MAY 2001
I DID NOT HAVE A FILM AT CANNES BUT, LIKE I HAD nearly a decade ago, I needed to network, to rebuild connections and seek out opportunity.
By that point my hair had grown to my chin and flicked outward at the edges in a way that felt flirtatious and fun—not quite the classic look we’d always gone for, but those days were over.
“Sweet, innocent, a young orphan girl who lost her way,” Amos had said. “Is that what you want me to work with?”
“No,” I said with a wrinkle of my nose. That might make me better received with the public, but it wouldn’t get me roles.
I’d known this might damage my career—but not quite how drastically.
Parts hadn’t just dried up, they’d vanished.
We didn’t even find out about them until they were cast, which pissed Victor off, and he was too big an agent to ignore, so we then encountered a string of artfully worded descriptors of what casting directors were looking for like a new talent or someone understated or a homegrown actress, all of which clearly excluded me.
“It was never the maturity people liked,” I added. “It was how that was offset by the Harper rivalry. So let’s lean for that. I’m not perfect. I’m interesting. I’m someone who might get their hands dirty.”
So Amos decided to create something of his own. Mostly, he enjoyed styling—sourcing designers, pairing pieces, crafting a look. I was no longer his only client in that regard, but I was his priority, a partnership whose success was undeniable.
But more and more recently he’d begun to turn his hand back to designing, and this is what he made: a mountain of taffeta, nipped and stitched into long trailing tendrils, rough and soft at once.
It gave me the impression of a debutante escaped from a mansion aflame, or Alice clawing her way back through the looking glass.
I graced the red carpet on the arm of Anton Moreau, who was sour-faced and sullen about the whole affair. His agency had obviously decided I would be an excellent way to boost his profile—though from the glances he and Amos were sharing I suspected and he needs a beard was also on their agenda.
As soon as we reached the carpet, Anton was a captivating smile and a dozen doting glances, so I couldn’t complain.
I didn’t see Harper and Joel until we reached the theater at the top of the stairs, where a large drinks reception was taking place.
They were standing to the side, wrapped up in each other’s warm embrace, and I turned away, my stomach churning just as I caught Harper’s hand reach for a glass of champagne from one of the circulating trays and Joel swat it away.
Oh. One of those bastards. And I’m sure there was plenty to unpack about what had just occurred and what it might signal between the two of them—things I had been hoping for only a year ago—but all I could think of was the appearance of it all, of a man who might be more wary of his wife being drunk in public than of being seen laying a hand on her like that.
But it was Harper’s business, and I had people to meet. I wasn’t supposed to touch alcohol for the first year of my recovery, so as everyone else sipped champagne, I focused on getting the job done.
Anton and I worked the room for an hour or so before I turned and there he was, right beside me: Joel.
“Hello,” I said, startled. “Lovely to see you again.”
“I know Harper leaked those photos,” he said, keeping his voice quiet but his eyes drilled into me.
“Too little far too late if you asked me, but it’s been a wonderful reprieve.
So, by all means, attempt to worm your way back into this world, but stay away from my wife while you do it.
You’ve seen what she’s capable of—you don’t want to see what I am. ”
My teeth felt stuck together, ground so tightly it took effort to work my jaw free. “Is that a threat, Joel? Because that really wouldn’t be a very good look for either of you.”
His eye twitched, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore—his gaze darting around the room like he had other places to be—other people to intimidate.
Was this the sort of chivalry Harper cared for?
“You don’t threaten a disease, Heywood. You eradicate it.
God knows you’re like an infection when it comes to Harper, and she has more important things to focus on than the petty schoolground bullshit between you both. ”
“Joel,” Harper called sharply, appearing a few feet away and closing the distance quickly to take her husband’s hand. She didn’t even look at me, and that took me aback more than his words did. Like he might be more noteworthy to her than I was.
She pulled him away hurriedly and still didn’t so much as glance at me—and Anton, who had watched this unfurl, suddenly seemed to realize action might be needed from him, so he stepped forward, hand reaching protectively for the small of my back.
I glanced around, but with everyone milling and a few hours into the free-flowing champagne and not-nearly-enough canapés, the room was chaotic enough that our interaction seemed to have escaped the notice of the roaming press and photographers.
