Chapter Sixteen
So, now they text. Apparently.
It’s nothing important. Charlie talks about whatever he’s watching and occasionally sends TikToks. Simon sends detailed updates
about the dogs who live in his building.
They aren’t saying anything that matters. These are probably the most boring texts anybody’s ever sent to someone they’ve
had sex with, but the fact they’re texting is more important than what’s in them.
Simon can’t bring himself to tell Charlie about losing the role in the play, so he mentions that he’ll only be in New York
for another week and trusts that Charlie’s smart enough to take Simon’s caginess as a sign he doesn’t want to talk about it,
and to google instead of asking questions.
Simon stays up way too late finishing the second book in the dragon romance series, then starts reading the third. He finds
the subreddit for the series and gets sucked into a vortex of fan theories. Someone on the internet is wrong and Simon almost has to fight them. He preorders the fourth book and tries to decide whether it would be weird to go to a
book signing.
This series maybe isn’t what Simon would call good, or maybe his definition of good is useless.
It’s fun, the way novelty fringe is fun, the way Eurovision is fun, the way peculiar flavors of Oreos are fun.
Simon is having fun, despite being a bit of a wreck, and it’s because he’s given his entire flawed brain over to another universe.
He feels like he’s nurturing some freaky little part of his soul that he’s neglected since high school.
“I forgot for an entire day that the humans aren’t actually in love with that dragon,” Simon tells Jamie. “You and Charlie
have completely perverted my ability to read.”
“You’re welcome,” Jamie says. “And also you’re wrong.”
“Sure, if you’re playing make-believe.”
“Yes,” Jamie says. “Now you understand.”
After nearly a week in New York, Simon calls Lian.
“Sorry,” he says instead of leading with hello or anything passably normal.
But maybe Lian isn’t normal either, because instead of anything polite or even intelligible, she says, “Come back as a producer.”
“What?”
“If you want, we’ll give you a producer credit.”
Simon doesn’t roll his eyes, but only because they aren’t on a video call. After the third season, when Out There proved that it was, if not a huge hit, then at least a reliable success, he renegotiated his contract. So did Charlie and
Alex.
At one point, instead of offering more money, they offered a producer credit. It’s pretty standard to give stars that kind
of title. Usually it doesn’t come with any responsibilities or creative control, just gets tossed onto the negotiating table
instead of money.
Simon turned it down, strongly preferring money to the uncomfortable feeling of permanence that would come with producing
the show, however nominally.
“Why?” he asks.
“Do half a season. You can spend the other half stuck in space jail off camera. That would give you time to do other projects.
Meanwhile, sign on as a producer. That way if the following year you only want to do a few episodes, nobody can stop you.”
“One of us is confused about what kind of power an actor with a producer credit has, and it isn’t me.”
“Nobody wants you to leave the show. The network—they don’t like it. Upfronts are in three weeks.”
Every May, television networks and most of the streaming services put on a big show to pitch the upcoming season to advertisers.
Simon’s had to go to upfronts a few times, usually with Charlie and Alex too. They stand around onstage with a network executive,
everyone engaging in the fiction that their weird little show is a great opportunity to sell car insurance and prescription
drugs.
“The network wants to be able to show advertisers that Out There isn’t changing,” Lian says. “I’m just telling you, you have the upper hand, as long as what you’re asking for isn’t more
money.”
“When I asked for a few episodes off so I could do a movie, they said no.” Technically, Lian said no. She’s the show’s actual
executive producer. Over the years he’s managed to squeeze in a few small projects, but it’s rare that the scheduling works
out.
“That was the year Samara left. I didn’t want to run part of the season with half the original cast gone.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want you to leave. Personally and professionally, I want you to stay. You’ll never know how pissed off I was when
the network insisted on not one, but two white men as leads.”
Since Lian makes sure to tell Simon this at least five times per calendar year, he very much does know exactly how pissed off she was, not that he blames her.
“But you are the show,” she says. “For better or worse. You and Charlie. There isn’t a show without you.”
“Alex has as many lines as me or Charlie.”
“Alex is leaving.”
Simon is taken aback until he remembers the green makeup on Alex’s face, the way her character spent the last few episodes
of the season in a hospital bed. This must have been in the works for a while. “Does Charlie know?”
