Alix Ohlin - Inside

“I don’t have any money,” Anne said.

“Oh, shut up. You know I’ll pay.”

In addition to paying, she drove. She took Anne to a club where they did shots of tequila and danced and flirted with a couple of guys Diane introduced to Anne, though she couldn’t tell if Diane actually knew them or had just started talking to them on her way back from the bathroom. They were cute, surfers in suits with wavy hair and blinding teeth. Too pretty to have sex with, Anne thought. They’d expect all kinds of gratitude and wouldn’t do any of the work. But flirting was fine, and so was dancing and drinking. She threw her body into it, letting her muscles flow and her thinking stop. It was three in the morning when they got back into the car. Diane was talking a mile a minute — maybe she did some coke in the bathroom? — about how she might go down to Baja and just chill for a few weeks, get her head clear, maybe work on this screenplay she had an idea for, or meet a Mexican guy and get laid and drink tequila on the beach, did Anne want to come? Diane’s voice was ringing in her ears like an annoying phone, and she was on autopilot herself, so she used her usual trick to get someone to shut up, which was to lean over and kiss her. It wasn’t the first time she had ever kissed a woman, but it had been a while.

Diane tasted like lip gloss and alcohol.

“Oh, wow,” she said. “Wow.”

Instead of driving home they went to a nearby hotel. It was expensive, and Diane paid. The bed had the nicest sheets Anne had ever felt. She ran her hands through Diane’s hair. She was a beautiful thing, Diane, scrubbed and shiny and soft. Anne felt like she was stroking a puppy, a feeling made stronger by how little the other woman weighed and the soft whimpering sounds she was making. It didn’t exactly feel like sex — not the sex that Anne was used to — but it felt good, at least until they passed out.

When Anne woke up, she was alone. She had danced off a lot of the alcohol and felt better than she would have expected. She took a long shower, and when she came out Diane was back, wearing a hard-to-read smile.

“I went for a walk,” she said. “My head was killing me. I ordered breakfast for us. How do you feel?”

“Better after the shower,” Anne said.

“I’ll take one too.”

While the water was running, room service came, everything under silver lids, like in a movie. With food in her Anne felt sleepy again.

“You can stay until noon if you want,” Diane said. “I guess I should get changed for work. They’ll expect me to be at the office so they can kick me out on my ass, those bastards.”

She slid out of her robe, revealing her smooth, pretty body, then stood behind Anne and ran her hands down inside her terrycloth. Anne surprised herself by arching her back in response, a need rising up that she hadn’t known was there. They went back to bed, this time sober, and neither of them left the hotel until noon.

Diane did get fired, but she didn’t go to Mexico. Instead, she moved Anne into her little house on a winding side street in Los Feliz. Anne liked the neighborhood, which felt cluttered and cozy. Wide-set bungalows with deep, shady porches and slanted roofs were set back from the street, and in the yards there were tangles of spiky desert cacti. They took walks, Diane pointing out the California plants to her, eucalyptus, yucca, bougainvillea, the words like a new language on Anne’s tongue. Sometimes they hiked in Griffith Park, the city spread out beneath them, clothed in smog. Anne went on auditions and took meetings, and Diane went out for lunches and consultations and took meetings. Everybody in L.A. was taking meetings. When Anne drove around the city now and witnessed its sunny leisure — people dawdling beneath umbrellas, sipping smoothies on the beach — she understood that these weren’t vacation days or tourist pastimes, they were all meetings. After her own appointments, she would join Diane and sometimes her personal trainer, who would run them through an exhausting sequence of repetitions. Anne was in better shape than she’d ever been and she felt great. Inextricable from this were her evenings in bed with Diane, their thin, muscled bodies wrestling and twirling in what felt at times like another session with the trainer, at other times something more serious and important, a real meeting .

Diane was the first person who ever ran her fingers over the delicate white scar tissue, barely raised now, on her torso, from when she used to cut herself. She shivered as Diane’s index finger traced this old map across her abdomen, replaced then by her mouth and cool tongue. Diane looked up at her. “If they need to,” she said, “they can cover these with makeup.”

Anne took a meeting with a friend of Diane’s, a producer named Adam. He wasn’t handsome, but like everybody else she met in L.A., he’d been exercised and tooth-whitened to the point where he seemed like he was. He was developing a pilot about sexy spies and thought she might fit the bill. After lunch, he said, “I have a script you could look over, but I left it at my house. Why don’t we just swing past there, and I’ll give it to you. Do you have time?”

She did. They had a drink in his living room and kept talking about the pilot. His house was full of modular white furniture and bulbous, fluorescent lamps. Then she asked him how he got started in the business — a question that in L.A. always led to a lengthy answer — so she could have a little time to think.

“It’s a cliché at this point to say that the industry chews you up and spits you out, right? For actresses, of course, it’s worse than anybody else. I mean, this isn’t news to you, I’m sure,” he said as they went into the bedroom; he was nominally giving her a tour of the house. “But I’ve been smart enough to navigate it pretty well so far. I’m not one of those fucks who’s looking for one good hit and then wants to buy some mansion in the Hollywood Hills and retire. Those people are pussies, if you ask me. This game is about risk. About gambling your whole life. Don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Anne said. “I just got here.”

“Yeah, spare me the I-just-got-to-town routine,” Adam said. “You’re an operator, same as me. We’re like computers running the same program. Let’s see your body.”

“Just see it?” she said.

“For now,” he said, and checked his watch. He was lying across his bed, a low futon with a black bedspread. Off to the side, in the bathroom, Anne saw a matching black sink, black shelves, and black towels. Diane’s flowery red shower curtain flashed in her mind, not out of guilt but as a reward, what she’d get back to after she was done with the business at hand.

She expected him to take off his clothes, but he didn’t. Instead he circled her, patting, groping, murmuring to himself. “How old are you?” he said at one point.

“How old do I look?” she answered, as Diane had advised her to.

“Too close to thirty for comfort.”

“Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t bother trying to make me feel bad.”

Adam smiled. “I like you.” His hands were on her breasts.

“If you say so,” she said.

Back at Diane’s she took a shower, not because she felt dirty but because she was tired, the same as anyone after a long day at work. When she came out, Diane was cooking dinner. Anne poured herself a glass of wine, and they kissed. It was the closest she had ever been to a domestic life, and it was only three weeks old.

“So how did it go with Adam? Did he give you a naked evaluation?”

“You knew about that?”

“He always does it. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you, but he doesn’t like it when people are tipped off. I know he’s a creep, Annie, but he’s a successful creep. If it went well, which I know it must have because you’re gorgeous, he’ll get you in somewhere.”