Seven Miranda
Seven
Miranda
2008
... you don’t treat me like you should. You’re so bad, but so, so good ...
Miranda sings along as she draws a thick black line across her eyelid and follows with mascara, blinking when she’s done and evaluating her reflection in the mirror. She’s dressed in a tube top, robin’s-egg blue, with a black leather jacket to give the pastels an edge. The top works with her low-slung jeans to show off her belly-button piercing. She’s curled her hair and put on her favorite hoops.
It’s her best outfit, and she wants to feel good today. Because today she has finally—and ironically—reached her twenty-first birthday.
Miranda takes the stairs two at a time and makes coffee and breakfast—peanut butter toast with grapefruit on the side. She’s not doing the green smoothies anymore. They were too much work; so were the gratitude exercises, and so was the accountability partner, a woman who was rumored to have also relapsed, and whom Miranda has not heard from since.
But Miranda is feeling good. Things are stable. The Bennington Bookshop wrapped without incident, and she hasn’t had to see George or Tyler since. She even has a meeting with her agency this afternoon about a new movie—a real one, with an A-list costar.
She hums to herself as she drinks her coffee and scrolls through her messages. There’s one from her mom and one from her agent, both wishing her a happy birthday. Miranda replies with hearts and sets the phone down.
After a few minutes she picks it up again. What she’s really hoping for is a message from Zane. When TLOYL returned from Venezuela, she set aside her pride and texted him several times before he replied and finally agreed to meet up. She felt that he owed it to her, at the very least. Miranda imagined it would be a grand reunion, something straight out of the old Hollywood movies; she wore a black dress with a plunging neckline and even had one of the MUAs on the Holiday Heartwarmers set do her makeup beforehand. The bar they met at in Westlake was classy, famous for star sightings. She felt her heart race uncontrollably when she saw his car pull up outside.
But Zane was underdressed in a T-shirt, jacket, and Chuck Taylors. Well, dressed for New York Fashion Week rather than the old glamour she’d been going for. And he didn’t look happy.
“Hey,” she’d said softly, moving in to give him a hug that he stiffly returned. “You look great.” Their outfits may have been mismatched, but he was tanned, a little sunburned, and his hair was windswept as though he’d walked straight from the hacienda’s fields and into the bar. He’d grown out his facial hair, the baby face he once had replaced with a more defined jawline and harder features. He was the most beautiful thing Miranda had ever seen.
“So what’s this all about?” Zane asked as they sat down.
Miranda’s smile froze on her face as she tried to read his expression, confused. “What’s this all—you’re back. We’re back. I wanted to see you as soon as I could.”
“That so?” He was looking at his hands, avoiding her eyes. A waiter came, and Miranda, trying to keep up appearances for him, ordered a root beer. She caught Zane watching her while she did and looked down at her lap. They’d spent very little time together during their relationship that wasn’t fogged by the influence of one substance or another. The moment that the thought crossed Miranda’s mind, she wondered whether that was what he had meant in the courtroom the day he got his sentence. Were they recognizable to each other without their vices?
He ordered a Cherry Coke.
“Zane,” she said when the waiter had left and then returned with their drinks, and still Zane hadn’t picked up the conversation again. “Come on. What’s wrong?”
He ran his hands through his hair, looked out the window. “I heard you were fooling around with someone on the set of your movie. So—I was kind of surprised you wanted to get together, that’s all.”
Miranda’s heart twisted painfully. She tried to think of something to say. Instead, she took a sip of her soda.
“So you don’t deny it,” Zane said, finally looking her in the eyes.
“Did we have some kind of agreement when you were in Venezuela? Because the way we left it,” Miranda said slowly, “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see you again. Your family sure didn’t want me to. And you were giving me all sorts of mixed signals. Whatever I did on set, it was after I hadn’t heard a word from you for nearly six months.”
Zane shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess you’re right. I just didn’t think you’d run into the arms of the first guy out of rehab who looked at you sideways.”
“Ohh-kay.” Miranda rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s just—”
“No, it’s fine.” Zane wrapped both hands around his glass; below the high-top, his knee was bouncing. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be bitter. Maybe we just—met too young. We have our whole lives ahead of us, you know?”
