“Uh, no.” I rub the back of my head. “I thought I’d figure that out after the piece was written.”
“Good luck.” She snorts. “I doubt anyone will pay attention unless you have some pretty big names—God bless Penny, but she doesn’t count. They’ll just laugh at the two of us. I might be able to give you some more names. Maybe Penny will, too. But it’ll be hard to get them to talk to you. No one wants to talk about this shit.”
“Yeah.” My voice is a sigh. I fold my arms. “I get it. I don’t want to force anyone to bring up bad memories, but I figured they were already coming back up because of the documentary. I just don’t think he should be getting awards after—you know.”
“Boy, do I know.” She snorts again. “Well, what do you want to hear about?”
“Do you mind if I record you?”
“Whatever you need.”
“Uh.” I clear my throat. “Can I ask what happened? When it happened?”
“The set of Touch of the Heart—that was more than twenty years ago now,” she says. I’m not sure whether Penny told her how old I am or not, but something about the way she says it makes me think she knows. “It was my first really big movie, and I could already tell it was going to be Oscar bait. Lennox was…nice, I guess, at first. He knew everything was new for me and said he’d help make things easier to handle. I was in his trailer all the time.”
My stomach tightens. I don’t feel good about this. And there’s something heartbreaking about how clearly she remembers this, when I worked so hard to block what happened to me in middle school.
But it makes me feel like she’s spent years, more than two decades, reliving this story over and over again. Like she can’t escape it.
“One day, I fell asleep in his trailer,” she says. “He had this really nice couch. I loved it, since it looked like it’d been made in the sixties and reminded me of home. When I woke up, he was on top of me.”
My breath hitches. This conversation feels too intimate, too revealing, for us to be having over the phone. And I feel like shit for even asking.
“It’s okay,” I say, shaking my head. “You should only tell me as much as you feel comfortable with. If you want to take a break or—”
“I didn’t just get bullied into telling you,” she says, voice like steel. “I’ve been thinking about this long before Penny brought it up. If you don’t write it into your story, I’ll write it myself. This isn’t a pity project. I want this guy to burn.”
I force myself to breathe. She’s right. It’s about taking Lennox down, making sure people see the real him.
“Okay,” I say. “What else do you want to tell me?”
@JosieTheJournalist: pay your interns!!!!!!!!!!!!
New York City is dark and slushy, not as glittery as I’d expected when we were still on the plane. Everything looked beautiful from up high.
It’s even worse when we actually leave the airport. Snow blows everywhere, but it isn’t crisp and white, not like in the movies. It’s dirty from sloshing underneath thousands of pedestrian feet. I guess the weather isn’t bad enough to keep everyone inside, because there are still crowds of people wandering around and beeping and yelling at each other. For some reason, it makes me think of Julia, and that makes me even sadder.
We spoke for a few hours on Monday before Alice and I had to catch our flight. By the time Alice had finished her shower, I’d moved out into the hotel hallway because I couldn’t stop pacing back and forth. I know Julia told her costume designer right after she woke up with Lennox on top of her, and the designer told her not to tell anyone. I know everyone on set avoided her afterward, as if they knew what had happened. I know she kept trying to talk about it, but the more she did, the harder it became to get jobs.
“Lennox,” she said. “He did it. He told me he’d make sure I never got hired again if I told, and he did.”
I don’t understand how one person can have so much power. But he does. Tons of women know it. Julia knows it. My phone call with her made everything seem more real, a gigantic weight that has settled at the bottom of my belly. It’s the reason why his behavior isn’t public knowledge. It’s the reason why no one has written about this before. It makes me think someone smarter than me should be writing this.
But I already know I can’t just toss the story to someone else. Penny asked me. I’ve already become attached to Julia. Even if part of me feels like I can’t handle it, another part feels like I’m the one meant to write it.
I don’t know. My head is a mess.
Today the main cast is being featured on The Morning Show with Amy and Mike, which means everyone is up at five in the morning, including me. I’m not sure how going with them to the show helps me write the story, but I guess the idea is that I’m supposed to follow them almost everywhere. I’m barely awake when Alice and I shuffle into the studio’s greenroom. There’s a TV mounted so we can see what’s being broadcast to TVs across America live: the hosts, Amy and Mike, sitting at a table and chatting casually with each other.
Producers are running around and talking to Art, giggling like he’s some sort of god. Someone puts makeup on Marius’s face. Since Penny isn’t a member of the main cast, she isn’t here. I wish she were. Alice and I basically stick in the corner, barely even acknowledging each other because we aren’t actually awake. I
