"Taylor, do you know how many women your age are no longer acting? Here you are at 42, and you keep getting offered role after role! I'd give my right arm just to have more shot, and you're sitting here telling me you're thinking of passing on one this big? Give me a break already!"
"I am grateful to still be getting steady work. It's just that it's not much fun anymore."
"That's why they call it work!" her old friend told her. "The kind of movies you make don't pay like action films with Stallone or Van Damme, but you make ten for every one they do so it all equals out, right?"
"It isn't the money, either, Jane," Taylor told her.
"Then please tell me what it is! What's going on inside that pretty little head of yours?"
Taylor Farris was indeed 42 years old, and she was not only still making romance movies, she was making three or four a year. She was one of those people who had the ability to seem believable in every role she played. No matter who she played or where her characters lived or what they did, they always fell in love and married the handsome, wonderful guy. He could be a single dad who walked dogs or a handsome attorney or her long lost beau from high school. In the end, her characters always found themselves living happily ever after.
But for Taylor herself, when the final scene was shot, she always went home alone. Every time. Yes, she went home to an amazing, incredible penthouse in New York's upper east side, but she always went there by herself.
And for as long as she could remember that had been just fine. She'd been too busy making movies and money to care about things like love, romance, or children. But for the last year or so, and especially the last six months, she'd found it harder and harder to think of anything else.
Her career had proven to be both a blessing and a curse in that the money and lifestyle that gave her so much freedom also severely limited her choices when it came to a husband. What man, other than a fellow actor who understood the business, would put up with living with a wealthy actress who was on location several months a year? How would she be able to have and raise children? Yes, she could hire a nanny, but why have them if someone else was going to be there day in and day out?
Based on what both men and women of all ages told her, she was clearly still a very beautiful woman and that, too, was a dual-edged sword. Her beauty was what allowed her to play the leading lady in one romance movie after the other, and yet it was the thing she needed to at least initially attract the attention of the kind of man she'd like to marry, and she knew her looks wouldn't last forever. Her future husband didn't have to be model handsome. In fact, that was a bit of a turnoff for her as the preferred the kind of man people called 'ruggedly handsome'. But he did need to be someone she found attractive enough to want to hold or kiss and yes, to make love with her. And the longer she waited, the less opportunity she'd have to ever have children, something she now very much wanted.
As difficult as all that was to try and explain to her best friend, Jane Eilman, a former actress who'd do anything to get another role, it would be even more difficult trying to tell her how she was feeling, and why none of this was making her happy anymore.
Jane had a stable, steady, and...sexless marriage. She would also do anything to have her husband pay some attention to her, while Taylor could have pretty much any man she wanted, but only on a 'rental' basis. How could she tell Jane how sick and tire she was of the endless stream of good-looking actors who walked in and out of her life on a regular basis when her friend would love to have just a fraction of that kind of warmth from a man even for a few hours every now and then?
To Jane, it seemed like Taylor had it all. But to Taylor Farris, It was as though her life was spinning out of control during its prime, and that feeling had gone from mildly unsettling several months ago to overwhelming and relentless the last several weeks.
Taylor had been in love before but only once. Right after graduating from college, her high school boyfriend from the small town they grew up in in eastern Oregon looked her up after having spent four years on active duty in the Marine Corps.
He was still boyishly handsome, and during those four years he'd matured so much. He was so grounded and settled and down to earth. She'd fallen hard for him, and looking back, she couldn't help but feel that had she married him, she'd be happier than she was in her fancy penthouse with more money than she could spend in three lifetimes. She'd have far less money, but Taylor honestly believed she'd be much richer.
But because he'd loved her so much, he'd encouraged her to follow her dreams and fly to Hollywood and read for a part in a movie. Once that was out of her system, she could focus on a real career and raising a family—with him. Except that she'd been called back the next day for a second reading, and that very afternoon she'd been given a part in the movie. Not the one she'd read for, but still a very substantial supporting role, and that role helped her land another role, and the rest was, as they say—history.
She thought about trying to explain all that to her friend of many years, a friend who'd married an actor-turned-director, and who also lived in a swanky penthouse on the floor above her. Her friend had money, too, but Taylor knew she was very unhappy. Her life was hollow and empty and nothing but one dinner party after the other followed by some premiere and then another party. She and her husband had no children, and he'd made it quite clear he didn't want them. She was now too deeply invested in him and in 'the business' and would ride it out hoping to feel better tomorrow by taking one more pill or having one more drink today.
Taylor had never really thought of her life as some kind of roller coaster let alone like there was some pressing need to get off, but lately all she wanted to do was walk away. And yet what was there to walk away to? And to where would she walk? How would she meet the proverbial nice-guy-underdog like her characters always did in her movies to walk away with? What guy like that would follow her back to New York and her top-floor penthouse and her parties and all the surrounding phoniness?
The scariest question of all was, "Is it already too late?" Had love and a family already passed her by?
"So are you gonna make this movie or not?" Jane asked bringing Taylor back to reality.
"Um, yeah. I guess so. After all, it's a Christmas special, and of all the ones we do, those are usually the most fun. I have to say I'm not happy about going to Diamond Head for three months, though."
Her friend laughed and said, "Uh, honey?" Diamond Head is in Hawaii. You're going to Diamond Rock. Iowa. You know, 125 miles from Des Moines, the closest thing to a city for many hours—by plane."
"Don't remind me," Taylor said with a shake of her head. She'd done the small-town thing a few times and they were invariably as exciting as watching grass grow or paint dry. She'd hole up in her private bus, focus on her work, and eventually she'd be back home in Manhattan getting ready for the next movie.
"It'll be over before you know it, Taylor. And this will give you time to sort through whatever mid-life crisis you're having and move on. And then you'll be back to yourself in your own home and here in civilization, right?" her friend said cheerfully.
"Right. Back home. In civilization," she repeated without conviction.
What she didn't say was, "All by myself."
An hour later, Taylor's perky and often-opinionated executive assistant, Anne Barber, came in and let her know they had first-class tickets from LaGuardia to Des Moines for the following morning, and that her own private bus would be there waiting for them when they landed.
*****
Diamond Rock, Iowa. City Hall
"So...I guess we're gonna have these Hollywood types crawling all over us pretty soon."
