Anna North - The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

“What do you mean?” I asked, stalling.

“I mean, you’re friendly and everything. You were nice to that guy back there, even though he was kind of a dick. How come you don’t have a wife or whatever?”

For someone who didn’t understand people, she was good at getting right to what would hurt me. At the same time, I wanted to answer her. After Taylor kicked me out, I’d had no one to ask me what had happened, how I was. I called Kat, and she listened silently for a few minutes before saying, “Pardon me if I don’t have much sympathy for you.”

“I was living with my girlfriend,” I said to Sophie. “She was a little younger — well, twenty years younger. We’d been together three years, and I always assumed we’d get married someday, but I hadn’t done anything about it. Then one day she told me she’d decided she didn’t want to be with me anymore, so she kicked me out.”

Sophie didn’t say anything, but when I took my eyes off the road to see if she was listening, she was looking at me with total concentration.

“I told her I loved her, we should get married. I said I’d get her a ring and we’d go to France for the honeymoon. And she looked at me kind of sadly, and she said, ‘I don’t want to marry you.’”

“Why not?” Sophie asked.

This was something I’d thought about a lot, obviously, as I moved into my one-bedroom apartment, watched young couples with toddlers building sand castles on the beach.

“I mean, my first marriage didn’t go so well,” I said.

This wasn’t completely true. Nadia and I had been good together a long time. I never wanted to be like Steven and the other guys we hung out with. There were always girls around when we were younger, new, pretty girls with long legs in little jean shorts or white summer skirts, smelling like sunscreen, but my dad had come home to my mom every night, even though he spent all day spreading hot tar on people’s roofs and God knows he could have used a little fun, and if I couldn’t stay faithful with a nice house and a cool job and a pretty, healthy wife, then how could I ever respect myself? So I flirted, but nothing more, for years, and then I fell in love. It’s not important who she was — she had black hair, she was younger than me, but not a lot, she was a lot like Nadia except she was new and she was never mad at me. Nadia and I were going through a hard time then — now I think it was nothing we couldn’t have handled, but at the time I convinced myself that we’d grown apart, that our marriage was over. And I did what I thought was the right thing, and I moved out and got a divorce so I could be with the other woman, who I thought would make me happy.

“I left her for someone else,” was all I told Sophie. “And then that didn’t work out either. So I don’t know, maybe my girlfriend didn’t think I was a very good bet.”

We turned right and I could see the ocean laid out in a shining plate. When I moved, the broker had told me there was something good for the brain about living near the sea, something about ions. But I often felt like the water was insulting me, like, “I’m beautiful and endless — what are you doing with your life?”

“Do you think you’re a bad bet?” she asked. She was looking at me with that math face, but I thought I could see some worry in it, like whatever I said next would be very important.

The day I moved out of Taylor’s, packed my turntable and a few clothes in my car and drove off all by myself, I thought she was probably smart to get rid of me. And for the next few weeks, as I sat in my almost empty apartment and thought about what would happen if I were to die, I still thought that. But over time I came back to the thing that kept me going in my life, the belief that I had screwed up — badly, even — but that I was capable of loving people well and doing right by them, and if I was given a real chance, I would show it.

“I think I can be,” I said.

She didn’t say anything, and her face didn’t quite get that hopeful look it had before, but she seemed satisfied. And she nodded, and her nod seemed to take me in and accept me, like I was okay, like we were both okay. I thought of Kat, the skeptical way she always looked when I told her I loved her or that I wanted to help her however I could. “There’s no way you can help me,” she’d said once, after a breakup of her own. At the time I’d been so hurt I could barely say good-bye, but now I thought maybe that was how the world worked; your parents weren’t always the ones who could help you, your child wasn’t always the one you could help.

We were home. The clouds were rolling back in, and the evening sun was coming down in streaks. A boy and a girl, probably brother and sister, were flying a bright blue box kite on the beach. The sister held the spindle while the brother watched.

“You should move to L.A.,” I said. “I can introduce you to a lot of people. It would be great for your career.”

She was looking back at the beach, but she turned and gave me a half smile.

“Actually,” I said, “there’s a locations guy you should meet right away. He’ll be a big help on Isabella . He took me to this church out in Alhambra one time that would be great for the wedding scene. And for the Columbus scene, we’ll have lots of options, obviously — this guy knows a lot of great beaches.”

Sophie nodded. “This is a nice beach.”

She sounded like a kid again.

“It’s nice,” I said, “but probably not so great for shooting. We’ll want someplace a little less built up. But we’ll find it, don’t worry.”

She nodded again. She was looking at the ocean.

“It’s lucky you came to me,” I said. “I think there’s a lot I can show you. We’re going to work really well together.”

Sophie was quiet for a minute then. A gust took the box kite high up above the waves, and the brother and sister cheered.

“You should direct your own movies,” Sophie said finally.

No one had said that to me in a very long time, and I’d stopped even thinking about it.

“Why do you say that?” I asked her.

“You’d be good at it,” she said, and then she walked into my house.

. . .

WE MET VERONICA at one of the fancy bad restaurants where I always met actors. Lots of actresses aren’t beautiful in person — they have big, weird features that show up better on screen — but Veronica had a smoky, lush-mouthed sexiness that made everybody look at her, even in a place full of Hollywood types. I could already see her sitting on Isabella’s throne, drawing the whole court’s eyes to her. We kissed on the cheek. Up close her face looked a little puffy, like she’d been crying; she probably had. There were a lot of rumors about Veronica — that she’d had an abusive childhood, that she was bipolar. I was still worried she’d be difficult, but I’d talked to Marisa that morning, and she’d turned me down sweetly but definitively. Veronica was starting to look like our best shot.

I turned to introduce Sophie, but she was already sticking out her hand.

“I’m Sophie Stark,” she said.

“Great to meet you,” said Veronica. Her voice was more gravelly than I remembered, but I liked it; it made her sounds serious. “I love your movies.”

“Thanks,” Sophie said.

I had to keep myself from shaking my head. I’d have to teach her to say, “I love yours, too” whenever someone said that, even if she hadn’t seen them.

We sat. Sophie stared at the menu. I started to get nervous; I should’ve prepped her better. I should’ve told her you had to make flattering small talk with actors, build them up, make them feel important.

“You were really amazing in Aero-Man ,” I said. “You took a two-dimensional part and really made it three-D.” This was my stock line for people who had been in shitty movies; it usually worked pretty well.