SEPTEMBER 1996
“I’VE BEEN BACK A DAY,” I SAID, INSTEAD OF WHAT I wanted to say, like: “Why are you here? Did my security let you through the gates? And are those paparazzi taking photos from the bushes here because you tipped them off?”
Harper slipped her sunglasses up to push her hair back—and I noted that she’d cut it, slashed it into a choppy bob that framed her angular face.
When had she done that? I’d been trying to keep up with life over here, but it had slipped through my fingers like the tide through the marshland weeds.
At the time, I’d thought it pleasant, but now it felt like I’d missed out, and I had to resist the urge to trawl through backdated magazines to find exactly when, exactly why.
She pierced me with her cold amber eyes and deadpanned: “I missed you.”
“Inside,” I growled as those shutters snapped. “Now.”
“Careful, Heywood, issue an invitation like that and your threshold becomes traversable.”
She tipped her weight forward, so she was no longer leaning against her cherry-red Lamborghini.
I shut the door behind us and watched as she took my home in. Hers, I remembered, was all monochrome modernity with a few artful pops. This was more of a rattan collective—designer beach to her state-of-the-art luxury.
“Well?” I demanded.
“You’re back, so I thought we should do something big to get the press’s attention again.”
“Big is you turning up at my house?”
“No, we’re going out. I know a cocktail bar with impeccable lighting.”
“Why would I agree to that?”
Harper smiled, and it was always a vicious, beautiful slash of stretched-thin lips and blinding teeth.
“Because you missed me too. And because you like manipulating your public perception almost as much as you like attention. We head out, and we’ll be on every cover, possibly for weeks.
Everyone thinks they understand a rivalry, but frenemies are complicated.
We don’t merely want them looking, Nadine, we want them captivated. ”
———
“Look at the sconce in that back corner,” Harper instructed, pointing behind her shoulder.
I looked—sleek and metallic, not all that interesting.
At the tables surrounding it, people were eyeing our booth as subtly as they could, like they might pretend they weren’t in this bar hoping to spot celebrities.
There were even a few camera shutters winking at me.
“Why?”
“Because I know your best angles.” She grinned into her straw. “That will be the shot, trust me. Say thank you.”
It took all my effort not to glower, and she laughed.
“One day you’re going to thank me for all that I’ve done for you. You’re going to grovel. Even if I have to force you to your knees myself.”
“Caleb that disappointing you have to fantasize about me instead?”
“I can be flexible. But I imagine you know a thing or two about that.”
I looked at her, but she was focused on the cocktail, tapping a perfectly polished, white-tipped nail on the glass. I took a sip of my own vodka soda, convincing myself she wasn’t saying what I thought she was.
But then, almost nonchalant, she added: “So, aren’t you going to tell me about her? That’s what girls talk about on these kinds of jaunts, isn’t it?”
I set my glass down on the table before I could break it.
Noting the rigid set of my limbs, Harper added: “Relax, Heywood. I have standards and outing people falls well below them. Besides, I just told you I’m the same, so you’re armed for retaliation.”
“You mean you—”
“Have dated girls before? Sure.” She took a sip of her drink then snorted. “Do you remember at CADS how all my books were secondhand and my clothes had, like, a dozen patches?”
I nodded. Poverty was very fashionable in the early ’90s for girls like Harper.
“Right, well, my father discovered I’d been hooking up with Alison Yardley at the tennis club.
He said he’d cut me off if it didn’t stop.
Actually his exact words were ‘that sort of thing needs to be left behind at boarding school.’” Harper laughed a little, like this all wasn’t incredibly traumatic.
“So I began putting nearly everything away just in case. Tried to hide that fact, of course—you’re welcome for that copy of Blood Wedding, by the way.
But I know what I’m like when I’m blinded by love—I’ll do anything.
I’d give it all up in an instant. So I figured it was better to have some savings in place. ”
“Harper, that’s dreadful.”
“Yes,” she said cheerily. “It is. Fathers, eh? Ironically my mother was perfectly fine with the fact that Alison was a girl; she just didn’t like that she had a nose ring. So, let’s agree not to out each other and do let me know if you want access to the sewing circle.”
“What?” I startled. As obsessive as I was about film, Dietrich and Nazimova’s Golden Age network of sapphics hadn’t escaped my notice, but I certainly hadn’t anticipated such a thing continuing in Hollywood now. “There’s a sewing circle?”
