8. The Artistic Temperament
THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT
ONCE, WHEN I WAS young, I asked my grandmother when I would die. She laughed.
“Why would you want to know that?”
“I don’t know, I just feel like I should be prepared.”
My mother was in the kitchen somewhere, pretending not to listen.
I’d been the one to beg for a reading. I’d initially wanted to know if a bully from my class would ever see her comeuppance.
Grandma reminded me she’d have to read the other girl’s palm to see that for certain, but everything she knew about life suggested yes.
“Fate isn’t so simple, anak,” Grandma told me, about the death thing.
One of my mom’s constant refrains was that life had worn Grandma down; her softness was only for my generation of progeny.
She’d made her children tough, and then rewritten the story to reap the rewards of living easy.
But then again, my mother loved a grudge.
“You don’t have an ending set in stone.”
“What about God’s plan?” I interjected.
“Smart-ass,” muttered my mom under her breath.
“Nobody understands God except for God,” said Grandma.
“But—”
“I know some things,” Grandma cut in, shrugging. “There is greatness before you. All your dreams, they are reachable; they are written into every pathway of your life.”
My mom snorted quietly.
“But deaths,” Grandma continued, louder, “you have a million of those. Any one of them could be yours. Every choice you make can always change the ending.”
“Then what’s the point of seeing the future?”
“I don’t see the future. I interpret it.”
“Well, but what if I’m going to get sick or something? Or if it’s something I can prevent—”
“The trouble with futures,” my grandmother told me, “is that they always appear changeable from the outside; you can always imagine what you might have done differently if you’d known how things would turn out. But we live on the inside.”
I frowned at her. “What does that—”
“It means: You are you, and therefore you will only make certain choices. If you could see everything with perfect clarity of vision, sure, you could change the shape of the future. And maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. Either way, why spoil the story, make it tragic?”
“Is it tragic?” I felt panicked.
“Ma,” called my mom. Warningly.
Grandma shrugged. Then she closed my open palm around an invisible gift.
“Every story ends in death,” she said.
I got slightly lost on my way home, in my effort to take an alternative route.
It occurred to me that I was being stupid, and that superstitions about misleading demons were probably counteracted by technology or something.
Surely even demons evolved with the times, learned to possess a GPS.
They could follow me if they wanted to, which probably they didn’t.
It didn’t matter. I’d already been well schooled in not questioning things I suspected of being stupid. It felt like an act of love just to listen. Sometimes I wished my mom would come to that conclusion herself.
I was up early the next day for an audition Dan had told me about, a commercial. “Something bigger’ll come along,” he’d assured me at the time he passed along the details, then he called me again the morning of. “How’s it going with the de Witts?”
I was fumbling to make myself coffee, disregarding the many things I could reply that weren’t worth getting into on a perfunctory phone call. “I know this is LA, but I have never personally witnessed a person who could subsist exclusively on cocktails and smoothies.”
Dan laughed. “Oh yeah, Emmanuelle loves a juice. And William’s kind of eccentric with his diet too, actually. So they say.”
“Is he?”
“He’s one of those actors who hasn’t touched a strawberry in twenty years. He only eats brown rice and tea.”
“Wait, really?” He was certainly thinner in person than he seemed on screen.
“I think it’s called a macro diet, whatever that means.”
“That doesn’t seem possible,” I said. I was actually thinking: I wonder if that would work for me. “Well, good for them, I guess. They both look great.”
“Don’t forget, Anya, this is Hollywood. A really good plastic surgeon leaves no trace. Hair, teeth, bones, it’s all fake. I almost guarantee William de Witt was born with a completely different smile.”
I thought of Dr. Hodel, the doctor who’d answered the phone in the middle of the night. “True.” I clinked around for a mug and asked, “Is it true William de Witt has a project in the works?”
“It must be,” Dan said. “I just got off the phone with someone at Ara.”
My heart raced. I briefly stopped bothering with the coffee. “Really? Who was it?”
“Atticus Chandler, one of William’s pet producers.”
“I met him a couple of nights ago.” I couldn’t believe it. Emmanuelle hadn’t been messing with me. There was actually something in the works. “What’s the part?” I forced myself to keep moving. This early, my charisma didn’t operate without caffeine.
“They’re sending over a spec script. I’ll let you know after I review it.”
“What did Atticus say?”
“Just asked me questions about you, anything you’d done.”
The coffee was scalding when I took my first sip. “Did you tell him about—”
“Of course. Anya, kid, I want this as badly as you do, believe me.”
