Page 85 of Hollywood, Ending

“Strike this woman!” he shouts. He scares me when he says it. So much anger, verging on disgust, in his voice.

“The orcs,” I say. I’m more scared than I expected to be in the saying of it. “The orcs, my lord. They have laid waste to Calenbath. What is not fire is ash. Our allies are gone. Our enemies are at the gate. The future is in doubt and the past is buried in the ground, my lord. There is only time, and that time is now.”

“Can it be—” He sounds so shocked, so scared.

“The time for questions has passed, Gavinth. The time of speaking has passed. We fight now, all of us. No trials. No tribes. No guilds. Only human and orc. We fight for the Realm that was.” I pause, letting the emotion well up in me. “And we fight for the Realm that shall be!”

_____

It takes a moment for the spell to break, for Gavinth to be Kai again, and for me to be Juniper.

“That was good,” he says. “That’s so fucking fun.”

“And I don’t even have to get coked up and bleed all over my shirt in this one,” I point out.

“And I don’t have to be heavily traumatized, just ravenous for power.”

_____

We watch a movie, one of the newer Bond films. Slicker, less corny, propulsive in its action sequences. He doesn’t say much until it’s over. The credits are rolling over an Adele song when he leans across the couch and closes the distance between us, kissing me first softly—inquiringly—and then with real passion. For the next little while, we make out like a couple of kids, which I guess we still sort of are.

_____

Later, down at the beach, we’re both reading when he says, “I think I want to go home.”

“Where is that exactly?”

“I’m not sure,” he says.

Day 6

At breakfast the next morning, I tell Kai again that I don’t care about doing Andromeda, because I really don’t.

“Maybe you’ll move to Indianapolis with me. There’s a good theater company there. Better than you’d expect.”

“I love you, but I don’t know that I Move-to-Indianapolis-Love-You.” I smile as he laughs.

“I like real theater,” he says. “I like the spontaneity of it, the one-chanceness of it.”

I tell him I’ve never done much proper theater, that I’ve always acted for screens, because that’s what my mother wanted me to do. “I can’t believe it’s been more than a year,” I say. “I’ve had two movies come out since she died.”

“She’d be really proud of you.”

“Yeah, a little too proud. I wish she’d loved me for being a good friend or a good sister or whatever, but it was only ever for being a good actor.”

Suddenly I notice a teenage boy standing over our table. “Has anyone ever told you that you look just like Juniper Castillo?”

I tell him that I am, in fact, Juniper Castillo, and then I take a picture with him. When I sit back down, Kai asks, “That doesn’t bother you? I mean, in the middle of a serious conversation.”

“Without fans, there’s no job.”

“But you could’ve just told him I’m sorry, I’m eating breakfast or something.”

“That kid is going to meet me one time in his life. I want him to have a good memory. Doesn’t cost me much, and gives him a little something hopefully.”

“I’m not sure it doesn’t cost much,” Kai answers. “But I love that about you, you always having time like that.”

We eat for a while, and then I say, “You know, I realized something last night. I was thinking about how pissed I was about you leaving, and how pissed I was that Todd planned to recast the movie if you wouldn’t do it and I’d lose Gods of Andromeda. And I just reflexively wanted it, because I am supposed to want it, because it’s the studio’s next tentpole or whatever. But what I realized last night is that if you’re not in Andromeda, I want them to recast it. I don’t want to be in it with Charles Fucking Oldham. I don’t want to be opposite some other actor. I want to be opposite you, playing with and against you. That’s the movie I want to make. I spend so little time thinking about what I actually want.”