Summary
Monique absentmindedly reveals to Evelyn that she is comparing the collapse of Evelyn's marriage to Don with her own divorce. Evelyn is sympathetic, but also pragmatic. After she leaves Evelyn's apartment, Monique gets a call from her editor, who presses her for more information about the interview with Evelyn. Monique explains that Evelyn doesn't want to give an interview to Vivant magazine, but that she does want Monique to write a biography. Monique says that she is trying to persuade Evelyn to give a cover story and photoshoot instead; if she succeeds, she wants to be promoted to editor-at-large. Monique's editor counters with an offer of promoting Monique to writer-at-large if she can secure the cover story. Monique agrees to try.
The next morning, Monique confronts Evelyn about a deadline for when the book might be released. Monique worries that it could be years before the book comes out, and that if she doesn't produce content for Vivant in the meantime, she will likely lose her job. Evelyn and Monique negotiate until Evelyn agrees to offer a cover story to Vivant, including a photo shoot. In exchange, Monique will continue to work on the biography, and not ask any questions about the timeline. While Monique is happy with the outcome of this conversation, she is more confused than ever as to why Evelyn is insistent on retaining her, rather than finding a new biographer.
Evelyn resumes her narrative: by 1960, her career was collapsing, and no one in Hollywood was interested in her. At the 1960 Academy Awards, Evelyn stayed home alone and watched while Celia won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Little Women. Afterwards, Celia rushed to Evelyn's house to celebrate; they were not living together because they could not take any risks that anyone would find out about their relationship. Afterwards, Celia's career continued to thrive, and Evelyn hatched a bold plan: she decided to go to Paris to meet with some French filmmakers, and see if any of them would consider casting her.
When Evelyn met with the French New Wave director Max Girard, he was immediately struck by her beauty, and offered to cast her in the film he was already working on, Boute-en-Train. He requested that Evelyn film a topless scene, and she agreed, knowing this would create controversy and interest. However, Evelyn suggested a modification to the scene to make it even more enticing: the scene cut away just before her breasts were revealed. Sure enough, Evelyn was immediately thrust back into fame. By autumn 1961, Evelyn was working on a film adaptation of Anna Karenina, produced by Harry Cameron, who had ended his relationship with Sunset Studios. That fall, Evelyn attended a concert with Celia and Harry. Caught up in the happy moment, she held Celia's hand, and someone saw them. The narrative features a gossip article speculating about a potential romantic and sexual relationship between Celia and Evelyn.
Evelyn became very concerned about these rumors, and strictly limited how much she was seen with Celia. Evelyn also proposed going on a date with a man to deflect some of the rumors. She suggested the popular singer Mick Riva, because he had already spoken publicly about being very attracted to Evelyn. However, Celia did not like that plan; she even wondered if the world might be open to the truth about their relationship. Evelyn was adamant that they had to protect themselves at all costs. Celia reluctantly agreed to Evelyn's plan to stage a fake relationship with Mick Riva, but in return, she wanted the two of them to live together afterwards.
Rather than explicitly telling Mick about her plan, Evelyn decided to seduce and trick him. In December 1961, on a date with Mick, she proposed that they go to Las Vegas together. After Mick flew them there on his private plane, he and Evelyn spent the night drinking and gambling, as Mick became more and more eager to have sex with her. When Evelyn kept declining, Mick finally suggested that they get married that very night. Mick and Evelyn got married, just as she had hoped, and then went back to the hotel, and had sex. Evelyn did not enjoy having sex with Mick, and felt guilty about betraying Celia. She carefully managed the encounter so that Mick would end up regretting their marriage, and sure enough, the next morning, Mick suggested an annulment.
The news and rumors about Evelyn's very short-lived marriage completely distracted from any rumors about Celia, and for the next two months, she and Celia lived very happily. However, after a few months, Evelyn found out that she was pregnant, and told Celia. Celia was furious because she had not realized, nor agreed to, Evelyn and Mick having sex. Celia and Evelyn had a terrible fight, and broke up. After that, they did not speak for 5 years. With help from Harry, Evelyn had an abortion. Afterwards, she and Harry became closer than ever, especially because Evelyn now had no one else.
Evelyn breaks off her narrative, and Monique expresses her surprise that Evelyn did not ever try to win Celia back. Evelyn says that she regrets the time she and Celia spent apart, but also felt that she had no choice. She alludes to how, when difficulties arose during the filming of Anna Karenina, she chose to marry her co-star Rex North to increase interest in the film. Evelyn made this choice because both her and Harry's careers depended on the success of this film. Meanwhile, Monique receives a text from her estranged husband David, asking her to reconsider their impending divorce.
Analysis
The novel's narrative and point of view periodically switches back and forth between Evelyn and Monique, heightening the parallels between the two women. While Monique is a very different person, she encounters struggles akin to what Evelyn has experienced; in fact, some of these struggles arise directly out of her relationship with Evelyn. Evelyn's insistence on Monique writing, and profiting from, an exclusive biography, introduces ethical conflict for Monique, who feels guilty about acting in her own ruthless self-interest. Evelyn, however, informally mentors Monique through the narrative she recounts, encouraging Monique to learn to stand up for herself and pursue her ambitions at all costs. Monique is able to use Evelyn's strategies to hold her own against Evelyn herself, and engineer an arrangement that serves her needs. By making Monique her biographer, Evelyn sets the younger woman up for financial security, but she also transmits lessons that will serve Monique in all areas of her life. Because she identifies with Monique as a fellow woman of color, who has not always been taken seriously in her career, Evelyn wants to both directly create opportunities for Monique, and also teach her how to be more assertive and strategic.
