The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements

Chapter Twenty-Two

Win was sleeping in the loft bed Shift and Charlie had built last summer. There was a triangular window across from her mattress, and lying awake, she watched the tame drifts of snowfall against the dirty sky. They would need to lay something down on the walkway from the road to the greenhouse, on Saturday. Shift was wearing white satin pumps for the wedding, and Win doubted they would fare well on wet, icy ground.

She dreamed about Leo. They were swimming in the pool in Saint-Tropez, circling each other in the blue-green glow, except this time something else was in the water with them, a slow and hulking shadow that followed them. Without discussion they tried to split up to confuse it and then to band together to scare it, but neither seemed to work, and it only drew closer.

When she came out for breakfast the next morning, she told Shift, who snorted.

“Subtle.”

“What do you think it means?” Charlie asked earnestly. Shift snorted again, and palmed her hand through his bed hair. She was still watching Win. Win nodded at her.

“It’ll be fine,” Win said.

For a while yesterday she had thought she might cry again, half-dazed from a sleepless night, but her brain had already moved on from shock into planning mode. Marie had replied to her message with a flurry of activity, floor plans, escape routes, areas of the venue where Win would be able to avoid any kind of photography. Win wasn’t sure how she’d gotten hold of a blueprint of the Rosemont Greenhouse, but she was grateful. Security would keep outsiders away from the approach to the venue, only partly for selfish reasons. Win doubted a baying mob would be exactly the background Shift wanted when she made her entrance.

But the security team wouldn’t be able to monitor Charlie’s Vogue photographer, and there was even less defense against wedding guests or staff who wanted to sell a few grainy photos to the media. She would need to keep her guard up all night so as not to be caught even once in the same frame as Leo. Marie raised the possibility of just whisking Win out straight after the ceremony, but Win was resolute. She would stick it out until the end of the night.

Despite Win’s attempt to broach the subject with Charlie, no one really knew what Leo’s plans were. All Charlie could show her was a determined missive from Gum: He’s coming. She agonized for a while before forcing herself to ask Pritha if she was in touch with Leo.

“No,” Pritha said, very stiffly. “I am on your side.”

Win wished that other people could keep as silent as Leo. Shift shunned TV and had only slow and spotty Wi-Fi, making it easier to ignore the deluge of commentary, but Marie’s daily briefings kept her in the loop. Speculation had moved on to Win’s other past relationships, with magazines and pundits now leading all-out investigations in order to determine exactly how much Win had been lying about.

Marie was unsurprised and disdainful. “Like children discovering Santa Claus isn’t real. All we ever promised them was a good show.”

“They’re going to get a good show in a few days,” Win said.

“We’ll just have to deal with that,” Marie said. She looked too polished and out of place among the piles of papers and corsages in Shift’s kitchen. She was flying back and forth between LA and Montreal with apparently no exhaustion, joining Patrick in meetings with studio execs and potential directors to talk about Win’s newly toxic brand, then meeting up with Win for long, intense strategy meetings every couple of days.

The second time Marie had flown back, Win had told her that it was fine if she needed to stay in LA. She’d tried to make it clear that she knew Marie was one of the more successful publicists in the business, that she’d have hordes of people at her door, and that if she didn’t ditch Win completely, she should at least make some time in her schedule for other clients. She worried that Marie thought she’d missed her chance to leave; the best time would have been with Emil, in one fell swoop, and now she was stranded on Win’s sinking ship without any backup.

“You know,” Marie had said, steely-eyed, “if I’d done for any other actress what I’ve done for you, there’d be almost nothing anyone could do to knock her down. Even the Lila Gardner mess could have turned into a fun love triangle.”

Win had stayed quiet. She wasn’t sure if this was a rebuke.

“And now you’re on the edge of—well…” Marie had said. “You can call it professional pride on my part if you want, but I think it’s obscene. Fifty years from now people are going to realize you were the best actor of your generation, and I’m not going to let anyone drive you out.”

Win had stared at her.

Marie had looked a little flustered. “Anyway, I want a mention in your first Oscars speech.”

“Oh, okay,” Win had said, and laughed, voice catching.

