Chapter Three #3
He’s seriously considering borrowing Jamie’s copy of A Scorched Land to see whether dragon romance might be the mental anesthesia he craves, when his phone buzzes.
It’s his niece. If it’s one o’clock in California, that means it’s four in the morning in Connecticut, but Nora is seventeen and has the sleep cycle of a bat.
Nora: Dad wants to know if you’re coming to my graduation
Other than Nora, Simon’s family doesn’t know he’s spending this summer on the East Coast. He’s going to have to tell them
soon because not mentioning it will tip the scales from “distant but plausibly warm” to “estranged” and Simon doesn’t want
to be the one responsible for that.
Simon: Is that an invitation or a warning?
Nora: 50/50
Nora: figured you hear it from me, give me the answer you know they want, and then you don’t have to talk to my dad
Nora: or YOUR dad
Simon: This is bullying.
Nora: correct
It’s not that Simon dislikes his family. He doesn’t, at least not most of them.
It’s just that the Devereauxs are gregarious Connecticut football enthusiasts with jobs in investment banking and corporate
law. Simon’s bad at math, introverted, and gay—a combination they all treat like a delicate health condition. One of his brothers
is the junior senator from Connecticut and the other’s a partner at a top New York law firm. Both his parents are retired
hedge fund managers and both his stepparents are retired doctors. Simon pretends to fly through outer space for a living;
they just don’t have many overlapping areas of interest.
There’s a story Simon’s brother used to tell as part of his stump speech, about how Simon struggled academically until his
parents sent him to a school that focused on the arts. This was supposed to demonstrate Senator George Devereaux’s commitment
to education and arts funding, as well as to remind everyone that he has a semi-famous brother. The story’s even kind of true.
In eighth grade, Simon flat-out refused to do any schoolwork whatsoever until his parents agreed to send him to a high school
with a decent theater program.
He’d been a wretched little goth child, grew into a wretched little goth teenager, and only thanks to a timely growth spurt,
a late appearance of the family cheekbones, and a talent for looking handsomely judgmental was he spared the fate of becoming
a wretched little goth adult. There’s a fine line between being sullen and being superior, and it took Simon some trial and
error to find that line and keep to the correct side of it.
Nora was born when Simon was in high school. He mainly knew her as a face on his oldest brother’s campaign-curated social
media until she was thirteen and started texting him out of the blue.
At first he couldn’t understand why she sought him out.
But then she sent him a selfie—not one of the campaign-approved shots of her in a school uniform, but a picture of her with inexpertly applied black eyeliner and no smile—and it all clicked into place.
Somewhere in his mother’s house, there are pictures of Simon with the same smudged eyeliner and scowl.
She’s a wretched little goth child and she thinks of him as proof of concept.
Devereauxs can, with a little effort, avoid getting an MBA.
They don’t look much alike, but he feels like there’s a resemblance anyway, something that makes him almost understand what
people are talking about when they talk about family.
Nora: anyway, party’s at the end of may. you don’t even need to drive. metro north to greenwich or just go back to your roots
and hire a car. dress code is generationally wealthy white people
Simon: If I don’t go, you know it isn’t personal, right?
Nora: yeah yeah whatever
Simon has nearly two months to wrap his mind around this, so he probably should reassure her that he’ll be there. But he can’t,
so he just sends her a picture of Edie and tries to fall asleep.
In the morning, Jamie’s up before Simon, which is a bad sign. He’s lying in wait in Simon’s kitchen, a full pot of coffee
on the counter.
“Has Ken been in touch?” Jamie asks, which is a worse sign. Ken is Simon’s agent.
“No.”
“Okay, he’s useless as usual, good to know.”
“Hey—”
“So there was an article yesterday about Tree of the Gods and your name is mentioned.”
Simon’s face heats. That show made the worst day working with Charlie Blake seem like a peaceful visit to the library. The
showrunner habitually screamed and threw things, which opened the door for every other sociopath on set to let loose. The
lead actor was a Method pest who stayed in character in order to harass every woman under thirty-five and hurl insults at
everybody else. Simon spent months wishing he’d gone to law school.
“That show ended eight years ago,” Simon says. “Are they ever going to stop talking about it?”
“There are rumors about the second book finally getting adapted. That’s why it’s all getting dredged up.”
Those rumors reappear every few years and never go anywhere, possibly because the entire former cast and crew are using the
power of negative thinking to un-manifest it.
“Anyway,” Jamie goes on, “it’s the usual stuff about difficulties on set. Nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“Difficulties,” Simon echoes. Jamie’s being delicate. “What exactly does it say?”
“It mentions that you walked off set, and hints that now there are tensions behind the scenes on Out There.”
Simon did walk off set while they were shooting Tree of the Gods, that much is true.
But he’d bet the article says he stormed off set, which is—well, that’s probably true too.
His scene partner was crying, the showrunner was yelling at them, it was over a hundred degrees and his costume involved leather pants, and all Simon could think was that he needed to not be there.
Only after he got home—his ears still ringing, his nerves still jangling—did he realize he’d fucked up. He’d come back the
next day, mortified.
Even before the first season aired, there were rumors about the set being toxic, full of feuding actors and drama queen behavior,
probably because the show was full of feuding actors and drama queen behavior. The story about Simon walking off set—stripped of context so he was just
a spoiled actor unwilling to take direction—fit that narrative and served as a handy illustration of why the show was behind
schedule.
“I guess the implication is that I’m the common denominator,” Simon says. “I’m impossible to work with.”
Charlie’s lecture about treating his coworkers decently feels even worse now than it had last night. Had Charlie read the
article? Had everyone at Lian’s read the article? They’d probably heard the stories already, so it shouldn’t matter, but Simon
wants to hide under a blanket and never come out.
Until now, he’s assumed that all he needs to do is leave Out There, and the rest of his career will fall into place. He’ll be offered some roles and at least a few of those will be interesting.
Problem solved. But Simon isn’t nearly enough of a draw to make up for being difficult to work with. Queasiness settles in
his stomach.
“Anyone who’s worked with you knows those stories don’t mean anything,” Jamie says, because he’s loyal but deluded.
“A few weeks ago, I threatened to bite Charlie.”
“On set?”
Simon nods miserably.
“Maybe don’t do that again? For what it’s worth, the article linked to an old story about Charlie getting into a bar fight.”
That had been over six years ago, during Out There’s first season. The fact that Charlie’s old sins are being dredged up too does make Simon feel marginally better. Getting
into a bar fight is objectively worse than storming off set, right? Then he realizes he’s judging his own behavior against
Charlie Blake’s and barely coming out on top.
“I’d tell you to call Ken,” Jamie says. “But you’d do just as well to tell the dog.”
“Jamie—”
“Or, like, write about it in your journal.”
“I don’t have a journal.”
“And you hardly have an agent.”
“I don’t want to deal with any of this,” Simon says. He’s barely handling a basic, no-complications kind of day. Throw in
anything else and he’s hopeless.
“Ken or the bad press?”
“Yes?”
Jamie taps his fingers on the counter. He looks like he wants to say something but, in the end, he just starts making omelets.
“Do you want me to email Ken?” he asks when they’re eating. “I can cc you and say I’m your assistant.”
Another thing that Simon doesn’t want to deal with is that Jamie is, basically, his assistant. And, for the past few weeks,
his personal chef.
“It’s fine,” Simon says. “Don’t worry about it.”