Chapter Forty-Six

VENICE

THREE MONTHS LATER

SIENNA AND I decide that her biopic, aptly titled Femme Fatale, would be announced at the Venice International Film Festival, taking place the first week of September, where she would be a presenter. I, of course, planted the seed right after our trip to Warsaw. She loved the idea and suggested that I come as her plus-one. It has been at least fifteen years since I have done the Venice circuit. I was a presenter back then, and sat on the jury in 1967, when Catherine Deneuve won for Belle de Jour. My presence will certainly make a splash. Once the paparazzi see us riding the gondola together and our secret project is unveiled, the media frenzy will be sensational. We are both ready for it.

Me, especially.

Sienna and I coordinated our outfits for the week, a showcase for the “young Lena Browning” to be inextricably tied to the old one. How I wish we could trade places and I could be that youthful again, stand in her heels, not mine.

Before traveling to Venice, I made sure that all important details were implemented. My financials are all in order. My house is ready. The few key personal items from the past—particularly photos of those I loved—are here with me, protected in one of my half dozen suitcases. All the things that matter to me have been organized for what surely will take place after Venice. I have lived my life my way, and in the end, I am a very rich woman. Sienna doesn’t know it yet, but I appointed her my executor. I trust her, and I don’t trust anybody.

Descending the plane into the private section of the Venice Marco Polo Airport, Sienna and I twin in our large Jackie O sunglasses, wide-leg trousers, cream-colored blouses (mine unbuttoned two down, hers four), with matching thick gold rope chains. My hair is freshly dyed, and hers is natural and beachy looking with fresh highlights. We are quite the Hollywood duo, and within minutes of our arrival at the festival, waving from the gondola, the word is out, and the media goes wild.

We hold an “impromptu” press conference, and I smile proudly at my young doppelg?nger as she talks to the press and explains our work in progress. I feel the familiar heat of the cameras flashing on all sides, and admittedly, I relish the attention. It’s been a long time coming. The story is too good, so Tinseltown juicy. They just don’t know it yet. But they will.

I’m sorry/not sorry for what is about to happen, I tell Sienna with my eyes. But the experience you are about to cultivate would have earned rave reviews from my dear old friend Stella Adler. Her theory was that actors needed to build up a wealth of resources beyond their own knowledge and experiences, so they could more accurately and convincingly portray a wide array of characters.

Watch and learn, Sienna... watch and learn.

WE ENTER THEPalazzo del Cinema after the exhausting three-day media whirlwind. I should be drained from all the interviews, but I feel quite the opposite. Younger, lighter, leaner. I am no longer the Hollywood has-been tucked away in the Hills with her penciled-in brows and parade of double-lime vodka martinis. No, tonight I am relevant once again. I don’t walk into the grand theater, I float, feeling serene and beautiful in my shimmering custom-made high-necked ivory Oscar de la Renta gown. Sienna is at my side in a form-fitting beaded match. We are both dripping in Harry Winston. The princess to my queen.

“How do you feel about seeing Jack Lyons again?” she whispers in my ear amid the flashbulbs, glitter, and glitz, the myriad mics shoved in our faces. And yes, I do enjoy the burst of side comments, all some form of “Lena looks better than ever.” Damn straight. Still here, people. Fat Lady ain’t singing yet.

“Thrilled,” I tell her. “Jack is presenting the Golden Lion for best film. Kind of perfect, right? Lyons meets lion.” I laugh giddily. A little too forced. Perhaps I overdid it.

Sienna pauses with a hard side-eye. She has lived, breathed, studied my movements, the timbre of my voice and its myriad meanings. The way I tug my hair back just so when I have something to hide—every nuance is embedded in her head for when she plays the younger me in her directorial debut. She is more aware of Lena Browning’s mannerisms than I am.

The look she gives me now is more of a pierce than a pause. I turn away quickly, wave to a French director who was once a close friend of Stan’s. “Bonjour, Luc!” I call out with an exaggerated wave.

“It’s happening here, isn’t it?” Sienna mutters under her breath.

“What are you talking about?” But feigning stupid is not one of my qualities. I can’t even act it.

“Lena, just stop.”

“Follow my lead,” I say, noting the lights flickering on and off, our signal to find our seats. The ceremony is about to begin.

If only Stan were here. “You couldn’t write this shit, Lena, if you tried,” he would have said. “No one would believe it. But it’s all here, primed for the taking, isn’t it? The buildup, the climax, the clincher. Can’t wait to see what you’re going to do with this.” My heart thumps with bittersweet excitement. I can’t believe it’s been four years, Stan. I hope you’re watching from your front-row seat up there. God knows, I miss you.