“Let’s see,” Marie continued now. “Adam is being his stubborn self and refusing to speak to anyone. A couple of models we hired to go to public events with you are enjoying the attention, but they aren’t great at interviews, and people aren’t especially interested in them.”

Win nodded, trying and failing to recall the names and faces of handsome dates from long ago. If she were a man, Win thought with a particular surge of bitterness, the fact that she’d arranged arm candy for an awards show would barely raise an eyebrow, let alone warrant an interview. Marie had already forwarded her a couple of think pieces on smaller websites arguing as much, but given that it looked like Win had destroyed a marriage in the process of bolstering her image, sympathy for her was thin and sparsely found.

“And then there’s Nathan,” Marie said.

“God.” Win tipped her cheek into her hand. “Okay, hit me. What’s he done now?”

“Mostly just the usual thinly veiled references on his show.” Marie turned the phone toward Win to play her a clip of Nathan in the opening monologue of his panel show, vibrating with poorly concealed glee. “This week’s theme,” he said, tinny through the speakers, “is karma,” and beamed at the wave of audience laughter and applause.

“Original,” Win said.

Marie made a dismissive gesture. “Well, you know what he’s like. The only problem is someone from the Daily Mail actually called him and managed to get a quote. He said, It makes a lot of sense. She prefers the kind of fantasy she can control.”

Win nodded, taking it in. Nathan capitalizing on this opportunity was not that surprising. He was fame hungry in a way that she’d recognized too late, and a few semi-friendly calls over the last few months weren’t enough to keep his loyalty. Nathan’s first and foremost priority, always, was himself.

It was weird to think that she’d liked Nathan so much once, that they’d slept together, held hands, that he’d taken her on a picnic up high in the Peak District and pulled out containers of deli food and premixed Buck’s Fizz. She remembered when his quick, laughing voice had given her butterflies. Now he just annoyed her. She wondered what game he thought he was playing, what victory he was trying to seize out of the ashes of her career.

“That guy,” Shift said, wandering into the kitchen in time to hear this last, “is really cruising for a bruising.”

Win laughed. “Yeah.” She held out her hand for Marie’s phone. “Do you have his number?”

“I—yes?”

“I’m going to call him.”

“He could record it,” Marie warned. “He’s quick on his feet like that.”

“I don’t think he’d do that,” Win said. “He doesn’t want to look like he’s planned anything. He likes feeling reckless.”

“He could still spin whatever you say against you.”

“Yeah,” Win said. That had been in her head all year, since they broke up; it was in her head every time she broke up with someone, a rush of fear over how much they knew about her, how much they could tell the press. In the last few weeks of their relationship, Nathan had complained, You never let me in. When they broke up and Nathan was a jerk, Win had thought: Well, can you blame me?

She wasn’t going to waste time feeling sorry for Nathan, but maybe it had been wrong of her to expect something real when she was censoring every other thing she said. It certainly hadn’t helped their relationship, and perhaps sitting quiet and hoping Nathan wouldn’t spill anything too bad wasn’t going to help, either.

“It’s not that late in England,” Win said.

Nathan picked up sounding tense, that East London accent sharper than usual. “All right, Marie. You’re not my boss, you don’t actually get to tell me off—”

“It’s me.”

Nathan was quiet. He cleared his throat. “Been a while.”

“Yeah,” Win said.

They’d spoken a few times when she was at her mum’s house, after he first called. She had kept speaking with him until he’d seemed like he was warming up, and not at risk of bitching about her on his show again. But Leo had been there all the time, inescapable, driving her mad, infuriating her, obsessing her—so she’d stopped returning Nathan’s calls. It occurred to her now, belatedly, that over the course of the last few months, even since August, she’d been cruel to Nathan. Not in the way he’d been cruel to her, malicious and pointed—but still.

“I got caught up in some stuff. I know you saw.”

“Yes,” Nathan said, and then quickly, almost like he was daring himself to say it, “So none of that stuff with that guy was real?”

Win pressed her lips together. “I didn’t call to talk about him.”

