Page 38 of Hollywood, Ending

The audiobook was interrupted by a moment of silence followed by the ringing of my phone. Agent Bob. It was past eleven o’clock, but Bob was never not working.

“Christ Kai I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for ten hours you have to answer your phone, okay? This generation and their phones—you’re fucking obsessed with them but never use them. How are you?”

“Good?”

“How was the movie?”

“I think it’s good? Juniper has some concerns.”

“Sure, sure, well, I’ve seen it and let me tell you, kid, there’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s amazing. And I’ve been on the phone all day about you. I’ve got producers all over town tripping over each other to ask after your availability. You’re exploding.”

“Good?”

“Good? It’s fucking great. We’re gonna have some choices. But can I just remind you of something? I hope this won’t seem rude, kid, but I just want to remind you I believed in you from Day One. Anyone calls you, you let me know, okay? I’m sure CAA will be circling you like the goddamned vultures they are, but the great thing about us is we can work with anyone, you get me? CAA’s an incest factory. They don’t make the best movies they can make; they make the best CAA movies they can make.”

“I’m not going to fire you, Bob.”

“Great. I know that. You’re a loyal kid. Listen, Brian Arawas wants to have breakfast with you tomorrow. He’ll come to your hotel. Brian Arawas coming to you; can you believe it? Nine thirty. Don’t be late. Zoe and I will catch up with you afterward. This Gods of Andromeda thing could be huge. The studio’s all-in on it. Sixty-eight shoot days, starts in December. If breakfast goes well, they’ll do a test deal just based on your self-tape. That’s how much they love you for the brother. What’s his name, Zoe?”

“Garon,” Zoe said. She was Bob’s assistant. I guess assistants usually listen in on calls, but Bob was always calling attention to her. I liked Zoe.

“Garon. Fuck. With a book, you can’t change the shitty names or the fans go fucking crazy. Anyway, Kai, test deal and then chemistry reads. You like working with Juniper, right? Judging from your socials, you like her plenty. Just don’t get nervous. Brian is smart, but he’s not any smarter than you. And maybe you don’t even want to do a sword-swinger set in space. We’ll see how the breakfast goes. You gotta ask yourself what kind of career you want. You want to be Matthew? You want to be RDJ? Or hell I don’t know, maybe you want to be Will McIntire. That guy’s got a good fucking life, let me tell you—famous enough to fuck hot girls but he can still go to the grocery store. Can I talk about fucking hot girls, Zoe?”

I heard the end of Zoe’s sigh as she unmuted and said, “Probably best not to, Bob.”

“This new Hollywood, kid. It’s fucking crazy. I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Can I still quote fucking T. S. Eliot, Zoe?”

Another small sigh. “Yes, Bob, you can still quote T. S. Eliot.”

“Great. We’ll be able to get you a good deal, and when I talked to the producer this morning—Dylan, great guy, you’ll love him—he said they were beefing up the role a little, to make it fifth lead. See how the breakfast with Brian goes, then we’ll put together a test deal.”

“Okay,” I said. And then after a second, “So what’s going to happen with Andy Warhol Never Gets Old?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, what’s going to happen with the movie? Everyone keeps saying that it’s really good, but I don’t know what that means.”

“It means they’re trying to get Matthew and Kathryn invited to the Oscars is what it means. I loved the movie, okay? It’s a great fucking movie. But who wants to see a sad movie about Andy Warhol and two sad kids? This is America, Kai. Americans paid two hundred million dollars to see Paul Blart: Mall Cop. We are not a nation of taste or sophistication. Even with the awards, we’re not talking about Nobel Prizes here. You know what got nominated for an Oscar? Fucking Molly’s Second Tooth, kid. You see Molly’s Second Tooth?”

“No.”

“If you’ve ever seen a dog vomit its body weight after eating chocolate, you’ve seen it. Nobody has taste anymore. Maybe they never did. Can I still talk about dog vomit, Zoe?”

“Please stop doing that,” I said.

“Agreed,” added Zoe.

“I’m a dinosaur. But I’m a dinosaur that’s going to get you a hell of a deal for Gods of Androgyny. You want my advice? The best time to make a deal is before anybody knows how big your movie’s actually gonna get. Maybe I’m wrong and you’ll be at the Oscars next year. But the world’s full of great movies nobody watches and great actors nobody hires. We’ll see you after breakfast.”

“Andromeda,” Zoe muttered.

“See you tomorrow,” I said.

_____

I kept staring up at the undark sky. I wanted to call someone, but it was too late. I scrolled through my texts. There were a lot I hadn’t answered, but I didn’t feel like responding to any. The thought of responding to anyone made the ache in my stomach worse, and it was already pretty bad. I tried to go back to having an empty mind and listening to Gods of Andromeda, but I kept thinking about Bob and Lon and Ellen and the sweaty man who got in the Uber, and how Juniper’s eyes looked when she asked me to check her room. And I thought about it, of course, the pronoun that needed no further description, because it was always there, awake or asleep or in between. I thought about Ellen knowing about it, and how people are usually so kind about it, but I still don’t like them knowing, because then they can’t unsee me through that lens. I thought about how condescending everyone was—the cops, the lawyers—how they treated me like a kid. But of course the whole point is that I was a kid.

I didn’t know if I really wanted to be famous. I thought about how before we watched the movie, Matthew was surrounded by those reporters, all of whom stood a step or two farther from him than you’d usually stand in conversation because he had some kind of energy that kept them at a distance. He told them that the only person who can’t enjoy a Matthew Malone movie is Matthew Malone, and they all laughed. But the same energy that kept those reporters laughing made the sweaty man believe he could get into Juniper’s car. I thought of something Matthew said to me once on set: “I’ve done a lot of drugs, but nothing hits like fame. Sometimes it’s an upper; sometimes it’s a downer. But it will always rock you.”