Page 16 of Hollywood, Ending

“If you say so.”

“And good at everything. Two parents, one brother…sounds like a pretty good life, Kai Laramie.”

“Sure does,” he said.

_____________

Monday morning, I was working alone with Matthew. In the scene, we walk through a Rothko show together, and Andy says, “I like Mark, but he’s so warm.” In between set-ups, Matthew and I sat on our cast chairs next to each other, and I thanked him for making that call about Gods of Andromeda.

“Who’s your agent?” he asked.

I told Matthew I was with Jamie at CAA, and inquired about him.

“I have a team more than a person,” he said. “Do you like her?”

“She’s an agent,” I said, and he laughed.

“They’re snakes, but they’re my snakes. The thing to remember, Juniper, is that they can always get another you. They can always find some starry-eyed kid who just got off the bus from Omaha. But you are your only you.”

“Yeah,” I said, with that thought—I am my only me—quivering through my body.

“You’re good,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Kai is good, too. Real good.” I tried not to take it personally that I got a good and Kai got a real good.

“He is,” I said. “Hey, can I take a selfie of us? The studio wants…content.”

“Gotta feed the beast,” he said, and immediately snapped into Warhol. His cheeks hollowed out; his eyes emptied. He offered up a faint wan smile as I snapped three selfies in quick succession.

“Reminds me of Andy’s Polaroids,” Matthew said. “He would’ve loved the Internet, Andy. It would’ve devoured him, and he would’ve loved it anyway.”

I uploaded all three pictures as a series. The people ate it up. Two thousand likes in fifteen minutes.

_____________

After work, Kai and I got dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant a half-mile walk from our apartment building. We’d barely sat down when he brought up my mom again. “It was a complicated relationship, but I miss her,” I said.

“You continue to be a hilariously bad liar,” he said.

“Everything with you is a therapy session.”

“I’m interested in you,” he said. “I find you very interesting.”

_____

After dinner, we went back to his apartment to watch Kathryn’s first feature, Pro Patria Mori, about a guy coming home from a war and visiting the families of the three soldiers he knew who died. Kai wanted to watch it to “see what Kathryn will make of us.” The movie was dreary—all gray skies—but suitably sad and well-acted. It starred a guy I recognized but couldn’t name, one of those blank-canvas, white-guy actors who manages to be in everything without ever becoming properly famous. Kai sat next to me on the couch, the same throw blanket over both of us, but we weren’t quite touching except at the shoulders. My ex, the Cinematographer, kissed me the first time we were in a room alone together. I thought about how the Cinematographer always wanted me, how even on set he would look at me with undisguised yearning.

But Kai sat awkwardly on the couch, his hands folded carefully in his lap lest he accidentally touch me. It was like he was seeking another kind of intimacy. I thought of something I’d read in one of Andy’s books: “Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting.” And that wasn’t wrong. I could feel the fabric of Kai’s shirt against my forearm, and just that nearly took my breath away. I thought about kissing him—I had the feeling that ten thousand years could pass and he’d never initiate a kiss—but I didn’t want to ruin the feeling of his elbow almost against mine, our knees millimeters from touching.

_____

As the credits rolled at the end of Pro Patria Mori, Kai said, “Do you miss your mom? Even though she hurt you and everything?”

I sighed. He was relentless, and so I relented. “She wasn’t a bad person,” I said, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around myself. “Not exactly. But yes, I miss my mom. I wanted to make her proud. I probably still do.”

“I miss the person who hurt me the most, too,” Kai said.