Hollywood's Secret Baby

All this fury boils over as a stew so hot that bubbles of hatred pop at the surface, splashing out unpredictable splotches of the noxious stuff. This emotion seeps into my character and suddenly, I’m adding lines that leak straight from my heart.

“You can’t hurt me,” I spit out. “Do you want to know why? It’s because my heart’s already been cut out. When my love disappeared, my body kept moving, but I’ve been empty ever since. So go ahead and kill me. Just do it!” I shriek. Then panting, I add, “Show me off to your audience out there watching. Those soft-dicked trolls living in their basements getting off to my pain. Let them have it. Take all of it. But you kill me at the end. You hear me? Kill me or I’ll fucking stab your eyes out and shove them down your throats.”

Then I laugh, and I actually feel something inside of me shift, like I’m coming unhinged. When I stop, there’s silence in the studio. Then clapping from my left. It’s Sarah, and her applause is soon joined by the rest of the crew.

“That’s it for today,” the stand-in director says. “Absolutely stupendous work,” he says. Sarah kneels beside me and releases my wrists. Even though they don’t really hurt, I automatically rub at them like I’ve seen people do in movies.

“That last take was amazing,” she says, but I’m not listening to her praise.

“Where’s Cory?”

There’s the hesitation of a secret held back as Sarah says, “He had to run an errand.”

“An errand? Is he picking up a fucking carton of milk? Tell me what’s going on.”

“You should hop in the shower really fast,” Sarah says. You’ll feel a bit calmer once you have all of this muck cleaned off of you.”

There’s definitely something she’s not telling me.

“Where did Cory go?” I ask in the same voice I’ve just used to threaten the lives of my character’s torturers.

Sarah holds out her hands as though to defend from the reprisal that’s sure to come. “I’ll tell you, but you have to remain calm.”

The moment she says this, my blood pressure shoots through the roof. The only time that people ever tell you to remain calm is when you shouldn’t be. Something’s wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong. My heart drops past my stomach, and even though I’ve just gone through this torture scene however many times, I didn’t feel half as nauseated as I feel now.

“What is it?” My voice box rattles like a kitten caught in a winter rain.

“Cory didn’t want to stop you filming. That’s why he took off by himself. He said that you’re more important than he is to this movie, so that’s why—”

I grab both of Sarah’s arms, staining her light blue blouse that I can only guess cost more than I used to make in a whole week. “What happened?”

“Lizzie got hurt.”

My heart stops. I turn to run out the studio, but Sarah stops me.

“Nothing serious,” she says. “Apparently a door got closed on her finger. They’re not sure if it’s broken or not, but she’s already at the hospital.”

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“Cory wanted you to finish the scene. He said he could take care of this by himself.”

Take care of this. Like Lizzie is just some task he needs to mark off his checklist. An inconvenience that he has to navigate in order to keep his filming on schedule.

“You need to clean off first,” Sarah calls out to me when I march towards the parking lot. But I don’t stop. It doesn’t even matter that I’m barely wearing clothes because I have to get to my daughter. It might just be a finger, but people have died from less. What if there’s a blood clot or an infection? Lizzie’s never stayed in a big hospital by herself. She must be terrified. I’m already well on my way to winning the shittiest mother of the year award. If I were to take my time showering and prettying myself up before visiting my daughter in the hospital, I might as well be crowned the worst mother of the decade.

I just step outside the studio when Sarah catches up to me.

“If you insist on going in this state, at least put on some trousers.”

She hands me my jeans from the dressing room. Pulling them on in full view of a security guard up at the entrance of the parking lot and two guys smoking out in a corner is not as embarrassing as it should be. I don’t have space to consider my own feelings right now. Everything is laser focused on Lizzie and the fact that I’m not there beside her at this very instant. I have to literally jump up a few times, yanking the jeans over my hips. The fact that I’m covered in artificial muck is not making this any easier.

“My car is just over here,” Sarah says, leading the way. Once my jeans are buttoned, she hands me a towel. “Clean your hair up. I do wish you had stopped long enough to at least grab your shoes. I couldn’t find them inside. If we are very lucky, I may have a pair of sandals in my trunk.

After tousling my hair as dry as it’s going to get, I place the towel on the leather seat before sitting in the passenger seat of Sarah’s convertible Mercedes Benz coupe. Once we’re in the car, Sarah lowers the top. “I am sorry, but the scent coming off of you is far from pleasant.”

“Do you know where the hospital is?” I ask, all business. I don’t care about dirt or smells or anything like that.

Sarah responds by punching the name of the hospital into the GPS. In seconds we’re turning onto the street. Once we get up to speed, the open air acts as a natural blow dryer, finishing the job that the towel began.