The Role by Ashley N Roth

I decide to have an affair the day after my husband starts filming. The idea first sprouts when he mentions audition and romantic lead in the same sentence. It metastasizes when he says he has a call back; festers when he’s excited about it. He doesn’t know I’ve had trouble sleeping. He doesn’t know I’ve poured out the coffee he made for me each morning. He doesn’t know I’m choosing to spend an unnecessary five dollars on something worse at the local coffee shop. 

He’s getting prepped by makeup artists while I scope out the place, seeking the person I’m supposed to cheat on him with. Each metal table is surrounded by young working professionals on important Zoom meetings or college students waxing nostalgic on the terrible boy bands of my own high school years. They’re wearing low-rider jeans on purpose; they’ve resurrected overplucked eyebrows. Somebody should tell them eyebrows never grow back. 

None of these people will work. 

Sitting at my own table, completely alone, I’m suddenly embarrassed for the years I tried to emulate the wildest version of Drew Barrymore, even though there are five girls here doing exactly the same. I could be their mother. I could be the mother of the woman cast as my husband’s romantic interest. I read and reread the notes on his script last night when I couldn’t sleep, saw the sections where he scribbled: this is the part where I fall in love with her. 

***

When Josh and I met, we were fresh from receiving praise for our respective breakout roles. Seventeen claimed I was the new millennium’s Winona Ryder, even though I would have said I was more Janeane Garofalo. She’s the one I connected to each time I watched my own VHS copy of Reality Bites until it warped and jammed the VCR.

 Josh wasn’t the next anything. He was simply lumped in People’s annual beauty contest, not the sexiest man alive, but the gaggle of men almost given that honor and given small sections in the magazine’s pages as a consolation prize. Two rising stars are eventually cast in a movie together, and we were. We played two people in love with other people. Our characters never crossed paths. 

 In reality, we orbited each other. I noticed him hovering while I filmed my scenes, standing in line beside me when we lined up for Craft. Like the other male actors, he ate at least two sandwiches, chips, Oreos or whatever decorative sugar cookie they’d provided. I did what the other actresses did. Made a small salad without dressing and chewed on a breath mint, wishing it was anything else. Someone had laid out an US Weekly, highlighting the actresses who gained weight and dared to show their disfigured ingenue bits to the general beachy public. 

“That’s all you’re having?” were the first words he said to me. He was the first man on set to worry that I was eating enough. When I left after wrap, I turned down my iPod for the walk down Melrose to catch the bus, so I could hear the memory of him asking me if that was all I was having, and that’s what I was still listening to when I forgot to take my laxative, when I decided to run to Ralph’s for a pint of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and the biggest bottle of Hidden Valley I could find. 

***

Josh sends me a selfie. He’s smiling wide, the bright lights glowing behind him like a celestial aura. I zoom into the picture, parked inside the parking structure of the La Brea Target, still trying to figure out the logistics of the affair I need to have. Usually, this parking garage doesn’t get a signal, but the universe decides I need to see this, so I take it as a sign and investigate every pixel, looking for her. 

There. She’s a speck inside the bar the studio has rented as their meeting place, even smaller than the glasses and the prop beer bottles. Even that small, I can tell that her skin is smoother than mine, that it holds its shape, that all she has to do is starve for a couple of days to reach her goal weight. I can tell that when the director asks my husband to fall in love with her, it will be easy–he won’t have to pretend she’s me like he used to. Back in 2001, in our one movie together, he would scan behind the cameras and lights to see if I was watching. We made eye contact before he took off his clothes for the other actress he was hired to want. I held on to his gaze with all the power I could muster. 

It must have worked because we moved in together. We went to premieres together. The paparazzi never caught us separated, unless we were on separate sets. Those times began to stretch out into big empty spaces. We bought a small house in Glendale. We helped each other prep for auditions. When we didn’t get call backs, we consoled each other. When we did get parts, they were small and meaningless and did nothing more than pay for the bills, so that we could continue to live off movies that later played on TBS or TNT, that now occasionally hit streaming.  

Josh sends another picture. It’s Craft. His plate is filled just as it’s always been. His romantic lead and her plate are in this picture, too. Just as full as his. Either he sent this picture to be cute and reminisce over our first meeting or it’s a subconscious poke at how much better this actress is, not willing to bend to expectations of starvation. I hop into the elevator, thankful for the snuffed reception, so that I’m not compelled to tell him how much easier it is when you’re in your twenties to break the rules, to fight against standards. At my age, rebellion is only begging to be further shoved into invisibility. 

