Page 4 of The Actor and His Secret

‘Six months and a stroke of luck.’ The sofa shifts as Selina sits beside me. She plucks the glass bottle from the floor and holds it, studying the peeling label with a grimace. ‘No more of this. Time to get in the shower and put on the mask of Nikos Ridge, America’s beloved Greek god. The box office is welcoming you back.’

It’s easier to focus on her than the reeling emotions storming within me. I can’t believe it, won’t believe it.

But it’s there, in black ink on white paper. ‘How?’

‘Talent, but that would only be half a lie.’ Her wink tells me she’s joking, but I catch the faint whiff of truth beneath her tones. ‘Turns out the actor they hired dropped out due to a conflicting schedule. Enough time has been wasted, and pre-production is almost up. Filming starts by the beginning of next week. No other actor was willing to take it on, not with the wildly compressed schedule they’d be facing coming in at this point. Casting didn’t want to spend time auditioning for another so…’

‘So, they picked me.’

Weak. Pathetic. You’re worthless.

I pinch my eyes closed, pressing the heels of my hands into them. I don’t say it aloud, but I whisper to the dark, telling my father’s voice to shut up.

He doesn’t, of course. He never does.

There would’ve been a time for celebrating such news but gone were those days. The world once felt like such a small place, but that was the perspective I had looking down from great heights. Now it’s large, endless, and ready to devour me. I’m sitting in the middle of it, in an apartment I can’t afford, pockets dry and opportunities always out of reach.

Until now.

Selina starts to cry. I hear it in the sniffling, in the way she wrings her fingers around the bottle of spirits as though she wants to strangle the life right out of it.

‘This is your last chance, Nikos.’

I know it before Selina says it.

‘I know,’ I reply.

She grips my knee and squeezes. ‘You can’t fuck this up. Not for you, not for me.’

I haven’t worked in three years. Once I withdrew into myself, once what was going on grew too much to bear and I just started to hide, the opportunities dried up. Who would want a movie-star who’d rather be locked inside his apartment than promoting the film? Who has panic attacks so bad he has to lock himself away until they pass? Hollywood hasn’t called, the press has left me alone. For the most of it, I’ve stayed in this apartment, festering like mould, sinking my future with every shot of vodka I drink.

This is your last chance.

I inhale deeply, feeling no different than fragile glass in careless hands. Selina picks the script up, and this time, places it carefully in my numb, shaking hands.

An Age of Dragons - I remember it now. The script was for some new book-to-movie adaption with a moderate budget. I trace my finger over my name, seeing it in black and white, dried ink, and still it doesn’t feel real.

‘I don’t… I don’t deserve this.’

It’s not me who speaks, not entirely. It was the little broken boy who had once been buried beneath the success, the fame. The little broken boy who clawed his way out of the cage I made. The little broken boy who ruined everything for me by trying to escape.

‘Yes, you do,’ Selina says, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder. ‘There is no one more deserving I could see this happen to.’

The pause which follows draws out for a millennium. I dare to shatter it.

‘Is that Selina talking, or the fifteen percent fee you get if I accept?’

Her grip falters. ‘It’s me, your friend before the manager. Now, your plane leaves from JFK tomorrow morning. You’ll be out of state for eight months on set. A month for rehearsals, followed by seven months of filming - ’

‘I can’t…’

‘Eight months. That’s all I am asking of you.’

I shake my head, burying it in my hands. ‘I can’t do it, Selina.’

‘I wish it was a choice you had. But if you don’t get the work, you don’t have the money to pay for this apartment. Your lifestyle. Fuck, Nikos, if nothing else matters then perhaps knowing you’ll have no more money for the drink and the drugs will. Eight months, that’s it. Then you don’t ever have to do it again. You’ll be free.’

Helpless tears fill my eyes as the secrets fill my head. I wish I could tell her, but even she doesn’t know. I look up at her, hating the pity in her brown stare. ‘I’ll never be free, Selina.’

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