Chapter 11
I felt like taking a nap when I got back to my room, but I made the mistake of checking in with Ellen, who informed me that she was coming by at ten to “run scenarios.” It was already nine forty-five, so I took a quick shower and changed and by then she had arrived.
“Goo-odd-ddd mmoo-oorr-rnni-iiii-nnng-ggg,” she sang when I opened the door.
“It’s a beautiful day for my new media starlet.
You are trending on Twitter, Kai. I have to know: Who set it up?
Because it wasn’t me. I wish I had ideas like that, but I’m not that cunning. ”
“Nobody set it up. Some guy got in Juniper’s Uber—”
“Oh, come now. It’s simply too good not to have been orchestrated. A handsome young man saves his beautiful young costar from a sweaty old creeper? It’s all out of central casting. If anything, it’s a bit too on the nose. I wonder if it was Katie. Katie’s got a flair for the dramatic.”
“There’s no way it was Katie,” I said. “Juniper was terrified. She was literally shaking. I don’t think it was a setup.”
“Well then perhaps the gods just gave us a wonderful gift. Regardless, you literally can’t buy this kind of media.
I’m sure it was traumatic and everything, but it’s also gold.
Let’s have class outside, shall we?” She pulled the patio door open and sat on one of the lounge chairs with her iPad.
I wondered what Ellen’s life was like. I couldn’t tell how old she was. Thirty? Forty?
“Do you have any pets?” I asked.
“I’m on the road too much. I used to have a cat.”
“What happened?”
“It died, Kai, thanks for asking.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I heard you met with Brian Arawas today. Are you going to be in Gods of Andromeda?”
“Dunno. I signed a test deal but—”
“No. Jesus. Kai. Remember, I might as well be a reporter. Everyone might as well be a reporter.”
“I loved meeting Brian. He’s a brilliant director, but I have no idea what my next project will be. I don’t even know what I’m doing this evening,” I said in a monotone.
“Better. Juniper has a reputation for being difficult to direct. Did you see that on set?”
“Juniper is the best-prepared, hardest-working, and loveliest actor I’ve ever met,” I said, holding up fingers for each of my three adjectives.
“Very nice. What do you hope people take away from this movie?”
“The feeling that love and art both have the power to truly change us.”
“How did it feel watching yourself on-screen?”
“I was mostly just watching Juniper and Matthew, who made me forget that they’re Juniper and Matthew. They just became Carly and Andy.”
“Good. Good. We’re making progress. So, listen, if anyone digs up the high school stuff, I’ll make it clear that’s off-limits. Is there anything else we need to avoid?”
“I don’t think so?”
“Because there was something glaring you didn’t tell me about before. What else don’t I know about? That’s my worry here. It’s in your best interest to tell me everything.”
“I really think that’s it.”
“Great,” she said. “Great. You’re gonna be just fine, kid.”
_____
After Ellen left, I took a nap. I dreamt about it—not about it specifically but about the courtroom.
When I walked in for the first time, I remember being surprised by how small the court was, and by how few people were in the room.
No press. No family. Just the jurors and the alternates and the lawyers seated at their tables and then him.
I could tell he was there, but I couldn’t look at him.
There was just a blurry field at the edge of my vision.
I felt like I was betraying him. Everyone kept saying it wasn’t my fault, but I was still destroying his good name.
I woke up thinking about it, and about Ellen asking me about it. I didn’t want to expose myself to more of it just to be fifth lead in some movie. It wasn’t like I’d get to hang out with Juniper all the time; she’d be mostly acting with the lead guy and everyone else in the court. I called Bob.
“Flannery and Appelt,” said a polite voice.
I told them who I was and got patched through to Bob immediately. It used to be that all my calls went through Zoe, who’d tell me that Bob was “in a meeting” and would call me back, but now I went straight from the operator to Bob himself, who said, “What’s up, kid?”
“Say no.”
“What?”
“Say no to Gods of Andromeda. I don’t want to do the chemistry read. Sorry, but I just don’t want the role.”
“Can I give a reason?”
“I don’t want to spend six months in Canada playing someone’s little brother.”
