By the time I reach Anthony’s building, I’m covered in a thin layer of sweat. I haven’t been able to return to Ben and Sofìa’s apartment to freshen up after walking dogs for the past six or seven hours, in the parks, on the crowded summer streets, with sunshine reflecting off every shiny surface in Manhattan. My cheeks sting with sunburn. I wish I wasn’t such a mess. Even though I’ve already been offered the part, somehow in the pit of my stomach this feels like it might be a continuation of the audition.
Taking my time on the front steps, I wipe my forehead, blot my upper lip on the neck of my T-shirt, straighten my hair. My hand shakes as I reach for the intercom. Almost immediately, there’s a loud thunk as the door unlocks. It’s made of steel and glass and weighs a ton, and I push it open into a marble lobby that, however elegant it might be, reminds me of a crypt. A tinny but cheery “Come on up!” follows me inside from the intercom.
As I climb the stairs—shocked each time by the single doorway on every landing, whereas Ben and Sofìa’s building has about eight units per floor—I try to keep my breathing measured. But the stairs are steep, the air stifling hot, and after a few floors, I’m winded. Anthony is already on the landing, waiting for me.
“You have something against elevators?” he asks me, then signals for me to hurry inside with an exaggerated complaint: “You’ll let the cold air out.”
I obey, stammering out a nervous excuse on the way. “Ben and Sofìa’s building doesn’t have an elevator.”
Inside, it’s chilly enough for Anthony to be wearing a long-sleeve shirt and sweatpants. Goose bumps prickle my exposed legs, and my shirt clings to me like a wet towel. “Is this place really all yours?” I hear myself ask. It’s a stupid question, but I forgive myself. I knew to expect grand, but I hadn’t expected this.
Anthony doesn’t stop moving to savor my small-town awe. By the time the door has closed behind me, he has retreated into the kitchen to dig through the cabinets. I take the opportunity to catalogue the rest of his apartment, which is relatively easy to do. As big as it is, the entire space is on display. I guess this is what they mean by a New York loft. He has gutted whatever was here before, down to the brick walls and oak beams, and he lives now in its shell. The huge space is organized into informal quadrants—kitchen, living room, bedroom, office—but except for the bathroom and closets, all it is is a giant box, furnished in an eclectic mix of sleek modern furniture and heavy antiques.
In Reverence, he had still been living at home with his parents. Their apartment is one of those old-school New York co-ops, hovering somewhere on the Upper East Side, full of nooks and crannies and elaborate furniture that looks too delicate or uncomfortable to use. His room had been on the far end, tucked away from the living spaces, behind an old washroom. He’d never said it outright, in the movie, but it always felt like his parents wanted him hidden, out of the way.
Here he’s chosen the exact opposite for himself. A place where he will be on display wherever he is. I like it.
Humming to himself, Anthony sets two glasses of water on the coffee table. Then, as though he’s noticing me for the first time, he gives me an abbreviated wave. “Do you want to come in?”
“Oh, sorry,” I say. For all of my visual snooping, I’m still standing at the front door. I drop my purse to the ground and join him in the living room quadrant, dodging a pile of precariously stacked books.
“Thanks for coming all the way out here,” he says with a laugh, and I’m not sure whether he means Williamsburg or his living room. “You’ve got to be curious about the project.”
I nod, not bothering to hide my eagerness, but not exactly trusting my voice. Again, I find myself wishing I were just a bit older and more experienced. I would know how to act around Anthony. I wouldn’t stand, frozen in place, in his doorway, nervous and quiet. Maybe I would walk around, admire the artwork he’s installed on the walls, make a joke about my day. But I can’t think of anything to say. Instead, all I can do is wonder what he expects from me, and what he is thinking of me.
“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the couch.