“You’d have to ask him.”
Simon’s going to miss Alex. It doesn’t make sense—he’s known for months that he was leaving the show. The idea of missing
her shouldn’t feel new.
“You told Alex I was thinking of leaving,” Simon says, piecing it together. “When she didn’t sign, you let her know that I
wasn’t signing either. Did you make her the same offer? Producer credit? A seat at the table?”
“I don’t think the show can survive losing both you and Alex at the same time,” Lian says, which is its own kind of answer.
“Listen. This show is going to be my legacy. And it’s probably going to be yours too. You might want to think about what that
means.”
Simon knows she doesn’t mean it to come off as vaguely menacing, but it does anyway. It’s possible—probable—that Out There will always be what he’s best known for, that it will haunt the rest of his career.
Still, there’s something about the word legacy that shifts his perspective.
This show matters to people. He always feels a little let down when a show he likes ends abruptly, or when a character leaves without a satisfying resolution.
Maybe, if he’s leaving, the least he can do is give the writers time to give his character a good send-off.
“Can I tell the network you’ll do next season?” Lian asks. It’s a testament to how well she knows Simon that she isn’t fazed
that he hasn’t said anything in about five minutes.
“I need to think about it.”
“You have a week.”
After ending the call, Simon has to pace the apartment for a little while. Doing half a season feels manageable. He isn’t
sure he’ll enjoy it, but he can get behind the idea of finishing things right. Closure, maybe. Narrative closure for his role on the show,
professional closure for Simon.
It occurs to him that this is another conversation he should be having with his agent, and the fact that he hasn’t even talked
to Ken about the entire play debacle is—well, Jamie may be onto something when he says Ken is useless, or at least useless
for Simon. But right now, Simon is still mentally awarding himself star stickers for eating three meals a day. He’s counting
binge reading romance novels as radical self-care. Firing his agent—and, oh God, finding a new one—does not feel possible.
Instead he emails Ken and asks him to see what they can get from the production company. Seeing it in writing, he feels . . .
not great, but optimistic. That’s enough, for now.
The idea that Charlie might not know about Alex leaving is bothering Simon more than he knows what to do with. He can’t just
tell Charlie—at least, he doesn’t think he can. It’s too messy to throw a bomb into somebody else’s friendship.
Instead he goes right to Alex, texts her what Lian told him, and then sends what might be the most incriminating message he’s ever written: “Does Charlie know?” He feels like his intentions are in flashing letters all over his phone screen.
Only “give Charlie a hug for me” would be worse, and maybe not even that, because if anybody got that message from Simon, they’d assume his phone was hacked.
A few minutes later, he gets an answer from Alex: “yeah, told him as soon as I started thinking about it.”
So, back when Charlie was carjacking Simon to deliver a lecture about the importance of giving people a chance to say goodbye,
he already knew Alex was leaving. He wonders if Alex got the same lecture and doubts it. Their friendship is so light, so . . .
breezy. Simon’s never had a light and breezy friendship in his life.
His phone buzzes with another message: “so are you two talking?”
In order to answer that, Simon would need to define some terms. Does forwarding Charlie the pictures of Edie that Jamie sends
him constitute talking?
But of course it does. Just because nothing’s being said doesn’t mean they aren’t talking. It makes the fact of their talking
more significant—they’re finding things to say, pulling them out of thin air, just so a day doesn’t go by without some kind
of contact. He texts back “yes.” He doesn’t qualify it, doesn’t explain.
“You’re both really dumb and I hope you know that,” Alex writes.
Simon has nothing at all to do other than eat expensive salads and occasionally replenish his supply of face serums. So he
takes out his laptop and starts watching Out There from the first episode of the first season.
He’d forgotten that right from the beginning, he and Charlie were in nearly every scene together.
At the time, he assumed this was Lian putting them in the narrative equivalent of a get-along shirt.
Now, though, he can see how well he and Charlie played off one another.
These days, when a scene comes together, Simon assumes it’s due to the kind of chemistry you earn after putting in thousands of hours.
But it was like this from the start. They never had to do dozens of takes. It just worked, even when Charlie was drunk and