***

Target proves another barren wasteland for adultery. Nothing but women and their children or couples loading up on giant packages of paper towels and bathmats. An older couple seems to follow me in every aisle, and as much as I try to avoid them, we pass each other again and again. Near the toothpaste, the clearance rack of mismatched swimsuits, the tiny, refrigerated section of frozen pizzas. They break my heart with their normalcy, with the way they take turns pushing the cart and debating on simple household items. He wants the green mouthwash; she prefers the blue. Seeing them, I know they’ve never considered an affair, and he’s maybe noticed girls younger than her, but he’ll never be put in a place where he’s asked to kiss her with a prescribed amount of passion. She’ll never have strangers post their opinions about how well she’s aged. They’ll run errands and go home and watch something boring together and be blissfully happy. 

It’s because of them I abandon my cart, right by the checkout lines. When the boy with the red shirt stops me, and asks if I’m okay, I shake my head with brutal honesty. He’s about to ask me another question, but then he pauses.

“Where do I know you from?”

I don’t let him figure out that he knows me from something his parents probably forced him to watch. 

***

Even before my agent answers the phone, I know she’s annoyed. It rings four times, and I’m prepared to leave a desperate sounding voicemail, one that I’ll be embarrassed about later. But then she answers, every breath she takes is a strangled sigh. 

“Sammie, how’ve you been?” 

“Terrible,” I answer honestly. “Hoping you’re about to cheer me up and tell me there’s suddenly been an influx of auditions.”

Cell phone audio is so crisp that I can hear my agent thinking, and it sounds like the robotic beeping of 1980s arcade games. 

“Sammie—”

“There aren’t any, are there?”

“I send you out on everything I can.”

I squeeze my hand around the phone and hold it behind my head, prepared to hurl it across the room. I hope it breaks. I hope it pulverizes all the texts Josh has been sending to me, little breadcrumbs of his budding romance. It’s so typical. First, it’s just an acting job, and then it’s just contrived chemistry that accidentally sparks into something real. Then, it’s a conversation about divorce, and I’m left to vanish while he has a second coming as a distinguished silver fox. 

“Sammie?” This is the same agent I’ve had for twenty-five years. Since we believed computers would kill us.   

“Yes?” I put the phone on speaker and set it down. My agent lists off the few roles she’s submitted me for. Someone’s alcoholic mother, a frazzled teacher, a woman addicted to pills and waiting for her estranged children to remember she exists.

“Push for that last one.” I feel so sorry for that role I almost must embody her. Too bad my loyal agent doesn’t hear this because I’ve wandered so far away from the phone and closed every door behind me. 

***

I’m in the bath, sinking myself lower and lower into the water that’s gone lukewarm, while my phone convulses from the other room. The vibrations create miniature sonic booms that ripple beneath the water’s surface. I’d forgotten the phone existed. As a reflex, I step out of the tub, water drizzling down my entire naked body and leaving scattered puddles trailing behind. I pick up the phone and see two missed calls from Josh and a single text. 

Director got food poisoning. Filming was cut short today. Heading home. 

Shivering, I read the message again, my finger hovering over a response, but at a loss for what to say. Should I say I’m glad? Should I ask him to stall so I can figure out how to do infidelity correctly? Should I say that I want him to pull out of the role and come home and tell me that I’m not old, that I’m still attractive, that he can look at me the way the old couple looked at each other in Target? 

I push at two letters: O. K.

***

We sit at our dining room table, Styrofoam containers creating a mini wall between us. Josh picked up Thai on the way home. I dunk the tiny pieces of tofu into my coconut broth, holding them under as long as I wish I could let myself stay under water. 

“How’s filming going?” I say, twisting my napkin inside the plastic wrapper.

“It’s great.” He laughs. “It’s slow. I haven’t had anything but these small parts in so long, I forgot what full days on set feel like.”

“Yeah, it’s been a while.” I shove three spoonfuls of soup in my mouth. 

“I’m glad I got a night off, though.”

I don’t want him to say that because he feels like that’s the right thing to say, to tell me he loves me because it’s woven into a routine we’ve had for two decades now. But the fact that he does say it throws me off guard and I accidentally glance at him. I hate that he looks just as charming as he always has. I hate that when he looks at me, he sees a face I’m desperately trying to salvage with thick hyaluronic acid creams, microneedling, and just a few jabs of filler that are out of the price range of my decaying royalties. 

“Aren’t you glad?” We’re still staring at each other when he asks. I don’t know if I am because I’m trying to let go. I’m trying to be the kind of woman who cheats out of spite, who doesn’t have feelings that get hurt. The spices on my tongue are suddenly overpoweringly salty. I go to the kitchen and rinse my mouth out, but no matter how many cups of toxic LA tap water I swish with, I can’t get the spices out of my taste buds. I hang my head in the sink, my chin grazing the cool, wet chrome. From the other room, Josh’s spoon scrapes at his bowl. 

