As we spoke more, he told me about a physician-assisted suicide support group he and his sister had joined, for those at the end of their lives and their loved ones. So many in the group were fighting for the right to die with dignity. Healthy eating wasn’t going to save his sister’s life, and neither of them wanted her to suffer any longer than she had to.

  I knew then that I wanted, very deeply, to give a voice to the people of that support group.

  I went back to the Discourse office and pitched the story. I thought I’d be turned down, given my recent slate of articles about hipster trends and celebrity think pieces. But to my surprise, I was greeted with a green light.

  I worked tirelessly on it, attending meetings in church basements, interviewing the members, writing and rewriting, until I felt confident that the piece represented the full complexity—both the mercy and the moral code—of helping to end the lives of suffering people.

  It is the story I am proudest of. I have, more than once, gone home from a day’s work here and read that piece again, reminding myself of what I’m capable of, reminding myself of the satisfaction I take in sharing the truth, no matter how difficult it may be to swallow.

  “Thank you,” I tell Frankie now.

  “I’m just saying that you’re talented. It might be that.”

  “It’s probably not, though.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s probably not. But write this story well, whatever it is, and then next time it will be.”

  THESPILL.COM

  Evelyn Hugo’s Coming Clean

  BY JULIA SANTOS

  MARCH 4, 2017

  * * *

  Word on the street is siren/LIVING LEGEND/world’s most beautiful blonde Evelyn Hugo is auctioning off gowns and agreeing to an interview, which she has not done in multiple decades.

  PLEASE tell me she is finally ready to talk about all those damn husbands. (I can understand four, maybe even five, six if you are really pushing it, but seven? Seven husbands? Not to mention the fact that we all know she was having an affair with Congressman Jack Easton in the early ’80s. Girl. Got. A. Round.)

  If she won’t come clean about the husbands, let’s pray she at least goes on the record about how she got those eyebrows. I mean, SHARE THE WEALTH, EVELYN.

  When you see pictures of E back in the day with her brassy blond hair, those dark, straight-as-an-arrow eyebrows, that deep-tanned skin, and those golden-brown eyes, you have no choice but to stop what you are doing and stare right at her.

  And don’t even get me started on that body.

  No ass, no hips—just huge boobs on a slim frame.

  I have basically been working my entire adult life for a body like that. (Note: Am very far away. Might be the spaghetti bucatini I’ve been eating for lunch every day this week.)

  Here is the only part that has me heated: Evelyn could have chosen anyone for this. (Ahem, me?) But instead she chose some newbie at Vivant? She could have had anyone. (Ahem, me?) Why this Monique Grant chick (and not me)?

  Ugh, fine. I’m just bitter it’s not me.

  I should really get a job at Vivant. They get all the good stuff.

  * * *

  COMMENTS:

  Hihello565 says: Even people at Vivant don’t want to work at Vivant anymore. Corporate overlords producing censored advertiser courting bullshit.

  Ppppppppppps reply to Hihello565: Yeah, OK. Something tells me if the most well-respected, sophisticated magazine in the country offered you a job, you’d take it.

  EChristine999 says: Didn’t Evelyn’s daughter die of cancer recently? I feel like I read something recently about that. So heartbreaking. BTW, that picture of Evelyn at Harry Cameron’s grave? Basically ruined me for months. Beautiful family. So sad that she lost them.

  MrsJeanineGrambs says: I do not care about Evelyn Hugo AT ALL. STOP WRITING ABOUT THESE PEOPLE. Her marriages, affairs, and most of her movies just go to prove one thing: Slut. Three A.M. was a disgrace to women. Focus your attention on people that deserve it.

  SexyLexi89 says: Evelyn Hugo is maybe the most beautiful woman of all time. That shot in Boute-en-Train where she’s coming out of the water naked and the camera cuts to black right before you see her nipples? So good.

  PennyDriverKLM says: All hail Evelyn Hugo for making blond hair and dark eyebrows THE LOOK. Evelyn, I salute you.

  YuppiePigs3 says: Too skinny! Not for me.