“I know,” Miranda said flatly.
“Maybe we just need to grow up.”
Miranda shrugged and looked out the window. There was a couple across the street walking a dog. The man sneezed, and the woman took a Kleenex out of her pocket for him, taking the leash so he had both hands free. For some reason it made Miranda want to cry.
There was a time Zane might have done that for her. Back in their party days she would lean into him at the end of the night, letting the sounds of the music get muffled on someone’s couch somewhere while Zane stroked her hair and made up stories to keep her awake. She wonders whether he even remembers that, the way he’s acting now. She would have asked him if he wasn’t being such a jerk.
So instead she said, “Whatever.” And threw back her root beer.
After what she’d been through the past two years, she felt plenty grown up. And it was Zane’s loss if he didn’t recognize that.
They hadn’t spoken much since then—Zane’s dad made him work as a roadie on a summer old-rock-star-revival tour, and their lives continued to go in different directions from there.
Miranda wakes up her phone again, closes and opens the messaging app to refresh it. Because still, it’s her birthday. Maybe he’ll call, or at least text. Maybe he’ll send her flowers or a note or something, any kind of message. He never said they couldn’t be friends. Miranda tiptoes to the front door to make sure she hasn’t missed a package.
Nope.
Whatever—today is not about Zane, and besides, she already has romance in her life. Lately it comes in the form of Taha, a minor prince from the Emirates, who has enough money for a whole fleet of Audis and three yachts in three different parts of the world. And he’s throwing her a huge party tonight at Delphi, a Calabasas club he bought out just for her. It’s going to be the best birthday party she’s ever had, he’s promised—cage dancers, open bar all night, hip-hop duo Deez and Straight A performing live, fireworks on the back patio.
Everything will be incredible, Miranda’s sure. But she’s not sure if any party could be the best she’s ever had without Germaine and Sicily.
Miranda settles back down to finish her coffee. There’s a ding on her phone, and she scrambles for it, but it’s Sicily.
Happy birthday biyotch!!!! You better party your ASS off for me today!! Don’t ride the bull 3 3
Miranda laughs to herself just as a message from Germaine follows.
Birthday Gurrlll !! Live it up babes. If you see any bulls, don’t ride them xx
They were both referring to Miranda’s eighteenth birthday—the last one, she realizes, that they celebrated together. They’d been flush with cash and confidence. Miranda had just wrapped shooting on her second movie, and Sicily was about to go on tour for the first time. Germaine didn’t seem thrilled about her parents’ plans to send her to business school, but she brought the glamour and aloof confidence.
They started in Santa Monica and moved east, with a limo booked for the whole night, hitting a five-star restaurant for dinner and then on to the Sunset Strip, pretending to complain about all the paparazzi who followed them around—but, really, the attention made them giddy. They were stumbling over themselves by 9:30 p.m.
Miranda doesn’t remember much about that night, but she does remember that at some point the driver started swerving to avoid a pap car coming up fast on their left. After a few maneuvers—and no directions from the three women in the back seat as to where he should go, because they were all laugh-crying about Tyler Xavier’s new haircut—he must have made the executive decision to flee into the hills. Eventually he pulled over and knocked on the partition.
“Excuse me, misses,” he said. “I’m sorry, but we have gotten off track. Where would you like to go next?”
Miranda had squinted out the window. It looked like they were on a neighborhood street. “Where are we?” she muttered.
“Yes, sir, where are we?” G demanded in a voice that sounded like her father’s. Sicily giggled.
“Somewhere around Eagle Rock,” the limo driver said. “But I can take you wherever you’d like to go.”
“We could stay here, couldn’t we?” Sicily said. “It looks nice here.”
“I don’t know.” Germaine looked a little disgusted. “What’s around here?”
“Sir, can you drive around and see if there’s a bar?” Miranda asked.
He nodded, pulling out of the side street and onto a main road. They all looked out the window until Sicily pointed at one.
“What about that? The Pour House?”
Miranda glanced at Germaine. She was the oldest and most worldly; she’d traveled farther and had more money than Miranda and Sicily ever hoped to. They looked up to Germaine. She’d preceded them on Kidz Klub , and it was a secret kept between Sicily and Miranda that they’d both been super intimidated by her at first.
