Chapter 13
After she left that evening, I ordered room service alone.
I tried watching TV, but I couldn’t find anything good.
I didn’t know what to do. I probably should’ve called my parents or a friend or something, but I was feeling the kind of lonely that other people can’t fix.
I walked into the suite’s living room, pulled the bottle of champagne from its bath of room-temperature water, unwrapped the foil, and popped the cork.
I went outside, stripped to my underwear, got in the pool, and tried to drink the champagne.
It was too warm, and so bubbly that it went up my nose a little.
I wondered why I was drinking it, why I was sitting in this plunge pool in my underwear at the Hotel Bel-Air drinking straight from a bottle of warm champagne, and I realized it was a kind of performance.
I was doing it because it looked cool, even though I was the only person who could see how cool it looked.
So I took a picture of myself and posted it online.
I looked good in the picture—collarbones visible, hair messy, bottle of champagne just visible.
I remembered something my roommate had said to me once, that there should be a word for the distance between your actual life and your Instagram Life. She had proposed fictance.
My phone started buzzing. Bob again.
_____
“I told the studio you didn’t want to play someone’s little brother, and they got it.
Then immediately—five minutes later—I get a call back from Tom Fucking Weisman himself, and he asks me what do you want?
Says they need somebody for the new Jurassic World, and they always need new X-Men.
And then he says, get this, he says, ‘I understand a talent like Kai not wanting to play somebody’s brother.
But what if he auditioned for the Somebody? ’ ”
“Wait, what?”
“They want you to read for…I can’t remember the fuckwad’s name, Gavin?”
“Gavinth? The lead?”
“Gavinth, yeah. Technically second lead, behind the girl. Seven hundred thousand guaranteed, and the back end could be worse, Kai. This movie makes money, you make money. And I’m not a psychic, but this movie is gonna piss money.
Money comes out of everywhere. Action figures.
Sequels. You even get a little cut of the video game they’re doing for the movie. Leading man.”
“With Juniper as Agrippah?”
“God, these fucking names. Yeah, you’d be opposite Juniper, if you get it.
Two kids who are absolutely exploding get their first blockbuster, and of course they do it together because they’re so tight.
So they get two breakouts with known chemistry.
It’s gold. It’s fucking platinum. I love that you said you didn’t want to be somebody’s brother.
Love it. And now you aren’t gonna be. Let me tell them yes.
Let me tell them you’ll be there on Thursday totally ready to audition for Gavinth, chemistry reading with Juniper. ”
“I need to sleep on it.”
“Kid, it doesn’t get any bigger than this.”
“I just want to sleep on it. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Good night, Gaylord, Duke of the Manor. Am I allowed to say fucking Gaylord, Zoe?”
“I’d recommend not, Bob.”
“Great. Kid, get some sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning. I’ll send you the newest rewrite of the script.”
_____
I felt nauseated. Of course you take a shot at being Gavinth, consort to the Queen.
Nine months ago, you were waiting tables, and not in a good restaurant.
You’ve been in exactly one movie. It’s about an artist who’s been dead for thirty years.
Nobody sees movies with five-word titles about dead artists.
Gods of Andromeda is good work, and you’re in the world to work.
I started to read the newest rewrite of the script.
The dialogue—and there wasn’t much of it—all seemed easily translatable into other languages.
Minimal adjectives. Action verbs. A lot of broad observations, like, “We will destroy the enemy, or the enemy will destroy us.” At one point, Gavinth literally says, “My dear Queen, the power of love is no match for the love of power.” And then there were long descriptions of battle scenes, many of which I could not follow.
But I could see a lot to like in the role.
Gavinth wanted to be the hero of the story, and his choices all made sense, which was a lot more than can be said for most screenplays.
My drama teacher told me that theater was all about building toward a recognition, and then a reversal.
It’s been like that since Aristotle. And Gavinth had a hell of a recognition—two-thirds of the way through the movie, he realizes that if he backs the invading enemy over his wife, he could end the matriarchy and seize power, so he begins to undermine Agrippah.