Bob didn’t say anything, which was so unusual for him that I figured he’d hung up on me.
But then he laughed and said, “Listen, kid. I’ve got a dozen more scripts to send you that came in just this week.
Some you’d be auditioning for the lead. It’s gonna probably be less money for you to do something else, but I’m here for your dreams, kid.
I’m not like those CAA bastards. You don’t want to spend six months in Canada playing someone’s little brother, I’m not gonna force you.
I’ll let ’em know.” And then he hung up.
_____
I wanted to see Juniper, so I texted her and asked if I could drop by her room.
She wrote back immediately Ten minutes. Getting out of the shower.
I pictured Juniper in the shower. I imagined her head tilted back, her thick hair straight and waterlogged, her big eyes blinking away shampoo, her collarbone, and so on.
When I got to her room exactly ten minutes later, her hair was in a towel and she was putting on makeup in the mirror. “I know you’re not as worried about this as I am, but don’t you feel like the cemetery scene reads almost satirical with that song and the way it’s currently cut?”
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, honestly, Juniper, I feel like my job was during the shoot and now we just—”
“But it’s our careers, Kai. Don’t you see that? This is our calling card. Maybe it’s different for you because—and don’t take this personally—there are so many more good roles for men, but I feel like for me this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and—”
“You’ve already booked the lead in a huge movie, Juniper. And you’re good in this. You really are.”
“But don’t you see the inadequacy of good? You don’t get to make this your life by being good.”
“What I meant is that you’re great in the movie.”
“I could be better if Kathryn hadn’t chosen again and again the most innocent, doe-eyed, woe-is-me take I offered her. I could be better if Lou Reed wasn’t droning on in the background of the cemetery scene. I come across as so one-note—”
“You don’t. Also, I like Lou Reed.”
“While you show so much range and depth of feeling,” she said.
“Juniper. You do seem innocent in it, but that’s why it’s so heartbreaking.
You’re not ready for the shit you have to live through, but you live through it anyway.
Honestly, it made me think about myself.
I can give a kind of love to your character, a kind of love I can’t give to myself, and watching you in the movie, I kept thinking, I also deserve this love. ”
“That’s incredibly kind,” she said, taking a step toward me.
“Well, it’s true.” I thought we might kiss but then she turned away and shook her arms out nervously.
“I can’t calm down. I haven’t been able to since that guy in the car last night.”
“Yeah. Ellen thinks maybe someone set that up,” I said. “That the sweaty guy was a plant or something. Katie wouldn’t do that, would she?”
“She can be nefarious, but she always tells me. No way that was a setup.”
“Right, I figured,” I said.
After a minute, Juniper looked at me through the mirror and said, “Do you want to see a movie that we’re not in?” She sounded shy when she said it. Innocent, even.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that. Can it be something terrible?”
She laughed. “Indeed, it must be something terrible.”
_____
Juniper and I went downstairs and got into her silver SUV. For some reason, I was surprised to learn that she could drive.
We were battling traffic, inching toward the theater.
Juniper kept starting to say something critical about the movie and then stopping herself.
I told her that I was gonna pass on Gods of Andromeda, because I just didn’t think the part was big or interesting enough.
She said she wished I could be the lead guy, her husband, and I said that I did too, but I didn’t look like a lead guy; I looked like the lead guy’s little brother, and she laughed and said, “You underestimate yourself, Kai.”
She filled the silence that followed by continuing to worry about our movie. “I just can’t stop thinking about it,” she told me. “I’m sorry, I know it’s annoying. I just want the film to be special, to be significant.”
“What even makes a movie significant?” I asked.
“Everybody keeps talking about how good the movie is, or whether the movie is good, but I don’t even know what makes a movie good.
Like, what is the point of making movies?
Is it to make people happy? Then the movie is terrible.
Is the point to make people cry? Then it’s great.
Is the point to, like, reveal some deep truth about the human condition?
Then I think it’s, like, good but not great. ”
“Yes, that is the problem. It could reveal something deep about the human condition if it weren’t for the goddamned Lou Reed song.”
