Page 73 of Hollywood, Ending

Ellen grabs me. “You’re starting to look panicked,” and I say, “Yeah,” and she says, “You know what, let’s skip the rest of the interviews and get you inside.”

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Inside the theater: Red carpet on the floor. Arches above. Painted ceiling. This is a classy movie palace, probably from the early twentieth century. I tell myself all the things I’m supposed to when I get scared: Come into your body. Notice whatever there is to notice. Your feet are on the floor, in Prada shoes that are a bit too tight. You can hear the noise outside, but it’s at least a little deadened. Smell the popcorn. How is the air on your skin? Stale, slightly warm. Where are you? Paris. Are you with someone you love? Yes. Okay. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

I can’t stop sweating. Hate sweating. It reminds me that my body is mammalian. There’s a concession counter up ahead with prepackaged containers of popcorn. Ellen grabs one, asks me if I want a drink, and I say Do they have whiskey, and she says For the star of the movie they do, and a minute later she appears with a plastic glass full of whiskey and ice. I’m calming down. I know I shouldn’t use alcohol this way, but it does the job. The thing about alcohol is it quells my anxiety in the short run and worsens my anxiety in the long run. This is also the thing about weed, and the thing about Instagram. I take a long drink. It burns my throat going down. “We can go to our seats,” she says.

I find the seat marked Kai Laramie, next to the one marked Juniper Castillo. Juniper shows up a few minutes later and sits down next to me, and just the smell of her calms me down. “You’re stunning,” I tell her, and she blushes.

The theater fills with people—hundreds of them. We’re in the sixth row, and so almost everyone is behind us, but people keep coming up and congratulating us, wanting to shake our hands.

Matthew stands at the front of the theater, his shadow double his size, crawling up the screen. He thanks everyone for coming. “I was in Portugal last year,” he says, “and I visited an old ossuary—a place where the bones of the dead are stored. They were stacked high, room after room full of our ancestors. And in one room an inscription on a small tablet read, ‘These are the bones that wait for your bones.’ Warhol’s bones wait for ours, but he is also with us, now, more than ever, in an image-saturated world. I’m so proud of this film, and especially of the brilliant young people at its heart—Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo. I love them, and after watching this film, I know you will, too.”

The applause begins as the credits start to roll. There’s especially loud clapping for Matthew, of course, but both Juniper and I get some as well when our names flash up on the screen.

I’m not so much watching the movie as I am listening to hundreds of people watch it; the way the energy shifts in the room during the nightclub scene where Juniper’s bleeding all over me, the way people laugh at Andy’s dry humor, and especially the weeping as Warhol dies and the news reaches us. When the Lou Reed song that Juniper hates plays, the whole place is crying, including me, and then the movie ends and everyone immediately stands up and starts applauding. Juniper is still holding my hand even though it’s sweaty, and she pulls me up with her to wave at the crowd, and then we go up to the front and sit between Kathryn and Matthew and answer some British reality TV star’s questions about the movie, and then I take a shot of whiskey backstage from a flask that Matthew’s handing around because my brain is flooded with all kinds of chemicals I’ve never felt before, and then Juniper and I are in a hotel room, taking very nice clothes off each other.

_____

Juniper and I end the night by closing down the hotel’s rooftop bar. It’s warm in Paris, and we’ve got a hell of a view of the city. She tells me about being a kid, about the little pool in her LA apartment complex, and how there would always be other kids swimming in the pool who were also in town for pilot season. She tells me that her mom would get so drunk at the pool that Juniper worried she would drown, and I tell her that she really didn’t get a chance to be a kid at all, and she says that we’re still just kids. I tell her about growing up in Indianapolis, how I did summer stock at Butler University and only felt like I was myself onstage or on the field. Had to be playing.

Talking to Juniper is the opposite of talking to a reporter.

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On the plane the next morning I can’t sleep. I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling, but I’m feeling a lot of it. I’m trying to watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on the little screen. The flight attendant keeps filling my wineglass with cabernet, and I keep drinking it. Across the aisle from me, I can see Juniper sleeping. I want to sleep with her again, but I also don’t. The thought of having sex again kind of submerges me. Sex is so physical, so organism-y, so base. I think about how she told me once that after men have you, they don’t want you anymore. I don’t want to be that kind of man, but I’m terrified I’m going to be. I always recoil in the face of actual intimacy. It is so easy to say I love you, and so hard to let myself feel it.

Finally I fall asleep. I wake up vaguely hungover as we’re descending.

