That little girl has the benefit of getting older. I’ll bet your wife doesn’t remember her name.”

“She probably doesn’t. Just the blond pigtails. Innocent little girl otherwise. But you … ,” he said. “You’ll look the same, movie to movie. Don’t you worry about that?”

He went back to his food, waiting for her to answer, and she didn’t quite know how. She understood what he was getting at, the thorny reaction of the public, its fickle nature, but even in a generous view of her career, she was hardly Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly or any of those gilded actresses with something to protect when it came to script choices. She wasn’t the same, she wanted to tell him, tapping the sticky café table with a hard nail to prove her point. She wasn’t going to look the same from movie to movie—she was going to age.

“I hope I didn’t upset you,” he said.

“No, no. I’m just thinking about what you said. It’s a serious question. I take your opinion very seriously.”

“I’m sure it’s a good role. And he’s a very famous director. I’m sure you’ll do fine,” the driver said. He was stammering his assurances. When she didn’t respond, he began eating again, slowly, without looking up at her, and she felt a bit of sympathy for him. He was clearly embarrassed by his questioning, unaware that it might have been insensitive, but perceptive enough to note that it wasn’t any of his business, that the role was, after all, a choice. Something she could have turned down if she felt strongly enough about how the public would perceive her. He was handsome, but he wasn’t stupid.

The Actress took a sip of the sharp tea and absently tore off another piece of toast. The driver’s plate had been piled high, and even with a hearty appetite and their new silence, he wasn’t anywhere near half-finished. She contemplated what she’d told him thus far about the film and how he had reacted, realizing that she’d left out all the nuance. The two scenes in a brassiere. Her lover appearing shirtless on-screen. The interrogation by a policeman and her successful evasion of the law. How she had been written to exit the picture. She’d given him hardly any of the story, but he’d latched on to morals. He would go back to Los Angeles and—he would certainly tell his wife—he’d say he brought around that Actress to star in a picture featuring her as a thief and an adulterer. Not a secretary. Not a woman in love. It was her own fault if he came away with that impression. She’d been asked to tell the story and had told it in only one way.

He put down his fork. “Ma’am, I apologize. I can tell by the look on your face that I’ve upset you.”

“No, no. You didn’t,” she reassured him.

“But you’re so quiet all of a sudden …”

She reached over and rested her hand on his, the right hand, the one he would need to use to lift the fork, but she only thought of that after she pressed into the warmth of his skin, the eyes of the hostess at the café’s counter burrowing into her gesture, as if she knew that wives didn’t touch their husbands exactly that way.

“Really,” she said, smiling. “You’ve given me plenty to think about. You’re extremely thoughtful to ask me those questions. Sometimes we forget what it’s like to be someone in the audience, how they might perceive things.”

For a moment, the Actress thought the driver might take his other hand and clasp hers—he was looking down, not at his plate exactly, and not at her hand, just down in a posture that suggested a deep regret that didn’t befit their conversation. He looked ashamed and she felt for him and she didn’t want to take her hand away from his, not even to allow him to pick up his fork again and eat away their silence.

With his thumb, her hand still on his, he traced a light, downward feather of a touch, just once. Then his hand went still once again, and it became clear to her that she was the one who had to let go.

“We think the world of you,” the driver said, and it was he who cautiously took his hand away. “My wife and I.”

They ate the rest of their meal in silence, and though the driver kept his eyes on his plate and never glanced at the avenue, she knew that the Director and the crew had not yet arrived. The clock above the counter read eleven thirty and already a full lunch crowd was there. When the check came, she tried her best to insist on paying for her toast and black tea, but the driver refused, and she spared him the indignity of having the eyes of the café watch him take her money as if his own wallet were not enough.

He held the door open for her, and before she stepped outside, before she lost the humid, thick smell of the café and before she was greeted by the dusty odor of the sidewalks, she caught the briefest hint of his aftershave.

She sighed. “I guess we just keep waiting. It’s closing in on noon, and the scene we were supposed to shoot today takes place in the morning.”

He looked up at the October sky. “Can anyone tell the difference?”

“Some people can. The shadows. The way light plays on the face. Especially now in autumn. The sun is a little lower in the sky. You can tell what time it is just by looking outside, can’t you? Roughly?”

“I suppose you’re right,” the driver said, putting his hands in his pockets.

“You know, I really can’t imagine that I’m going to need you to drive me anywhere for the rest of the day. Why don’t you check into your room?”

“I’m not staying at this hotel, ma’am. Me and the crew find places over off the highway, where the truckers stay.”

She knew what those places were, the side motels she’d seen along Highway 99 leading into Bakersfield, work trucks parked patiently in their gravel lots while the drivers rested for the night, a long row of identical doors, identical rooms, meager by comparison to her own hotel room across the street, simple as it was. The Sleep-Tite Motel. The Knight and Day. The Star-dust. Their neon signs off during the daytime, but as the highway approached the outer edges of Bakersfield, they sprang up closer to each other, and she pictured how they might look to a weary driver, a cluster of safety in the darkness, and such a long day of driving that sleep would come with alarming ease, no matter the endless traffic droning on through the night, just outside the door.