I half comply, sitting in the crook of its arm, while Anthony strides across the room to a camera atop a spindly-looking tripod. I don’t know how I missed it. It’s next to the TV. I was right after all. This is still the audition. I run a hand nervously through my hair, trying to fluff it up. I should have brought a brush. Most of the time, the length of my hair hides the tangles. I’m sure Anthony is going to notice. To him, the mess will signify an unprofessional lack of preparedness.
He fiddles with the camera. The red light—nearly hidden in the glare sliding across the glossy lens—blinks on, and my face appears on the TV screen. I release a breathy “Oh,” and the camera catches it in real time. I tell myself to slow down a bit. Relax, Betty. This entire experience is a lesson. I hadn’t realized how much of a hayseed I actually am, but now that I’m here, in Anthony Marino’s apartment, I should try to enjoy myself.
I watch my lips curl in an embarrassed attempt at a self-conscious smile, then tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and settle back into the couch cushions, trying but failing to back myself out of the camera’s line of sight. For a moment, I forget what it is we’re doing. I’m transfixed by my own reflection. Not because of how I look but because this girl seems so separate from me. It feels like she’s the one initiating my small movements, the nervous tics. I think it’s because of the camera’s angle. She’s looking away, while I’m looking directly into her eyes.
Anthony’s voice brings me back into the moment. “Pretty amazing resolution, right?”
I tear my focus away from this girl. “This is crazy,” I say. “I mean, it makes me feel crazy. I don’t know where to look.”
“Don’t overthink it,” he tells me. “Look wherever you want to.” He zooms in slightly, and the movement draws my gaze back to the screen. “We won’t do this long. I just wanted to see how you translate in higher definition. And to show you what I saw last night. You didn’t believe me.”
I wait for him to finish the thought, but he doesn’t. “Didn’t believe you about what?”
“Who you are,” he says. “On camera. It’s not about the way you look. Well, it’s that, too. But there’s something about you that a person wants to—I don’t know.” He searches for the right word, then hesitates before he voices it. “Touch.” This reminds me of our aborted kiss, and I wish he hadn’t said it. Maybe the same thought occurs to him, too, because his face flushes and he looks frustrated. His eyes narrow as he focuses again on the screen. “Take a look at your image, how accessible it is. You’re not doing anything specific, but it’s like you’re confessing your every thought to the camera. It’s simply part of who you are. Do you see it?”
I stare back at my second self, who in turn stares off to the left side of the room, and I wait, watching the blush creep up my cheeks to match his—though at least mine could just be my sunburn. “I guess,” I say, unconvinced, but flattered nonetheless.
“Ben said you modeled back home?”
“A little,” I say. A few professional shoots, but those were rare. The reality is much less glamorous, but he wouldn’t understand. He lives on the top floor of a converted warehouse in the heart of Williamsburg. He went to film school at NYU. His first film won multiple awards in festivals. To him, modeling means walking a runway in some over-the-top costume in front of a room full of celebrities. He doesn’t know what it means to don polyester tops for snapshots for local small-town sporting goods stores, to be paid a flat rate that barely covers the gas it took to drive there.
But no, that isn’t me anymore. That’s the past. That’s why I’m here. I’m starting over. I’m doing things differently now. I don’t articulate these thoughts. On-screen, though, I can see their contours pass over my expression.
“Not proud of it?” Anthony asks, reading my face correctly. “I know the feeling.”
“Do you?” I ask. I’m surprised. The camera catches this, too. “Ben said you were some kind of prodigy.” I realize how this sounds, so I try to soften it, though I think I only make it worse. “I mean, from the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like you’ve got anything to be ashamed of.”
“I guess it isn’t a matter of pride or shame,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “Even if it feels that way sometimes. It’s more that—” He struggles to gather his thoughts. “I liked the process better than the product. Being in the moment, filming. With Reverence, if that’s what you’re still talking about. Watching it again, it lacks something. Soul, maybe. It’s more self-conscious than I wanted it to be. All I see is the choreography, the rehearsed lines, the structure I imposed on the story. I think that’s why I haven’t done anything since. I’ve been nervous it won’t be the same, or maybe that it’ll be exactly the same. It’s hard to look back.”