“You called to tell me off,” Nathan said. “So while you’re at it, I think I’m owed an explanation. You ran straight from dumping me to larking around Saint-Tropez with him, after all—”

“It was a mutual breakup, Nathan,” Win said, trying to stay calm. “And I didn’t go to Saint-Tropez until you started running your mouth to the press.”

Too late, she realized that had been the wrong thing to say. Marie and Shift both winced, and on the other end of the line there was a staggered silence before Nathan said, “Are you serious? That’s why you went off with him? To show that you weren’t bothered?”

“Nathan.”

“That is messed up, babe. That is some fucked up shit. God, everything they’re saying in the papers is absolutely right—”

“So I guess I got what I deserved,” Win snapped, losing her temper. “They’ve found out, and it doesn’t matter how complicated everything was or how much I had to control things. They’ve found out and you can gloat as much as you like, but I wish you’d do me a fucking favor and do it somewhere I don’t have to hear about it all the time. Why don’t you go down to the pub and moan to all your mates about it? Or tell your latest date how hard it was to be with me? Honestly, I couldn’t care less, but just give me and Marie a break, I can’t tell you how bored I am of hearing your name.”

“You mean stop bad-mouthing you to the press,” Nathan said. “Phrase it nice as you like, but that’s what you mean—”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Win said. “We dated for nine months. We met each other’s families. It didn’t work out and that sucks, but I didn’t ruin your life. Have some fucking respect.”

She hung up, breathing hard. Her fingers twitched; she wanted to call him back, apologize, be as charming and calm as she could and sort it out so that he wouldn’t talk about her anymore. Then she set her jaw and looked up.

With feeling, Shift said, “That was brilliant.”

“That might have…” Win licked her lips. “That might have been dumb.”

She dared to look at Marie, and startled again. Marie’s face was gently, serenely smug. “He had it coming. Unless he starts out-and-out lying, there’s not much new he can say that people haven’t already heard. And if he does, we’ll either sue him or start lying right back.”

Win started to smile, uncertain.

“Benefit of rock bottom,” Marie said. “The only way out is up.”

Marie flew back to LA the next day. Win wasn’t that surprised when she got an email only seven hours after Marie had left for the airport, a roundup of the latest gossip, including a note that the director of The Sun Also Rises had at last made a statement. Better not read it, Whitman, Marie had written, but Win opened it anyway. She sat looking at the short paragraph and felt sick.

Authenticity is important to me, as it is to most of the talented people working in film, he’d said. When we’re telling stories, we have to be careful that the heart of them is true. I have to know that the actors are there because they believe in the story and want to share it, not because it’s part of a personal narrative or quest for fame.

Win swallowed down bile, and went back to Marie’s email. The last link was to an essay in the New Yorker. Marie had captioned it ?? quite interesting. The headline was Whitman Tagore’s Crumbling Castle.

Here’s what we wanted Whitman Tagore to be: beautiful, smart, funny, sexy, cool, a spokesperson for all British Indian people ever, not too Indian, romantic, passionate, talented, humble, kind, it started. For the four shining years that she was the queen of Hollywood, she managed it effortlessly, most obviously in that glorious standard of real-life love stories. Last week, it all came tumbling down. But god, it was beautiful to watch her try.

It was a kind article, thoughtful and smart. It felt like a beam of light falling on her, and just as alarming. After a moment, Win clicked back to the director’s statement, and then she closed her laptop.

In the lounge room Shift was bent over a synthesizer, headphones slung over her neck, frowning to herself. Charlie was sprawled in his armchair staring at the wedding seating plan. Win threw herself on the couch and touched the back of Shift’s knee.

“Whitman,” Charlie said, “do you think it’s better to put my friends from school on one table and friends from work on another, or do a singles table and a couples table?”

“First one,” Win said. “Singles tables are condescending.”

Charlie stared at the chart and made a low, mournful noise. “I think you’re right. It just has to be perfect, you know? Imagine if there was a fight and Vogue wrote about it.”

“That would be bad,” Win agreed, and asked where he was going to seat Shift’s cousins, a family of four boys who were all enormous, played ice hockey, and had a tendency to pick Charlie and his other willowy friends up and lift them above their heads. Charlie launched into a detailed description of how they would be close enough to the bar to keep them happy but blocked from the models by Shift’s roadie friends. Win lay back on the couch and listened.