Harper leaned forward, over her glass, toying with her straw again. It was distracting, the way she rolled it between her long, elegant fingers. “There’s a sewing circle,” she said, her voice warm and low. “You’d be quite welcome. Especially in that jumpsuit.”
My breath caught—unsure if she was teasing me or, hideously, flirting. I looked up, that teasing smirk—and the vicious glint, the one that said she knew just how much that jumpsuit irked me. Mocking and smug: the Harper default.
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll pass.”
“Too loved up with this one? Sasha, right?”
I didn’t like her name on Harper’s tongue. “I don’t recall the press leaking anything about the two of us.”
Harper shook her head, tossing the frayed choppy strands into the sort of mussed tresses that evoked thoughts of curling fingers and clutched bed sheets. “I had you followed.”
“What were you saying about standards?”
“That they’re low but not subterranean.”
I took up my glass again, quirking a brow at her as I raised it to my lips. “Imagine if you put this effort into your performances.”
“Oh, I thought we had this conversation a long time ago, Nadine. My performances are effortless—and that’s how I’m going to beat you: without much effort at all.”
“You might want to try harder. You’re too aware of the camera. You milk the shots.”
Harper made a soft hum somewhere deep in her throat. “Noted. So you’ve been watching the show. And not, I assume, because you can relate to being a broke, aimless girl in the city?”
I did not rise to the bait—the hook and lure of her. Sometimes she acted as though any response from me at all was a win, any reaction something gained. And sometimes she behaved like she was so desperate for my approval she would lay the ground out for me in the hope I might wander upon it.
“Any notes for me?” I asked.
“No. I can’t say I’ve managed to catch any of your recent films. I’ve been so busy of late.”
———
Ruchi didn’t know how to react, pacing around my living room like I often did hers. I’d been about to call a ride given Harper had been drinking, but Ruchi was already outside, ranting about Harper’s “bastard publicist” letting her know about “this little affair” far too late.
“She used you,” she said. “She owns that bar.”
I sighed, leaning back against the firm cushions of a sofa that ought to be more comfortable and less stylistically appropriate. The room swayed with the movement. I’d credit Harper that—her establishment didn’t water down the liquor.
“What does it matter? If anything isn’t that embarrassing for her? She needs to branch out because she can’t hack it well enough in acting?”
“She doesn’t care about being a better actress than you, Nadine.
I suspect she knows she’s lost that one.
She cares about being bigger than you. And she cares about making you give a damn about that.
Frankly, I give a damn about that. She’s trying to make herself a brand, and I’m not sure that we shouldn’t be doing the same. ”
I thought of Harper’s bar and its arched mirrors, the reflective tables, the direct bolts of light shining from above, like everything was designed for people to be seen. The people clustered, like they’d known to expect it. She was cashing in on her celebrity.
How embarrassing.
“I have no interest in lowering myself to her level. It’s tacky.”
I didn’t want to be more famous than her. I wanted to be more accomplished.
But then I actually thought about that—her name spoken over mine, her face on posters, people thinking of CADS or Hollywood or even this rivalry between us and thinking first and foremost of her.
“Urgh,” I groaned into my pillow, which Ruchi clearly took as acquiescence.
“You won’t be exactly like her. She’s the accessible party girl. You’re an enigma, a mystery, a level above it all.”
“And?”
“You’re luxury, Nadine. So let’s drive that home.”
———
That was my first brand deal, and it branded me in turn: Dior. Classic, timeless, rich.
I began holidaying in European coastal destinations, letting myself be photographed in nautical swimsuits lounging on yachts (god bless seasickness tablets).
I took skiing lessons. I ate at fine restaurants.
I wore expensive labels and went on shopping trips with Sabine Verrier, an actress who was better established but beginning to age out of Hollywood, so she needed me to bring her back into the fold just as I needed her for the prestige.
I had the illusion of a legacy, the sheen of wealth, and the protection of the establishment—not relatable, but untouchable.
That wasn’t me, that was Harper—so how had that come to define me? I was the sort of girl I’d have raged against mere years ago.
Cool, fun Harper began doing Pepsi adverts—ironic given that in an interview two months earlier she’d sworn the key to staying slim was drinking a can of Diet Coke for breakfast.