Marnie
Denial was a place in Cannes, and I wanted to barricade myself in it and never come out again.
And that’s exactly what I did, for as long as I could.
This Harper girl clearly had no idea what she was talking about.
I clung to that thought so hard that, when I spotted Ben in the lobby of the Martinez after a meeting, all I felt was relief.
We hadn’t spoken since Harper had dropped that bomb on me.
Now, even in a sea of beautiful men, Ben looked dashing as he talked excitedly with some important-looking guy, his eyebrows shooting up in delight.
I loved our life together. His family had been so warm and welcoming. I fit so perfectly within their happy bubble. I couldn’t give this up. I’d have to be crazy. We would make it work. Everything could, and would, be explained away.
Ben finished his conversation and scanned the room, eventually pausing on me.
My heart fluttered. There was a movie quality to the moment.
Estranged lovers reunite after too much time apart.
Just roll with it for a second. The crowd splits.
The music goes down. They smile wildly at each other as they close the distance between them.
The world no longer exists.
Love prevails.
As I made my way over to him, the knot in my stomach twisted tighter. Maybe I didn’t need to ask the questions that had been swirling in my head. Maybe there was a way to skip right past this on our way to the happy ending we deserved. But if there was, I couldn’t see it.
“Hey,” I said, casually.
“Oh hi,” Ben responded.
You would have thought we were random acquaintances.
The crowd was thinning, the latest batch of celebrities on their way to yet another screening, party, press conference. I gestured to the lounge area, where we found an empty couch. Ben sat at a reasonable distance from me, avoiding my gaze.
“I had a chat with Harper.” I paused, watching for Ben’s reaction. He seemed puzzled but not concerned. I gathered the courage to continue. “She told me about your screenplay.”
“She shouldn’t have done that. You’re busy; I don’t want you to worry about anything. I’ll talk to her.”
He made a move to get up, like the real problem was that I was working too hard to deal with the fact that he’d stolen my work.
“Harper told me what your screenplay is about. The vengeful mistress who kills her lover.”
His face was blank. No admission. No contrition. I felt like I was speaking in a different language.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at him directly.
“Weeks ago, I had an idea for a story about a vengeful mistress who kills her lover. I got excited and wrote a few pages of the script, just for fun. But then I kept thinking about it, so I ended up finishing a whole draft. The file has been on my laptop the whole time. I should have told you before, but I never meant to do anything with it. And now I think, maybe… The screenplay you’ve been sending around is actually mine. ”
This time, the facade dropped. Ben scoffed as he shook his head, like I was making no sense at all.
“It’s not yours.” He let out a sardonic chuckle.
“So you didn’t find it on my computer?”
I felt a burst of relief. The confusion on his face was proof of some kind of mix-up. Soon it was all going to make perfect sense.
Ben leaned forward. “It’s not your screenplay. That’s what I mean. There’s no way you wrote it. Come on, Marnie. You don’t know how to do this.”
This man was the love of my life. My future husband. My future fucking husband.
“The name on the title page, Charlotte Clark, I made it up,” I said, willing myself to stay calm.
Ben let out an irritated sigh. “What are you talking about? This isn’t funny.”
Had he always been such a pretentious asshole? If so, what did it say about me that I’d never noticed before?
“What happened, Ben? Why did you take it? Why are you pretending this screenplay is yours?”
Ben recoiled. “You make it sound like—”
“I make it sound like exactly what it is. Look, I’ll take some responsibility for my part in it. I should have told you I was writing a screenplay. I was just worried that would hurt your feelings.”
“Hurt my feelings?”
“It’s been your dream all along. I never meant to step on your toes or, like, compete with you. I felt inspired and I didn’t think I’d actually finish it. I feel bad that I hid that from you.”
I stopped there. I couldn’t exactly blurt out that I was ashamed of the fact that my perfect boyfriend was so bad at the thing he loved the most.
But that wasn’t the whole problem. Ben was a great guy.
He was smart and handsome. Secure and loving.
I always felt like he was a catch. Always wondered why he’d picked me.
So, from day one, I showed him the Marnie I wanted him to see.
The gainfully employed Marnie who cooked most of her meals from scratch with organic produce.
The practical Marnie who shopped sales and wore sensible shoes.
The fit one, the career-focused one, the domestic goddess, the funny, the sexy, the savvy girl.
I texted with his mother about gatherings and birthday presents and a dozen other little things, because I needed to be great in every single way.
Ben’s lips were zipped up in a thin line.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked, feeling small, like I was begging him to fix us.
Ben inhaled sharply. What he said next nearly knocked me over.
“Everyone in town is reading the screenplay. With my name on it. My title.”
“But it’s not yours.”