  EvelynHugoIsASaint says: This is a woman who has donated MILLIONS OF DOLLARS to charities for battered women’s organizations and LGBTQ+ interests, and now she’s auctioning off gowns for cancer research and all you can talk about is her eyebrow game? Seriously?

  JuliaSantos@TheSpill reply to EvelynHugoIsASaint: This is a fair point, I guess. SORRY. In my defense, she started making millions by being a badass business bitch back in the ’60s. And she would never have had the clout to do that without her talent and beauty, and she never would have been as beautiful without DEM BROWS. But OK, fair point.

  EvelynHugoIsASaint reply to JuliaSantos@TheSpill: Ugh. Sorry for being so bitchy. I skipped lunch. Mea culpa. For what it’s worth, Vivant won’t do half as well with this story as you would have. Evelyn should have chosen you.

  JuliaSantos@TheSpill reply to EvelynHugoIsASaint: Right????? Who is Monique Grant anyway? BORING. I’m coming for her . . .

  2

  * * *

  I’VE SPENT THE PAST FEW days researching everything I can about Evelyn Hugo. I was never a big film buff, let alone interested in any old Hollywood stars. But Evelyn’s life—at least the version on record as of now—is enough for ten soap operas.

  There’s the early marriage that ended in divorce when she was eighteen. Then the studio-setup courtship and tumultuous marriage to Hollywood royalty Don Adler. The rumors that she left him because he beat her. Her comeback in a French New Wave film. The quickie Vegas elopement with singer Mick Riva. Her glamorous marriage to the dapper Rex North, which ended in both of them having affairs. The beautiful love story of her life with Harry Cameron and the birth of their daughter, Connor. Their heartbreaking divorce and her very quick marriage to her old director Max Girard. Her supposed affair with the much younger Congressman Jack Easton, which ended her relationship with Girard. And finally, her marriage to financier Robert Jamison, rumored to have at least been inspired by Evelyn’s desire to spite former costar—and Robert’s sister—Celia St. James. All of her husbands have passed away, leaving Evelyn as the only one with insight into those relationships.

  Suffice it to say, I have my work cut out for me if I want to get her to talk about any of it.

  After staying late at the office this evening, I finally make my way home a little before nine. My apartment is small. I believe the most appropriate term is teeny-tiny sardine box. But it’s amazing how vast a small place can feel when half of your things are gone.

  David moved out five weeks ago, and I still haven’t managed to replace the dishes he took with him or the coffee table his mother gave us last year as a wedding present. Jesus. We didn’t even make it to our first anniversary.

  As I walk in my front door and put my bag on the sofa, it strikes me again just how needlessly petty it was of him to take the coffee table. His new San Francisco studio came fully furnished courtesy of the generous relocation package offered with his promotion. I suspect he put the table in storage, along with the one nightstand he insisted was rightfully his and all of our cookbooks. I don’t miss the cookbooks. I don’t cook. But when things are inscribed to “Monique and David, for all your many years of happiness,” you think of them as half yours.

  I hang up my coat and wonder, not for the first time, which question gets closer to the truth: Did David take the new job and move to San Francisco without me? Or did I refuse to leave New York for him? As I take off my shoes, I resolve once again that the answer is somewhere in the middle. But then I come back to the same thought that always stings afresh: He actually left.

  I order myself pad thai and then get in the shower. I turn the water to nearly scalding hot. I love water so hot it almost burns. I love the smell of shampoo. My happiest place might just be under a showerhead. It is here in the steam, covered in suds, that I do not feel like Monique Grant, woman left behind. Or even Monique Grant, stalled writer. I am just Monique Grant, owner of luxury bath products.

  Well after I’ve pruned, I dry myself off, put on my sweatpants, and pull my hair away from my face, just in time for the deliveryman to make his way to my door.

  I sit with the plastic container, trying to watch TV. I attempt to zone out. I want to make my brain do something, anything, other than think about work or David. But once my food is gone, I realize it’s futile. I might as well work.