“But you’re—” I fumble with the words. You’re Anthony Marino. “Ben said it’s a great movie. Brilliant, even. You don’t like it?”
“Ben’s a prince,” Anthony says with a shrug. “He’d say that about anything I did. It’s a good enough movie, I guess. Entertaining. And it made money. But it’s ordinary. Bland.”
“Do you think you feel that way about it because you made it?” I persist, offended on the movie’s behalf. And on my own, too. How can he be so critical of something so beautiful? “Maybe you know it too well? Or when you say it’s too self-conscious, maybe you mean you’re just too conscious of it yourself.”
“I’m not going to let myself off the hook that easily,” he says. “Look, I know I shouldn’t criticize something that’s affected my life so positively. People—well, some people—love the movie so much, they seek me out. They thank me for making it. So I know it served its purpose, and I’m grateful. But when we started filming, I was fresh out of school. The story was so overwritten, it became sterile. I was so concerned with the mechanics of the shoot. We had producers, gaffers, a script supervisor. The more I tried to structure it, the emptier it got. This next one, it’s going to be different. I want it to be real. I want it to surprise me.”
He tilts the camera’s monitor and watches me for my reaction there, through the camera. I have to fight the impulse to laugh. Because this situation is so strange. Here I am, on TV in Anthony Marino’s apartment. And he’s telling me he isn’t proud of Reverence. The movie I loved so much is apparently empty, according to its creator. Sterile, even. But then the laughter dies in my throat. Because this is important to him. He has to do this through his camera. It’s a bit pathetic, or at least that’s how it feels, as much as it’s relatable, too. It’s like talking on the phone. That’s how I told Tucker I loved him, the first time. Even though we saw each other every day, I’d waited until he called me on his drive to the grocery store to speak the actual words. I love you, Tuck. Don’t forget the oranges.
Back in Williamsburg, Anthony asks, “Who was your last boyfriend?”
I get the feeling he can read my mind, and I can’t hide my shock, but Anthony bats my reaction away, as though it’s something hanging in the air. “Don’t be bashful,” he says. “Everything’s fair game here. That’s the way this is going to work.” And then, after a beat: “Sorry for being presumptuous. You’re not seeing someone now, are you?”
And what if I am? I wonder. But I shake my head. “Tucker,” I say. “He was really nice.” I cringe at the bland description, but I’m not sure what else I should say. What else does he want to know? Why does he want to know about Tucker, anyway?
“How long were you two together?”
“Years. Three, I guess, but we’ve been off and on since high school.”
“When did you break up?”
“A little over a month ago,” I say. Will he do the math? It’s an easy equation, but he doesn’t give anything away. Or maybe he doesn’t remember how long I’ve been here in New York.
“Who broke up with whom?”
This makes me smile. Whom. Who says that? “I did. Broke up with him, I mean.”
“Why?”
I close my eyes and try not to squeeze them shut so I don’t look like I’m avoiding the question. The problem is, I know the answer. Because my father killed himself and I couldn’t stand to be there anymore. Because, if I’m being honest, I hated Tucker the instant he said he was sorry for my loss. The very instant he tried to hug me and pretend he could make it all better. But how do I tell this to a virtual stranger?
Anthony graciously offers, “You broke up with him because you weren’t the same person you were when you thought you fell in love with him for the rest of your life. Close enough?”
I open my eyes, grateful for the generic assessment. “I definitely didn’t want to see him anymore.”
