Page 59 of Hollywood, Ending

I eat a chicken Caesar salad while Ellen continues to give me instructions, then she goes out onto my balcony to smoke a cigarette. I tell her I wasn’t aware she smoked, and she says, “Respectfully, Kai, you don’t know much about me.” And then I tell her what I do know—that she’s married to a woman named Sarah, that she used to have a cat, that she keeps mixed nuts in a Ziploc bag in her purse because she doesn’t eat carbs but loves a snack, and that she is good at her job. “Well, then,” she says. “You know me better than most of my coworkers. One thing about you, Kai: You do fucking listen.”

I eat for a while and then ask her, “Who do you think leaked it? That teacher you talked to?”

“I had that teacher sign an NDA.”

“You did? Thanks.”

She shrugs. “Part of the job.” After a few moments of silence, she says, “Maybe it was Juniper?”

I mull it over for a minute. “No. Juniper wouldn’t do that to me.”

“It’s just weird that it got out. I really tried to keep it under wraps.”

“Unless you’re lying and you leaked it,” I say.

She laughs. “Kai, unfortunately, I care about you. It’s a real impediment to doing my job.”

3

I spend the afternoon with Juniper, answering the same questions: What’s it like to work with Matthew? How did you and Juniper achieve such incredible chemistry? How did you research the part? How well do you know Juniper? Is there anything our readers should know about your relationship? Juniper, you’ve been so open about your history of abuse and how it has shaped you; what would you say to young people living in similar situations?

This last question Juniper always answers brilliantly, and each time it’s like she’s never said the words before, as if she is only now thinking of them. “Your first obligation is to survive. As a kid, I felt so powerless and so scared all the time, and I’m sorry for anyone who feels that way now. But your first obligation is to survive if you can, to make it to the other shore.”

I like this answer because it doesn’t pretend that there’s some easy solution, that trauma is something you get over or move past. It’s just something you live with. But your first obligation is to survive.

When my mom and dad finally found out, my mom said, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” The truth is, I told them the moment I could, the moment it became possible. Before that, the words strangled me.

_____

We make it through the afternoon. Matthew is on Entertainment Tonight, so Juniper and I make a date to watch together. Then she wants me to go to her friend Ophelia’s birthday party. But before all that, I go back to my room and lie down on top of the covers and stare at the ceiling for a while. I scroll through Instagram, post some pictures of the day, and drink a beer out of the minibar. I decide to go for a walk, but people keep recognizing me, even though I have a ball cap on, because the movie is getting a lot of attention, so I go back to the hotel and have a drink at the bar alone, watching a baseball game.

Finally, Juniper texts me to come over for some room service dinner, so I make my way to her suite, which for some reason has a grand piano in one of its two sitting rooms.

“Today was exhausting,” I say.

“Oh, yeah, pretending to look upon you with fondness for nine straight hours? The horror.”

I laugh. “Last year, I could barely make rent, and I still find a way to complain about my life.”

“It does get old,” she acknowledges.

“Well, your first obligation is to survive,” I say.

“Working with Matthew was a literal dream come true,” she says.

“My favorite animal is the rhinoceros that escaped from the Prague Zoo.”

“Kai’s favorite color is the yellow of falling ginkgo leaves.” She plops herself down on one of the living room’s several chairs. “Anyway, problems of privilege are still problems.”

“What do you want for dinner? I’ll call it down.”

_____

I’m eating a cheeseburger and Juniper a salad when Matthew comes on-screen. He’s wearing a black suit, two buttons open on his purple shirt, smiling. It’s strange to think that I know him, that this man on television is also a man who plays motorcycle racing games and can’t quit smoking.

“How are you?” asks the host and Matthew says, “I’m well. I’m well,” and then they talk about Warhol and transforming oneself for the role and how Matthew lost thirty pounds in thirty days and all that stuff, and then out of nowhere the host says, “Matthew Malone, what happens to us after we die?”

“I know that love is stronger than death,” Matthew says. “My father died almost ten years ago, but as long as I am alive, he will be my father, and I will be his son.”