  This is all very intimidating—the idea of interviewing Evelyn Hugo, the task of controlling her narrative, of trying to make sure she doesn’t control mine. I’m often inclined to overprepare. But more to the point, I’ve always been a bit like an ostrich, willing to bury my head in the sand to avoid what I don’t want to face.

  So, for the next three days, I do nothing but research Evelyn Hugo. I spend my days pulling up old articles about her marriages and her scandals. I spend my evenings watching her old movies.

  I watch clips of her in Carolina Sunset, Anna Karenina, Jade Diamond, and All for Us. I watch the GIF of her coming out of the water in Boute-en-Train so many times that when I fall asleep, it plays over and over in my dreams.

  And I start to fall in love with her, just the littlest bit, as I watch her films. Between the hours of eleven P.M. and two A.M., while the rest of the world is sleeping, my laptop flickers with the sight of her, and the sound of her voice fills my living room.

  There is no denying that she is a stunningly beautiful woman. People often talk about her straight, thick eyebrows and her blond hair, but I can’t take my eyes off her bone structure. Her jawline is strong, her cheekbones are high, and all of it comes to a point at her ever-so-swollen lips. Her eyes are huge but not so much round as an oversized almond shape. Her tanned skin next to her light hair looks beachy but also elegant. I know it’s not natural—hair that blond with skin that bronze—and yet I can’t shake the feeling that it should be, that humans should be born looking like this.

  I have no doubt that’s part of the reason film historian Charles Redding once said that Evelyn’s face felt “inevitable. So exquisite, so nearly perfect, that when looking at her, you get the sense that her features, in that combination, in that ratio, were bound to happen sooner or later.”

  I pin images of Evelyn in the ’50s wearing tight sweaters and bullet bras, press photos of her and Don Adler on the Sunset Studios lot shortly after they were married, shots of her from the early ’60s with long, straight hair and soft, thick bangs and wearing short-shorts.

  There is a photo of her in a white one-piece, sitting on the shoreline of a pristine beach, with a large, floppy black hat covering most of her face, her white-blond hair and the right side of her face illuminated by the sun.

  One of my personal favorites is a black-and-white shot from the Golden Globes in 1967. She is seated on the aisle, her hair pulled into a loose updo. She is wearing a light-colored lace gown with a deep scoop neckline, her cleavage controlled but on full display and her right leg escaping through the high slit of the skirt.

  There are two men seated next to her, names lost to history, who are staring at her as she looks ahead at the stage. The man next to her is staring at her chest. The one next to him is staring at her thigh. Both of them seem enraptured and hoping to see the tiniest bit farther.

  Maybe I’m overthinking that photo, but I’m starting to notice a pattern: Evelyn always leaves you hoping you’ll get just a little bit more. And she always denies you.

  Even in her much-talked-about sex scene in Three A.M. from 1977, in which she writhes, reverse-cowboy style, on top of Don Adler, you see her full breasts for less than three seconds. It was rumored for years that the incredible box-office numbers for the film were because couples were going to see it multiple times.

  How does she know just how much to give and just how much of herself to withhold?

  And does that all change now that she’s got something to say? Or is she going to play me the same way she played audiences for years?

  Is Evelyn Hugo going to tell me just enough to keep me on the edge of my seat but never enough to truly reveal anything?

  3

  * * *

  I WAKE UP A HALF hour before my alarm. I check my e-mails, including one from Frankie with the subject line “KEEP ME UPDATED,” yelling at me in all caps. I make myself a small breakfast.

  I put on black slacks and a white T-shirt with my favorite herringbone blazer. I gather my long, tight curls into a bun at the top of my head. I forgo my contacts and choose my thickest black-framed glasses.

  As I look in the mirror, I notice that I have lost weight in my face since David left. While I have always had a slim frame, my butt and face seem to be the first to pick up any extra weight. And being with David—during the two years we dated and the eleven months since we married—meant I put on a few. David likes to eat. And while he would get up in the early mornings to run it off, I slept in.

  Looking at myself now, pulled together and slimmer, I feel a rush of confidence. I look good. I feel good.