But even at the end, when he’s mostly a villain, you still feel his love for his homeland, and even for his Queen.
He’s just convinced himself, as we all do in the end, that his interest aligns with the world’s interest.
Also, the studio would presumably pay for a trainer, or whatever one does to develop larger muscles, since Gavinth was repeatedly described as shirtless but for his golden armor.
I took another pull on the bottle of champagne. It was dark in LA, but not really, of course, because it never got all the way dark. It got some kind of grayish orange.
Seven hundred thousand dollars. Six thirty after Bob’s commission.
I’d probably have to hire Ellen, or an Ellen.
That’d be twenty-five or thirty, I figured.
After taxes, I might end up with around four hundred thousand dollars cash.
Four hundred thousand dollars, and all I had to do was spend six months in Vancouver and maybe one month doing promotion.
Four hundred thousand dollars, cash, free and clear.
I liked thinking those words, the shape of them: Four. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.
I got out of the pool, grabbed my clothes, went inside, and emptied the champagne into the bathroom sink. I didn’t want anyone to think I’d wasted it.
_____
As I lay in bed and watched TV, Ellen invited me to a place in Bel Air for a drink.
For some reason, I felt like a drink—a cold one.
Plus, it was only five minutes away. At the bar, it took a second to find Ellen, because even though there were a lot of lights, I couldn’t see anybody’s face.
I eventually found her, along with Lon, Natalie, Studio Todd, and Katie, all crowded around a small cocktail table.
A waiter dressed in all white was hovering nearby, and I could see his uniform clearly but not the person wearing it.
Across the table, Studio Todd was telling a joke.
I could tell he was drunk, because his consonants kept slipping out from under him.
“I want you to close your eyes and imagine a family living in abject poverty. Absolute poverty. The only thing they own is a small hut with a thatched roof. Two adults and two kids inside this tiny home. Now imagine that it catches fire. Their home. It’s burning to the ground. Are you imagining it?”
“Yes, I’m imagining it,” Ellen said.
“Why are you imagining that? Why are you doing that to their home?”
“Wait, is that the entire fucking joke?”
“That’s the joke.”
“That’s not a joke,” Ellen said. “It’s a shitty morality play. Kai, welcome. Todd is ruining our evening with his humor.”
Studio Todd waved the criticism away with one hand and took a drink of his beer with the other. The waiter brought me a glass of white wine I hadn’t ordered.
“Kai, no shit you are incredible in the movie,” Todd said.
“Thanks.” The pianist playing behind Todd finished a song, and I applauded quietly but no one else did. “I really appreciate your support.”
“Well, it’s a special film,” he said. “You don’t get ’em that often. You gotta make a lot of Alvin and the Chipmunks to get an Andy Warhol Never Gets Old. Or I did, anyway. You hit a grand slam in your first at bat.”
“I’m not much for baseball,” Lon said, “but I like that metaphor. So you’re going to get behind it then.”
“We’re all the way behind it,” Todd said. “We’re going to spend twice as much promoting the movie as you spent making it.”
“Only because we made it for fourteen,” Natalie piped in. “With the most bankable star in Hollywood.”
Kathryn showed up then and hugged her way around the table, ending with me. “Kai,” she said, “Brian called me today and told me you’re taking him on a journey from Garon to Gavinth.”
“He loves a journey,” I said.
“He does. X to Y, and Y to Z. But you’ll adore him.
Really. And honestly, it’s perfect synergy, because it’s great for our movie to have you and Junie in his movie.
And by the time you’re done making that, I’ll steal you back to be in whatever I do next.
We’ll just trade you back and forth for the rest of our careers.
I love it. I am so thrilled for you. Of course, you’ll have to win them over in the room, but you will.
You will. There’s never been anyone quite like you.
” Kathryn grabbed a glass of wine and raised it.
“Here’s to Andy Warhol and Gods of Andromeda and the mighty future of our young actors. ”
Everyone toasted, and then Natalie said, “Why are we toasting a movie that Lon and I aren’t making?”
