“He has some clients in the festival,” Bridget said, squinting at Maddy’s face to regard her handiwork.

“How come he wasn’t on Steven’s plane?”

“Bentley Howard paid for this trip because he has meetings. He was staying with me at Mile’s End because they wouldn’t pay, but he’s very practical. Only schnors when he has to.”

She passed Maddy a hand mirror. Her eyes were smoky, sexy. “Wow,” Maddy said. “You’re really good at this.”

“Now stand up and look in the mirror.”

Maddy rose in her heels and moved toward the mirror on the wall. The makeup and the dress were perfect together. She felt like a princess, elegant, even regal. She had never been all that interested in clothing, beyond the way the right outfit could help her book a role, but now she was curious about the fabric, the cut, the way a dress could change the way you felt.

When Maddy arrived in the lobby at seven, she found Zack waiting on a couch. “Nice dress,” he said. She had the cape on her arm, not sure whether to put it on at the hotel or at the theater.

“Thanks. Your mother got it for me.”

Zack rolled his eyes, and she wondered if he was feeling competitive with his mother for having signed Maddy. “She has impeccable taste. So I hear you have an audition coming up.”

“Yes, Walter Juhasz will be here on Monday.” He nodded. “I don’t even think I have a serious chance at a Juhasz film, but they say I do, so . . .”

“How’s Dan? He didn’t want to come to get publicity?”

“That’s what I’m here for. He’s busy working out the contracts and stuff.” It was hard to read Zack’s tone. Was he implying there was something improper about the trip, just as Dan had? “So how’ve you been since Mile’s End?” she asked, sitting down beside him.

“Really busy, actually. I signed three new clients. Did she tell you?”

“Who?”

“Kira. She signed with me just last week.”

“Really?” asked Maddy. “That’s fantastic. She didn’t mention anything about . . . I didn’t even know you guys had met in Mile’s End. I mean after the opening-night party.” In the condo, Kira had mocked him. But maybe it was all a decoy. Maybe they’d already had a meeting by then, and she didn’t want Maddy to know.

“Yeah, we had a coffee the afternoon of your first screening. I was so impressed with her performance. I knew I could help her, and luckily, she felt the same way.” The last Maddy had seen of Kira was a few days before, at Irina’s party. Cast and crew, plus Maddy and Dan’s circle of friends, all trekked out to fete them, but the night had been so hectic that she and Kira had barely spoken.

Bridget, Weller, and Flora came off the elevators. Zack and Maddy stood to greet them. Weller examined her in the dress as though she were an expensive cut of steak. She blushed. “You are wondrous,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, self-conscious again. What kind of man said “wondrous” who wasn’t gay or eighty?

Maddy and Weller were put inside a car. In the front passenger seat was an enormous bald man who Weller said was a bodyguard paid for by Apollo Classics. Maddy was amazed by all the ways the rich and famous really did live up to the clichés. It was like the bodyguard was part of the swag.

She could see the Berlinale Palast rising high as they approached, the big red bear, the festival mascot, standing up on the side of the atrium. On one side of the car path, forming a T with the red carpet that led into the theater, hundreds of fans were packed tightly behind stanchions. A sea of people with no apparent end.

When their car door opened, there was an intake of breath as the fans waited to see who would emerge. Maddy stepped out, and a few seconds later, Weller followed. That was when she heard the roar. Weller took it in stride, smiled, pivoted to wave. The cries were hysterical and continuous, and then Bridget was beside Maddy, whispering, “Come.” She ushered her to the foot of the red carpet, beside Zack. Todd Lewitt and Weller’s costar, Henry Berryman, had already arrived and were posing for pictures. Berryman was a gracious English actor pushing eighty-five, a known lifelong alcoholic.

As Weller and the bodyguard headed straight to the stanchions, fans thrust things at Weller—festival programs, head shots of him—and he signed them with a Sharpie. Those lucky enough to receive autographs clutched them to their breasts like boys at baseball games who had caught foul balls. Others held up cell phone cameras. All the while, Weller indulged them, as if they were friends, equals. She wondered if he was speaking German; a guy like him probably spoke half a dozen languages. The German fans seemed more grateful and less hysterical than American fans, admiring but not cloying.

After fifteen long minutes, Weller crossed to the red carpet. He embraced Berryman, clapping him on the back a few times, and the two men worked the press and photo lines, thrusting their arms around each other’s backs and posing with and without Lewitt. Then Weller turned and came toward them as though he had something to ask Bridget.

“You enjoying yourself?” he asked in Maddy’s ear.

“Very much,” she said, nodding enthusiastically.

She felt him slip the cape off her shoulders. He handed it to Bridget and led her toward the press. Henry Berryman was facing the photographers on the opposite side.

As Steven laced his fingers through hers, everything went into slow motion. She felt a combination of horror—that Dan’s prediction was coming true—and arousal. Steven had taken her hand, like she belonged to him. And yet the gesture didn’t feel smarmy or inappropriate. It felt correct, and his palm was big. She remembered the way it had felt that night at Bridget’s lodge, when he had greeted her.

He was looking over Maddy’s shoulder, and when Maddy glanced in the same direction, she saw Bridget give a tiny nod. Maddy instantly understood. It was Bridget who had wanted this for Maddy, this moment. Bridget was managing even when she did not appear to be.

The voices were deafening, the camera flashes like a strobe. “Turn this way, please!” and “Over here, Mr. Weller!”

