Burning Time

9

“Do you know who this is?”

Ronnie, Emma’s agent of many years, leaned over excitedly as she pointed to the name on the cover of a script she had brought for Emma to read.

They were having breakfast at The New York Deli just around the corner from Ronnie’s office on Fifty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.

It was a big name. Emma took another bite of her eggs Benedict and grimaced. “Of course I do.”

“Well, this is it. This is how it happens. You do a nothing film, don’t have any expectations for it, somebody somewhere likes it. And suddenly you’re a star. I’ve seen it a million times.” Ronnie sighed. “It’s just never happened to me.”

Then she reached across the table and slapped Emma’s hand. “Are you crazy? We can’t eat that,” she said as if she had just noticed it.

Emma looked at the Canadian bacon smothered with Hollandaise sauce on her plate. “Why not?”

“It’s four-hundred-percent fat.” Ronnie raked a hand through her blunt-cut red hair. The hair curled around her ears for a second and then fell back in its perfect circle around her plump face.

Ronnie was a compulsive eater. She wrinkled her freckled nose at Emma’s plate with disgust and longing.

Emma shook her head. Ronnie used to refer to her as You. You do this job or that job. Now when she talked about Emma it was We or I. “We’ll think about this,” or “I don’t want to do that.”

“We have to be more careful,” she said now. “You can’t just eat anything you want. You can’t just do anything you want. We have to think about what it means for our career.”

“It’s not our career. It’s my career,” Emma replied with a smile.

The pink blush lavishly applied to Ronnie’s cheeks stood out strongly against her pale skin, as she blanched.

“I just don’t want you getting fat,” she said defensively. “I wasn’t being pushy.”

Emma let out a small laugh. Ronnie was extraordinarily pushy. But it never helped her, and her pushiness hadn’t helped Mark, Emma’s college friend and the writer/director/producer of Serpent’s Teeth, either.

Ronnie hadn’t liked the modest project, and refused to make a single call to help it. She had nothing to do with the film and now she was claiming she was instrumental in putting the whole thing together.

“It grows in the night without your consent,” Ronnie said about the fat. “Look at me. I don’t eat a thing. Not a thing. I have one tiny lamb chop at night with all the fat cut off, and a lettuce leaf. I don’t know why I’m so fat.” She heaved a great sigh.

“I’d be a pretty girl if I wasn’t so big, wouldn’t I?” She gave Emma a searching look. Emma knew that although Ronnie was deeply involved with her fat, that was not what was on her mind right then. She was really very worried that Emma would leave her.

“You are a pretty girl,” Emma said.

She turned her head and caught sight of a couple at a table across the room. They were caressing fingers while talking and looking deep in each other’s eyes. Unexpectedly, grief gnawed at her, filling her again with the overwhelming feeling of desolation that had slowly been taking her over for a long time.

“We can’t eat fat. We can’t eat sugar,” Ronnie was babbling. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?” she demanded suddenly.

Emma stared at the lovers. She couldn’t remember the last time Jason had looked at her like that.

“What did you imagine happening after you did this film?” he had asked again last night.

Her reply didn’t satisfy him. “It was a low-budget thing.” She had shrugged. Big deal. “Kind of a lark. We had no idea anyone would pick it up.”

“Some lark.” He was like a stone wall. There was no getting through it.

“Oh, come on, Jason, is it so bad that people will see my work instead of just hearing me?”

For the last few years, Emma had been a voice on both TV and radio. She had acted in several of Mark’s plays, but got no important work on the stage and no parts at all on TV or in the films.

“It’s not just work,” Jason said carefully. “It’s a sexual thing. You exposed your body, you humiliated me—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? You can do it, but I can’t say it?”

“I was acting in a film, that’s all.”

“It’s more than acting. It was a sexual thing, Emma. You have sex. What would you call it?”

“It’s work. I call it work.”

“Working on your back with your clothes off and a stranger on top of you? What kind of work is it?”

“Stop it. You’re making too much of it. I’m an actress. It’s what I do.”

“No, it’s not what you do. It’s not what you’ve ever done.” He turned away, wouldn’t look at her.

“I thought you were so well analyzed,” she had said after a long pause. “Other husbands of actresses seem to handle it.”

“Maybe, if it’s part of the deal,” he replied bitterly. “But I’m a doctor, a very private person. This wasn’t part of our deal.”

“Emma. Answer the question,” Ronnie demanded.

“I have to go,” Emma said suddenly.

“What? We haven’t talked about the scripts yet. One of them has a sex scene in it that will knock you over.” She reached in her bag for the other scripts she brought.

Emma shook her head. “Look,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure I want to be known for that.”

“What are you talking about?” Ronnie cried.

Emma turned away from the lovers and focused on her. “I said it isn’t what I want to be known for.”

“Since when are we so squeamish, huh?” Ronnie started fanning her face with one of the scripts, as if she were going to faint. It had a red cover that clashed with her hair. “Look, you have to do what they send you. If they send you prostitute scripts, you have to be a prostitute.”

“Is that what they are?” Emma asked. “All three?”

“What’s the big deal? What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?”

“I hate films that glorify hookers. I really do. Hookers are not wonderful people. They don’t end up happily ever after. I don’t want to be known for my body. It’s—”

“You have to read for this one next week. So look at this first and call me after two.” Ronnie handed over the scripts abruptly. “Don’t make me sick.”

“I have a taping this afternoon,” Emma said.

She was doing a Maalox moment, speaking the voice of the old woman because the old woman cast for the part sounded like a chicken.

“Then read it now.” Ronnie pushed it at her.

Emma took it. It was very thin, only four or five pages. “These are just sides,” she protested.

“So?”

“So where’s the rest of it?” she demanded.

“Emma, don’t fight me. Sometimes they just give sides. They don’t want you to work on the whole goddamn part. They just want to see you do the scene cold, how you see the character from the few words that are written there.”

“Where’s the rest of it? I can’t do it if I don’t know what the story is.”

“You’re making me very upset. You’ve been in this business long enough to know you’re not the one who has leverage at this point. They are the ones who decide on you. You do it, and if they like you, you get the part. You get famous, have fun, and make lots of money. What’s the problem here?”

Emma gathered up her things. Right, get famous and make lots of money. Ronnie was right. She had been working very hard for this for years.

“Okay,” she told Ronnie. “I’ll go for it.” If Jason didn’t like her success, it was his problem.

She watched the lovers get up and leave.