Once we take our seats on the far-left side of the front row, I admit to Sienna that Jack Lyons and I are planning a little something special tonight, and I wanted to surprise her. She raises a brow, but I ignore it. It’s more of a surprise to Jack, I think, but I leave that part out.

Just before the ceremony begins, I greet old friends who pay their respects to me. How happy they are to see me back in Venice, blah blah blah. A collection of shiny new actors passes by me as though I am scenery and instead they chat up Sienna. But I keep one eye planted on the doors, peering over the expensively perfumed shoulders and aftershave-doused tuxes. I throw my head back with feigned laughter and disburse warm pleasantries one after the other like an usher handing out stage bills as I wait for the “guest of honor” to arrive.

And then I see him.

It’s as if eternity is contained in this singular moment. Still slim in his designer tux, but bald and dried up—he is a man who has lived too well, but time got to him anyway, like the rest of us. He makes his grand entrance as the very last guest to enter the packed auditorium, surrounded by a posse of sycophants and security as though he were the president of Italy. A worshipful silence fills the room, followed by surround-sound loud whispers: the elusive emperor of cinema has arrived. Oz revealing his face: Armand Arias, aka Lukas Müller.

Müller at ninety-two smiles tightly while taking in the adulation, the obvious angling for his attention. A beautiful, much younger Argentinian woman is planted at his side, and a handsome young man at the other. His latest wife and, most likely, his lover. His film’s stars and producers welcome him with wide-open arms, a multitude of air-kisses. No one touches him. They know better. Everyone in the room understands that this is Arias’s night, his last roar. His golden lion. The Impostor is the opus of his much-discussed covert albeit prolific career. Critics salute the film as “Arias’s most authentic work”—so real, so emotionally packed, “as if he were there.”

Ahh, but he was. The film is not only autobiographical, but also a thinly veiled ode to the Third Reich. And I am the only one in the room who knows the truth.

He sees me. He knows I’m here—everyone does. His fake brown eyes—those liars—latch on to mine. I smile amiably in return, pretending that I’m just like the others, in the presence of greatness. Duped. Everyone knows Lena Browning, but no one more than you, Lukas Müller. Enjoy this moment, I tell him silently, believing that you still have the upper hand. That you are still the superior race.

Adrenaline surges through my veins like youth serum. I have waited my entire adult life for this moment. I squeeze Sienna’s hand next to me. She squeezes back, misinterpreting my excitement.

The orchestra begins. And the master of ceremonies, a beloved Italian comedian, begins the show by telling a few bad jokes that earn uproarious laughter. The guests are ready, knowing that a camera can randomly land on you at any given moment. Rule number one and two: Never pick your nose or dig something out of your teeth during an awards ceremony. Never argue with your plus-one or show your disappointment that you lost. It will be captured.

The next few hours move too slowly, until it is finally time for the most prestigious award of the night: the Golden Lion for Best Film. Jack Lyons walks onstage accompanied by a young Italian siren at least forty years his junior—the ideal (typical) matchup.

It has been several years since we have seen each other. Jack has aged. His overly tanned skin is leathery and bloated, and he’s had obvious plastic surgery. But when he smiles, there it is, that everlasting eye twinkle. And when he speaks with that gorgeous rich British voice of his, immediately years are chipped away, and he is everybody’s celebrity crush once again. Jack, forgive me... but it must be done like this.

I count to sixty in my head, then slowly rise from my seat.

Sienna holds me back by my arm and whispers, barely moving her lips, “Lena, what are you doing?”

I smile for the cameras that I know are on me, and murmur back through my teeth, “It’s part of the presentation. Must go.”

Surprised by my unplanned interruption, but always the gentleman, Jack extends his hands when everyone sees me walking toward the stage unprompted, perhaps believing that I am having a senile moment. He silences the audience and says, “If the magnificent Lena Browning has something to say to me and it’s not about my lovemaking skills [laugh, laugh], well, then I’m here for it.”

Always a class act. His copresenter’s thick, dark eyebrows narrow with a this-is-not-what-we-rehearsed-Jack horrified look. But she’s a newbie and no one pays attention to her, and he is Jack Lyons, a two-time Oscar-winning legend. And I’m... well, we all know who I am.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jack announces. “May I present the incomparable Lena Browning—God’s gift to cinema.” An ovation, of course. Even Lukas Müller is forced to stand and clap. I couldn’t love this more. The way his fraudulent eyes blaze with fury and his face splotches red, wondering what I’m up to. I ignore him purposely. Look at everyone in the room but him. I smile, wave, wink, then hold my arms out wide. Yes, Lena Browning is in the house. And then I lower my chin, raise my legendary filled-in left brow, and turn to Jack, who is not quite sure what’s happening but is game anyway. He hands me his microphone, and I blow him a return kiss.

