He crept to a different window. Marian was sitting bareback on the gray horse in her pajamas, holding the reins as Jamie climbed the paddock fence and slid on behind her, bare feet dangling. They turned toward the creek and were gone, the horse’s haunches disappearing among the trees, the dogs trotting after.
Addison had never quite known whether he should believe the twins were his but had not been willing to insult Annabel in such a way. Now he believed. He could see it in their arms and legs, the shape of their feet, and in some less tangible way, too—the way the morning air arranged itself around them. He believed, also, resolutely, that he had nothing to offer them. He would never know what to say to them or how to be fatherly and warm. He could only disappoint and wound.
All was quiet outside. He washed at the basin before he slipped out and strode quickly down the road, back the way Wallace had driven him. Less than three dollars were left in his pocket, but he had more in the bank in New York. Not a fortune but enough for now.
Not long after the sun came up, he boarded a westbound train.
Los Angeles, 2014
One
If it weren’t for the thing with Jones Cohen, I wouldn’t have ended up playing Marian Graves. It’s not like I could have predicted that at the time, though. All I knew was I had that tight feeling in my chest, like I wanted to kick over someone’s sandcastle. As a kid, I’d had that feeling a lot. I’d be on set and want to go berserk and stomp the plastic stable with the plastic pony into plastic bits, but I never acted on it until I got older, not until I was Katie McGee and weaving down the 405 in the backseat of someone’s Range Rover at 110 miles per hour, not doing anything more than laughing and shrieking but still feeling like I was pulverizing something.
Anyway, I don’t know why I went home with Jones. At the time I would have said it was because I wanted to, but I didn’t, not really. I was bored and restless and pissed off, but none of that was new, none of that made me take Jones’s hand and walk out into the light. I was tired of the light, but of course all I did was bring more on myself.
I don’t remember everything. I remember sitting with Jones at the club, on a weird love seat cordoned off in its own little VIP alcove, a funereal, Victorian-looking thing with a tall black back that curved over us like a beetle’s wing. I remember the tattoo of Johnny Cash on his forearm and his leather cuffs and turquoise rings. Sources said we were cozy and flirty, that I was being seductive, that I was all over the notorious ladies’ man, but I don’t remember if I suggested we leave or if he did. I don’t remember exactly what I said to him, but I know I would have teased him, pressing for details about the famous women he’d slept with. I would have been earnest, then tough, then soft and vulnerable. I have a vague recollection of him telling me that his next album would be stripped-down as fuck, just him and his guitar. And I’d told him that sounded amazing and absolutely what you should be doing, which I sort of stand by because even though Jones’s persona is douchey, he is a legitimately great guitarist. The floor was slick, and I remember slipping on our way out, one precarious shoe glissing sideways under me as we passed the shadowy coat-check guy tending his hoard of unnecessary L.A. coats in his red-lit cave. That might have been when I took Jones’s hand. The hostess told us to enjoy our evening—pretty girl, hungry, giving me the usurper’s eye—and the door opened, and the night exploded.
Even drunk, with everything looming and pivoting around me, I knew they would be waiting, my rookery in their black leather and their stupid Kangol hats, shit-talking and smoking while they waited, vigilant, their motorcycles and Vespas stacked around the block. The door opened, and their cameras went up like long black snouts. Shutters chattered; the flashes crowded in. They pressed closer until I almost choked on the light. Jones’s guys elbowed them back, making a tunnel for us to the car. Hadley! Jones! Hadley! Are you together? Hadley, where’s Oliver? Did you split up? In the pictures, my dress is too short. I am bleary, half smiling, sly, clinging to Jones’s hand. At least I kept my legs together getting in the car.
They followed us to Jones’s house in a celebratory swarm, flying along, popping white light against my window even though it was tinted the glossy, opaque black of Japanese enamel. In the car I remember Jones working my earring free with his tongue, pushing the hook through my lobe until the flimsy tangle of diamonds was hanging from his smile—a party trick, like tying a cherry stem into a knot. I remember his cavernous house with the usual huge abstract canvases and everything else white as heaven in a joke about heaven. I remember a tattoo high on his inner thigh that said, in tiny, earnest capitals, LOVE ME.