Page 75 of Hollywood, Ending

Juniper

Day 1

There’s a phenomenon I’ve experienced after a film comes out that I call The Comedown. It happens with good movies and bad ones, and even with TV shows that run on Nickelodeon for six years. One day you’re working, rolling some ball of art ceaselessly uphill, and then you wake up the next day and it’s just…over.

After Kai fails to show up to the premiere’s afterparty or respond to my late-night my-place-or-yours text, I call him that next morning, but it goes straight to voicemail. I figure he’s still asleep. “Good morning. Call me when you charge your phone and get this. I love you.” Then I call my agent, Jamie.

“Juniper, my love, how are you?”

“How’s the movie tracking?”

“We’re still hoping for a twenty-plus opening weekend. We’ll know more tomorrow night once we get some actual butts in actual seats. You feeling good?”

“Sure,” I say. “What should I be doing today? Posting? I’ve got a carousel I could post of Kai and me, or I could do a live, or—”

“Definitely post stuff from the premiere, Junie, but you need to chill a little. You did it. Take a week off.”

“I don’t need a week off. I need the movie to be a hit.”

“It already is; have you read these reviews? There’s gonna be plenty to do. A whole awards push probably. But for now, the train has left the station. Work on Andromeda if you need to work.”

“Got it,” I tell her.

“I’ll call you tomorrow with more.”

“Sure. Thanks, Jamie.”

_____

I don’t start worrying about Kai until around ten thirty a.m. I call him again. Straight to voicemail. I don’t want to be That Girl, so I tell myself he’s fine and just sleeping in. I go for a run in the hotel’s gym. I prefer running around Central Park, and we’re right around the corner from it, but I don’t want to get recognized, especially when exercising, because I have a goofy running gait. So I put on a hat and some workout clothes and run on the treadmill, and then Katie calls me and tells me my flight to LA leaves at eight p.m. but she has gotten me a late checkout so no rush.

I ask her what I need to do to promote the movie, and she says, “Christ, Juniper. You did it. Once the movie is in the present tense for the audience, it’s in the past tense for us. Now it’s all about advertising and the studio’s marketing team. You junketed the living hell out of that movie. Take a nap.”

I call Kai again, and then finally I check in with Ellen.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey, is Kai with you?” Ellen asks.

“No, I was hoping he was with you.”

“He’s not answering his phone.”

“Straight to voicemail.”

“Okay, I’m officially Slightly Concerned,” Ellen says. “Let me have the hotel check on him. Probably just a bad hangover combined with low battery.”

While I wait for her to call back, I post that carousel of Kai and me on Instagram—pictures of us throughout the junket, culminating with us together on the red carpet, me laughing with his arm around me. Caption: I love you, Kai Laramie. And I can’t wait for the world to see why.

Ellen calls back as I’m reading the first comments. “So all his stuff is still there. Doesn’t look like he slept there last night; the bed is still made. I’m officially Moderately Concerned.”

“Fuck,” I say.

“I’ll call the studio,” she says.

_____

Kai disappearing feels precisely like when my mom would disappear. The same all-over bodily fear. The same resentment and frustration. The same awareness that however much they love you, they love whatever they abandon you for more. I’ve had that enough from a mother not to want it from a boyfriend.