Lou
I guess I can skip through this part. You already know that I didn’t get on the plane.
I couldn’t really describe my state of mind as I pushed my flight home to the day after the end of the festival—everything until then was sold out—and extended my stay at the hotel.
All on credit card, thousands of dollars on top of all the money I’d already spent. Money I didn’t, and wouldn’t, have.
But how could I leave when I was killing it in Cannes?
If you were watching me on your phone, that was the consensus: I was killing it in Cannes.
The story held up. My follower count blew up. My direct messages filled up. The number of people calling themselves a fan (a fan of me) went from zero to, well, up.
Everyone had thoughts and feelings, and no one cared about the truth.
So I too lost sight of it. I forgot that it wasn’t real.
Total strangers on the internet had created my dream life, and I grabbed it by the handfuls.
I felt like I was in a heist movie, when we finally cracked the bank safe open.
I was elbows deep in dollar bills. It was exhilarating.
People asked me questions, obviously. About the movie, about Dorian Fisher, about Cannes. I responded to everyone and confirmed nothing. It was easy enough. Deflect, deflect, deflect.
Soon after my conversation with Liza outside the restaurant, an event organizer had slid into my DMs. She wanted to invite me to a “delicious” event for a liquor brand.
Vodka, if I remember correctly. She knew it was last minute but really hoped the new Cannes It Girl could make it.
She meant me. Until then, I felt like I’d been hit by Cannes, and pretty hard at that.
Now I was a Cannes It Girl. How could I have gone home after this?
I said yes to the party and wore the red strapless dress I’d worn at my sister’s wedding almost ten years ago, which I needed to yank up every five minutes.
I filmed myself entering the venue, past the black rope and the handsome French men, straight to a tray of cocktails adorned with rose petals.
I took a mirror selfie in the bathroom, where the lighting made me feel good about myself.
I gave my new followers what they wanted, and they rewarded me with likes. It was a pretty good deal.
On my way out of the bathroom, I made eye contact with a guy who smiled at me openly.
“Hi,” I said, smiling and upbeat, like a Cannes It Girl.
He wore a shirt so thin I could guess the shape of his nipples through the fabric. Around his neck was a seashell tied with a thin black rope, a cheap accessory compared to the gold Rolex on his wrist. His black curly hair was mussed up from the wind, creating a mane around his face.
“Bonsoir,” he responded, taking my hand and pressing his lips against it, like we were in a Keira Knightley movie.
Men flirting with me wasn’t exactly new. You’ve seen my legs. But he was French and he was kind of sexy, and I had suddenly pulled my head out of the water after nearly drowning.
His name was Samuel and he was a model. His underwear campaign was currently splashed all over the Paris metro. He showed me pictures, though I can’t remember if I asked to see them.
I pointed at his six-pack.
“How much of this is real versus airbrushing?”
“You’re funny,” Samuel said.
He was in Cannes because he knew someone who knew someone who had an apartment in town. He and his pretty face had sweet-talked their way into a few parties already. When he asked where I was staying, I said that the Carlton was a really nice place. (It is a really nice place.)
“What about you, Lucy? What are you doing in Cannes?”
He’d finished his drink and was standing closer to me.
I leaned over and felt my warm breath against his tan skin.
“It’s Lou, actually.”
His face took on that bland demeanor of someone who hadn’t heard me over the loud music but didn’t care enough to ask me to repeat myself. It didn’t put me off as much as you might think.
“Well now, I’m here to have fun,” I said. It was both the greatest lie I’d ever told and the truest thing that could cross my lips. “My movie just premiered. Don’t Be Sad!, directed by Odetta Olson.”
“I heard it’s great,” Samuel said.
He hadn’t seen it. I liked him even more now.
He came even closer. I was certain he was going to kiss me right there in the middle of the party.
I couldn’t remember the last time something like that had happened, and I was ready for it.
I had no idea what I was going to do about Liza, or the rest of my life.
For now, I would take the fun and be grateful for it.
But then a brunette stumbled excitedly toward us. She had long thin hair and plump lips.
“J’ai trop faim,” she said, snagging cheese puff pastries from a passing tray.
The party, I have to admit, was nothing compared to the one I’d “crashed” on the first night. The savory pastries were soggy, and there was nothing else to drink but the brand’s very average cocktails.
Samuel pointed at me. “She’s in Don’t Be Sad!”
The brunette’s eyes grew wide as she swallowed her second cheese puff.
“Oh my god. So cool.” I barely had time to feel cool when she added, “Is it true that Odetta Olson got naked on set during the sex scenes? To make the actors feel more comfortable or something? Apparently that’s why her husband filed for divorce.”
This was the most attention I’d gotten in real life since arriving in Cannes. People on my social media were clamoring for details, but this was different. In the space of a few minutes, these two had lifted the loneliness right off me.
I opened my mouth. They were both ready to hang on to my words, greedy gazes forward. I shrugged, not meeting their eyes.
“What happens on set stays on set.”
Their jaws dropped as they both gasped with excitement. Ten years of acting classes and this was what I was using them for.
Brunette laughed. “So it’s totally true!”
I’d always been the nice girl. The one who confirmed meeting times and knew her lines by heart. The one who took the rejections chin up, who understood why the director had “gone a different way.” That girl had gotten me nowhere. I was so tired of her.