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“You’ll have two hours at the hotel.” Ellen is talking at me on the drive to the Mandarin Oriental. “Hair and makeup will come at two p.m., then you are in the car by four, then we walk the carpet. Screening starts at six and then the panel will be at 8:05. Then there’s the party, and you can leave that whenever you want and then, my friend, you are free. You have one night at the hotel to do with as you please, and then you are no longer my ward and we just wait to see if anyone actually shows up to see this movie.”

Ellen’s always talking logistics, and it occurs to me that I haven’t really had freedom of movement since that week between the audition and the junket, that I’ve been on someone else’s schedule the whole time. But it’s crazy to complain about my job. Shameful, even.

Anyway, all that’s going through my head when we arrive at the Mandarin Oriental and Juniper texts me my place or yours, and I go to her room and we have sex and then call for room service.

“You okay?” Juniper asks while her head is against my fast-beating chest.

“Yeah,” I say, although during the sex I’d been stuck in my head.

“Our movie is premiering tonight,” she says. “People will see it starting Friday. We fucking did it.”

12

The screaming starts even before we get out of the car. I’m in another Prada suit, this one slightly navy I think? Juniper is sitting next to me in another Dior. An indigo gown wrapping her delicate shoulders and plating the rest of her body like armor. She looks uncomfortable; the dress isn’t made for sitting. As our car rounds a corner, I see people lined up on either side of the street, five-deep behind barricades. They are yelling, and it is a little hard for my brain to differentiate between excited yelling and terrified yelling.

Strange to think this is my life. I feel very aware that I’m living the dream even if I’m maybe not living my dream. But what is my dream anyway? Juniper reaches over, grabs my hand. She’s wearing a diamond ring on her right ring finger, on loan from her jewelry sponsor. I’m wearing a Tag Heuer watch, even though I’m not a watch guy. She looks so pretty, a bit too made-up for real life, but perfect for the cameras.

When we get out, the screams crescendo. “KAAAAIIIIIII,” I hear from behind me, and I turn around, but then the people in front of me are saying, “KAI!!!!” too, so I turn toward them. I don’t know where to look. Juniper starts walking up and down the barricades, taking selfies with everyone, but I feel so overwhelmed by the noise I don’t know what to do until I feel Ellen’s hand on the small of my back moving me toward the barricades. I come into my body, wave at the crowd, and then make my way to the red carpet, where Kathryn is standing in a lovely gold fitted suit. I get in line for the carpet. Ahead of me is a small child wearing a tux. “That’s the winner of the National Spelling Bee,” Ellen explains, “and ahead of him is the guy who won the Indy 500, with his wife. Premieres always bring out an odd assortment.”

Finally it’s my turn and I stand before the wall of cameras with everyone shouting my name. If there were a dozen cameras in Paris, there must be over fifty here—clicking and flashing as the photographers shout over each other to try to get my attention. Even though Ellen has told me just to stare straight ahead and not listen to any of their requests, they’re all shouting my name and I want to be a good celebrity who looks at each of them and gives everyone their shot. I see my parents and brother and hug them and my mom says, “I’m proud of you, Kai.” My dad is excited to meet the IndyCar driver, so I introduce them, and then I have to go back to the photographers to take pictures with Juniper. I put my hand on her waist and feel the surge of her body entangled with mine. She looks up at me, gives me half a smile and a wink, and then turns to the cameras.

We stop for interviews—Time and E! and Teen Vogue, and when I’m talking to Entertainment Weekly, a wall of noise erupts from behind me, and I realize that Matthew has arrived. At the end of the carpet, Juniper introduces me to a friend of hers who turns out to be Very Famous, and I say, “It must be overwhelming to be you,” and she says, “That’s empathetic of you to say,” but actually I’m just multiplying the amount that I feel overwhelmed by the amount of her celebrity. Juniper asks if I’m okay, and I nod. I should ask her if she’s okay, but I don’t. Too overwhelmed to think about anything or anyone else except the cacophony in my brain.

The director Ryan Arnold and his wife come up to me. He’s making Matthew’s next thing—a big musical—and he says I hear you’re fantastic in this movie, and I say thanks, and he says I’d love to meet up for lunch sometime if you’re ever in LA, and I say Yeah yeah of course.

I see Bob and Zoe. He hugs me and Zoe asks how I’m doing and I say, “A little overstimulated,” and she says, “Don’t worry, Kai. It’ll all be over soon.”