Germaine made a face. “Looks like a place with super sticky floors.”
But this time Sicily pushed back. “It looks cozy,” she said. “It’s Miranda’s birthday! It’s up to her.”
Miranda squinted out the window. It seemed like a dive. But she was drunk and happy, and if they took the limo all the way back to LA, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stay awake for another bar.
“Pour House,” she said, starting to clap. “Pour House! Pour House!”
“Pour House! Pour House!” Sicily joined in, both of them getting up in G’s face.
Germaine huffed, pushing them away. “Okay, okay! Driver, to the Pour House!”
It was pretty small inside and very much a local place. A few men in flannel shirts glanced their way when they walked in, but to the girls’ surprise, they turned and ignored them.
“Three shots of Fireball for the birthday girl!” Sicily said, pushing Miranda forward to the bar. The bartender was a large man in a stained T-shirt who looked at them suspiciously. Either the people in this bar didn’t know who the 3AM Girls were, or they didn’t care.
“You ladies got some ID?” he asked.
Miranda scoffed, but Germaine said, “Of course, my good sir!” She reached into her sparkly clutch and pulled out her wallet. “Let me know if this works.” She slid two hundred-dollar bills across the bar.
The bartender glanced at the other patrons, who weren’t watching, and examined the Benjamins in the dim light. “Some IDs, huh?” He folded the bills together and slipped them in his shirt pocket. “Well, happy birthday.”
They whooped and hollered, throwing back Fireball and cheap rail drinks. The bar was playing old country music, and Sicily put her hands on her hips and taught them how to two-step.
They sang Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man,” putting their arms around each other and swaying in a circle.
It was nearly closing when G pointed into a dark corner and said, “What is that ?”
It was a mechanical bull.
“ Yes ! ” Sicily yelled. “You have to, Miranda!”
“No way,” Miranda said, but she was laughing. Before she knew it, they’d pulled the bartender from behind his counter so he could operate the bull, and Miranda was straddling the worn old seat. She grasped the handle on the saddle and raised a hand in the air.
“Go, Miranda! Go, go, Miranda!” the girls screamed on the other side of the partition.
The bartender turned it on, pulled a lever, and made a face at the sickening mechanical screech that came from the machine.
“Doesn’t see a lot of action,” he said. “Most of the guys’ backs are too bad for it.”
And that was probably why, when the bartender went for the lowest setting, it malfunctioned and jumped to high.
The front end of the bull rushed toward Miranda’s face at full speed, and the next thing she knew, she was on the ground.
“Okay, okay!” Sicily was saying brightly. “Let’s get you outside. G, some towels?”
But Germaine, ever their defender, was upbraiding the bartender. “I could sue your ass so hard that your grandchildren will have debt.”
The man put up his hands. “There’s a sign right there, lady. Ride at your own risk. I know my rights.”
“Towels?” Miranda asked thickly. Her face felt wet. She touched a finger to it and gasped when it came back covered in blood.
“G, come on!” Sicily snapped.
They took Miranda out and sat her on the curb next to the limo.
“It’s just a bloody nose,” G said, helping Miranda tip her head back and dabbing at her face with a wad of napkins.
“It better not be broken,” Miranda groaned. “I can’t go to the premieres with a jacked-up nose.”
“I’m sure it’s not.” Sicily patted her shoulder.
“I’m going to get some water to wash that stuff off your face.” Germaine balled up the used napkins. “You look like Carrie .”
Miranda half nodded and kept her head back as G walked inside. The night was warm. From her vantage point, she could see the dark sky beyond the flickering neon of the bar. She couldn’t see the stars—she rarely ever could in LA—but it seemed darker, quieter here than downtown, and she could imagine them out there somewhere.
“You have a good birthday?” Sicily asked.
Miranda laughed. “The best.”
“We’ll do it again next year.”
Miranda could hear the smile in her voice. But where on the globe would Sicily be a year from now?
As if reading her thoughts, Sicily rested her head on Miranda’s shoulder. “I hope it’s always like this,” she said quietly.