Samuel and émilie—she had a French mom, an American dad, and the gravely sexy voice of someone who’d been up all night singing on podiums—huddled over, insisting we take a picture.
émilie looked so pleased with it, like it meant something to her.
“Are you staying for the whole festival?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows. “I guess you have to. If the movie wins the Palme, all eyes will be on you.”
She had a point. If the movie won, I wouldn’t be invited to the ceremony. I wouldn’t be part of the celebrations. That would be a pretty big clue that I wasn’t actually in it. Which meant that I had five days left of being a Cannes It Girl, at best. This spotlight had an expiration date.
And what then? I needed a plan. A purpose. Having fun had never been the point. I wanted success. Fame. Professional accomplishment. And to prove my family wrong.
émilie was still waiting for me to respond.
“Actually, I’m focusing on locking in my next role now. My agent is in town, organizing meetings for me. You always have to think ahead.”
Except that Liza had no idea I was still in Cannes. And I didn’t know if she was still my agent.
“She should meet your aunt!” Samuel exclaimed to émilie. Then to me he said, “émilie’s aunt is a big casting director.”
“She’s been coming to Cannes for thirty years,” émilie said proudly. “I’m actually staying at her villa. It’s gorgeous.”
She pulled out her phone and showed me picture after picture of her time in Cannes over the last few days: pretty twenty-somethings drinking in an expansive living room, taking a dip in the pool, lying on the bright green grass. Samuel was in half of them.
“Beautiful!” I said, but my mind was racing ahead.
émilie’s aunt must be a pretty successful casting director to have a house like this. I pictured the look on Liza’s face when she learned that I was arranging my own meetings, that I’d found my next role without her help.
I willed myself to act chill.
“It’d be nice to meet her, if our schedules align.”
A server passed by with a new batch of those sweet pink cocktails. I didn’t want one but my throat felt dry and I needed to keep my hands busy, like I wasn’t desperately waiting for émilie’s answer.
“Hmm,” émilie said as I took greedy sips.
“Isn’t she casting for a new project at the moment?” Samuel said.
My heart started to dance in my chest, but émilie looked right past me.
“Fiona Pills is here!”
It was like the red sea parted. People stopped drinking, eating, breathing.
Surrounded by an entourage of at least four people, Fiona Pills looked like she had a literal halo around her.
The light bounced off her defined cheekbones and glorious hair.
She wore a sculptural minidress that shone like it was made out of a thousand diamonds. She was a movie star. The real deal.
And I was the exact opposite of that.
Later, I learned that Fiona Pills had attended no less than five events that evening, in three different outfits.
She only stayed at this one for a few minutes.
The Cannes Film Festival had turned into a PR tour for her.
Not for the movie, for her personally. If Odetta Olson was the toxic older female director, Fiona Pills had been her defenseless victim.
And now, at last, she was free of those shackles.
émilie held my hand. “You have to introduce us.” And then, to Samuel. “Let’s go get a selfie.”
I tried not to sound too alarmed. “She just got here. We don’t want to crowd her right away.”
émilie took the half-empty glass I was holding and placed it on a nearby table.
“She’s not going to say no to you. You’re in Cannes promoting the same movie. You work together.”
What was I supposed to say to that? émilie dragged Samuel and me through the crowd.
My mind checked out, as if I were an innocent bystander outside of my own body.
émilie didn’t hesitate one bit before she tapped Fiona Pills on the shoulder, like they were old friends.
The star’s entourage reacted, but her own face showed only grace.
“Hi Fiona, we’d love to take a picture!” émilie said, getting her phone ready. “With our dear friend Lou, here.”
She leaned to the side so Fiona could fully take me in.
And now I would be called out for the fraud that I was. Not Dorian Fisher’s new love interest. Not a Cannes It Girl. And definitely not sharing any kind of limelight with Fiona Pills. I stared at my feet, praying for the floor to open and swallow me whole.
“Hi Lou,” she said. “How are you?”
Fiona Pills smiled; it was electric. My new friends exchanged a delighted look, ignoring my befuddled air. émilie quickly leaned in and, click, the picture was in. Fiona Pills thanked us warmly—like we’d done anything to warrant her gratitude—before her team whisked her away.
“She is so cool!” émilie said. “Is she always like that? Tell us everything.”
I nodded. “She’s such a star.”
émilie checked the picture on her phone and posted it on her socials.
Then she looked up. “Okay, let me text my aunt.”
“She will love you,” Samuel said.
A few minutes later, émilie’s phone lit up with a new text.
“The day after tomorrow at 3 p.m.?” she asked. “My aunt likes to meet people at the Martinez.”
I counted to three in my head, holding my breath.
“That should work.”
Over my decade of trying to make it in this business, I’d been warned about so many things. How cutthroat it was. The challenges. The heartache. The unfairness of it all.
But people often forget to tell you how much luck is involved. How, one day, you might find yourself in the right place, meeting the right person who will open the right door for you.
The thing was, I’d already hit rock bottom. There was no way down from here. This couldn’t hurt any more than it already did.
I guess you might say that I wasn’t the one to get irredeemably hurt in the end.
I am, after all, still alive. It’s lucky for me that humiliation alone can’t kill you.