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You know, in the way you might have a crush on the captain of the football team in high school. You’re not going to date the captain of the football team. You know your place—and your place is: A scribe for student government. A student liaison for community service. Vice president of the spreadsheet club.
It’s just a little sunny place for your fantasies to wander. Sometimes. Occasionally. In between your many other more important things to do.
No harm in that, right?
Wasn’t that ultimately what movie stars were for? To be fantasies for the rest of us? To add imaginary sprinkles to the metaphorical cupcake of life?
But now the reality was going to collide with the fantasy.
It was the reason I wanted to say no.
I liked the fantasy. I didn’t want Jack Stapleton to become real.
Plus, how could you protect a person who made you nervous? How could you stay focused with an actual god-living-among-humans just feet away from you? Glenn had a professional rep to protect, but so did I. I was supposed to impress the hell out of Glenn if I wanted the London job, but what was I going to do if Jack Stapleton showed up one day in that same navy and cornflower-blue baseball Tee he’d worn in The Optimist?
Good God. I might as well just quit now.
I’d seen Jack Stapleton kiss fictional people, bury a fictional father, beg for fictional forgiveness, and sob fictional tears. I’d seen him take a shower, brush his teeth, curl up under the covers at bedtime. I’d seen him rappel down a cliff face. I’d seen him hug his lost-then-found child. I’d seen him scared, and nervous, and angry, and even naked in bed with the love of his life.
None of it was real—of course. I knew that. I mean, I wasn’t crazy.
It wasn’t real, but it seemed real. It felt real.
I already cared about him, is what I’m saying. That distance you always maintain with your clients? He had already breached it—even though I’d never even met him.
Plus, there was just something about Jack Stapleton that I liked. The shape of his eyes—kind of sweet and smiley. The deadpan way he delivered his lines. The way he gazed at the women he loved.
Oh, it was going to be a long assignment.
But—and here came the pep talk—not impossible.
The guy on screen wouldn’t be the same person in real life. Couldn’t be. The guy on screen said funny things because funny writers wrote his lines. The guy on the screen looked picture perfect because the production department styled his hair and put his makeup on and chose his clothes. And the washboard stomach? You don’t get those for free. He probably spent hours and hours maintaining that thing. Hours that would’ve been far better spent, say, fighting poverty, or rescuing homeless pets, or, I don’t know, reading a book.
Maybe, if there was mercy in the universe, he’d be nothing like I always imagined.
Maybe he’d be as unlikable as most of my clients were.
Unlikable might help.
But I’d also take dumb. Rude. Slug-like. Pompous. Narcissistic. Anything that could demote him to an ordinary, real, mildly irritating person like everybody else… and let me get my work done.
I mean, sure. I’d have preferred to keep the fantasy.
But reality had its uses, too.