  Before I make my way out the door, I grab the camel cashmere scarf that my mother gave me for Christmas this past year. And then I put one foot in front of the other, down to the subway, into Manhattan, and uptown.

  Evelyn’s place is just off Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. I’ve done enough Internet stalking to know she’s got this place and a beachfront villa just outside of Málaga, Spain. She’s had this apartment since the late ’60s, when she bought it with Harry Cameron. She inherited the villa when Robert Jamison died almost five years ago. In my next life, please remind me to come back as a movie star with points on the back end.

  Evelyn’s building, at least from the outside—limestone, prewar, beaux arts style—is extraordinary. I am greeted, before even walking in, by an older, handsome doorman with soft eyes and a kind smile.

  “How may I help you?” he says.

  I find myself embarrassed even to say it. “I’m here to see Evelyn Hugo. My name’s Monique Grant.”

  He smiles and opens the door for me. It’s clear he was expecting me. He walks me to the elevator and presses the button for the top floor.

  “Have a nice day, Ms. Grant,” he says, and then disappears as the elevators close.

  I ring the doorbell of Evelyn’s apartment at eleven A.M. on the dot. A woman in jeans and a navy blouse answers. She looks to be about fifty, maybe a few years older. She is Asian-American, with straight jet-black hair pulled into a ponytail. She’s holding a stack of half-opened mail.

  She smiles and extends her hand. “You must be Monique,” she says as I hold out my own. She seems like the sort of person who genuinely delights in meeting other people, and I already like her, despite my strict promise to myself to remain neutral to everything I encounter today.

  “I’m Grace.”

  “Hi, Grace,” I say. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise. Come on in.”

  Grace steps out of the way and beckons to invite me in. I put my bag on the ground and take off my coat.

  “You can put it right in here,” she says, opening a closet just inside the foyer and handing me a wooden hanger.

  This coat closet is the size of the one bathroom in my apartment. It’s no secret that Evelyn has more money than God. But I need to work at not letting that intimidate me. She’s beautiful, and she’s rich, and she’s powerful and sexual and charming. And I’m a normal human being. Somehow I have to convince myself that she and I are on equal footing, or this is never going to work.

  “Great,” I say, smiling. “Thank you.” I put my coat on the hanger, slip it over the rod, and let Grace shut the closet door.

  “Evelyn is upstairs getting ready. Can I get you anything? Water, coffee, tea?”

  “Coffee would be great,” I say.

  Grace brings me into a sitting room. It is bright and airy, with floor-to-ceiling white bookcases and two overstuffed cream-colored chairs.

  “Have a seat,” she says. “How do you like it?”

  “My coffee?” I ask, unsure of myself. “With cream? I mean, milk is fine, too. But cream is great. Or whatever you have.” I get hold of myself. “What I’m trying to say is that I’d like a splash of cream if you have it. Can you tell I’m nervous?”

  Grace smiles. “A little. But you don’t have anything to worry about. Evelyn’s a very kind person. She’s particular and private, which can take some getting used to. But I’ve worked for a lot of people, and you can trust me when I say Evelyn’s better than the rest.”

  “Did she pay you to say that?” I ask. I am trying to make a joke, but it sounds more pointed and accusatory than I intended.

  Luckily, Grace laughs. “She did send my husband and me to London and Paris last year as my Christmas bonus. So in an indirect way, yeah, I suppose she did.”

  Jesus. “Well, that settles it. When you quit, I want your job.”

  Grace laughs. “It’s a deal. And you’ve got coffee with a splash of cream coming right up.”

  I sit down and check my cell phone. I have a text from my mom wishing me luck. I tap to respond, and I am lost in my attempts to properly type the word early without auto-correct changing it to earthquake when I hear footsteps on the stairs. I turn around to see the seventy-nine-year-old Evelyn Hugo walking toward me.

  She is as breathtaking as any of her pictures.

  She has the posture of a ballerina. She’s wearing slim black stretch pants and a long gray-and-navy striped sweater. She’s just as thin as she ever was, and the only way I know she’s had work done on her face is because no one her age can look like that without a doctor.