Look - Zan Romanoff Page 0,39

Bluebeard story that year, and married Avery Riggs before she turned twenty. She never made another film.

“So why do we know her name?” Christine L. Tompkins asks. “Most silent film actresses faded into obscurity as their talkie counterparts rose to prominence. In fact, most films of that era no longer exist, due to careless archivists and the film’s extreme flammability.”

Lulu finds it weirdly comforting to think that even the things people have tried to save have disappeared off the face of the earth. Like an accidental Flash, almost. Eventually, no one will ever be able to watch her kiss Sloane ever again. It might be a long while, but it will happen. Probably. Right?

“The answer to this question comes, as it so often does, in the form of her husband. Avery Riggs made sure that the film was preserved. He bought a then-unheard-of professional projection system so that he could screen it at his first hotel property, The Aster, every year on her birthday. The hotel, by the way, was named for Wilmott’s favorite flower; the storied space ultimately couldn’t hang on to its glamour, and was shuttered due to bankruptcy in the early 1990s.”

So much for avoiding blue light. Lulu flips her phone over again and googles “the Aster hotel Los Angeles Riggs.” The photos she turns up show a structure that’s bigger and much more elaborate than the one she knows, but Lulu recognizes the landscape, and the thing Ryan’s built to mimic it. So that’s what The Hotel used to look like.

“Much has been made of Wilmott’s decision not to act again after Bluebeard,” Christine continues in Lulu’s ears. “She insisted that it was a personal choice, rooted in her desire to be a mother first. But those who knew Riggs suggest that he was a jealous man and that, having seen the way the public loved his lovely wife in her debut, he refused to share her like that ever again.

“Why, though, would he then insist on screening the film repeatedly, creating and maintaining a legacy where he might simply have allowed her to be forgotten?

“Riggs’s work as a developer was the building of monuments, and his tastes ran to structures that would dominate men, and outlast them. Whether or not he was behind his wife’s decision to leave acting, he found a way to monumentalize her. He turned her into something lasting, attached to his name and under his control. Connie would age and fade; she would become a woman and a wife instead of a celluloid fantasy. But he would always own the vision of her body as eternally nubile and functionally mute.

“Riggs’s real estate empire was, in some sense, built on the back of Connie Wilmott’s beauty; the money she earned from that film funded his earliest forays in that world. Interest in Bluebeard has remained feverish in part because of her reluctance to appear in public to support or discuss it. Her silence has allowed a cult-like obsession with the film and with her to build up. Instead of remaining a woman, Connie became an icon onto which fantasy is eternally and seamlessly projected.”

Lulu is more awake than ever. She picks up her phone again. Bea just messaged her a picture of herself in her hotel room with the texts:

so switzerland is boring and cold everyone here really is a blond GIANT the skiing is good but that’s all there is everything is just so . . . white

Lulu doesn’t know what Bea means by that—if she’s talking about the whiteness of the mountain, or the people. Bea talks about race so infrequently that Lulu forgets Bea isn’t white sometimes, which she told Bea once, and Bea didn’t like. So she doesn’t know what to say to this. If she makes a joke about snow, will she be missing the point again? Or by not saying anything, is she chickening out, the way she did with Ryan at The Hotel when he was talking about Gypsies and she basically let him off the hook?

Considering this, Lulu scrolls up idly and sees something that makes her flinch: The last time she messaged Bea was the night of her party. It’s been a full week and Lulu has been radio silent on her best friend. Shit.

Ughhhhhhhhhh I’m sorry, she writes back.

Bea responds right away. I guess LA must be pretty interesting

I’m sorry about that too, B

I promise

you haven’t missed anything

You and Cass been hanging out a lot?

Lulu stares at her phone screen.