Page 6 of Hollywood, Ending

“My husband won’t ball me.” So what.

“I’m a success but I’m still alone.” So what.

I’m a success but I’m still alone. So what. That struck me as real in a way very little in the book did. And I wondered whether loneliness is an inevitable by-product of success, because nobody else really knows what it’s like to be you, and anyway you can’t be sure whether people want to be near you because you’re you or because you’re a success, which is its own kind of aloneness. This must’ve been a place where Matthew could see himself in Warhol—they were both larger than life, performed selves.

Of course, there are worse problems. Pity poor Matthew Malone, who can’t complain to his friends about all his fame and wealth. But that amplifies the loneliness. So what.

_____

By then it was nine o’clock, so I went upstairs to Kai’s apartment.

“How were the scripts?”

“I liked one. They’re interested in me for Agrippah, Queen of the Realm.”

“Well, I’m self-taping for Kevin the Intern, who has six lines in this workplace comedy about a video game company. So we’re both crushing it.”

Kai’s phone was already nestled in a tripod placed atop the little table that straddled the kitchen area and the living area in his studio apartment. His place had the same floor plan as mine, and nearly identical furniture, but he had posters everywhere. The posters were all of shows at the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Warhol Museum—including a bunch of Warhol’s flower paintings. I grabbed one of the two wooden chairs nestled under the table and got behind the camera. “You have the sides?” I asked.

“Yeah, prepare yourself for some High Art,” he responded, and handed me a sheet of paper with the relevant dialogue on it. “You’re my boss, Richter, the main guy in the movie.” We read the script through once. It wasn’t very good, but the job of an actor is not to judge the material so much as to give in to it, and the worse the script the more interesting that job becomes, because you’ve got to find a way in. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. Kai hit record, said, “I’m Kai Laramie. Five eleven. Based in New York. Over eighteen. Okay.”

“Kevin, we need that report.” I tried to say it flatly so that Kai would look good by comparison.

“I’ve got it right here, sir,” Kai said, miming handing over a piece of paper. “The issue, sir, is that there are a number of bugs.”

“How many?”

“Over the summer I found one thousand three hundred, sir.” He paused, gulped. “And twelve.”

“You found one thousand three hundred bugs in the game.”

“And twelve.”

“Is it playable?”

“Um,” he said.

“Would you pay $2.99 for it?”

“Sir, honestly I found it challenging, and I’m getting paid to play it.”

“We pay our interns now? Christ, this company ain’t what it used to be.”

“I also get college credit,” Kai said nervously, “if you could just sign this form saying I showed up all summer?” He mimed handing over a second form, then hit the stop button on his phone camera.

“All right,” he said. “Thanks. I genuinely hope I don’t get this, although my agent says it’s a good gig for me.”

“You don’t want to try it again?” I asked.

He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Was my Kevin the Intern somehow lacking?” he asked, smiling.

“No, it was good. Just, I don’t know, I always do a few takes.”

“I bet you do. How many?”

“I don’t know. A lot,” I said. Dozens. I knew my process could exhaust my scene partners, but I also didn’t know any other way of doing it right.

“I think I’m good with one,” he said, and the truth is: He was. The kid was, as the saying goes, a natural.