Chapter 12
In the pages we shot the next day, Andy is at a gallery opening in Italy—the last opening of his life, his Last Supper paintings.
Kai and I are mostly just in the background commenting on how he looks (frail, unwell) and the overall pseudohappy vibe of the event (the gallerist who’d commissioned the work was hospitalized, dying of AIDS, but everyone was trying to pretend all was fine).
There were reproductions of the paintings in our fake gallery that had been built inside a Pittsburgh warehouse, and in between set-ups I kept looking at them.
“You like this stuff, huh?” Kai asked.
“I don’t understand it, but I like it.”
“That’s how I feel about people,” Kai said, and I started to say something, but he had already walked away to talk with Lon and Natalie.
I stayed in front of the painting for a while—a huge re-creation of da Vinci’s The Last Supper but with swaths of Andy’s colors.
I thought about how I was looking at a reproduction of a Warhol painting, which was itself a reproduction of a Last Supper plaster sculpture Andy bought in Times Square, which was itself a reproduction of the da Vinci painting. Warhol would’ve liked that, I suspect.
Warhol was a Catholic, like me I guess, even though I don’t go to Mass.
The paintings weren’t jokes, but they didn’t feel especially sacred either.
Again I found myself wondering whether it was all just skin-deep with him.
I looked up and Matthew, in his silver wig and skeletal frame, was standing next to me.
“I still don’t get Andy,” he told me. “Fortunately for me, Andy also didn’t get Andy, so I’m safe.”
_____________
We didn’t wrap that week until four a.m. on Saturday.
I slept until noon and then read some poetry from an anthology called American Poetics that had been part of my Modernism at Night curriculum.
I’d been trying to disentangle myself from my phone, which rather ruled my life, and so it was past two p.m. when I finally got out of bed and found that my phone, plugged into the bathroom wall outlet, contained three missed calls and several text messages from Jamie.
I called her. “What’s going on?”
“They want you for Gods of Andromeda. A million two up front and the back end doesn’t suck, but we’re gonna try to bump it up a little.
You won’t get first dollar rev share or anything, but if the movie makes money you’ll make money.
The book is hot. Brian Arawas is brilliant.
I love this for you. What are you thinking? ”
“One point two million dollars?”
“Correct. And if they make sequels, we’ll negotiate higher from there.”
I did the math: My lawyer would get $60,000 for the contract. Jamie would get $120,000. Then there’s Katie’s retainer, and a stylist, and taxes, and whatever whatever. I’m still walking out of that deal with half a million dollars in cash.
“Yes,” I said.
“YES!” Jamie said. “Yes! I’ll call the studio now and get it closed.”
_____
One thing about my mom: She was not stingy with her pride.
She always told me she was proud of me. Even after a bad audition, she was proud.
She’d always call me and my brother “my pride and joy,” but when I was a kid, I thought she was saying “my pride enjoy,” like she enjoyed feeling pride in us.
I knew how proud she would be of me booking the lead in such a huge movie.
I could picture her face—sallow and worn, one of those faces that reminds you that gravity is pulling us down—lighting up when I told her I booked it. So what, Andy might say.
I called Kai first. “I booked Agrippah.”
“HOLY SHIT YES YOU DID! OF COURSE YOU DID!” he shouted. “Yes! I just punched the air like a character in a sports movie. You’re Agrippah!”
“Queen of the Realm,” I said.
“I’m gonna try to get in as an extra just to see you in your hot Agrippah outfits.”
“Queens in the Realm mostly wear full-length robes, actually.”
“Stop, it’s getting too sexy,” he said. “Oh my God! Juniper, this is amazing. We gotta celebrate. I don’t have a ‘we gotta celebrate’ budget but I know someone who does. Hold on; I’ll call you right back.”
He hung up on me. I tried to go back to reading poetry, but I was buzzing with the thrill of it.
One point two million. A proper lead in a properly big movie.
Kai called back. “Okay we’re meeting at a bar called the Pelican at three p.m. You and me and maybe a wealthy benefactor.
Drinks are on me. By which I mean on him. ”
“I don’t drink,” I reminded him.
“I know. I googled ‘best mocktail in Pittsburgh,’ and the Pelican came up. You’re going to get absolutely sloshed on virgin mojitos.”
“Okay,” I said after a minute. “I’ll see you at three.”
_____
Matthew Malone was waiting for me outside the bar, wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. “Oh, Junie,” he said, “congratulations,” and hugged me. As we walked into the bar, I said, “Did you really tell Tom Weisman you’d make another movie with the studio if he cast me?”
“Maybe,” Matthew said. “But only because I was gonna do that movie anyway.” He smiled with half his mouth and I said, “Thank you, Matthew,” and he said, “Our business runs on favors. You’ll pay me back someday by casting me in a movie you’re producing when I’m old and decrepit.
You’ve got the drive, Junie. You’re talented, but it’s the ambition that’ll get you where you’re going. ”
When Matthew got to the bar, he took off his sunglasses and the bartender did a double take before saying, “Are you…who I think you are?”
“Indeed. Some friends and I are celebrating this afternoon and hoping to rent out your bar.”
“Well, there’s basically no one here.” There were, in fact, two people in a booth, staring mouths agape at Matthew Malone.
“We’d like to have a private event.”
“Sir, I’m, uh, I’m not sure I can just kick people out of here. I’d have to call my manager.”
“Would fifty thousand dollars be sufficient for a private party rental for a couple hours?”
The guy nodded rather furiously. “Yeah. Yeah. That would, uh, yeah, I’ll figure it out.”
“And as apology for the inconvenience, I’ll pay their bar tab,” he said, nodding toward the couple in the booth.
“Sure, of course,” the bartender said. The couple was soon gone.
Kai showed up a few minutes later and enveloped me in a hug. “You’re a proper movie star now,” he said. “Even if our movie sucks—”
“Which it doesn’t,” Matthew interrupted.
“Which of course it doesn’t but even if it does, you’re…I mean…you’re gonna be Matthew Fucking Malone, wearing sunglasses and a hat everywhere you go.”
“Well,” said Matthew, “let’s not get out of hand. There is only one Matthew Fucking Malone.”
_____
I drank three different mocktails—one with some kind of fake gin that was called Juniper Everlasting, which we all got a kick out of.
Matthew drank his standard old-fashioneds, and plenty of them.
Kai had a couple beers, and we talked about the shoot so far, and how we only had two weeks left.
“Kai will remember this as his first real movie,” Matthew said, “but I wonder how you’ll remember it. ”
“As my first really good movie,” I told him.
“I’ll remember it for the two of you,” he said. “Two kids who clearly love their work and each other. You’ve reminded me why I do it. Why I still want it, in spite of everything.”
Kai put his arm around me, and I felt really cared for in that moment. But of course I did. I can’t help but associate success with being loved; I was trained to do it.