‘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 theNational Enquirerthere,’ 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 howthatcan 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 –’