hairdresser half an hour to construct, ornamented with tiny, sparkling butterfly clips. Like most young female stars I’d met, she was thin to the point of unreality. I could make out the bones of her wrists and forearms, the pale blue tracery of veins along her neck.
Her pouty lips were painted scarlet. Her eyes were carefully lined and shadowed. And her cheeks were streaked with tears.
“Sorry about your interview,” she said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said again. “So what brings you to these parts? Don’t you have your own bathroom somewhere else?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, and drew a long, shuddering breath. “You know.”
“Well, actually, not being a thin, rich, successful movie star, I probably don’t.”
One corner of her mouth quirked upward, then drew down again into a trembling crimson bow. “Ever had your heart broken?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Actually, yes,” I said.
She closed her eyes. Impossibly long lashes rested against her pale freckled cheeks, and tears slid out from beneath them.
“It’s unbearable,” she said. “I know how that sounds…”
“No. No. I know what you mean. I know that it feels like that.”
I handed her one of the rolled-up towels I’d grabbed on the way in. She took it, then looked at me. It was, I thought, a test.
“My house is full of things he gave me,” I began, and she nodded vigorously, curls bouncing.
“That’s it,” she said, “that’s right.”
“And it hurts to look at them, and it hurts to put them away.”
Maxi slumped to the bathroom floor and leaned her cheek against the cool marble wall. After a moment’s hesitation, I joined her, struck by the absurdity of it all, and how it would make a great opening for an article: Maxi Ryder, one of the most acclaimed young actresses of her generation, is crying on the bathroom floor.
“My mother always says that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” I said.
“Do you believe that?” she asked.
I only had to think about it for a minute. “No. I don’t even think she believes it. I wish I’d never loved him. I wish I’d never met him. Because I think that as good as the good times were, it isn’t worth feeling like this.”
We sat for a minute, side by side.
“What’s your name?”
“Candace Shapiro. Cannie.”
“What was his name?”
“Bruce. And you?”
“I’m Maxi Ryder.
“I know that. I meant, what was his name?”
She made a horrible face. “Oh, don’t tell me you don’t know! Everybody knows! Entertainment Weekly did a whole story. With a flow chart!”
“Well, I was very explicitly forbidden from even mentioning it.” Plus, there was more than one candidate, but it didn’t seem prudent to say so.
“Kevin,” she whispered. Which would be Kevin Britton, her costar from Trembling.
“Still Kevin?”
“Still Kevin, always Kevin,” she said sadly, fumbling for another cigarette. “Kevin who I can’t forget, even after I’ve tried everything. Drink… drugs… work… other men…”
Jeez. I suddenly felt very innocent.
“What do you do?”
I knew what she was asking me. “Oh, you know. Probably the same kinds of things as you.” I laid one hand across my forehead, affecting world-weary hauteur. “I started by running off to my private island with Brad Pitt, trying to forget the pain by buying up llama ranches in New England…”
She punched my arm. Her clenched fist felt like a puff of air. “Seriously! Maybe it’ll be something I haven’t thought of.”
“Probably just more stuff that doesn’t really work. Baths, showers, bike rides…”
“I can’t go for bike rides,” she said morosely.
“Because of the paparazzi?”
“No. I never learned how.”
“Really? Bruce, my ex-boyfriend, couldn’t ride a bike either…” My voice trailed off.
“God, don’t you hate that?” she asked.
“The way even completely unrelated things remind you of the person you’re trying to forget? Yes. I hate it.” I looked at her. With her face framed by the bathroom wall marble, she looked ready for her close-up. Whereas I was probably a blotchy-faced, runny-nosed wreck. No justice, I thought. “What do you do?” I asked.
“Invest,” Maxi said instantly. “Manage my money. And my parents’ money, too.” She sighed. “I used to manage Kevin’s money. I wish he’d given me a little notice that he was going to dump me. I’d have sunk him so deep into Planet Hollywood that he’d be taking guest-shots on the WB just to make his rent.”
I considered Maxi with newfound respect. “So you, like…” I racked my brains for the appropriate vocabulary. “Day-trade?’
She shook her head. “Nope. I don’t have time to be geeking around on computers all day. I pick stocks, and I look for investment opportunities.” She stood and stretched, her hands on her nonexistent hips. “I buy real estate.”
My respect was turning into awe. “Like houses?”
“Yup. Buy them, have a crew renovate them, sell them at a profit, or live in them a while, if I’m between movies.”
I felt my fingers reaching for my pen and notebook, creeping almost of their own accord. Maxi as real-estate mogul was something I hadn’t read in any of the innumerable profiles I’d plowed through. It would make great copy. “Hey,” I ventured. “Do you think… I mean, I know they said you were busy, but maybe… could we talk for a few minutes? So I can write my story?”
“Sure,” said Maxi, shrugging, and looked around as if realizing for the first time that we were in a bathroom. “Let’s get out of here. Want to?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be heading to Australia? That’s what April said.”
Maxi looked exasperated. “I’m not leaving till tomorrow. April’s a liar.”
“Imagine that,” I said.
“No, really… oh. Oh, I see. You’re kidding.” And she smiled at me. “I forget how people are.”
“Well, generally, they’re bigger than you.”
She sighed, gazed at herself, and dragged deeply on her cigarette. “When I turn forty,” she said, “I swear, I’m giving this all up, and I’m going to build a fortress on an island with a moat and electrified fences, and I’m going to let my hair go gray and eat custard until I have fourteen chins.”
“That was not,” I pointed out, “what you told Mirabella. You told them
