Page 14 of Hollywood, Ending

“Great,” he said, “because I already got you a hat.” He revealed it from behind his back, and placed it on my head. “I gotta get dressed,” I said.

“You’re gonna close the door on me, aren’t—” he said as I closed the door on him.

_____

We had a couple hours to kill before the game started, so after getting dressed and brushing my teeth, I invited him in and struggled to shut up about Gods of Andromeda. “It’s actually really interesting, because the Queen must have a daughter because sons aren’t very important, and there’s this wooden staff, and having the staff means you have the power, so every ruler wants to hold on to it, but of course to hold the staff is also to be aware that you won’t always have the power, you know? Like, it’s almost as if you don’t contain the power; the staff does. The staff is yours only in trust.”

“Sounds like a banger,” he said.

“On the other hand, if I’m trying to be, like, The Kind of Girl Who Wins Awards, this is not a movie I take. This movie has a zero percent chance of winning awards. Maybe Best Kiss at the MTV Movie Awards, but that’s it.”

“It has kissing?”

“Oh, it has kissing. She has a husband but then she also has…what are mistresses called when they’re guys?”

“Misters,” he said without missing a beat.

“She also has misters. Including a hot foreign mister who is half orc. Orcs are bad but half orcs are okay from what I can gather.”

“So you’d get to hook up with a half orc if you got this part.”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like a good deal.”

“If I could even get it. My agent says it’s a long shot.”

“Do you have a dad?” he asked.

“In the book? If so, he’s not mentioned.”

“No, in real life. I got bored talking about work.”

“Yeah, I have a dad. He’s career army. He and my mom split up when I was four. I don’t know him that well, but we’re friendly. He calls on my birthday. Comes to my premieres. All that stuff.”

“Do you blame your mom for the fact that you weren’t close with him growing up?”

“Jesus Christ, can’t we talk about the weather or something?”

“I’m just curious,” he said.

“I blame my mom for a lot of things. She is, in general, the reason I ended up like this.”

“Well, I like the way you ended up,” he said.

_____

The truth is, I feel like if I talk about my mom she will somehow reach out from beyond the grave and pull me into the afterlife with her, and that she’ll be waiting for me in heaven with a disappointed look on her face because I ruined her reputation. I fear her. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,” C. S. Lewis wrote, and for me the feelings intertwine.

Kai—sprawled across the beige microfiber couch in my apartment, looking up at the popcorn ceiling—asked if I thought about her during hard scenes, like the one on Friday. “I try not to give her that satisfaction,” I told him.

“Even though she’s dead,” he observed.

“She may be dead, but she’s still my mother.”

“And you don’t want to give her that satisfaction because?”

I didn’t feel like going into it further with him, so I just said what he already knew. “Because she stole my money.”