Miranda touched the side of her cheek to the top of Sicily’s head. “What do you mean?” she asked, even though she already knew.
“I hope we don’t grow up and get boring. Get too busy for each other.”
Miranda shoved her a little. “You think I’d ever get too busy for you, Sis?”
“No.”
“And I know you won’t, either. And neither will G.”
Sicily shoved her back. “I know. So it’s a deal?”
“Deal.”
That was Miranda’s best birthday ever.
Tonight there will be hundreds of people at her party, but how many of them will be actual friends? Most of them will be hangers-on—Hollywood hangers-on, oil-money hangers-on. Every guy with a designer suit and leased European car will call himself a producer. Miranda’s mother will be there because Miranda couldn’t convince her not to be, and she’ll probably end up sleeping with one of them, now that she’s broken up with Doug and then, after him, Manuel, a plastic surgeon who remade her face. It was a very unsettling feeling, seeing the mother who bore and raised you come home with an entirely new face.
By the time Miranda realized Bobbie had stopped going to therapy, it was too late to convince her mother to course correct. It’s a pattern: whenever Miranda’s on the upswing, Bobbie stops parenting and starts celebrating. When Miranda crashes, that’s when she puts on the Mommie Dearest persona, all tough love and discipline. But if having a party girl for a mother is the price Miranda has to pay for career success, so be it.
Bobbie keeps saying that she and Miranda can be the 3AM Girls now. Miranda keeps ignoring her.
It doesn’t matter, Miranda tells herself as she drives to her afternoon appointment. The party will be fun. Taha will make her feel incredible at the after-after-party, when everything is over and it’s just the two of them.
And she’s working! Miranda adjusts her top and feels extremely professional as she walks into the agency office with her script in a binder in the crook of her elbow. She shakes hands with Sam, who took her back as a client after The Bennington Bookshop wrapped, and the others, excited about the potential project.
“I’ve read the script and I absolutely love it,” Miranda says, sitting up as straight as she can and being as enthusiastic as possible. The film is a fictionalization of the international pop scene in the seventies, centering on an ABBA-like group and their rise to superstardom. It’s going to be a career maker, sexy and glamorous with a rock-star edge. Miranda is vying for the part of Tove, one of the young women in the group.
“Well, I thought it’d be a great part for you,” Sam says. “ Bookshop brought you back to the land of the living, and I know you’ve got the chops to really shine in a role like Tove’s.”
“Right.” One of the other agents, a tall man with slicked-back hair, scratches his nose. He’s more executive level, the ringleader, Miranda can tell, and the two younger agents besides Sam are new faces. They exude the hunger and swaggery confidence of young men who have been promised a highly lucrative career. “So you’re up against Ellie Dakota and Jade Dempsey. But we managed to get you an earlier audition time than them.”
Ellie and Jade were even younger than Miranda, and both had already been on the last cover of Vanity Fair ’s “Young Hollywood” cover.
“Maybe I need to get on that Vanity cover to complete my résumé,” Miranda jokes, laughing a little.
“That ship has sailed,” Sam says flatly.
Miranda looks at him, but he avoids her eyes. Instead, he looks down at the script and says, “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Miranda stands and reads a monologue of Tove’s, in which the character is contemplating the trajectory of her life in an Amsterdam Red Light District club. They give Miranda advice as she goes, helping her tweak her delivery and consider different emotions Tove might be feeling. Sam does a scene with her, and then they talk about audition strategy.
Miranda feels confident, and the lines come easily—she loves the idea of Tove. She could bring so much to the gritty, struggling-star character arc. She wants to be Tove, in a way—this movie could bring her the success that Eurovision brought to the complex, fictional rock star.
But she can’t get Sam’s comment out of her head. It nags at her more and more as they go on.
One of the younger agents’ cells rings, interrupting them.
“Sorry,” he says. “Gotta take this.”
Miranda takes the opportunity to excuse herself and go to the restroom. At the sink she runs her hands under cold water and presses them to her face. The unflattering overhead lights make her look older than she is.
“I’m twenty-one,” she says aloud. “If I weren’t here, I’d still be in college.”
And if Ellie and Jade weren’t where they were, they’d still be in high school.
