Page 79 of Hollywood, Ending

With just the Door ajar

That Oceans are – and Prayer –

And that White Sustenance –

Despair –

You there, I here, with just the door ajar. It makes me think of Kai, the unsolvable distance between us, the way I can’t get into his head and he can’t get into mine even if we’re both pretty good at getting into other people’s heads. There’s always a distance between you and I, a chasm that cannot be bridged, and even though we are both at the same resort on the same island, I am here and he is there, with just the door ajar.

_____________

I call Matthew Malone that afternoon.

“Kid,” he says, “our movie is gonna be number one at the box office this weekend.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Looking like twenty-five.”

“Twenty-seven the last time I heard, and that’s just US. Might have to get myself another Warhol. You feeling good?”

“Matthew, you need to call this resort, GoldenEye, ask for Kai, and apologize.”

“Apologize for what, the abuse thing?”

“Yeah. For the abuse thing.” I feel the frustration in my voice.

“No worries, I’ll give him a call. He had a rough go of it, huh?”

“Yes, Matthew. You revealed something intensely private to the world.”

“I figured he might not understand.”

“I also do not understand.”

“We trade in our frailties, Juniper,” he says. “Even the everyday person on Facebook, they get more attention when they reveal their dog just died, or they’ve gotten cancer, or whatever. The world runs on attention. Who gets it, and who doesn’t get it. Your life is better if you get it. And I got plenty of it for Kai, and our movie. Someday he’ll thank me.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, someday at least he’ll understand,” Matthew says confidently. “I’ll give him a call. We need to be copacetic for the awards campaign.”

_____

At dinner, a guy—graying dreadlocks, dressed in shorts and a tank top—sings reggae songs accompanied by a single-string guitar. He tells us between songs about performing with Ziggy Marley, then sings a haunting, harrowing version of “Redemption Song,” and I wonder how it must feel, having played for thousands, to now play for a few dozen tourists, most of whom aren’t even paying attention. I think about how even the best female actors with the best careers are often retired by the Industry before fifty.

But it’s still a gig. You’re still getting paid to do what you love. Kai is wrong about me there. I’m not just trying to live my mother’s dream. I am also trying to figure out my own dream for myself. I pull out my notebook and write a little.

The point is to do what you love as long as you can do it as well as you can do it. That’s what art demands of us. But isn’t that also what your mother told you? That everything must be sacrificed in the name of the great god Art? Maybe I’ve been choosing wrong the whole time. Kai was an asshole when he said I was chasing my mom’s dream, but he wasn’t wrong, just like I wouldn’t be wrong if I said he’s running not because it’s the noble or heroic thing to do, but because it’s the thing he couldn’t do when he was in high school. How can we escape being products of the past?

_____

Back at my villa, I take a shower and then yet again reread the Andromeda script. I can hear the waves lapping against the beach just upwind. When I walk outside to see the stars, there’s Kai in a beach chair, looking out at the ocean, chewing a piece of gum.

“Nothing like a nighttime hangover,” he says. “Why’d you have Matthew call me?”

“Because he needed to apologize.”

“Well, he did. He said he was sorry if he hurt me. I love an apology with an if. ”

The distance between us feels unbridgeable. I here—you there. I walk over and sit down on the chair next to him and look up at the star-drenched sky.