At one point Charlie got up to make drinks, and Win looked down at Shift, still playing with her hardware.

“I’m really glad I’m here,” Win said.

“I was just going to say that.” Shift wrapped her fingers around Win’s ankle, giving it a comforting little tug, like she was tethering Win to land.

“By the way,” she added, “probably better if you can trick Charlie into seating our parents at different tables. I’m not sure they’re going to get on.”

“Oh, okay, I’ll break that news gently.”

Shift laughed and unplugged her headphones. The music she was working on shimmered with stuttering rhythms and slow, arctic melodies shifting underneath. It was quiet and calm in the house. Win sank further into the couch and pretended that the intermittent flashes of cameras outside the windows were just lightning, a storm rolling through and past.

*  *  *

Win had a sneaking suspicion that Shift was more excited for the rehearsal dinner than she was the actual wedding. Shift’s favorite Chinese restaurant was out of the way enough to be inconvenient for everyone except Shift’s group of eco-friendly friends and musical weirdos, and the odd location and awkward side street entrance made it perfect for losing paparazzi.

There wasn’t a huge crowd: Shift’s and Charlie’s parents; Charlie’s cluster of male model colleagues who stood in a circle and looked faintly confused, as if wondering when someone would hand them a Bellini and tell them where to stand and pout; Shift’s touring band and a few uni friends; and her sister, the other bridesmaid, who was younger than them and had been giving Win nervous, admiring looks since she arrived a few hours earlier with Shift’s parents. Win exchanged hugs with them and updated them on Pritha’s health. The last time she’d seen Shift’s sister, Danielle was seven years old, obsessed with boa constrictors and sure that Win and Shift were deeply uncool. She was clearly reevaluating.

Charlie had taken to calling Shift’s parents Maw and Paw in the days leading up to their arrival (“Let’s take Maw and Paw to the observatory when they get here!” and “Do you think Maw and Paw would like my three-bean cassoulet?”) but once actually confronted with them, he was quite subdued, and said politely, “Nice to see you again, Mr. and Mrs. Scottsdale.”

“Oh, sweetie, call me June,” Shift’s mum said. Shift’s dad managed a faint smile and a nod.

Gum had flown in that afternoon, and Charlie had gone immediately to greet him at a bar. Win wouldn’t meet him until they got to the restaurant. She’d had a tight knot in her stomach about it all day. She felt strange about the idea of meeting Leo’s brother for the first time like this. At least Charlie had confirmed Gum was alone. Leo was only joining them tomorrow.

Win and Shift were the first people there, getting in the waiters’ way and tripping over tables. Shift was wearing a suit, her hair swept up into a drooping coif, her lipstick bright red, sporting a pair of wingtip loafers with tassels and a bolo tie. She looked like a disreputable cowboy forced into court, and she laughed with real pleasure when Win told her so.

“You just look beautiful,” she told Win.

Win shrugged and looked away. Shift wasn’t the type to particularly care about bridesmaid dresses, which had been a relief to Win’s team if not Win herself. She’d asked her stylist in LA to send her something simple, the kind of dress that indicated a background presence without seeming like she was hiding. They’d slipped her into midnight-blue Balmain, ankle length with glinting silver chains strapped loosely over her shoulders.

Georgia Chilton, the Vogue profiler, had stopped by as well. She was friendly, professional but open, and smart enough not to pay Win much more than the cursory attention a bridesmaid deserved, though her gaze was alert and interested. Shift spent most of the time laughing and dragging Win into the conversation all the same, speaking a little faster, eyes bright with nerves. She was unused to a journalist who didn’t want to ask her about her latest sampling techniques and what she thought about the return of dubstep.

“I don’t know why you need me, really,” Shift said. “The profile’s on Charlie, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’ve already had a couple of in-depth interviews with Charlie,” Georgia said. “I need to know something about you.”

