Author: Emily M. Danforth
Category: LGBT
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/emily-m-danforth/page,19,568862-plain_bad_heroines.html
“Hey, hey, the gang’s all here,” Bo Dhillon said, opening the screen door and stepping outside.
He bounded down the stairs and over to them, to Audrey, stepping around Harper to grab her shoulders, a hand on each, before he kissed her cheek, his big moustache smashing against her face and neck.
“Really good to see you, girl,” he said as he pulled back, still holding her shoulders. He was in olive jeans and a T-shirt with one of the posters for the original Black Christmas printed on it in all of its 1970s vibrancy—the discord of a happy red-and-green holly wreath as the outline for the black-and-white photo of a dead girl in a chair, her mouth a gaping scream and her head encased in a sheen of cellophane. It was a grotesque image and now directly in Audrey’s sight line. “I’m so amped about this.”
Audrey nodded. “Me too. Thank you so much for thinking of me.”
“I didn’t think of anybody else.”
Merritt was behind them and off to the side a little. She said something then that Audrey didn’t quite hear.
Apparently neither did Bo. “What’s that?” he asked, dropping his grip from Audrey’s shoulders to turn and look at Merritt.
“Oh, I was just saying, except for the other actor,” Merritt said, smiling like they were all in on something together.
“I’m sorry, what now?” Bo asked her again.
“You couldn’t think of anyone but Audrey to play Clara . . . except for Lily Strichtfield, who was playing her until yesterday.” Merritt was still smiling plainly, as if she hadn’t just said the thing she’d said.
“I mean, ouch,” Audrey said, trying to make it a joke though it did not feel like one.
“What’s your point?” Harper asked Merritt exactly as Noel said, “Wow, kid.”
“I’m not your kid,” Merritt said. Her voice wasn’t sharp, exactly, but her smile was gone. “Just getting used to how this all works. Hollyweird.” Now she did smile again. Sort of.
Bo jumped in. “No, you’re right that it takes getting used to.” His tone was as jovial as a party clown. “Lily was great. She is great, but she didn’t work out for this and I say we’re all the luckier for it. Sometimes fortune blooms from the muck of happenstance.” He turned now, formally, to Noel. “I’m Bo, by the way,” he said. “I know your dad.”
“Hey, I know him, too,” Noel replied.
“Funny guy,” Bo said.
“Don’t tell him that,” Audrey said. “He’ll never stop reminding me.” She tried to join in with a joke, but whatever had just happened with Merritt had made her wobble with doubt. What the fuck was that?
Bo looked around at all of them and said, “Cool. Alright, well come on—everybody’s in the back. There’s a shit ton of sushi.” He started up the porch stairs and then turned and said, “I’m sure it seems otherwise, but this is all very relaxed today, Audrey. Really. More than anything we just want to gauge the energy between you.”
“Our chemistry,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, running a hand over his moustache, “that’s part of it. But I’m talking energy, too. This one’s only gonna work if the actors make it their own—that goes for you and Harper especially. I’m not saying full-on improv—you know, like toss-out-the-script bullshit. We like the script.”
“I do, too,” Audrey said quickly.
“Yeah?” he said. “Good. But I still think we’re all going to have to really live inside this one to pull it off the way it deserves. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” Audrey said. “I think so.”
But, Readers: she did not know, not really, what he meant by that.
Things Are Not All That Pleasant Out by Bo Dhillon’s Pool
I’ll not soften the blow (nor will I season the gristle or bubble wrap the bullet): Merritt did not want Audrey Wells to play Clara Broward.
Early that morning she’d watched Audrey’s clips.* They all seemed to Merritt, truth be told, notably average. Shoulder shrug. Fine, I guess.
Merritt had then searched for Audrey’s social media, thinking maybe her feeds would somehow show that this person was personally interesting enough to play Clara, that she had Clara’s spark and life force. But there weren’t any feeds to stalk—none at all. Instead, Merritt found plenty of posts about Audrey’s mother, Caroline, and her series of past public debacles. She’d watched that leaked security footage of the car crash and the dog attack a few times—it was especially haunting because it was in black-and-white and from a weird angle—Caroline looking like a ghost-zombie, the dog leaping at her in a flash of muscle. Merritt could see why it had achieved back-in-the-day virality. She did find some lingering evidence that maybe Audrey had once maintained a public Facebook profile. Or someone had, in her name, when she had been in that tween TV series; but that was years before. And now: nothing.
And Fine, I guess, shoulder shrug, couldn’t ever be enough to play Clara Broward, who was brash and vain and clever.
Audrey Wells was iceberg salad with a side of banal.
Now Merritt took a drink from her second (third?) iced coffee of the morning and tried to avoid making eye contact with Harper, who seemed to be studiously attempting to make eye contact with her. Thankfully, she had her face-eclipsing sunglasses on, so she didn’t think Harper could tell where she was or wasn’t looking. They were now out in Bo’s backyard, on the stone patio next to his pool, beneath a massive pergola draped with bougainvillea vines of showy pink flowers and a few strings of unlit globe lights, their wires droopily crisscrossing the space.
