“I see.”
“And I didn’t say I was confessing any sins. To say that what I have to tell is a sin is misleading and hurtful. I don’t feel regret for the things I’ve done—at least, not the things you might expect—despite how hard they may have been or how repugnant they may seem in the cold light of day.”
“Je ne regrette rien,” I say, lifting my glass of water and sipping it.
“That’s the spirit,” Evelyn says. “Although that song is more about not regretting because you don’t live in the past. What I mean is that I’d still make a lot of the same decisions today. To be clear, there are things I regret. It’s just . . . it’s not really the sordid things. I don’t regret many of the lies I told or the people I hurt. I’m OK with the fact that sometimes doing the right thing gets ugly. And also, I have compassion for myself. I trust myself. Take, for instance, when I snapped at you earlier, back at the apartment, when you said what you did about my confessing sins. It wasn’t a nice thing to do, and I’m not sure you deserved it. But I don’t regret it. Because I know I had my reasons, and I did the best I could with every thought and feeling that led up to it.”
“You take umbrage with the word sin because it implies that you feel sorry.”
Our salads appear, and Troy wordlessly grates pepper onto Evelyn’s until she puts her hand up and smiles. I decline.
“You can be sorry about something and not regret it,” Evelyn says.
“Absolutely,” I say. “I see that. I hope that you can give me the benefit of the doubt, going forward, that we’re on the same page. Even if there are multiple ways to interpret exactly what we’re talking about.”
Evelyn picks up her fork but doesn’t do anything with it. “I find it very important, with a journalist who will hold my legacy in her hands, to say exactly what I mean and to mean what I say,” Evelyn says. “If I’m going to tell you about my life, if I’m going to tell you what really happened, the truth behind all of my marriages, the movies I shot, the people I loved, who I slept with, who I hurt, how I compromised myself, and where it all landed me, then I need to know that you understand me. I need to know that you will listen to exactly what I’m trying to tell you and not place your own assumptions into my story.”
I was wrong. This is not low-stakes for Evelyn. Evelyn can speak casually about things of great importance. But right now, in this moment, when she is taking so much time to make such specific points, I’m realizing this is real. This is happening. She really intends to tell me her life story—a story that no doubt includes the gritty truths behind her career and her marriages and her image. That’s an incredibly vulnerable position she’s putting herself in. It’s a lot of power she’s giving me. I don’t know why she’s giving it to me. But that doesn’t negate the fact that she is giving it to me. And it’s my job, right now, to show her that I am worthy of it and that I will treat it as sacred.
I put my fork down. “That makes perfect sense, and I’m sorry if I was being glib.”
Evelyn waves this off. “The whole culture is glib now. That’s the new thing.”
“Do you mind if I ask a few more questions? Once I have the lay of the land, I promise to focus solely on what you’re saying and what you mean, so that you feel understood at such a level that you can think of no one better suited to the task of gatekeeping your secrets than me.”
My sincerity disarms her ever so briefly. “You may begin,” she says as she takes a bite of her salad.
“If I’m to publish this book after you have passed, what sort of financial gain do you envision?”
“For me or for you?”
“Let’s start with you.”
“None for me. Remember, I’ll be dead.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“Next question.”
I lean in conspiratorially. “I hate to pose something so vulgar, but what kind of timeline do you intend? Am I to hold on to this book for years until you . . .”
“Die?”
“Well . . . yes,” I say.
“Next question.”
“What?”
“Next question, please.”
“You didn’t answer that one.”
Evelyn is silent.
“All right, then, what kind of financial gain is there for me?”
“A much more interesting question, and I have been wondering why it took you so long to ask.”
“Well, I’ve asked it.”
“You and I will meet over the next however many days it takes, and I will tell you absolutely everything. And then our relationship will be over, and you will be free—or perhaps I should say bound—to write it into a book and sell it to the highest bidder. And I do mean highest. I insist that you be ruthless in your negotiating, Monique. Make them pay you what they would pay a white man. And then, once you’ve done that, every penny from it will be yours.”
“Mine?” I say, stunned.
“You should drink some water. You look ready to faint.”
“Evelyn, an authorized biography about your life, in which you talk about all seven of your marriages . . .”
“Yes?”
“A book like that stands to make millions of dollars, even if I didn’t negotiate.”
“But you will,” Evelyn says, taking a sip of her water and looking pleased.
The question has to be asked. We’ve been dancing around it for far too long. “Why on earth would you do that for me?”
Evelyn nods. She has been expecting this question. “For now, think of it as a gift.”
“But why?”
“Next question.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously, Monique, next question.”
I accidentally drop my fork onto the ivory tablecloth. The oil from the dressing bleeds into the fabric, turning it darker and more translucent. The chopped salad is delicious but heavy on the onions, and I can feel the heat of my breath permeating the space around me. What the hell is going on?
“I’m not trying to be ungrateful, but I think I deserve to know why one of the most famous actresses of all time would pluck me out of obscurity to be her biographer and hand me the opportunity to make millions of dollars off her story.”
“The Huffington Post is reporting that I could sell my autobiography for as much as twelve million dollars.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Inquiring minds want to know, I guess.”
The way Evelyn is having so much fun with this, the way she seems to delight in shocking me, lets me know that this is, at least a little bit, a power play. She likes to be cavalier about things that would change other people’s lives. Isn’t that the very definition of power? Watching people kill themselves over something that means nothing to you?
“Twelve million is a lot, don’t get me wrong . . .” she says, and she doesn’t need to finish the sentence in order for it to be completed in my head. But it’s not very much to me.
“But still, Evelyn, why? Why me?”
Evelyn looks up at me, her face stoic. “Next question.”