“I know the story,” he says with a laugh. “Ben-and-Sofìa relationships are the exception, not the rule. They don’t know how lucky they are. Or maybe they do. Whatever. Sofìa wasn’t much help explaining your situation to me.” He turns away, squatting in front of a pile of books by the TV stand, while I digest this pronouncement. I know she’s said she and Ben have told him all about me, but I had hoped—I had convinced myself—that they were telling him only the good stuff. That they were talking me up. Selling me to the famous director. Anthony had seemed not to know about my father. But maybe this was just a ruse to hear how I would present myself to him. After all, he just asked me if I’m single, when he knows full well I am. I know I shouldn’t be upset. He wants to hear everything from me for himself. My truth. And this is all information I would have willingly offered him—maybe not my embarrassing high school years, the awkward attempts at friendship—and maybe it’s a gift, somehow, that I don’t have to confess to all of my personality, my shortcomings. But it doesn’t feel like a gift. It feels like yet another reminder that I’m the odd man out, an outsider in this group of friends. That Sofìa’s loyalty is to Anthony, not me.
I’m jolted out of my self-pity when a book lands on my lap. “Do you want to hear about this project?” Anthony asks me. In answer, I turn the slim electric blue paperback in my hands. The pages are so old, they’re starting to disintegrate, and when I open it up, the smell of must wafts to my nose. The Executioners. “Have you ever read it?” he asks me. “Seen the movie?”
I shake my head, and flip through the pages of the novel, searching for some kind of hint.
“The movie was called Cape Fear,” he says.
“That sounds familiar,” I tell him, finally finding my voice. “I think. But I haven’t seen it.”
“The original was released in nineteen sixty-two. It was remade by Scorsese in nineteen ninety-one. Maybe that’s the version you’re familiar with. I saw the original when I was fifteen. I was home alone one day. Pretending to be sick. This was before cable on demand. I switched on the TV, and that’s what was playing. Afternoon cinema on our huge old RCA color TV. The movie scared the hell out of me.”
I flip through the pages of the novel, stopping to read a paragraph out loud that catches my eye. “Such a precious and precarious age. Half child and half woman. And when she was all woman, she was going to be extraordinarily lovely. And that would create its own special set of problems.” I shut the book. “Is this me?” I ask.
Anthony doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “The story is pretty simple, but scary. This violent criminal, Robert Mitchum, fresh out of prison, holds a grudge against the lawyer, Gregory Peck, who was responsible for his conviction. He wants revenge. So he stalks the lawyer’s family to their houseboat—which is moored in this place called Cape Fear—and he terrorizes them. The film pretends to be about fathers and daughters. The lawyer has a young daughter, Lori Martin—that’s the girl you just read about—and the criminal fixates on her. He tells the father he’s going to hurt her. Rape her, is what he means. So the father becomes more and more vicious, protecting his daughter.” Anthony pitches his voice low, for dramatic effect. “Revenge,” he intones. “That’s what the film was really about. Revenge. Gregory Peck is clearly the hero. He’s Gregory Peck, you know? At the end of the film, though, he isn’t just trying to protect his family from Robert Mitchum. He’s exacting his own sense of justice.” With a shake of his head, Anthony stops himself. “Maybe instead of me telling you all this, we should watch it. What do you think? Do you have time?”
“Why not?” I say. On the one hand, I’m delighted. I still can’t believe I’m here. That this is happening. That Anthony Marino is analyzing revenge with me in his apartment, like it matters if I understand the concept. It’s the difference between exacting justice and pain, I guess. On the other hand, though, the longer I stay here, the greater risk he sees how inadequate I am. I don’t want him to realize his mistake and change his mind. “If you think it’s important,” I add. I check my phone for any texts from Sofìa, but there’s nothing except another missed call from my mother. She has never been this insistent before. I wonder what she wants. But I brush the thought aside. I don’t need another lecture on how ungrateful I am, or what a terrible houseguest I must be. She can wait.
“And don’t worry,” Anthony tells me, turning the TV back on with a few complicated clicks of the remote. “I have your check. Don’t let me forget to give it to you before you leave.” The screen goes black for a few beats, then lights up again, bathing half his face in its glow. The other half remains shrouded in shadow.
He looks so casual. Apparently $20,000 doesn’t mean anything more to him than the salmon dinner did. I wonder if I should say thank you. But he hasn’t left that kind of an opening. It sounds like a chore to him, a reminder to take out the trash or call the dentist. And I guess this makes sense. In his mind, he isn’t doing me a favor, giving me this money. I’m going to earn it. He hasn’t realized yet I would have done this for free.
