Page 46 of Hollywood, Ending

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?”