“Because Kai’s reading for the lead,” Kathryn said.
Studio Todd looked at me and said, “I like you for it, kid.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Todd motioned to the omnipresent waiter for another.
“He shouldn’t do it,” Lon said to Ellen.
“Who shouldn’t what what, Lon?”
“Kai shouldn’t take that Brian Arawas movie.”
“Fuck off. Of course he should.”
Lon took a sip of his drink.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I asked after a minute.
Lon leaned forward, his elbows on the tiny table.
“It used to be. There used to be a saying in town: But can he hold a gun? You’d see somebody in something, and they’d look good.
Handsome. Good actor. Natural. Big talent.
And the execs would say, But can he hold a gun?
Because the weird thing about Hollywood is that for all its liberal hippie kombucha peacenikking, you can’t get far if you can’t hold a gun.
Think about every big actor. Tom Cruise—great at holding a gun.
Arguably his biggest talent. Denzel Washington—what a fucking gun holder.
Paul Giamatti? Great actor. Really. Brilliant.
Can’t hold a gun, though. Just doesn’t look right.
The, uh, fucking Twilight guy. Rob Pattinson. What an actor. Can’t hold a gun.”
“Lon,” Ellen said.
“There’s no guns in Gods of Andromeda,” I said. “It’s all swords and spells.”
“It’s a saying. There’s a certain kind of person who just looks all wrong with a gun, or a sword, or a magic wand, or whatever the fuck. You’re a good actor. But you try to play some barrel-chested sword-toting swashbuckler, you’re fucked. You can’t hold a gun.”
“Lon,” Ellen said again. “No career mentorship after eight p.m. Also you just want him for your next project.”
“I do have a script you’d be perfect for,” Lon said, “but that’s not it. The kid’s going to the graveyard where all the other dumb twenty-year-old fucks go if he takes that movie. We all know forty of ’em who aren’t working anymore.”
“Shut the fuck up, Lon,” Ellen said.
“Am I wrong?” he asked.
“What you are is drunk,” Ellen said.
I took a sip of my wine.
_____
The funny thing was, I knew a fair amount about holding a gun.
I owned a gun, somewhere. My grandfather had given it to me on my thirteenth birthday.
A double-barreled .410 made in Italy. It was probably still at my parents’ house.
We’d shot skeet a few times, but I’d only killed something with it once.
My Pawpaw came to town for Thanksgiving and we ended up quail hunting in southern Indiana.
We had hunting dogs with us and I wore a bright orange vest. I was a freshman, and terrified of killing anything. It had just started happening.
The gun felt like a lot of responsibility, which of course it was. I kept thinking that if I turned and shot, I could kill my father, or my grandfather. It felt weird to hold all that killing in one hand, barrel pointed down.
I wondered if Lon had ever shot anything. He didn’t look like it.
Ellen leaned in toward me and said, “Seriously, Kai. No one at this bar including the pianist knows less about twenty-first-century Hollywood than Lon, okay? That’s why he has Natalie. Todd likes you for it, and he’s the executive on the movie, so his opinion actually counts.”
I nodded, but I was thinking about hunting in southern Indiana with my grandfather.
He only had a year to live, as it turned out, but he was healthy then.
I remember telling Pawpaw that I’d been cast as Hamlet, and he said, “ ‘The devil hath power / To assume a pleasing shape.’ ” I was surprised my Pawpaw knew the play.
“You must keep reading,” he told me. “You’ll never be alone in this world so long as you have a library card. ”
In my memory, the dogs flushed out a covey of quail moments later.
I raised my gun to my shoulder and carefully took aim a little bit away from the quail.
I wanted to look like I was trying without risking an actual kill.
But I was scared of the gun’s kick against my shoulder, and so as I squeezed the trigger my arm jerked a little, and I watched in stunned horror as a quail fell in a descending spiral out of the sky.
I felt my grandfather clapping me on the back. My dad shouted that I was a natural as one of the dogs came running toward us with the dead quail in its mouth.