Chapter Thirty-Six
Milo
My whole life I wanted this. This moment. And now, here it is. Best Lead. Best Lead. The odds are on me to win the thing. Exactly where I always wanted to be in my career – the shit I used to dream of. An award for theatre.
Except I’m – here. On a plane, wearing actual thermal clothing I raided the airport for, my stupid neon coat pushed into my bag.
And I’m flying coach. Coach. And you know what?
I am so goddamn happy to be in coach. I’m in coach, on a plane to Norway.
I’m not downtown, in a Louis Vuitton tux, next to Jeremy Allen White and Emma Stone.
Instead, I’m beside a woman who is knitting what looks like a green-striped dog jumper (it has four holes – one for each leg, I guess) and a dude who is chewing beef jerky.
He has headphones in, and he’s . . . ah.
He’s watching the FA&Cs on his seat screen.
We’re delayed. Some sort of air traffic control problem or something? I lean my head back, watch the muted awards ceremony. I wonder if my seat is empty. I wonder if Jameson made it. He keeps calling me, but I meant it when I said I wanted to do this alone this time. No help. Just me. Just Allie.
I handed my speech to him, sealed in an envelope. ‘You need to ask no questions,’ I told him. ‘This is something I have to do alone. No you. No Iris.’
‘I hear you.’ He smiled like a proud father. ‘Just saying, if you don’t win,’ said Jameson, ‘I’m not promising I won’t post this speech somewhere. I just know it’s going to be fire.’
‘Dude?’
Ah, shit, the guy next to me has seen me staring at his TV. Slowly, he unhooks a headphone.
‘Can I help you with something?’ he asks.
I stare at him. ‘What? I . . . No.’
‘Are you confused or in the wrong seat?’
‘I . . . don’t think so?’
‘It’s just, you’re staring at my TV. You can always use your own. We’ve all got one.’
And he turns back, puts his headphone back in, and carries on watching the awards.
I stifle laughter. Boy, I love coach. Coach keeps me grounded. Coach doesn’t give two shits about what you have to offer the world. They want to sit in their seats and they want to watch some TV and drink a tiny can of Sprite and be left the hell alone.
On screen, there are tuxedos and dresses for miles.
Friends. Enemies. People I really, truly admire.
The kinds of people who made want to act.
Those people who expressed a part of such real humanity in their work that it made me understand myself just a little more.
And there was a time that I wanted to be in that room, with them, above anything.
It didn’t matter that my craft had rough edges and I knew it: the overacting, the inability to really get to the emotional truth of a character.
The self-consciousness I pretended didn’t exist, that always kept me from losing myself totally in a scene.
I’d have given anything at all to be there.
Even when they didn’t want me – especially when they didn’t want me.
That meant love. That meant acceptance. And now love means one thing: it means Allie. And I want to be wherever she is.
The pilot announces we have a window of airspace. We’ll be shortly preparing for take-off.