But when I excused myself a few moments later, Harper followed me to the bathroom, a shadow of my every step. I was the disease? She was the recurrent nightmare, the illness I couldn’t shake.
“So who is he?” she asked.
“What?”
“The man clinging onto you.”
The bathroom was wide, with solid oak doors separating the individual stalls and a marble countertop with basins resting upon it like upturned hats. I took a step farther, like I needed space between us, though I masked it with the pretense of ensuring every stall was empty.
Once I had, I let myself look at her.
Properly and just the two of us, with no one else to perform for.
She wore silk, bitter and red. It dipped low, an assertive V as enticing as anything, almost vampiric in its lace-edged trim.
That fire that burned when I knelt before her flared now, as I looked at her, and I wondered if I’d ever be able to see her again without wanting to bite and tear and taste blood.
“What’s it to you?” I asked. My tongue felt swollen in my mouth, like it was already coated in the acrid tang of her.
“Is this it?” she hissed instead of answering. “Dear lord, how the mighty fall, the great Nadine Heywood hanging on the arm of some second-rate actor at Cannes because no one is booking her for her own films?”
I clutched the edge of the counter, the cool marble, letting my fingers curl like if I broke every nail it would satisfy my urge to break her.
It was not that every day was a struggle in the face of my addiction, and more that when the struggle came it obliterated everything in its path, had me grasping at coping mechanisms and turning over conversations from rehab like their echo might save me. And she …
I thought of my shins pressed into the rug.
The scissors cold against my neck.
Her fingers tilting my chin to meet her heartless eyes.
“Going to lick the boots of every director here? Maybe I should have made you do that, when you were on your knees for me.”
I hated her. I hated her. I hated her.
I leaned against the counter unable to stand with the weight of it.
“Is this how you stage your comeback?”
I looked up into the mirror, saw my own turmoil staring back, and marveled that this was her prize: my distress for her pleasure.
But she didn’t look pleased at all, just cold and hateful, glaring at me like she might keep going, like I was a wreckage for her to plunder.
I met her gaze and the disdain burning a home there.
“No, Harper, this is.”
And then I brought my head down hard into the marble countertop, heard her startled scream like it had come from my own mouth. I felt my nose break but what did it matter? The pain burst like an overripe fruit, unpalatable but edged with satisfaction.
And it was my own blood I could taste, in the end, hot and thick and nowhere near as sweet.
———
Victor put me in touch with the agency lawyers who helped me file the restraining order against her. Enough. Enough of her finding me whenever she wanted, of coming to my house and tormenting me, of feeling her touch in everything I did.
At Cannes, help had come running, as I cried and wailed about Harper attacking me, grabbing me by the hair and forcing me into that counter.
Harper had protested that she hadn’t, of course, but no one believed that when my blood was splattered across the tiles.
She shot me the most beautiful glare as Joel rushed in and hurried her out, like she was a little awed and a little impressed, like she had no idea I was willing to do something like that for her.
Feud Turns Fiery as Moore Attacks Heywood at Penultimate Night of Cannes
Nadine Heywood Files Restraining Order Against Harper Moore Following Cannes Assault
Heywood Declines Opportunity to Press Charges Against Moore: “I just want her to leave me alone”
I was gathering quite the little collection.
Meanwhile, parts were not exactly flooding in, but certainly there was a steady trickle.
Some people wanted to avoid the drama altogether.
And some wanted to cash in, and now that it was clear Harper was the worse of the two of us, I was their option.
Thankfully there were a few thousand surgeons in LA who specialized in nose jobs, and one had rebuilt mine with Leave a Light On for reference. So I was working again within weeks.
And I wore that old necklace everywhere, just in case she saw (she would, of course she would) to know I was rubbing all this in her face.
Not everyone bought the story of the attack—some thought I’d tripped and fallen. Some suspected a relapse. Some that I had to have provoked Harper somehow, done something worthy of such an act—after all, I was the one fresh from rehab.
I blocked her number so god only knew where she stood on the matter. I just hoped she was miserable about it.
Then I got that call: Rigged had dominated the Emmy nominations. And there I was: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.