I’m sorry, Jack. I’m ruining your moment to take mine.

Sienna’s hand is cupping her mouth. She also knows that the cameras will zero in on her, too, so she shifts slightly, offering up her best angle. That’s my girl. From this vantage point, I see so many familiar faces that have touched my career over the years. I take my time and walk in front of the podium, center stage, smack in front of Lukas Müller. “When I was a little girl, all I ever wanted to be was an actress,” I tell the adoring audience. “But”—I glance at Müller with a playful smile, press my jeweled hand to my chest—“I am an impostor.” A play on words, of course. Laughter erupts in the theater. I wait it out, soak it up. “You see, I am not Lena Browning. My real name is Bina Blonski, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. And that man”—I point to Müller while projecting my strongest Lady Macbeth voice—“is not Armand Arias. He is Lukas Müller, a high-ranking Nazi who murdered my husband, my friends, and countless others. He is the impostor.”

The audience goes wild, believing that I am reenacting a scene right out of Müller’s movie—the usual “hoax” skit that happens at every awards ceremony, no matter what country you are in.

Müller’s face is explosive. He can’t hide it now. He can’t leave. He is stuck, fists clenched, boxed in with nowhere to go. His trophy wife seems to be trying to calm him down, asking what’s wrong, and he swats her hand away. I pray the cameras caught that.

I walk closer to the edge of the stage, perfectly in line with Müller. “I have been searching for Lukas Müller for nearly sixty years, but once I viewed The Impostor, I knew I’d found him.” I wave the mic like it’s a magic wand. “The highly acclaimed last scene—the one that the critics deem ‘so authentic’—was taken from my very own life. I was there in that car. Lukas Müller was that driver. I was the girl who shot the criminal in the passenger seat. But the real criminal was the driver, the impostor all along.” I aim my mic at Müller.

“Armand Arias, you got away with your war crimes and have been admired for years, fooling us all. But not tonight, my friends. Not tonight.”

Müller is whispering something to the man to his left, who begins to stand.

“She is still fucking great,” I hear someone quip as I peer directly into Müller’s camouflaged eyes. And before anyone can stop me or Müller’s bodyguard can shut me down, I reach under the long slit at the side of my dress and pull out my treasured Browning—my namesake—nestled inside a slim holster wrapped around my leg, and I shoot the enemy point-blank in the chest. Bull’s-eye. Exactly where I intended. The shot heard ’round the world.

One bullet. That’s for you, Zelda.

The audience roars, clapping voraciously, believing the blood is ketchup, that this exquisitely performed scene is all preplanned. That the world’s most celebrated femme fatale is paying homage to the world’s most reclusive director. I know the charade will last merely seconds until reality sets in. I touch Anna’s hairpin in my hair with my free hand as a gesture to her, knowing she is watching this spectacle from her home.

“That’s with love from the Warsaw Ghetto,” I shout into the mic as Lukas Müller takes his final breaths, and the echoes of my voice are the last words he will ever hear.

“Lena, no!”

Sienna charges onto the stage, a blond pit bull unleashed, pushing past the security guards who are now rushing my way, understanding that this was not an act. She grabs me, shields me, removes the gun from my relenting hand. Flash, flash, flash. The optics—so damn good—are not lost on either of us.

In the fleeting moment that Sienna turns away from the audience and locks eyes with me, I perceive the ever-so-small curl in the corners of her lush ruby-red mouth—one of a dozen Sienna smiles I have come to know. This barely visible triumphant grin tells the story of a trailer-park kid who rose from the ashes of abuse, drugs, and neglect, and did what she needed to do to survive. A woman who, like me, understands to her core why this had to be done exactly this way. That tiny implacable smile is applauding. Brava, Lena. Brava.

A stillness sheaths the theater into a collective bubble of disbelief before all hell breaks loose. The great Armand Arias has been assassinated point-blank by the legendary Lena Browning. A femme fatale’s final strike. The paparazzi lap it up, pigs in shit, greedily capturing a cinematic golden shocker in real time from every possible angle.

Minutes later, as the approaching sirens wail from outside the theater, all I can think as the police enter and come for me: I won. The last bullet, the last line, was mine.