Chapter 4 Beck, the Sporty One
Beck, the Sporty One
September, a month before the reunion
“It was absolutely consensual! Come on! He’s thirty-five years old.”
Ezra Rose, Beck’s lawyer, looked at her with pitying eyes. “Mm-hmm. Well, you can’t exactly blame the vic—er, person. You were operating from a position of power. Haven’t you seen The Morning Show? It’s so good. Sharon and I are obsessed.”
“Yes, I know the show, Ezra! I cast half of it! But there was no power imbalance. I didn’t even know he was an actor till . . . after.”
He hadn’t told her that before they slept together, had he?
Maybe at dinner, when she was checking her phone—an occupational hazard.
Shit. Her heart kicked like a rabid Shetland pony.
If he had told her, and then she slept with him, that changed things, and not in her favor.
No. He definitely hadn’t. She obviously would’ve remembered.
This lawsuit had her rattled. Quid pro quo sexual harassment? Come on!
Ezra, a sixty-something guy, bald but for the tufts of hair sticking up on each side of his head, shuffled some papers. “I think you should just settle, Beck. It’ll cost less, and a trial would only hurt you.”
“I’m already hurt! I just want to clear my name.” God, she sounded like every perp ever.
Earlier this year, Beck Morrow, sole proprietor of Rebecca Morrow Casting, who’d placed actors in forty-seven movies and nineteen television shows, had gone on a date with a guy named Andy, cursed be his name.
Andy. Not Andrew or Drew. It should’ve been her first warning that he was an immature asshole looking for a shortcut.
The Andys of this world were not to be trusted.
They’d met at a wrap party for a film shot in Brooklyn.
Beck had cast four roles in it, and Andy knew someone who’d worked on set decoration.
He chatted her up, asked what she thought of the movie, made some jokes about Brooklynites.
He was cute and relaxed. When he asked if she’d like to grab a drink after the party, Beck impulsively said yes.
Why not, right? She was forty-three, and this kind of thing didn’t happen in a world when you just swiped left or right (but mostly left).
Most men didn’t ask a woman out because they’d had a nice time talking.
His invitation was . . . novel. Vintage, almost. Had she been prepared for this shockingly quaint request, she probably would’ve said no.
Dating was only meh at best, whereas her new couch . . . now that was a thing of beauty.
But it had been fourteen months since her last date.
Beck was more than six feet tall, which put off a lot of guys, and while she was fit, her face was plain.
She wasn’t putting herself down. She liked her face, but she was not particularly pretty.
She tended to look like the “before” in a makeup tutorial, and since she didn’t wear makeup, she never got to the “after.” Men didn’t exactly sprint after her on the street, asking for her number.
And so, rather than going home to Mr. Littlejeans, her fifteen-year-old cat, and watching the latest hit on Netflix or Prime for work, she’d said yes.
It was a mistake.
Andy was not uncharming, not unfunny, not unattractive.
He didn’t flinch at the cocktail menu, where no drink cost less than twenty-four dollars.
He said he worked in finance, and his clothes were nice, so when he turned down her offer to go dutch, she didn’t argue.
“I’d love to see you for dinner,” Andy said as he paid.
“I’m free all this week except for Thursday.
” He had a nicely groomed beard, blue eyes and an easy smile.
There was no reason to turn him down, she told herself.
She should do something different for once, not just stay at home and work.
“Sure,” she said.
Oh, to revisit that moment and say no! So much for the intuition that had been such a huge part of her success.
Beck wasn’t exactly looking for a life partner (it just felt like so much work), but yes, on some level, she was a little lonely.
New York City wasn’t an easy place for single women.
Andy had no criminal record (of course she’d checked), did have a job with Bank of America and was clearly interested in her.
He’d even checked out her ass. Also, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had dinner in a restaurant to just talk to someone.
Most of her nights out—and they were legion—were for work.
As a casting director with a solid reputation—she’d worked with Christopher Nolan, Sofia Coppola, J.
J. Abrams, Hanelle M. Culpepper and yes, Shonda—a lot of Beck’s job was finding new talent.
This meant going to off- and off-off-Broadway shows, or watching student productions at NYU, or going to black box theaters and third-tier comedy clubs, hoping to find that spark.