He led them across the avenue, and she peered down the road one more time but knew the afternoon was now lost. She wondered briefly—then stopped herself—if there might have been an accident, and by wishing the thought away, she removed it as a possibility. They were running late was all, and when the Director finally arrived, he’d prepare everyone with a new schedule for the brief, decidedly private shoot. It was just the beginning of work on the film—the preliminary stages—and the hard work and the curiosity from the public was yet to come.

“Well, I suppose there’s not much else to do but go up and take a nap.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You should probably go on ahead and check into your room. Save yourself some time. I honestly won’t need you this afternoon.”

“Only if you’re sure, ma’am. I can wait here until the Director arrives.”

“No, no,” she begged off, and started toward the hotel door, and he moved with her, then ahead, in order to open it for her.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll call the front desk on the hour, so if you change your mind, let them know. I’ll drive right back.”

She smiled in thanks and was about to step into the lobby. “Driver,” she called out. “Listen, I feel terrible. I’ve never even asked you for your name.”

“Carter,” he said, returning her smile, and he bowed his head a little.

“Thank you, Carter, for everything this morning,” the Actress said. She stepped into the lobby, knowing he wasn’t going to follow, but disappointed still when his footsteps failed to sound behind her. The desk clerk nodded at her in greeting and also in silent affirmation that he had heard nothing yet from the missing guest, the lobby completely empty of any sound, any movement, and she walked to the tiny elevator and waited in the quiet, while the desk clerk turned a single page of newspaper to sink into his afternoon reading.

No one in the carpeted hallway, no maid’s service cart to inspect and memorize in passing, no maid with a downturned look of exhaustion. No one, she began to believe, on the entire floor. The Actress entered her room and took off her shoes, sitting on the bed to massage her feet. It had been a long morning, and she’d been up so early for the driver to bring her all the way here, only to wait.

A nap would come easy in this silence. She walked over to the door to double-check its lock, and once she was done, she removed her skirt, her blouse, and the constriction of her bra and lay on the bed. She closed her eyes, replaying the conversation she’d had with the driver, regretful of how she had described the role. Could she have told it to him in another way? Would it have mattered? It had been the only moment, really, when the driver had been anything but cordial, kind, respectful, the look that had washed over his face when he realized she would be doing something wrong in this picture. She opened her eyes and rested a hand on her naked breast and sighed. That look on his face. And over a bundle of stolen money. What if she mentioned the detail of the lunchtime tryst in a little hotel room like this one? I saw the script call for the opening shot to be this woman rolling around luxuriously with her lover. She isn’t wearing a blouse and you can see the hair on his massive chest. That soft feather downturn of his thumb tip and whether or not he would have done that.

Carter. It could have been, she realized, either a first or a last name.

Because she was alone and no maid was ever going to come down the hallway, and because the door was locked even though she was certain the other rooms had gone unoccupied, the Actress rose from her bed and walked to the mirror and stood in front of it. She stood absolutely still in self-examination, her reflection cutting off at the waist, so all that was visible to her was her naked torso, her face, her eyes. She had all afternoon, she knew, to stand in front of that mirror in scrutiny, the way empty time manages to hand you nothing but doubt. She had to be convinced it was acceptable to play that first scene in a brassiere, even if the whole theater would have believed a man and a woman being inescapably in love simply because the screen story said so. A whole theater of men looking at her in a brassiere, a whole darkness wanting. She drew her eyes down to her breasts, beautiful and round. Never had she caught the Director looking at them—always at her eyes. Still, she kept thinking of those other actresses, their entrances, their slow-motion kisses, their gowns, their mystery and allure from their first glimpses onward. Maybe it wasn’t much of a role; maybe those other actresses had been approached and had wisely turned it down. The Actress stepped back from the mirror, as far as she could before she reached the opposite wall. She took in the entire image of herself, the doubt as thick as the quiet in the hotel. But she would show them. She would show herself. You don’t just put on a maid’s costume and dust the rooms. You have to know the uncertainty of interaction with guests who couldn’t care less, the ache in your back from bending down to make beds. The Actress was going to play more than a woman who steals money. She was going to play a woman in love, who does something wrong for the sake of it. Her hand on the driver’s a gesture at understanding how it felt to do something illicit, how it felt to draw someone into sin. A woman who was a secretary in a dusty Arizona city. A woman who had a sister who loved her and would later look for her. A woman with a moral choice, who makes the right one in the end, no matter that the story itself could have cared less what she did or did not do, her little car moving from Phoenix and on westward, the drive so long you’d think she was going to drive off the end of the earth, in a love so deep she was willing to disappear into it without a lingering trace.