Ironically, just as Evelyn is conveying to Monique the importance of pursuing her ambitions at all costs, she comes to the part of her narrative wherein it is revealed how much that ambition has sometimes cost her. Evelyn is shrewd and good at predicting what audiences would respond to; her plan to reinvigorate her career by appearing in a controversial film, and appearing almost nude, is a bold and decisive plan that pays off. Moreover, Evelyn can determine how best to titillate her audience even better than a talented director can. Max Girard plans a scene from his perspective as a heterosexual man, who can imagine how a male audience will want to see Evelyn: fully exposed and available to their gaze. However, as a bisexual woman, Evelyn now has insight into both masculine and feminine forms of desire: she has always known how to titillate men, but because of her relationship with Celia, she can understand how the desiring gaze of a woman might respond to another woman. Evelyn's more subtle take on the scene is tantalizing because it is withholding, and thus it reflects how her entire persona will rest on revealing just enough, while denying her viewers the culmination they crave.
This portion of Evelyn's narrative reflects important changes in film history. By the 1960s, the studio system had become less important, and more and more stars were working on an independent, freelance basis. Both Evelyn and Harry move away from the studio system, which allows them greater independence and creative control. Evelyn's interest in making a movie with a French director is driven by the rise of the French New Wave style of film. Emerging in the late 1950s and remaining prominent through the 1960s, the New Wave style was characterized by an increasingly documentary style, narrative ambiguity, and formal experimentation including fragmentation and a lack of continuity. Representative directors included Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Jacques Rivette; Jenkins Reid includes a specific historical detail when she references Evelyn going to see Breathless, a 1960 film directed by Godard, and becoming intrigued by the French New Wave style. Many historical novels include a mixture of historical and fictional events; most of the films referenced in the novel are fictional, but this detail connects Evelyn's fictional career to actual occurrences in film history. The fictional scene in which the camera cuts away just before Evelyn's breasts become visible is stylistically aligned with techniques that were popularized in other New Wave films. Additionally, by the 1960s, European films were notably often more explicit in their treatment of sexual themes and images, and this often made them popular with American audiences.
While her schemes serve her well in rescuing her career, Evelyn's need for complete control of her persona and reputation damages her relationship with Celia. Especially because her career is rebounding, Evelyn refuses to tolerate any risk that she and Celia could be outed; the two women have significantly different attitudes towards the amount of risk they are willing to tolerate. Because Celia is white, and from a wealthy family, she has both additional privilege and additional security, which likely explains why she is willing to tolerate more risk than Evelyn; even if she truly lost her Hollywood career, she would have resources to fall back on. Evelyn refuses to contemplate any possibility of returning to the poverty in which she grew up, and she is willing to stage a sham marriage in order to mitigate this risk.
Evelyn's scheme to lure Mick Riva into marrying her reveals her skill at manipulating people (especially men), and how she treats her personal life as an extension of an acting career, in which she chooses and performs certain roles. Evelyn can read all of Mick's desires, and also knows what will repulse him; she skillfully manipulates his egocentric desire to live out a fantasy, and his shallow response to the threat that she might fall short of his ideal. Whereas Evelyn's relationship with Celia is characterized by her ability to be herself, Mick only wants to see his fantasy of a bombshell come to life. Evelyn executes her plan almost seamlessly, but she fails to account for the vulnerabilities created by biology and by love. She can control and manipulate many things, but she is vulnerable to an unplanned pregnancy, and to how Celia responds to learning the full scope of what happened between Evelyn and Mick.
Throughout the novel, Evelyn occasionally uses second-person narration (addressing the reader directly, often using "you"), and this narrative technique features prominently in her description of the night she spends with Mick Riva. Evelyn draws the reader into the step-by-step account of her plan, and also encourages the reader to draw parallels between what Evelyn does, and other examples of performance and charade that occur in everyday life. The narrative technique encourages readers to see Evelyn's scheme as an exaggerated example of how women often perform and play along with masculine expectations and gendered stereotypes. As a trained actress, Evelyn treats the encounter with Mick like a script, in which she knows what lines she should speak, and what cues she should respond to. She is able to seamlessly curate this performance because she has seen the same gendered dynamics play out time after time, on screen and in her own life. In describing how cultural assumptions of heterosexuality have impacted women, Adrienne Rich writes that "The lie [of compulsory heterosexuality] keeps numberless women psychologically trapped, trying to fit mind, spirit, and sexuality into a prescribed script because they cannot look beyond the parameters of the acceptable" (657). By exploring queer desire and embracing her queer identity, Evelyn has moved outside of the parameters of the acceptable, and she can now observe and manipulate gendered conventions to serve her own ends; she operates outside of that system rather than being trapped within it. While Evelyn blatantly deceives Mick, she will notably be transparent with her subsequent husbands (including Rex, Harry, and Robert) about her motivation for marrying them, and will give them full agency and choice about marrying her.