That indefinable factor that would satisfy the vague “I’ll know it when I see it” instruction from directors.
These forays had about a 3 percent success rate.
In other words, for every one hundred shows Beck saw, she might find three actors she’d contact to come to her office, do some readings so she could gauge their talent, their range, their look.
If that went well, she’d advise them on speech, posture, confidence, sometimes even a different haircut.
She’d tell them what shows and movies to watch, and maybe, if the right role came across her desk, she’d ask them to read for the part.
It wasn’t what she’d dreamed of doing. Basketball, the WNBA, had been her dream.
When that future had been assassinated, she’d had to look elsewhere.
During her sophomore year of college, her roommate had been in a play.
They’d needed a stage manager, and Beck volunteered.
Actors were fun, she’d found, and NYU had a lot of them.
That summer, she applied for an internship with Bastion Talent Agency in Los Angeles.
A paid internship. She was a starving college student, and New York in the summertime .
. . sweaty. The guy she was dating was going home for the summer, so why not?
Bastion, she’d learned, had a reputation of finding the next fresh-faced kid who’d set Hollywood on fire, or plucking an actor who’d previously only booked commercials and moving them up the food chain.
As the intern, Beck had sifted through headshots, looking for an interesting face, and begun paying more attention to commercials.
By the end of the summer, she’d recommended two people Bastion wanted to represent.
When she graduated from NYU, Beck was offered a full-time job and took it.
Casting was a kind of alchemy. Being a star wasn’t about looks so much as something indefinable. Her boss, Sherry, would squint at a hopeful actor, tilt her head and say, “Now read that line like you hate me. Great. And now like you’re trying to get me into bed. And now like you’re my mother.”
Beck had worked harder and longer than anyone else in the firm, taking on more and more responsibilities. But while the City of Angels was beautiful, and everything they said about the weather was true, she moved back to New York at thirty to start her own company. She missed the East Coast.
The casting community was close—Sherry threw her a few jobs, and Beck was off and running.
After a couple of years, directors trusted her to find the right person for the role, sometimes giving her a dubious look when the actor came in to read, then a high five afterward.
Two of her finds had gone from obscurity to Oscar nominations.
One had won. Thirteen of her clients had Emmys, and six had nabbed a Golden Globe.
It took a lot of energy and time, always being on the prowl, squinting at actors, bartenders and salesclerks—and once, her garbageman—to assess their charisma.
Beck loved it. The idea that anyone could live out their biggest dreams, or even start thinking about those dreams, was addictive.
Miguel, her former garbageman, now lived in Santa Fe, a regular character actor on the verge of becoming a cult fave.
Which was all to say that Andy’s interest in her, not her job, was refreshing. She rarely saw anyone outside of the business, unless you counted Mr. Littlejeans’s vet and her doorman. A night in which she was pursued, flirted with and fed . . . it would be nice.
And it was nice. When Andy asked her about her job, and she told him her perfected vague answer—I work in TV, on the business end of things.
Have you watched anything good lately?—their talk turned to brushes with celebrities, always fun and not at all uncommon in the city.
She admitted to bursting into tears when she’d run into Christopher Walken, since she was such a fan, and how he had smiled and given her a twirl before continuing down Tenth Avenue.
Andy parried with seeing Anne Hathaway one day, impulsively blurting out, “Are you okay? You look exhausted,” and the cringing apologies that followed.
They didn’t exactly spark, but they didn’t fizzle, either.
This speaking to a human about personal things was novel for Beck.
The food was excellent, the ambience lovely.
Andy paid, asked if he could walk her home, since he’d thoughtfully chosen a restaurant a few blocks from her apartment.
When he said he could really use a cup of coffee (code for sex, obviously), Beck hesitated, then said, “Okay.” Apparently, her third eye of intuition had been stabbed with a sharp stick.
She’d bought the fifth-floor apartment (with elevator!) in Hell’s Kitchen because it had been affordable (back then, at least) and close to the theater district. It was a very pleasant one-bedroom in a 1920s brownstone, ivy crawling up the sides.
“Nice place,” Andy said.