***

When I wake up in the morning Josh is already gone. I go to get my morning coffee, but the timer was never set and all that’s there is an empty pot, tinted with all the brews he remembered to make for me all the days before today. It’s a sign. 

For the first time in weeks, I drink coffee in my own house, at my own dining room table, on my own small stucco balcony. Smog blots out the sunshine, but the concrete is still glaringly bright. When I walk out the door, I’m wearing my biggest round sunglasses, the ones every classic woman wears when she makes a powerful entrance, the ones women like Jackie Kennedy wear as armor in the most devastating moment of her life. When I get to the set I push them on top of my head, so that they’re still there, wielding their power. 

It’s easy to walk on a set when everyone knows you have a familiar face, even if they can’t remember your name, or who you are. A few people mumble “Josh’s wife.” I want to believe I hear someone say, “She played Abby in Pacific Northwest.” I’ve always hated being known as one singular person that never existed, but somehow that is still better than just being someone’s wife. 

When he leaves a set, he is always Josh Elliot, a person who is funny in interviews, known for his character range, and making a comeback for a whole new generation of people who think he’s hot for an old guy. I’m rarely named anymore when we’re photographed together. They haven’t even picked apart my body in years. It’s aged to a point where it isn’t worth it. Maybe I should go wild with plastic surgery, charging it all to Josh’s resurrected fame. Then they can say I should have aged gracefully, which really meant fading gracefully. 

I’m angry at the magazines, at the people who don’t know my name, at the people who hated any movie I did after Pacific Northwest, at the producers who occasionally grant me a small role on a sitcom for nostalgic reasons, at my agent for her refusal to tell me the truth. My rage glows outside of me like the edges of a neon sign. I’m impossible to miss, but when I stand behind the camera, glaring at Josh, he doesn’t flinch.  

Josh and the woman he’ll leave me for are positioned in a bed, with the sheets tugged strategically around them. When the sheet bunched around Josh’s waist scoots away, people rush to the bed to rearrange the fabric, to crumple it so it looks like it’s been tangled in unscripted passion. They want everything to be perfect, to reflect the intimacy of a first time. When the sheets move again, I see it the dips of skin that prove he isn’t wearing a modesty garment. The crisp white sheets slide around his costar. Too much skin again. 

They’re both naked. Actually naked. 

 I just keep staring, waiting for him to notice. He turns his head for a moment, his face bathed in bright light. But there isn’t even a flinch of recognition while I’m right here on the other side of the camera. 

Standing here isn’t the solution. I’ll destroy Craft first. 

My movements are hyperbolic, choreographed for an action movie, for my biggest scene. I yank the tablecloth off with as much force as every cinematic superhero. 

But it’s too much. 

Everything lands silently. 

The plates, the trays, the big serving spoons, all collapse onto the cushion of the spooled fabric. The cheap tablecloth muffles the satisfying crash I’d wanted. The director calls out, “Action!”

I need more. I push over the camera beside me. It crashes to the floor, the sounds of crunched metal and broken glass echoing on set. A flurry of crew rush over, sweeping and scooping, and shoving me out of their way. 

Two men wheel over a large gray trashcan. They nearly knock me over. When I stumble, nobody asks if I’m okay. 

Josh doesn’t break character—it’s like everything I did was already written into the script, like he expects it. The actress twitches slightly, as if the destruction around her is just a fly buzzing into the scene.

“Cut!” 

They’re saying something about taking a break, something about cleaning up the mess. Nobody says anything about the woman causing it all. Josh and his costar scoot off the bed, wrapped in the same sheet. They step over the broken glass, the shards of plastic and slivers of metal. They walk right by. 

I escort myself out, forgetting to put on my sunglasses when I step back outside. For a moment, I consider staring right into the sun. I want the sunshine to ruin my retinas. But, I chicken out and hold my hands up instead, trying to remember where I parked. 

I bet I won’t be blacklisted. Josh’s costar won’t label me as crazy. I won’t even graze a headline. All I’ll hear is everyone talking to each other, asking if they’ve seen how well Josh has aged. He still looks so good. 

Ashley N Roth is a West Coast-raised, Nashville-based writer, educator, and performer. Her writing has appeared in Jersey Devil Press, FOXES Magazine, decomP, Moonsick Magazine, Literary Orphans, and elsewhere. Additional work and mediums have appeared in various creative spaces and events, including a film festival in Trenton, NJ and a 90s inspired art exhibit in Nashville. Her debut novel We Never Took a Bad Picture is forthcoming March 2025 from April Gloaming. Find her online at www.ashleynroth.com

16 May 2025