Maddy heard Steven saying, “This is Maddy Freed. M-A-D-D-Y F-R-E-E-D. She just won a Special Jury Prize at the Mile’s End Film Festival. Keep your eye on this one, she’ll be a lot more famous than I am soon. And she takes a much better picture.”

She began to feel less intimidated, to relax. As her confidence grew, she turned her face this way and that. “Ms. Freed, Ms. Freed! Here, Ms. Freed!” She was high. It was different from her feeling when she’d won the Jury Prize. That had been about her work. This was about her.


From the foot of the carpet, Zack stared at the V that Maddy and Steven’s hands formed. He didn’t like that V.

Zack was familiar with a certain cynical type of girl. He met them at premiere parties or nightclubs, the models/actresses—anoractresses, he called them. At first glance, they would blow him off, but when they found out he was an agent, everything changed. His diminutiveness was no object. Suddenly, they were touching his arm, moving their lips near his. Shameless.

In his first year as an agent, he had enjoyed the attention—it was a trip to walk into a Michelin restaurant with a knockout on his arm—but at the end of the night, it was just him and the girl in his loft. Because none of the girls was interested in talking, it felt a lot like bringing home dolls. Coke helped, but eventually that bored him, too.

He didn’t know Maddy well, but he never would have put her in that category of girl. Now he wasn’t sure. She was vamping, hamming it up in that ridiculous dress, a dress you wore only if you had a movie in the festival, not if you were someone’s date. Berlin wasn’t the Academy Awards; there were different rules. He couldn’t reconcile the girl on the carpet with the girl he had seen in I Used to Know Her, the serious dramatic actress. Who could not only act but write. Maddy was smart. What was she thinking?

“It seems like a lot of trouble to bring her to Berlin for one audition,” he murmured to his mother.

“Not when your director refuses to leave the continent.”

“That’s a very fancy dress.”

“This is a very important premiere.”

“What’s your plan for her?”

“To break her in. Zachary, please. I don’t need to educate you on the value of advance publicity. You’re an agent, for God’s sake.”

He shook his head and watched the V grow tighter.


Maddy could hear a woman calling her name in a thick accent. The woman was in a parka, standing next to a guy with a videocamera. “Ms. Freed, I am Gisela Moor. I’m from a German television show?”

“Hey there,” Maddy said. Steven had released her hand and was talking to another reporter a few steps away.

“What is your film in the festival?” the woman in the parka was asking Maddy.

“Oh, I don’t have one. But I’m in a movie that just premiered at Mile’s End, in the U.S. It should be out by Christmas in the States, and we’re hoping for a release in Europe. It’s called I Used to Know Her. By a great new director named—”

“How long have you and Mr. Weller been involved?”

“Oh, we’re not—he isn’t—we just met. My boyfriend is the director of my movie, and he’s actually named Dan—”

Bridget was there, standing next to her. “That’s all for now,” she said. She ushered Maddy inside the theater. Maddy was flushed from the adrenaline of the past ten minutes and embarrassed that the press had misunderstood Steven’s gesture. She wished she had gotten more time to talk about Dan and the movie. “You did very well,” Bridget said, smiling warmly. “You’re a natural.”

When the rest of the cast finished their interviews and came inside, they all climbed the stairs to the theater. With Steven beside her, her hand still tingling, Maddy wasn’t sure what to say. “Thank you for doing that,” she tried. He said nothing but smiled at her briefly, paternally, before moving a few steps ahead.


At the after-party, held at a hot nightclub, she and the Widower crew sat a banquette in a roped-off private area. Zack had come to dinner with them during the screening but decided to skip the party.

Maddy’s cell phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize, with a strange area code, and not knowing any better, she answered. A man from the Daily Mail said he was calling for confirmation that Maddy was dating Steven Weller. “No, that’s not true,” she said. “I don’t know where you got that. I have a boyfriend.”

Bridget indicated that Maddy should give her the phone. Bridget took it, listened for a moment, and said Maddy was not going to comment on the rumors. Then she clicked off.

“But that makes it sound like it’s true,” Maddy said.

“No, it’s always better not to comment,” Bridget said, “or else it sounds like a false denial.”

“Maybe I should issue some kind of statement. Flora could help me. I want the press to know that Dan and I are together. I want to get his name out there, too.”

“Don’t take any of this seriously,” Bridget said with a wave of her hand. “The legitimate outlets won’t report anything without attribution. As for the illegitimate ones, I try to give them as little attention as possible.” A moment later, the phone rang again. Bridget silenced it, returned it to Maddy, and said, “We’re going to have to change your number.”

Maddy hoped no one else bothered her. She’d had too much wine at dinner and didn’t want to answer by accident and say the wrong thing. That it had been exciting to hold Steven’s hand. That she loved feeling his blood next to hers.

Maddy heard Chrissie Hynde singing “I’ll Stand By You,” and began to sway in response to the music. She was sixteen again, at the Potter High School prom. Steven saw her swaying and asked if she wanted to dance. “Yes, Mr. Weller, I will dance with you,” she said, realizing she was verging on drunk. At the banquette, someone had ordered cranberry and vodka and she’d already had a glass.

He held her closely as they rocked back and forth. It was intoxicating to be close to him. He smelled like cedar or musk.

His wrists were heavy on her shoulders. In her velvet heels, she was three inches taller than he. “Your real last name is Woyceck, right?” she asked.

“Yeah. Polish. Way too hard to spell, so I changed it early. Why do you ask?”

“I was just thinking about how I used to know everything about you. When I was a teenager, I clipped articles about you from teeny-bopper magazines. Isn’t that stupid?”