Taking the Initiative

"Adrian, could you bring in the robe I left on the chair? I'm still wet," Jessica called from the bathroom.

"Sure." He set down his water glass, picked up the silk robe, and went in.

Jessica stood at the mirror drying her hair. Adrian hung the robe within reach and passed her a towel.

He lingered behind her after handing it over, closer than was necessary.

"What exactly are you doing?" Jessica asked, amused but pointed.

"Keeping you company," he said with a smile. He knew the answer was evasive. While their arrangement lasted, he intended to take what he could from it.

"How's the set?" he asked. "I hear Nicolas Cage has taken an interest in you."

"Don't worry. As long as we're together, I'm not seeing another man," she said plainly.

Adrian liked her directness. Whatever feeling he had once had for Jessica had faded after she took the lead in The Butterfly Effect. Even his bond with Jennifer Aniston, which was far from settled, held more tenderness. He had no reason to pretend he felt the same way about Jessica.

Jessica had stated her expectations clearly. Adrian chose to interpret that as proof she would accommodate him, an assumption that made the arrangement convenient for him and could also help her career.

He let the frustrations of work spill into their private life. Naomi had limits he would not press; with Jessica, he assumed he could ask for more and that her interest in the arrangement would keep her from objecting. The assumption served him.

He was giving Jessica something substantial in return: the female lead in National Treasure.

After Adrian had brought Todd Vladimir so many profitable surprises, Todd had brought him one. Backlot Pictures had joined Disney's National Treasure, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring Nicolas Cage. This was no token stake. Backlot had committed nearly forty million dollars, close to half the budget, and secured a voice in major production decisions.

"If we want to grow, we need to work with the majors and take part in big pictures," Todd explained.

He had a point. A successful independent producer could still be dismissed as second-tier if it had never helped bring a large-scale film to the screen. New Line had raised hundreds of millions for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Even Miramax, long associated with independent cinema, had put substantial money into Cold Mountain. Backlot needed a project that would change how people regarded it.

The company had raised a hundred million dollars. That did not come close to covering everything it wanted to do, particularly the costly work of building a distribution network. So far it had agreements with nearly five hundred theaters. That was a start, not a nationwide release apparatus.

Miramax, an established independent distributor, could arrange a release in roughly two thousand theaters; Lionsgate could reach more than a thousand. The major studios operated on a larger scale still. Backlot's strongest distribution asset was home video. My Big Fat Greek Wedding had given Todd an opening to build DVD channels, and he had kept expanding them. The acquired library was modest, but even modest titles could earn money over time.

Todd's aim was to reach Lionsgate's current theatrical range within two or three years. That would require more capital and more hits. As long as he protected the money earmarked for distribution, investing in one major production was reasonable.

Whether he took any private pleasure in doing business with his former employer was harder to say.

Adrian understood enough about the industry by now to support him. National Treasure looked like a sound bet to him, at least as a first film.

The more he worked with producers, the more old knowledge came back. He dimly remembered that Bruckheimer's run would falter near the end of the decade and that a later film would lose heavily. For the moment, though, he still trusted the producer's instincts.

Once he learned how much Backlot was putting in, Adrian made one request: cast Jessica Biel as the female lead.

"I want to make her a star," he told Todd when the producer questioned him.

Todd did not press. Decades in Hollywood had taught him to recognize a personal interest behind a casting request. He neither approved nor pretended to be shocked.

Jessica was younger than the character as written. She was twenty-one; the part was conceived for a woman in her mid-to-late twenties. Todd thought she could plausibly play older, however, and the production could adjust around her.

Adrian also knew it was a commercial adventure, with a role he believed the filmmakers could recast without changing the story's center of gravity. If he had wanted Naomi, Katie, or Zooey for it, he would have raised their names first. Jessica was the one he chose.

Backlot's investment and Todd's contacts helped bring the casting about. Adrian had also heard that Cage liked Jessica, though he had no way to know whether that mattered. He had a vague memory of the two actors being associated with a film; he could not place it.

For now, he accepted what Jessica had told him and assumed she would keep her word. He could see another use for their arrangement.

Later that night, he asked, "How would you feel about being seen with me, Jess? Publicly."

"Being seen together?" she repeated. He suspected the question pleased her more than she let on.

With her back to him, he could only imagine her expression. He remembered the attention she had gained when the papers had linked him to Nicole.

He had looked into it. The earlier rumor had died quickly after he and Nicole went out to dinner, but Jessica's name had stayed in the headlines for days. Some fans accused her of interfering in another relationship. On balance, the exposure had helped her.

If he offered a public relationship this time, Adrian expected her to accept.

Jessica turned toward him in the dark. "Is this because of the stories about you?"

She wanted the opportunity, but she was not foolish enough to agree without knowing what he had in mind.

"I had dinner with someone, and photographers caught us before anything had even happened. Now they're linking me to a married woman. It feels as if someone is targeting me. A relationship I can acknowledge might give them a different story." He gave her part of the truth. He did not hold himself to the same standard of honesty with Jessica as with the women he believed he loved.

"So what are you asking?"

"A year or two. You decide how long. We go out together, speak well of each other in public, and show up at the important events."

Neither of them needed him to spell out that the public arrangement would continue their private relationship too.

"All right. If that's what you need," Jessica said with little hesitation. She saw the career value in the publicity and Adrian's backing; she also knew that, in his mind, the public and private parts of their relationship came as one bargain.

That settled most of it. If Katie had not instinctively told her parents that she and Adrian were nothing to each other, he would have preferred to be seen with her. He had asked Jordana and Zooey too. Naomi had long since decided she would not appear beside him in the press as a girlfriend.

Jordana turned him down because she still had school and no interest in performing a long-distance romance for cameras. Zooey dismissed the very idea. With those options gone, Adrian returned to Jessica.

He had told the others what he planned. Naomi did not object. Jordana made a few cutting remarks. Katie disliked it but saw no way around the answer she had given her parents. Adrian never said it outright, yet he let her understand that he held that answer partly responsible.

Zooey was the puzzle. She claimed not to mind, just as she had said nothing when the photographs of Adrian and Katie reached the papers. Adrian could not tell what her silence meant.