Page 37 of Hollywood, Ending

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Back at the hotel, we had some time before going out to meet up with Juniper’s friends. I wanted to tell her about it, but we were talking about the movie, and she couldn’t stop criticizing her performance and Kathryn’s choices until finally I said, “I think the movie is good.”

“Of course it’s good,” she said. “It’s the biggest opportunity of my lifetime, and maybe of yours, too. That’s why it matters so much.”

“I also think you have a very analytical response to stress.”

She took a breath then. “That’s true,” she said. “That is true. You’re a good observationist.”

“Maybe we should just go out with your friends and celebrate the movie being good.”

And I guess I could’ve told her then, but it would’ve rather ruined the vibe.

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We went to some bar in a different hotel where they poured martinis tableside and allowed you to pick from five different vermouths, each with its own flavor profile. I got a lemon twist vodka martini with cardamom-scented vermouth. The woman I was sitting next to, skinny with thick eyebrows and wide eyes, ordered the same. Juniper had a club soda.

Juniper was talking to an actor I knew a little because we often ended up in the same auditions, a guy named Casey whose glacial blue eyes made me a little jealous, not least because of the way Juniper leaned toward him as they chatted.

I talked mostly to the girl who’d ordered the same drink as me. When I meet someone new, I ask a lot of questions because I prefer listening to speaking, so we talked about where her family was from—London—and how she ended up in LA—she wanted a city where no one looks at you, and if they do, they don’t care who you are—and what she did for work—“These days it feels like I’m professionally on Instagram.” She said, “Speaking of which, do you mind if we get a photo together?” and I said of course as long as you tag me, and she laughed and took the photo of us cheersing with our martini glasses.

In her English accent, she said, “Juniper told me you say I love you to everyone, but you haven’t said it to me,” and I said, “I love you,” and she laughed and thanked me and said she was falling in love with me, too. We ordered another round of martinis, and then another. I was starting to worry these thirty-dollar drinks were adding up, but when Juniper announced she was calling it a night, the girl I’d been talking to insisted on paying. I began to protest, but Juniper said, “Oh, let her. She’s on the cover of Vogue this month,” which was the first indication I had that maybe I’d been talking to someone quite famous all night.

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Outside, we were met by a gaggle of paparazzi, some with video cameras and some taking flash photographs. I kept trying to blink away the light. I was rather drunk, and Juniper had a hand tightly around my waist, and everyone was looking behind us, shouting, “Jaya! Jaya!” They were asking if she’d broken up with Stephanie, and what caused the breakup, and whether she was now seeing Juniper. And then a few of the paparazzi saw Casey and his blue eyes and started shouting at him, but they were mostly leaving Juniper and me alone except for one guy who kept asking for Juniper’s autograph. He didn’t have a camera or anything, just a Sharpie and a sweaty face and an 8 x 10 photo of Juniper as a kid. The noise was getting louder because Jaya was outside now, and I saw our Uber parked across the street, so I waved it over.

I opened the rear door and Juniper slid in. Then, just as I was about to get in the car myself, the sweaty man jumped into the back seat with Juniper. “Get the fuck out,” she said, kicking at him. I grabbed the man by his shirt and pulled him out of the car, throwing him onto the street and shoving him to the ground. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I shouted, then got in the Uber and slammed the door shut. I felt the adrenaline pumping through my ears. Next to me, Juniper was shaking, her body curled up against the far edge of the car’s bench seat.

“Jaya really brings out the paps. Jesus.”

“Who the hell is Jaya?”

“Come on, Kai. You didn’t realize you spent the whole night flirting with Jaya Hudson-Rowe, the supermodel? The, like, most famous supermodel in the world?”

“No,” I said. “And I wasn’t flirting.”

“She’s literally the most beautiful woman on earth.” I found Juniper vastly more attractive, but didn’t say as much.

“Have you seen that guy before?”

“No, I don’t think so. I have a couple stalkers though. He could’ve been one of them. God, that was scary.”

“Yeah,” I said.

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It was only ten minutes to the Hotel Bel-Air, and when we got there, I said, “Do you want me to walk you to your room?” and she said, “Yeah, but no funny business.” I said, “I only engage in extremely serious business,” and she offered me a wan smile.

When we got to her suite, she looked at me and said, “I know this is ridiculous, but do you mind checking? The closets and everything?” and I said sure and walked around her suite, looking under the bed and into the closet. “We’re good,” I said at last and only then did she enter the room. She asked if we could just watch a movie, so we turned on HBO and this strange, funny movie Submariners was on. We watched, my arm around her, her body fluttering next to mine, rib cage to rib cage. I wanted to kiss her but knew now wasn’t the time. And anyway I can’t do that stuff well; I always judge the wrong moment to kiss someone because sexually, my brain is fucked.

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At last she wanted to go to sleep and I offered to sleep on the couch and she said, No no that’s fine, so I went to my room and thought about the movie and the sweaty stranger. I couldn’t sleep, so I sat outside by my ridiculous little pool and looked at the very few stars in the Los Angeles sky.

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I often feel kind of empty—not necessarily in a bad way, just like my body is uninhabited. It was windy, but the air that blew in the trees seemed not to have a temperature, which only increased the weird feeling that my body wasn’t really there, or I wasn’t really in it. After a while, I grabbed my AirPods and listened to Gods of Andromeda. I’m a slow reader, so I listen to a lot of audiobooks. The story was set on a small planet in the Andromeda galaxy that only had one landmass, and the people and orcs who lived there were mostly peaceful because there was a ban on all weapons and war-making. The guy I was reading for was Garon, the lead guy’s brother, who served as the civilization’s chief negotiator. Garon carries this golden pen with him everywhere called the Peace Pen. When we go to war, the Peace Pen inevitably gets melted down to become a handle for my new sword. The Queen is really badass in it, and I could see how Juniper would be perfect for it.