“What does Lars say?”
“Lars—Lars says they’re offering me the part.”
“Well?”
“WELL, IF THEY’RE OFFERING IT WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG?”
“Back down, tiger. We’ve been through this. They are offering you the part, they just have an internal situation they need to work out.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Alison. Alison. Do you trust me? Do you trust me?” For a moment Alison remembered that snake, from The Jungle Book, who sang a sweet little song to Mowgli to get him to go to sleep, so that he could eat him.
“Sure, Ryan,” she said. “I trust you.”
“How are things going for you and Lars?”
She took a breath. “Lars and I are fine. We’re great.”
“That’s all you need to think about. The rest is my job. Let me do my job.”
Things were good with Lars. “Good” was as usual a relative word, but she would have a hard time describing her relationship with the Icelandic Prince in more unsavory terms. Lars was gorgeous. He was sexy. He was romantic. He was remote, but in a way that you would expect out of a global film director. It was true that sex with Lars, while exciting, was a little unnerving. He would do things like suddenly grab her by the hair, pull her toward him, and kiss her with complete, unself-conscious abandon. She could be sitting on the couch eating popcorn and the next thing she knew he was on top of her, with his fingers shoved up her vagina, her back arched over the armrest, moaning with pleasure. She felt like a total slut at times like that; she had never known that sex could be this overwhelming, and there were moments when she wanted him inside her so much that she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t go see some therapist about sex addiction. It was like a fever dream, half the time, and she would have been embarrassed by her own behavior if he were not even more creatively hedonistic in this arena. If one of them was a sex addict, it was Lars, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t it. This was the thing she couldn’t possibly tell Ryan: Lars was obsessed with her.
He sent dresses to her apartment and then came over at all hours to watch her model them, before undressing her in creative ways so he could fuck her. He brought her exotic Moroccan oils and showed her even more exotic ways to use them. And then one day he brought actors with him.
No big deal, he explained; he just wanted to have the guys read a few scenes from the movie with her. Her apartment was so small, and so marked as Lars’s sexual territory by then, the addition of the two strange boys was unnerving, bumpy. On the other hand, the idea that Lars wanted to work on the film seemed promising. She had practically memorized the script by then, and the chance to actually say the words and show what she could do with the character jazzed her. There was no way to say no. Why would you?
And of course it was fun, at first. Snappy little scenes where she flirted with the boys, bossed them around, acted all cool and witty while nursing a secret crush on the too-tough leader of the crew. It was lively and they were enjoying themselves. And then they got to the sex scene.
The living room, with so many men in it, had gotten a bit too warm and one of them—Carl, the one playing her love interest—had conveniently stripped down to his T-shirt.
“Let’s try this on the couch,” Lars told them.
It wasn’t a difficult scene. In fact, there was nothing to it. Laila was sitting on the edge of her bed, and the guy came in, kissed her, and then they had sex.
“You want us to do this scene?”
“Is that a problem?” Lars didn’t even look up from his script.
“There’s not much to it.”
“Let’s just take a shot at it.”
“You want me to sit here and make out with Carl.”
“I want you to act the scene.”
She actually started to do it. She sat on the couch, brooding—that was the direction in the text, Laila, brooding, sits on the edge of the bed. Her shirt, loosely unbuttoned, has slipped off her shoulder, revealing the nipple of her perfectly formed right breast. Carl sat down on the couch. He shifted, took a moment to settle, then leaned gently toward her.
And then it didn’t feel like so much fun anymore. “Hang on, cowboy,” she said. She turned to Lars, who was considering her with a slightly too-deliberate curiosity. “You want me to open my shirt and reveal the nipple of my perfectly formed right breast?” she asked.
“That would be fine,” Lars informed her. She didn’t know if he was kidding. It seriously wasn’t clear.
“You want me to make out with him? Right now? Like, right here on the couch?”
“We’re doing a scene, Alison,” Lars reminded her, with a condescending Icelandic superiority.
“Sure we are, Lars.”
She sat in silence for a moment. Carl looked back and forth between them, then stretched his hand down his back, like he was warming up for a wrestling match. “So do you want me to . . .”
“I need you to take off, Carl,” she said. “All of you, take off.”