I poured myself another rum, skipping the ginger this time. My weather reporter friends Ed and Roberta (what a name, poor girl) weren’t giving me any new information, so I finally grabbed the remote and switched the channel. Nothing but hurricane coverage on every station. I didn’t need any more hurricane coverage. The hurricane was coming; I got it. I could have been the reporter at this point; I had all their lines memorized. Perhaps I should have been a weather girl. I liked the weather, and they always wore such cute outfits.
I switched to the resort’s On Demand feature and scrolled through endless movie titles. There was a whole section devoted to movies with Cole in them—as a troubled trust fund kid in Bad Boy, a vigilante cop in Bloodhound, a charming but ruthless double agent in the Gentleman Gangster series, and of course, right there in the middle of the list was the film we did together. Faster. The catalyst. Ironic that it was about a relationship that moved at the speed of light and crashed spectacularly. If I’d never done that film, never met him, where would my life be today?
The poster featured our thirteen-years-younger faces staring longingly into each other’s eyes. The passion was real; I was in love with him when we shot that poster and believed he was in love with me—though now I wondered if he was even capable of real love. The photo shoot had been the week before we ran off to Vegas and got married. We’d been fucking like rabbits for a whole six weeks, and he had me completely convinced he was my knight in shining armor—back when I thought I needed a knight in shining armor, which of course he wasn’t anyway. But at the time I was addicted to him. Everyone on the crew was tittering behind our backs because we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, but we didn’t care. It would be funny if it hadn’t all turned out so sad.
Sometimes I felt like the Ghost of Christmas Past, visiting myself in happier times. I drew out the golden moments with an appreciation I never had when living through them: nights in satin and diamonds, the scent of freshly applied lipstick and the pop of the flashbulbs as the velvet rope lifted; press junkets in foreign cities, signing autographs for smiling fans whose languages I didn’t speak; the stick of pine needles beneath my knees and frost on my skin, fanning the ephemeral flame of truth for the camera. Watching an old movie I’d done was like a portal into the past.
I selected Faster and settled into the pillows with Mary Elizabeth in my lap. The piano riff to “Mad World” began to play beneath the familiar credit sequence, and there I was. Splendor in the springtime of life. My skin lustrous, my eyes bright, not a wrinkle in sight—I really was something. The deep emerald-green evening dress I was wearing clung to my curves and dipped nearly to my belly button, revealing legs for days and perky side boob every time I moved. I’d loved that dress. I kept it after we wrapped, but burned it after Iris…
Without warning, the vision of Iris wearing that dress filled my mind, spinning in circles so fast she crashed into my bed, dizzy. The moment I knew I wasn’t in love with Cole anymore.
Iris loved that dress even more than I did. She liked to put it on and imitate my lines until we collapsed in a heap of giggles. That’s the thing I remembered most about Iris: the laughter.
But I couldn’t think of Iris.
Iris standing on the diving board of my pool, turning back to smile with the sun in her hair before plunging into the shimmering blue.
Iris humming off-key while cooking dinner in the kitchen, a glass of red wine in hand.
I’d been so good in recent years about not thinking of Iris, but spending time with Cole had opened Pandora’s box. I couldn’t help myself; all the memories from that time were fighting to get out, clawing their way to the surface.
Thirteen years and I hadn’t told a soul.
I wiped my cheeks and realized that I was crying. Silly after so many years to still be so emotional. But I couldn’t help it when I thought of the future we had planned, all gone in an instant, as though it had never even existed. She was the only person who had ever truly loved me for myself, and I’d never been allowed to mourn her.
I scooped up Mary Elizabeth and wandered into my room, where I rifled through my suitcase in search of the sketches I kept neatly folded inside the jacket of my signed copy of Uta Hagen’s Respect for Acting. I sat on the bed and removed the jacket, carefully spreading the drawings out on the down comforter. The light streamed through the windows, illuminating the yellowed paper and faded colored pencil. The first sketch was of me, naked, looking over my shoulder at the artist, the green dress dangling from my hand. The second depicted Iris, also naked and lying with her head on a pillow, her eyes closed and her flaxen hair spread out around her, the way she was when I first laid eyes on her. A sleeping beauty.
Suddenly inspired, I extracted the nearly empty journal that was to be my memoir from the bedside table and opened it. I didn’t have to include it in the final version of the book, but I found I desperately needed to write it down. It could be cathartic, for my eyes only; no one ever needed to read it. I picked up a pen and began writing words I’d