“As if Charlie hasn’t already recited a few melodramatic odes,” Shift said. Win stayed behind Shift with a reassuring hand on her arm. She didn’t want to appear overbearing, and she didn’t trust how Georgia would portray her, no matter how nice she was in person.

At least the photographer wasn’t arriving until tomorrow, the wedding day. It meant there was no one to catch the way Win’s head jerked up when she heard Charlie’s cheerful laugh and Gum’s low, throaty chuckle, a sound she already knew, crackled and secondhand from Leo’s phone speaker.

They came in together, brushing snow off the shoulders of their heavy coats and stamping their feet. For a moment, Win felt almost winded with relief. Gum, as she had suspected from photos, didn’t look much like Leo at all. Now that she’d met Gabrysia, Win could see for herself that Leo took after his mother. They had the same bone structure, the same dark eyes fringed with lashes long enough to make them look slightly secretive. Gabrysia had masculine features; they sat better on Leo, though his looks weren’t quite as striking as his mother’s.

But Gum clearly took after their father. His forehead was broader than Leo’s, and he was shorter, carrying himself with an authoritative swagger, a build like a boxer’s with a pouched, American face. He’d struggled with alcohol for a few years, and the remnants of the fight had lingered on his brow, making him look older than he was.

Charlie had a faint flush in his cheeks, like he’d been drinking, and he seemed younger than usual standing next to Gum; it was hard to remember they’d been school friends. He looked around until he spotted Shift and Win and then made a beeline for his fiancée with Gum trailing behind him like an indulgent uncle. They cut an odd pair together, Gum’s slicked hair and heavy face against Charlie’s angelic golden curls and pink mouth.

“Shift,” Charlie said, and kissed her. Georgia Chilton, hovering behind them, made a note. “There you are!”

“Here I am,” she said, and touched his hair with a swift, affectionate curl of her fingers. “Hi, Geoff, nice to see you again.”

Gum gave Shift a fussy little handshake, half raising her hand to his mouth like he wanted to kiss it before he thought better, and said, “Feeling’s mutual.”

“And I don’t think you’ve met my maid of honor, have you?” Shift said, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “Whitman Tagore, Geoffrey Milanowski.”

“Hi,” Win said. Gum seized her hand in a hearty shake.

“Hullo, hullo, at last,” Gum said, squinting at her. Win remembered Leo saying that Gum was farsighted, but refused to wear his glasses, and he didn’t trust contacts. “Feel like I have met you, all your movies and the fuss with my little brother—”

“It’s been a long time coming,” Win said politely. Gum pumped her hand a moment longer.

“Excellent movies,” Gum said, and turned to Charlie. “Don’t you think?”

“Oh, spectacular!” Charlie said, beaming. Shift was leaning in the curve of his arm, and Charlie looked as though there was nothing bad in the world.

“Thank you,” Win said. She felt dull and small, not sure what she wanted to say. Gum’s mention of Leo had thrown her, though it would have been odd if he hadn’t. She wasn’t used to thinking of Leo as a little brother.

“I liked the ladies’ heist one best,” Gum said, and started clicking his fingers. “What was it, what—”

“Beg, Borrow, or Bleed,” Win said. It had been one of her early films; she’d been a relative unknown in an ensemble cast, playing an awkward computer scientist, pretty beneath the square-framed glasses. Directly afterward she’d left on her Win Gone Wild tour with Leo to prove she could be nasty, and a lead.

“That’s the one,” Gum said, and gave his churring laugh again. “Good film. Well, Shift, you all ready to throw yourself away on my boy?”

“I’ve just about resigned myself,” Shift said. Win leaned back, effectively if not actually leaving the conversation.

She felt as though she’d walked through a ring of fire. She was almost proud of herself for the way she’d managed it until Gum, frowning, disagreed with something Charlie said and pushed two knuckles against his eyebrow as he thought. It was so exactly Leo’s gesture that it knocked the breath out of her. She had to turn away and pretend she’d heard someone calling her name, touching Shift’s arm to excuse herself and hoping that her hands weren’t obviously trembling.

She walked as quickly and authoritatively as she could until she got to the bathroom, where she stood with her hands resting over the sink, head bowed. She took several shuddering breaths. Then she walked out smiling.