“I made it better.”
“But it’s not yours,” I repeated, feeling like the walls were closing in on me. “Even if you thought you’d found some random stranger’s work on my computer, why would you take it?”
He wasn’t denying it. He wasn’t giving me a plausible explanation. The man in front of me seemed like a complete stranger.
“It’s too late.”
He sounded so cold and calculated.
I opened my mouth to respond, but he barged in first. “This is what I’ve been working toward for years.
Mornings, evenings, weekends. You saw me.
I did the work. And I’m finally there. Finally.
Do you think that you can whip out some half-baked idea and declare yourself a professional writer?
I’m not going to let you take this away from me. ”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the writer here. You have a job you love. Your boss adores you. Your life is full. What else do you want, Marnie? Why are you so fucking greedy?” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Forget it. Miss Fucking Perfect will never understand.”
He shook his head in disgust, got up, and walked away without ever stopping to look back at me.
I felt like I’d been cut open, my heart ripped out.
Angry, too. For so many reasons. Mostly angry at myself.
And so I didn’t take any time to think. I took out my phone and flicked through my emails until I found the one from the producer who’d been so eager to speak to me.
Ben hadn’t mentioned that part. He didn’t know I’d already sent my screenplay out.
The producer’s last message was from five days ago.
Just like with the others, I’d never responded to her.
I tapped on the cell number in her signature. It was still early morning in LA, but I couldn’t wait another moment. The phone rang and rang and rang. My palm grew clammy around my phone.
“Hello?” she finally said, groggily.
“Hi! Is this Kavi? I’m Marnie, actually… This is Charlotte Clark. I wrote a screenplay called Quiet Treason. You’ve been emailing me?”
“Right.” She sounded much less sleepy now.
An awkward silence ensued.
“You wanted to talk to me about it? I’m sorry I’m only calling you now.”
“Hmm.” She sighed.
I felt myself crumble. I was not cut out for this. No one really made it in Hollywood. Not people like me, anyway.
“Is this not a good time?” I asked.
“Let me backtrack for a second,” she said, sounding weary. “You said your name is Charlotte Clark?”
“It’s a pen name.”
I heard the sound of the fridge opening and closing, a mug being placed on a kitchen counter.
“But you’re saying you wrote this screenplay?”
“I did. I’m Charlotte Clark. Well, Marnie Redd. But yes, it’s me.”
“Um. It’s funny you’re calling me now because an old friend sent me a new screenplay last night.
He told me I should stop what I was doing immediately.
It was that good. I read half a page before I realized it seemed very familiar.
The title and the author’s name were different, so I hadn’t made the connection.
I went through my files and found the screenplay you’d sent me.
It was the same one. And you’re calling now, when I’ve tried to be in touch with you for weeks. That’s a strange coincidence.”
All the blood drained out of my body. I was gone, mindless. Unable to speak.
She continued. “I googled your name, and nothing came up.”
“I thought people used pen names sometimes?” I heard myself whisper.
“But here we have two different writers, each claiming they wrote this one screenplay. The two versions are virtually identical.”
“Identical?” Ben had said he’d made it better.
“Pretty much. And it’s amazing. I’d love to make this movie. But I’m not spending the next few years embroiled in a copyright lawsuit. Nothing good ever comes out of that.”
“It’s my screenplay,” I said, sounding meek even to my own ears.
“So you say.”
“What do I do now?”
“Honestly? Unless you have a very good lawyer, I’d probably just give up.
That other writer, Ben Something, is represented by one of the best agents in the business.
Look, I don’t know what happened and I don’t want to know.
But if I were you, I’d spend my energy writing something new.
If you want to make it in this world, you have to think of yourself as a bottomless well.
You have to create and create until something sticks.
And protect your work. There aren’t many sharks out there, but the ones that exist are savages.
You must have really pissed off that guy. ”
I didn’t get back to our hotel until hours later, bleary eyed from meetings in hotel lobbies and worn down by the torrent of instructions coming from my increasingly panicked boss. I could hardly breathe as I entered the room; I was too exhausted for another argument.
But it turned out that I didn’t need to worry about that.
Ben was gone. So were his clothes that had been scattered around, his shaving cream on the left side of the sink, where he always kept it at home, and his suitcase. The space stood in eerie silence, the absence of him speaking louder than any mess he’d made before.
I’d come to Cannes on the verge of a promotion, working on a buzzy movie made by a killer woman, accompanied by my leading man, starring in my best life.
And now everything had blown apart.
Was I sad? Yes.
Mad? Definitely.
But also, I was relieved. I didn’t have to pretend anymore.
It wasn’t about what I needed to do anymore. Who I needed to be. There was no act to put on.
All bets were off.