Epilogue
It was the kiss that had broken the curse. Or that’s what Helen and Wich decided.
From their rental in Toronto, where they were making preparations to shoot Wistful, they watched as NTS’s publicist announced that her new project would be a character study of a fifty-something actress.
Jordan Frankly of Online Movie Madness asked how NTS could possibly play someone that age.
What followed was a few weeks of plastic surgeons on morning shows blowing up high-definition images of NTS for evidence that she’d been nipping and tucking—See here? And here?—for years.
Then, some aged politician accidentally sexted his son’s high school WhatsApp group, and the circus moved on.
“See here?” Wich said, kissing the furrow above Helen’s nose during one of those morning shows. “And here?” he repeated, this time kissing the fine lines at the corner of her eye. “And here?” he added at the base of her neck.
After that, he said no more, his lips being otherwise occupied.
Two years later, when they returned for Wistful’s Toronto debut, their phones buzzed with news that LAX’s Theme Building had collapsed, weakened, it was said, by the rumblings of the newly completed People Mover.
They stood outside Lightbox 2, holding each other, watching the parabolas fall to the crunch of concrete and the pinging of rebar until the flying saucer slid to its side, collapsing into rubble.
Their names were called from the auditorium, so they did not see the final image of the ripped banner and the single word that fluttered momentarily before sinking into a cloud of dust.
REAL