Chapter Thirteen
In the six weeks since she came home, Christina has watched as the flowers have bloomed and the days have lengthened, the light becoming more golden.
Sydney spring light, holding so much promise.
Los Angeles light is different – harder-edged, somehow.
Or maybe that’s just how it seems in her memory.
She’s wearing some capri pants that she last wore when she was a teenager – her mother pulled them out of a wardrobe somewhere.
Christina left her summery clothes behind in her Los Angeles home, thinking she wouldn’t be gone that long.
Just long enough for things to blow over.
It turns out there’s no fixed time for that.
A pot of tea is on the table next to her, and her favourite cup is half full of cooling liquid. She’s dragged the phone over from its spot next to the sofa – thankfully her mum has a long cord for it – and is talking to her agent at the end of his day and the start of hers.
‘No, you can’t come back,’ Lindsay says, sounding irritated.
He never used to sound irritated with her.
Whenever they spoke it always felt like he was flirting with her because he sounded light and almost giggly.
Maybe he’s irritated because she’s finally managed to get through to him after weeks of trying.
His assistant, Mischa, seemed to take pity on her today.
Lindsay is an experienced agent at a large talent agency; the sort of agent that actors and actresses dream of representing them while they’re auditioning for commercials and pilot episodes and doing rep theatre, wondering if anyone will pay attention.
He approached Christina after he saw her in a supporting role in an independent film, and she left the boutique agency that had taken a chance on her.
They understood – she couldn’t have said no to Lindsay. That would have been the end of her career right there. Instead, as it turns out, saying yes to Lindsay might have brought that about anyway.
‘It’s been weeks,’ she says to him. ‘I can’t believe anyone over there is still thinking about it.’
She thinks she hears a snort but maybe the line is just bad.
‘Clearly you don’t have the National Enquirer there,’ Lindsay says.
And if we did, I still wouldn’t read it, she feels like saying. Tabloid magazines have never been of interest to her, and especially not since she became a favourite subject.
‘I haven’t looked,’ she says truthfully.
‘Get looking, Christina. You need to know what people are saying about you.’
‘But it won’t be true, whatever it is. They don’t print the truth.’
‘People believe it anyway.’ He sighs dramatically. ‘That’s the point.’
She thinks about all the people she knows in Los Angeles. Maybe what Lindsay says is true.
‘I didn’t have an affair with him,’ she says quietly but firmly.
‘I don’t care if you did or you didn’t,’ he replies, and Christina wonders how that can be true. How can he have known her for this long and not care?
At his end of the call she can hear phones ringing and people talking. His office is like a train station: people coming and going, the constant movement of creative commerce.
‘Look, honey,’ he says, but it’s not a term of endearment, it’s a dehumanisation. She’s not Christina any more. She’s just a honey. ‘This shit is toxic. It’s like that oil sludge, y’know? The stuff that leaks from tankers and gets in the oceans? It’s going to hang around for a long time.’
‘It can’t last forever, though.’ There will be other scandals, she knows.
‘No, but people in this town … honey, they remember.’
‘I didn’t do anything wrong!’
‘You pissed him off somehow,’ Lindsay snaps. ‘And that’s what matters. No one will hire you.’
She swallows, wishing she could tell him what really happened, but he would be the least sympathetic person for that.
‘So, what?’ she says instead. ‘I just have to accept that I’m never going to work again?’
An exasperated sigh comes down the trans-Pacific line. ‘You can do some little theatre thing,’ he says. ‘Australia has theatres, right? Or soaps. You could do soaps. Honey, they’d be happy to have you, I’m sure.’ He chuckles. ‘It’s not like your country is full of movie stars.’
This is true but it doesn’t give her any comfort.
‘So you’re firing me,’ she says.
‘Well, no.’ A pause. ‘I just can’t get you any work.’
Christina realises that now she can’t make him any more money, he’s uninterested in her.
This phone call is so he can get rid of her and move on to someone more profitable.
All the work she’s put in, all the food she hasn’t eaten so she could stay as thin as the producers wanted, all the hours she’s spent having her hair bleached so it fits someone else’s image of what she should look like – none of it means anything.
None of it has brought her anything except money and tabloid bankability.
Which is, she knows, what most people would think of as success – and maybe she would have too, at one point, but now what she wants is peace.
‘Then I guess you’re not my agent anymore,’ she says. ‘Which is the same thing, right?’
‘Honey –’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she snaps, and hangs up the phone.
Her breathing’s rapid now, and rough. She’s never put her foot down in her life and it’s so unfamiliar that she feels slightly unwell with the shock of it.
Maybe if she’d put her foot down with the director – or had the reputation of someone who would – he wouldn’t have done what he did. Maybe he only targets people who are known for being pliable.
Because Christina has been that, hasn’t she? Doing what she’s told; taking opportunities offered to her rather than chasing ones that weren’t. She hasn’t been the seeker; she’s been the sought. And he sought her out. For the role, then more. Far more than she wanted to give.
She’s surprised when tears drop onto her hands, which are twisting around each other in her lap.
Sniffing, she hears her mother coming back into the house. ‘Darling!’ she calls. ‘Are you off the phone?’
Christina can’t answer, just keeps twisting her hands, letting tears fall.
Within seconds she feels her mother embracing her from behind, kissing the top of her head, then holding her tightly against her chest.
‘My darling,’ she murmurs into Christina’s hair. ‘Everything will be all right.’
Christina’s head drops with the weight of her tears and her anger and her frustration, of her grief for the life that has been taken from her, the uncertainty of what comes next.
She lets herself cry, and lets her mother hold her, and tries to believe Joni’s words even as every molecule of her being says she’s wrong.