Page 81 of Hollywood, Ending

“That sounds stressful.”

“I’m also mad at him. He is sort of ruining what should be a fun weekend.”

“Sounds like an asshole.”

“If only it were that simple,” I say. After another silence, I try again. “Kai, four days ago we were in bed together; can we at least be cordial? I shouldn’t have responded the way I did at the premiere. I was stressed. I fucked up. I’m sorry. But also, I am practical. I am ambitious. I do want you to win all the awards for your extraordinary performance, okay? I want to win them, too. I want to get dressed up with you and go to very nice parties and then get undressed with you. I can’t apologize for wanting that, and wanting to be smart and tactical in how we pursue it.”

“It was hot, you knowing exactly what you wanted. It was intoxicating.”

“Past tense?”

“I’m just really fucked up right now, Juniper. I don’t know my tenses, okay?”

“Okay,” I tell him, and he gets up from the table, leaving me to pay the check.

_____

That night, he shows up at my villa again, looking up at the stars. He clearly wants to be near me, and I want to be near him, but we don’t know how to deal with the Obstacle.

“How’s the movie doing?” he asks.

“Beating expectations. Should come in around twenty-seven for the weekend.”

“Which is good.”

“Very good.”

“How’s the stolen valor narrative?” he asks.

“It’s present. But it doesn’t matter, Kai. People love you in the movie, and that’s what matters. It’s the work that matters, not the…everything else.”

“We are literally in a business where we are defined entirely by what people think of us.”

“Yeah,” I say. “You always say you’re not smart, but the reason it’s so exhausting to argue with you is that you are in fact very smart.”

_____

I ask Kai to come inside the villa and watch a movie—I even tell him he can pick the movie—but he declines and says he’ll see me in the morning. So I get a soda called Ting out of the fridge and walk down to the ocean to watch the waves lit by moonlight, breaking and receding across my little strip of beach. I can’t make out any of the constellations, but I still find myself drawing lines in my mind between the stars. This was one of our first forms of art as a species: We looked up at the randomish dots in the sky and made patterns from them, and then told stories about those patterns. Maybe telling stories is what we do the way swimming in the ocean is what sea turtles do.

I don’t know what it’s like to be Kai, but I know something about having my life scrutinized instead of just my acting. Just before my last movie came out, I published an article about my mother’s neglect. She was dead by then. It’s a strange thing to disparage the name of a dead person. They can’t fight back, but also, it’s not like I was lying. She did drink. She did leave my brother and me for days on end. She did tell me that I’d never be anything, that I didn’t want it badly enough. The post went viral, especially a part at the end I wrote about how hard it is to love others when you didn’t grow up feeling loved. I played so many roles, but the only one I ever wanted was to be her beloved daughter, I wrote. I realized too late that I am not a burden on those who love me, but a gift in their lives. I deeply wish my mother could have seen me as a gift. I am determined to see myself as one anyway.

But I published that essay during a quiet movie push, a failed movie push. Kai has been strapped to a rocket ship and told by Matthew Malone, “Now go talk about this thing that you don’t yet know how to talk about.”

_____

I respond to some celebratory texts from friends, including Jaya’s text congratulating me on winning the weekend box office. But I can’t stop thinking about Kai. You don’t have to be an actor for the world to pound away at you, to render you two-dimensional, to villainize or heroize, or do both at once. But if you’re an actor, everyone gets a ticket to the show.

I start wondering how much Kai’s trauma will really make us at the box office. Surely there is a number. Three million? Twelve? What number is worth forcing him to sit in front of camera after camera and relive it?

Katie calls. “Hey,” I say.

“Hey, I know you’re in Jamaica, but the awards campaign is starting to take shape. The studio’s behind it. They’ve got our first lunch with Academy voters scheduled for next Wednesday. You ever do this before?”

“No,” I say.

“Well, it’s just lunch with old people. Some guy who costarred in something forty years ago is in the Academy and gets a vote, so he shows up to this lunch and you charm him. The campaign will center around Matthew, of course, but they’re going to push Kai hard, too. And you. I think getting you nominations will be a bit tougher, because it’s such a strong year for women and you’ll be up against more established actors, but it’s good just to get you in the conversation. Matthew’s going all out for this. He’s not even taking a movie through the beginning of next year to focus on it. I know you’ve got Gods of Andromeda starting in two weeks, but until then I’d like to squeeze as much juice as we can; sound good?”

“Sounds good,” I say.