3. Anna
ANNA
My phone rings at seven-fifteen.
My mother loves calling on her drive to the office.
I let it ring once more before I answer.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart."
"Thanks, Mom."
"Thirty years old." A pause. "How does it feel?"
I stare at the ceiling.
In Los Angeles, thirty for an actress sounds less like an age and more like a warning.
"How does it feel" really means, are you ready to come home?
I don't answer.
She laughs.
It's a genuine laugh, warm and brief.
"I can't wait to see you. I've told everyone my baby girl is coming home."
"Mom, can you bring it down a notch? I'm coming home a failure."
"Hey, that is not a failure. You gave it your best. That crazy business makes no sense; it's all luck."
“It’s not all luck.”
"That business is so messed up. It's good you're leaving. You don't want to be one of those people who leaves LA in a coffin."
"Nice visual. Mom, I'm coming, okay? You won."
"I didn't win. Don't say that."
"Sorry."
"I sent you some money for your birthday, and also to get that car a tune-up for the drive out. You should see it out here; it's gorgeous right now. What are you doing for your birthday?"
"I'm going out with some friends from class."
"Good for you."
"I have to go. Get ready for work."
My car is a 2006 Honda Civic with a check engine light that's been on for fourteen months.
The AC works on one side.
I take Cahuenga toward the diner and hit every light, which gives me time to look at the billboards. Normally, I'm excited to see what's coming out. Today it's depressing.
There's a new one up near the overpass. A movie I've never heard of, some kind of action thriller, with an actor I recognize from two other action thrillers just like it. His face is twenty feet tall.
Night Shifter 7 is coming out. Didn't even know there was a Night Shifter 1.
Below that, a streaming show. I'll never see.
Below that, a perfume ad with no words at all. Just a face. Cheekbones. The suggestion of a life I don't have.
I drive under all of it.
My check engine light flickers.
I run my lines in my head for my next class.
The diner is slow for a Thursday morning.
I tie my apron, fill the saltshakers, and don't think about the phone call.
Chloe finds me at the service station around ten.
"Is it weird that part of me is relieved for you?"
"No."
"Because you deserve a life, Anna. Like an actual life. Not—" she waves her hand at the diner, the aprons, the linoleum, all of it.
"Why not you?"
"You actually have a viable skill. Me, this is all I do."
"We're going out tonight, right?"
"Yeah, glance at table six. That's that kid," Chloe says.
"Oh yeah, he's on that high school show, right? He looks older in person."
"That's because he's twenty-seven playing fifteen."
At lunch, I pull Doug aside near the register.
"Doug, I need to give my two weeks."
He studies my face for a second.
Not surprised.
"You're never sick. Never late. I'm going to miss you."
He says it like he's joking.
But he means it.
I stand there holding my order pad, wondering when this place started feeling safer than acting.
Doug writes it down on his notepad.
No speech.
No trying to convince me to stay.
Maybe he can tell I've already left in my head.
He goes back to the register.
I go back and hand a table menus.
Chloe picks the bar. I let her because I don't care.
It's a place on Franklin we've been to many times. Dark enough that nobody cares what you look like. Cheap enough that we can each afford a drink without checking our bank accounts first.
Alex is already there when we walk in, sitting at our usual table in the back with a round waiting.
"There she is," he says. "Thirty years old."
"In this town, it's like getting cancer."
"They can cure cancer," Chloe says.
"You look exactly the same as the day I met you," Alex says.
"You're such a liar."
"You actually do when you smile."
I smile for him.
He grins and stands to hug me properly.
We sit.
The place fills up quickly and gets loud.
A jukebox still playing songs nobody paid for. Two guys at the bar yelling at a game on a television mounted too high on the wall. Glasses clinking. Somebody laughing too hard in the corner.
"To Anna," Chloe says, raising her glass.
"To Anna," Alex says.
I raise mine.
We drink.
For a while we just talk.
Real talk.
The kind you only get after years of failing alongside the same people.
Chloe's latest audition disaster. Alex's callback that still hasn't called back. The strange way this city can make you feel invisible and watched at the same time.
At some point Chloe heads to the bar for another round, and it's just me and Alex. I'm usually one and done, but it's my birthday and Chloe's buying.
"Are you okay with it?" he says. "Actually, okay."
"I think so."
"Because there's okay and there's okay."
"I know the difference."
He nods.
I can tell he doesn't believe me.
Part of me doesn't either.
"It just feels like the right door," I say. "Not the exciting door. But the right one."
"Yeah." He looks at his glass. "I get that."
Chloe comes back with drinks, and somebody feeds another dollar into the jukebox, and the place gets louder and somehow sadder at the same time.
We stay another hour.
When we finally say goodnight outside, Chloe hugs me longer than usual.
We each get into our cars.
The check engine light comes on before I've made it half a block.
I laugh.
Not because it's funny.
Because at this point the timing almost feels personal.
Still, I laugh anyway.
Alone in my car on my thirtieth birthday, driving through a city that never once learned my name.
I realize I haven't made my birthday wish.
I wish this car makes it to Montana.