“Okay. Okay. Right.”
“Things move slowly. And he might not want to attach you right away.”
In case studio heads were looking for more star power, some girl who’d already had her big break, before they sank money into something unprofitable and untested. Like me. “Right.”
“It’s a long road to casting.”
“Yeah, but he’s interested, right? It’s something.” The only way anything got made in an industry this profit-obsessed and risk-averse was with someone like William de Witt to vouch for it. “It” meaning, again, me.
“It’s something,” Dan agreed. “So whatever you’re doing to get in with the de Witts, it’s working.”
“And you’re sure it’s—” I hesitated. “They’re not sketchy, right?”
“Kid, nobody with this kind of money is normal. Fame doesn’t come to the levelheaded.”
“Right, but—”
“Put it this way—William de Witt has industry money and family money. If he really wants to make something, it gets made.” I could hear noise in the background, like he was running an errand. “So if I had to make a call, I’d say this is a worthwhile gig.”
(A prayer: If I fail, it won’t be because I wasted my time.)
“Okay.” I exhaled. “Okay.”
“Plus with the new partner, that tech guy, he’s flush with cash.”
That was the second time someone had alluded to Fred Dennings. Was he involved with the film aspect of the company? He seemed like the type to make a thousand superhero films if so, though maybe you couldn’t judge a book by its Patagonia quarter-zip. “I thought you said Emmanuelle was his partner?”
“Sure, but this isn’t the same industry it was before streamers. Money calls the shots.”
“Right.” Fair enough.
“So if he asks you to carry drugs or corpses, make sure you negotiate an EP credit.”
“What?”
“I’m joking.” Dan laughed.
I didn’t think Dan understood what women were usually asked to do. I doubted Teddy and I were at risk for the same sins. “Right. Yeah. Okay.”
“And hey, good luck today. Everyone starts out with commercials. It goes on a résumé. It’s work. Work is a good thing.”
I heard my mother moving around in her bedroom and pondered the merits of taking my time, lingering in the kitchen to greet her.
As usual, the possibility of another argument overwhelmed me.
If I booked the commercial, I promised myself silently, I would sit down to dinner with my mom.
It would lessen the sting of the lifestyle she so openly detested.
Any proof I could offer that my gamble was paying off would surely work in my favor.
Hollywood wasn’t the only one averse to risk.
“Got it,” I told Dan. Then I grabbed my stuff and snuck out the door, shutting it quietly behind me.
The character I was playing had mild to moderate eczema.
She felt free now, free enough to bare her arms!
I tried to put myself in the mindset of heedless joy, unfettered delight.
It was surprisingly accessible—the character had wanted something seemingly impossible, and now she had it.
In my mind I formulated an image of William de Witt, the way he’d passed by me on the stairs.
The tingle of sense memory, sweet déjà vu.
“We might be looking for someone more … diverse,” the casting director warned me.
“I’m biracial,” I said. “Half Filipino.”
“Oh!” She scribbled something down. “Maybe we can turn that up a little. It was a great audition,” she added without looking up. “You really sold it.”
I told myself I didn’t need this job. I’d always gotten things I wanted—love, sex, acclaim, the fleeting approval of my mother—when the stakes were low.
I could walk away from this. I had money, soon to be lots of it, pending Emmanuelle’s pay schedule.
I had credibility, a new notch in my portfolio, which I could use to get some other job, hopefully as produced by Ara.
“Sure. You know how to reach me,” I said, playing the part of someone so comfortable with her future it couldn’t possibly compromise the quality of her day.
When I returned home, Mom was at the store with Tita Perla, JR and Roro’s mother. Roro was in the courtyard tanning alongside Nessa. Over in the corner, JR was staring vaguely up at the sky.
I set my bag down beside Roro and joined her on her yoga mat. “What’s up with him?” I asked, gesturing to JR.
She nudged me over on the mat with her foot. “Pigeon fucking.”
“It’s not pigeon fucking.” From afar, JR sounded hurt.
“Are they not fucking?” Roro called back.
“Of course not, they’re just—”
When I shielded my eyes to look over at JR, his cheeks were red.
“It’s a very noble sport,” he mumbled, and I glanced at Roro, who rolled her eyes.
“What you up to, Weda?” Nessa asked me. “Dating any new white boys?”
I shrugged. “Just babysitting them.”
“You didn’t quit that job?” Roro looked at me hard, her old underbite coming through.