All around her people were mingling, producers and other studio people and a few crew members, Harper’s massive entourage of agents and managers and assistants, whatever they were, hangers-on, and Elaine, of course. Merritt had last seen her in the kitchen telling Noel a long story about her husband and his career as a political cartoonist. It was charming. It was also a story that Merritt had heard before, like most of Elaine’s stories. Everywhere there were people eating stupid-expensive sushi, drinking cucumber and mint water, telling gossipy inside jokes, talking about so-and-so who went here and there doing this and that.
Merritt had tried, a little, to participate in some of this talking, but as it did not suit her talents, she was happy to eventually settle in on one end of the outdoor sectional with her phone in front of her face.
Oh, she wanted to talk to Harper Harper, Readers. Of course she did. She wanted to sit next to Harper and pick up where they’d left off the night before. But Harper had her squad with her today—so many people who seemed to fill such distinct roles—and Merritt now doubted her own recollection of what had happened the night before, what she had felt and what she felt certain Harper had felt, out there by the Spago dumpsters. Everything today had her feeling almost seasick with wobbly uncertainty, and somehow disappointed. Disappointed already.
Part of that disappointment: Audrey Wells, who, it really must be said, was no Clara Broward. Of this Merritt felt quite certain. But it was an impotent certainty, the worst kind, because who would listen to her about it? Who would care?
Merritt looked up from her phone at the people gathered around the patio. Audrey was now standing with her manager next to a long outdoor dining table covered in food. The manager was reaching for a handful of edamame while talking to Josh, a guy Merritt had earlier been introduced to as one of Harper’s agents. She’d already decided she didn’t like him. It had taken her only a few minutes of being around him for that to happen.
Bo’s pool smelled strongly of chlorine, like something was off with the chemicals. He probably rarely swam in it. Somebody cracked a joke in reference to the pool scene in the House Mother movies and Merritt again wondered what it was she was even doing there, how any of this really had anything to do with her at all. She scrolled through phone pics of the now-fire-damaged Orangerie. Carl the caretaker had texted a new batch right before they’d left the hotel for Bo’s, these taken in the summer sunshine of that very morning in Rhode Island. The char was relegated to the n
ew construction within those glass walls, like a massive shadow plant blooming outward from its center, the black burn reaching and ready to take over had it not been stopped.
As she squinted at the images, trying to see them in the glare of sunlight across her screen, a text lit up her phone. She was amused, and, TBH, rather thrilled, to see it was from Harper.
other than t-shirt shopping, whatchu thinking for our date? can’t decide if you’d be into touristy LA (because irony) or wanting to avoid all of that . . .
Once she’d read it and looked up, she found Harper Harper looking at her.
So Merritt texted back:
New phone, who dis?
Harper smiled when the text landed on her screen. Then she took a minute or so, searching for something online, copying and pasting, before sending:
The saguaro (/sə’waroʊ/) (Carnegiea gigantea) is an arborescent (tree-like) cactus species in the monotypic genus Carnegiea, which can grow to be over 20 m (70 ft) tall. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saguaro
So Merritt wrote:
Wikipedia as your source? Really?
Merritt liked this. She liked it probably too much, given those Instagram posts she’d seen the night before with Annie the artist. She texted:
Is it a date? Aren’t you seeing someone right now?
Harper’s fast response:
yes. she’s seeing other people, too. are you OK with that? (this is kind of new to me)
To which Merritt wrote:
I don’t know if I’m OK with it.
But what she sent was:
I’ve been thinking, for a while, that I want to get my eyebrow pierced. Can you make that happen today?
Harper:
nice. nobody does that anymore—which eyebrow?
Merritt:
The left.
Harper:
ITC i know somebody.
good thing it’s the left or we’d be SOL
Merritt felt nearly giddy.
Even though she knew, she knew, this was just what Harper Harper did—that it was who she was, how she was—Merritt was still keeping alive one tiny whit of hope that maybe it was something more than the same charming performance that pretty much everybody received a greater or lesser version of. She really needed that to be true because she was, despite herself, feeling quite like a Brookhants girl of yore. She was smitten. She was smashed on Harper Harper and she wanted to smash Harper Harper. Both versions worked, in this case.
“You’re into the CrossFit-type stuff then?” she overheard Harper’s agent, Josh, say to Audrey as their cluster headed into the seating area, blocking Merritt’s view of Harper.
“Sort of,” Audrey said. “I don’t belong to a box or anything. But I do functional training. My trainer makes me do a lot of HIIT.”
“Nice,” Josh said. “Go hard and get it done. It’s the only way.”
“What is that?” Merritt asked, her constant desire to know things getting the best of her. “What’s HIIT?”
“High-intensity interval training,” Audrey said, right before Josh said the same, so that his words became her echo.
Merritt raised her eyebrows at them. “I’m not familiar.”
“It just means you, like, go all out in short intervals, with rests in between,” Audrey said. “Like push-ups and squats and stuff, fast and focused—but, like, with everything you have. It gets your heart rate up, then you slow it down, then you bring it back up.”
“High intensity, Merritt,” Elaine said, surprising her by joining in from behind. She and Noel had come into the yard. “That sounds right up your alley.”