A thought occurs to me. “You said there’s a family in this story that’s being terrorized, right? So if I’m the helpless daughter, who’s going to be the father who saves me? You?”
Anthony looks shocked. Then he blushes. “No.” His eyes dart sideways to meet mine, but only for a second. “Not me. This isn’t a remake of the movie. Not literally. We’re responding to it, in a way. I’ve always wanted to make a scary movie—to scare an audience the way this movie riveted me—but not just for the thrill of it. The film has to mean something more. Anyway,” he says, changing the subject before I can ask what he means, “you’re not going to be anyone’s daughter. You’re going to be paired up with your boyfriend. Up at my family’s summer cabin, like I told you.”
“Your own Cape Fear,” I say.
“Exactly,” Anthony says. “No houseboat, though. But close enough. The cabin’s on its own little island off the coast of Maine.”
“So who is the boyfriend, then? You?”
Anthony offers me a casual shrug, though there’s something practiced about it. I get the feeling he’s nervous. “There’s this actor I’ve worked with before, from Reverence. You’re going to like him.” For a second he pauses, as if to consider what he’s said, and it might just be my imagination, but I think his expression darkens. He can’t hide it from me. I’m sure of it. He’s not just possessive. I think he’s already a little jealous, in anticipation. “Mads,” he says. “Mads Byrne.”
Now it’s my turn to try to conceal an unflattering emotion. Not jealousy in my case, but eagerness. Mads Byrne. This guy is just about every girl’s dream. He’s a jock, but he’s smart. And he’s sensitive, too. In Reverence, he’s the one who finally shoves the knife into Anthony’s torso, and afterward his tears are so genuine, I believed that Anthony might well have been killed in real life. Since then, he’s been in some other indie movies. Nothing as good as Reverence, though. But I haven’t seen Reverence, right? So all I can do is fake a shrug to hide my thrill. I’m going to meet Mads Byrne. Not only that, I’m going to play his girlfriend. And then something else occurs to me. “So who’s going to play the criminal, then? You?”
But Anthony cuts me off. “Listen,” he says, “we really aren’t remaking the movie. We’re capturing its essence. Its fear. This”—he gestures to the TV—“is for you to have something to hold on to. Think of it like a mood board. It’s something you can refer back to as we proceed, because—I don’t know if Ben or Sofìa have told you—we aren’t filming off a script. Not even a treatment. Nothing.”
Talk to Anthony is what Ben had basically told me when I’d asked him for a script. He has his own way of doing things. I had assumed he meant that Anthony would decide when to give me the script. Not this.
“Nothing at all?” I ask. My stomach flips. I’ve never acted before. Am I going to have to improvise? Opposite Mads Byrne?
“Think of it like reality TV,” Anthony says, which is what Ben had told me, too—as though that explains anything. “You’re going to play a character, one that’s really close to who you are, in real life, but certain things are, for the sake of storytelling, emphasized.” In the glare of the TV, Anthony’s teeth are almost blue. “It sounds more complicated than it is. It’s like a game. You don’t understand the rules until you start playing, right?”
“Sure, but—”
“Trust me, Betty,” he says. “You’re a perfect fit for this. It will come naturally to you once we start. You just have to trust me. Or yourself. You have to have faith in yourself. And look at it this way. You don’t have to memorize someone else’s words and try to act them out until they feel like yours. Anyone can do that. I want you in the movie. You.”
Before I can even try to respond—again, I’m stunned by the force of his conviction—he turns his attention to the TV. It takes him a moment to start the film. While the colors on-screen flatten into gray scale and the room fills with the reverberations of a deep, ominous fanfare, he settles in, draping a long arm down the back of the cushions. “Relax, Betty,” he tells me. “Just watch the film. You have nothing to worry about.”