Page 10 of Hollywood, Ending

So I posted a series of photographs of my makeup being undone with the caption “Carly to Juniper: A Journey in Five Photos.” As they finished removing my makeup, I kept refreshing my Instagram page, watching the number of likes go up: 302 one minute, 487 the next, 1,645 the one after that. I was getting ten or twenty followers every time I refreshed—just from a post in the makeup chair.

I do not want to want to be loved by strangers, but I do not want to want most of what I want.

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Because I took longer in the makeup trailer than Kai, I ended up getting a ride home alone in a van driven by a guy named Tony. I called Katie to check in and tell her about my Instagram disaster, which she of course minimized, saying that if anything the studio should thank me. I got a text from Matthew then, to Kai and me: There’s a raw vegan restaurant…in Pittsburgh? I’ll be there at seven. Hope to see U 2.

I replied immediately. I’d love to but I’ve gotta read for a project tonight. Another time!

I knew the Gods of Andromeda book would be waiting for me back at the apartment, and wanted to read it as soon as possible.

Ours was a small movie—a thirty-four-day shoot, only a $14,000,000 budget—but I had high hopes for it, because Kathryn’s previous movie had done well, and also because sometimes comic book actors like Matthew Malone get a role like this one and shock everyone with their talent. I let myself fantasize that the movie might be big, that I might be big.

“Can you tell,” I asked Tony, “if the movie’s gonna be good? From the vibes on set or whatever?”

“No way,” Tony said. “Sometimes I think, man, people are gonna watch this film in fifty years, and it’s a total bomb. I’ll be driving around Clooney and Pitt and everybody gets along like gangbusters and the movie comes out and nothing. Other times, I remember once I worked this teen movie, about a Very Special Gal with Very Special Powers, and everybody was fighting all the time and nobody would share a van and the whole crew was walking on eggshells for two months and I thought this movie is gonna be an absolute shitfest, but then it was good. Not just popular, but good. So I never know. Do you?”

“No, but I haven’t been around as long as you.”

“That’s for damn sure. I think it’s like baking a pie, only you don’t have a recipe and a hundred thirty people are making the pie and everyone’s blindfolded except the director. The movie business is a crapshoot, kid, so you gotta have fun with it.”

Kai called then. “You can’t just tell Matthew Fucking Malone you’re unavailable for dinner.”

“I have to read this book. Gods of Andromeda. The project could be huge for me.”

“It’s Matthew Malone,” Kai said. “Asking us to dinner. I can’t go alone. It will be awkward. I need you there.”

“I’ll ask Tony. Tony, should I be a responsible adult and go home and read for what I hope will be my next job, or should I go out to dinner with Matthew and Kai?”

“Go out to dinner, kid. This is a relationship business. You could do worse than having a relationship with Matthew. That guy got me hired. Worked with him ten years ago on a blockbuster and then he comes back to Pittsburgh for this and makes sure he hires me back. What a guy. Let him take you out to dinner.”

“Listen to Tony,” Kai said.

“Fine, fine.” I hung up and texted Matthew, telling him we’d meet him at seven. That left me with half an hour to get home and read.

I was ten pages into Gods of Andromeda—not a novel to be praised for its sentences but still immensely enjoyable in its world-building—when Kai knocked on my door.

He was wearing slacks, a tucked-in button-down, and a blazer with narrow lapels. I was wearing a sweatsuit.

“Christ, I didn’t know you had to dress up for Pittsburgh’s dining scene. Hold on.” I closed the door on him, threw on a dress, pulled my hair back, and put on some lip gloss and mascara, then opened the door again. “Ready.”

“You clean up nice,” he said.

“You look like you’re trying hard,” I said.

“I am,” he answered.

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I don’t drink. Insofar as possible, and it’s not very possible, I like being in control of my life. Also, having grown up with an alcoholic mother, I have a generally low opinion of the stuff. From what I can tell, alcohol can make you love alcohol more than you love your friends or your children or your house or anything else, and I’d rather steer clear of Life Ruining Serum, even if it does have “floral notes” or “a hint of nutmeg on the finish.”

Which is what Kai and Matthew were saying about the white wine at Unheated, the raw food restaurant. We’d been ushered into a private room across from the kitchen. But even so, Matthew’s arrival could not go unnoticed. The hostess’s eyes had widened slightly when he walked in, and she said, “Could I…I’m sure you get this all the time, but could I get a picture?” Matthew said of course, and I took the phone from the girl’s shaking hands and took two horizontal and two vertical, and then she said, “Oh my God are you—are you Janie from Star Catcher?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Oh my God I used to love that show,” she said, and then Kai offered to take a picture, and I smiled. When I was a little kid, my mom always criticized my smile. She said it looked like I was in pain, or like I was baring my teeth in anger or fear. But I didn’t know how else to bare my teeth. I thought smiling was showing your teeth. Now, of course, I know that it’s acting, that you must briefly connect yourself to the idea of joy so that your eyes and your cheeks and your body all smile together.

I thought about my mother’s memorial service, how I had to think of a happy memory with her, or at any rate with someone, to smile as each person came up to hug me and express condolences. Everyone kept saying, “I’m sorry for your loss,” but I’d lost so much even before she died. I’d lost the certainty that mothers are good, that love is simple, and with her death, I’d lost even the ability to hate her. Grief is a strange bedfellow.