Miranda shakes her head. It isn’t age that matters. It’s talent. And she still has plenty of that to share.
Setting her jaw and squaring her shoulders, she heads back to Sam’s office. But voices outside the door make her pause.
“... deluded,” one of them is saying. “The only ship that’s sailing for her now are those Arab yachts where she’s a whore for hire.”
“Yeah, if Taha wasn’t giving so much for this picture, I wouldn’t even consider her for it,” the other says. “She wouldn’t even get hired as an extra.”
“All right, come on.” Sam sounds tired.
But the first man laughs. “Honestly, she should just jump to porn now and stop wasting everyone’s time. Including her own.”
“Okay,” Sam says, not as sharply as Miranda would have liked. “Take it easy.”
The floor is unsteady under Miranda’s feet. She feels like she’s about to throw up. The thing is, she’s not deluded at all about the mistakes she’s made, or the chances she’s thrown away, or the talent she’s wasted. But apparently she’s been deluded about one important thing: how little people think of her.
She doesn’t pay much attention to the rest of the meeting. Sam picks up a little gift bag from his desk as he walks her down to the parking lot.
“You okay?” he asks. “I thought that went all right.”
Miranda just nods numbly.
“Okay,” he says doubtfully. Then he lifts the bag. “Happy birthday, Montana. Hope you have a good one tonight.”
She takes it and walks away without saying goodbye.
In the car Miranda finds a bottle of pink champagne and a cheesy little birthday card.
A familiar feeling of fury and oblivion overtakes her as she rips off the foil and pops the cork right there in the driver’s seat, taking a long and painful swig. Then another.
Then she pulls out of the lot.
Why do so many people despise her? Plenty of other actors have had problems with drinking. Plenty have had bad relationships. Some have the most flagrant affairs and bitter divorces; some are estranged from their children or vilified by their parents. But these things don’t seem to destroy their careers. Tyler X has been to rehab, and he was just cast in a superhero movie. He was on the cover of People magazine only last month, for god’s sake, with an angelic smile on his inane face.
Miranda presses her foot to the gas. All she wants to do is get home and hide from the world in bed for a few hours. She’ll drown herself in champagne until she feels numb enough to go to her own party.
The yellow light a few yards in front of her on Mulholland is stale, and it suddenly turns red as Miranda barrels through the intersection.
She swears, and then swears again when the whoop of a police siren sounds behind her.
“Shit,” she says, pulling over and looking for a place to stash the champagne. It spills on her a little. “Shit, shit, shit.”
The officer is at her driver’s-side window surprisingly fast.
“Ma’am?” he says sternly, and there is no doubt in Miranda’s mind that he sees the bottle in the purse shoved haphazardly behind the passenger seat.
“Yes?” To her horror, it’s followed by a hiccup.
“Step out of the car please, ma’am.”
She can’t. The day can’t end like this. “Officer, I’m sorry, but I’m really late for something. I’ll pay a fine, a speeding ticket—”
“Out of the car.”
The paparazzi will find out. She won’t get the ABBA movie. Sam will drop her again.
Miranda picks up her wallet and slowly climbs out, mind racing. The car is registered to Taha—he has more than enough money to smooth things over. Sam didn’t write her name on the card. All identifying information is in her wallet, in her hand. And maybe the cop doesn’t recognize her—he doesn’t seem to, at least.
“Step away from the car,” the officer says, and Miranda takes a big step. “License?”
“Um,” Miranda says, trying to stall.
At that moment, a cyclist on the shoulder swerves around the cop car, and a second car honks loud and long, making the police officer turn.
There is a bus pulling up to the corner. Miranda takes one step, then another, clutching her wallet and feeling like time is moving in slow motion. This is overwhelming, but if she can just slip away—
Then she speed-walks.
She has one hand up, hailing the bus driver, when the cop closes his grip around her wrist.
So that’s her twenty-first birthday. DUI and a penalty for resisting arrest.
The mug shot is up online before Bobbie comes to bail her out.
“Miranda,” Bobbie says in that pitying voice Miranda hates.
“Just—don’t,” she says.
Miranda’s making headlines again, for all the wrong reasons. She won’t be able to get insured to make the movie. It’s over.