I offered Juniper a stick of gum. She declined. I unwrapped it and began to chew as I looked up what was playing at the theater. “There’s a Robin Hood movie that’s fifteen percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but forty-eight percent of users liked it,” I said.
“Much too high.”
“Agreed. Wait, I think I’ve got it. If you don’t mind waiting until two fifty, we can see Norse Redemption.
Eight percent fresh. The Guardian says, ‘One grows accustomed in this line of work to uninspired films, but Norse Redemption is truly extraordinary in its failures. Although presumably it is cold in Norway or Sweden or wherever this ninety-seven minutes of ridiculousness is set, the men are always shirtless and slathered in sweat, which is the sole blessing of the film. The performances of the actors’ pectoral muscles are far more compelling than those of their faces. ’ ”
“Well,” said Juniper. “Doesn’t that seem literally perfect?”
_____
And it was. We were alone in the movie theater, and so we got to shout at the screen all through Norse Redemption, which was much funnier than any comedy could have been.
At one point, the main bad guy says, “No gods, no kings, only Odin,” and Juniper said, “I’m pretty sure Odin is a god?
” And then I said, “No gods, no kings, only certain gods.”
“No gods, no kings, only one queen, Agrippah,” Juniper added.
_____
“Well, that certainly improved my opinion of Andy Warhol Never Gets Old,” Juniper said as we walked out of the theater.
“Right?” I said.
“Was there a woman in that film?”
“Sure,” I said. “The maiden. At the beginning.”
“Oh, yeah, the sexualized object that was dragged away by the villain so that we could internalize the villain’s true villainy.”
“Also, the mother.”
“Right, of course, the thing that provided food and blankets to the human characters.”
“I think between them they had at least eight lines,” I said.
“I guess that’s the good thing about Andromeda,” Juniper said. “Agrippah has some depth. Carries some action. And I think the love story between her and Gavinth is actually kind of sweet. They’ve got a good Obstacle. It’s a structurally sound film, really. It’s just about…”
“Orcs,” I said.
“Yes. Quite.”
I stopped at the edge of the parking lot and said, “It would be fun to be in Vancouver with you. But you’d be spending all your time with whatever meathead they get to play Gavinth.”
She looked over at me, smiling. “Probably someone from the movie we just watched.” Right then, I saw someone in the parking lot with a large camera taking our picture. The camera made a loud snapping sound, and the bearded guy behind it said, “What movie did you see?” We didn’t say anything.
“How long have you been dating?” asked the man.
I was just frozen there until Juniper grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the car. We got in and drove away. “That was weird,” she said.
“Did you tell anyone you’d be here?”
“I told Katie I was going to a movie with you. I’m supposed to keep her informed of where I go. Whatever, it’s just a photographer.”
I looked at Juniper, at her sundress, at her makeup. “Did you dress up for him?”
“For who?”
“For the fucking photographer.” I knew as I said it that I was angrier than I ought to be, but I didn’t know why. “Did you know about last night? Was that all…acting?”
“Christ, Kai, no. No. Shit like that happens all the time. I don’t need to arrange for creepy fans. Now, did Katie send that photographer to this movie theater? Probably. But that’s totally different from arranging an…assault or whatever.”
“Did you dress up for him?”
“Calm down,” she said. I asked a third time. Finally, after a long pause she said, “I am not dressed up. If I want to dress up, you’ll know that I’m dressed up. And if I thought about anyone when I chose this particular dress, it was you. So thanks for noticing, I guess.”
“Sorry,” I said after a second. “I feel like I can’t tell what is real right now.”
“Why aren’t you testing for Andromeda? Don’t want to spend six months with a neurotic actress?”
I took a long breath. I was thinking maybe I wasn’t cut out for this, but then I also wasn’t cut out for anything else. “It’d be one thing if I were with you all the time, but I don’t want to be Gavinth’s little brother. Honestly, right now I’m not sure I want to act at all.”
“Kai, you’re a brilliant actor.”
“Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you have to do it,” I said.
_____
I wanted to tell her then, too, but I could tell she was a little annoyed with me, so I let her drive us back to the hotel and then asked her if she wanted to watch another movie in my room. She smiled—God I love Juniper’s smile—and said, “Of course.”