“I don’t think so,” Merritt said. “I don’t even want to walk to my alley. There’s no way I’m doing a bunch of push-ups once I get there.”
“Well, whatever you’re doing,” Josh said loudly to Audrey, as if trying to wrestle the conversation back, “keep it up. You look great.”
Merritt thought this comment creepy, but somehow also expected, given their surroundings and Audrey’s job. Case in point: no one else seemed to think it particularly strange that this older dude was so openly appraising Audrey’s body.
Well, except for maybe Audrey herself. “Thanks,” she said stiffly, nodding a couple of small nods.
Merritt started to say something, stopped herself, then said it anyway—under her breath but loud enough to be heard. Her specialty today. “Maybe you’re even a bit too fit. For Clara.”
“What do you mean too fit?” Josh asked, turning toward her. “I’ve literally never heard that.”
“Just in terms of accuracy,” Merritt said. Both Josh and Audrey were now looking at her unhappily, expecting an explanation. “We have photographs of Clara Broward. We know what she looked like.” She paused, stared hard at Audrey. “I mean you look lovely, as you are, just not accurate for Clara Broward and her curves. You could always gain weight.”
“Yeeeeeah, I don’t know about asking Audrey to do that for this role,” Bo said quickly, joining them from wherever he’d been. Everyone in the backyard was now listening to this conversation, even if they were maybe pretending not to. Bo propped himself on one arm of the sectional. “What you’re saying is interesting, something to keep in mind, but there are convincing things we can do with the costuming. A killer corset.”
“And that’s fine,” Merritt said. “I’m just saying that you’ll be manufacturing your version of a look that Clara wore around for real. She was heavier than Audrey. This is a fact. It’s not a shameful fact, it’s just a fact. If you’re going for accuracy.” Merritt knew she had a point, but even still: she was not usually one to make judgments about anyone else’s body, even in service of a valid argument. And that’s not what she was trying to do now, either, but maybe it sounded like she was. She was ready to let it go, but then Bo said:
“Well, there are different shades of accuracy, right?”
“I don’t know what those words mean the way you’re using them,” Merritt said.
“An audience wants what it wants from its lead actresses is what he means,” Harper’s agent said, smiling a smile that showed his blue-white teeth.
“Oh, so you’re that guy?” Merritt said, barely turning her head to appraise him.
“Come again?” Josh said.
“This doesn’t seem a bone worth chewing at the moment, Merritt,” Elaine said.
“That’s also not what I was saying,” Bo said. “What I was getting at is that there are lots of ways for an actor to inhabit a character, to get them to feel accurate—your word. Truthful is my word.”
Now Harper was standing, smiling, commanding attention. “Josh’s just acting like an asshole,” she said to Merritt. “He’s messing with you. He’s not actually that guy. He reps me, right?”
Merritt definitely had a response to that—she had opened her mouth to make it, even, but Bo got there first. “That’s not the movie we’re making here, anyway. You know that.”
“Do I?” Merritt asked.
“You should,” Bo said. “I want you to know that. It’s why we brought you out here.”
“It’s not about me,” Merritt said, even though that wasn’t true. “It’s not my story. It’s Flo and Clara’s story. And all the other Brookhants girls. They were real, which in this case means not made for Hollywood.”
“Exactly,” Bo said. “Like I said, that’s part of why we’ve got you here—to keep us honest.”
“Well, that’s a mistake,” Merritt said. “I don’t often keep myself very honest. It’s not necessarily a priority.”
Heather, the well-coiffed producer from the night before, moved from the food table toward them, a bottle of sparkling water in her hand. “You should know now that while everyone wants to get this right—and I mean that sincerely, so keep speaking up—there are also always concessions we have to make in order to get a movie finished in such a way that we’re all feeling good about it. It’s a collaborative process, lots of people with lots of opinions. Nothing would ever get made otherwise
.”
“Maybe things shouldn’t always get made,” Merritt said.
“No, they shouldn’t,” Bo said, clearly over this discussion. “But since we are trying to make this movie, what if you three adjourn to my office for some prep time? Everything’s already set up to record in there and it’ll give you a little privacy.” He turned to Audrey and asked, “You good with running them a time or two with Harper and bouncing any questions you have off Merritt before we come to watch? Take twenty minutes, half an hour? Whatever you three think you need.”
“That sounds good,” Audrey said.
“There are copies of the sides on the desk,” Heather said.
“And sides are?” Merritt asked.
“Parts of the script you use for auditions,” Heather said.
“But is this an audition?” Merritt asked. And Audrey, for one, seemed interested in the answer to that question, though in the business of getting up and gathering things and leading the three of them to Bo’s office, no answer came.
The Happenings at Brookhants—Audition Scene 2
INT. L’ORANGERIE—NIGHT
Lightning strobes outside the walls of glass and skylights. Hard rain streams like snake trails. Flo enters, wipes water from her face, and shakes her hair. She is shutting the door against the storm when Clara’s presence outside startles her. She comes inside and they stand apart for some moments in the dark, dripping, the rain falling hard on the glass and the lightning spitting. Already there is tension between them.
CLARA
Am I intruding?
FLO