Chapter 6 'One': Summary and Analysis
Summary of Chapter 6: One (Hadley Baxter's Hollywood Backstory)
Hadley Baxter opens the chapter by asserting that the incident with musician Jones Cohen is what ultimately led to her being cast as Marian Graves, though she could not have predicted that at the time. She describes a familiar tight feeling in her chest, an urge to destroy something, that she traces back to her childhood on film sets. That night, she left a Los Angeles club with Cohen while drunk, bored, and restless. She does not remember exactly why she went home with him, but she recalls the VIP alcove with its Victorian love seat, his Johnny Cash tattoo, and the slick floor as they left. The waiting paparazzi exploded into action, their cameras flashing so intensely that she almost choked on the light. They followed the pair to Cohen's cavernous, white-decorated house, where she noticed a tattoo high on his inner thigh reading LOVE ME.
The narrative then flashes back to Hadley's first meeting with Oliver Trappman during auditions for the first Archangel film. Oliver was twenty and married to a forty-two-year-old London theater director, who ended the marriage after their second anniversary, claiming her passion had simply burst. Hadley and Oliver secretly slept together for three months before deciding to go public by holding hands at the premiere of the second film. Hadley describes the searing noise and light of that moment, and how Oliver is transformed by light into something almost unbearable to look at on film.
The couple read fan fiction written about themselves, initially laughing at the typos before growing quiet. They adopted the phrase I live you so much from one story into their private language. The press photographed them around the world and fabricated stories about pregnancy, rehab, and engagement. Hadley explains that she left the club with Jones Cohen partly to wound the obsessive fans who had consumed her relationship with Oliver, though she acknowledges she was really kicking over her own sandcastle.
The chapter concludes with Hadley noting that the Archangel franchise now has seven books, that she was fired and replaced by a teenager for the fifth film, and that she and Oliver first had sex in a car after the Kids' Choice Awards. She reflects on the impossibility of forever and the lies embedded in phrases like I only want you.