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They sat in rapt silence as what would eventually become one of the most famous moments in reality TV history unfolded before them, and by the time it was over, Margo was wide-eyed and red-faced with excitement. She looked like one of those pictures of girls from the ’60s who are ready to faint at a Beatles concert.
“Did you see that?” she gasped, turning to Will and grasping his arm. “Can you believe that actually happened?”
“Poor Tiffany!” Will said.
“Poor Tiffany? Oh, sure. I mean, yeah. But oh my god, Tyra. Tyra! Learn from this!” Margo dissolved into giggles at her own impersonation, having seemingly forgotten, for the moment at least, that she considered Will an enemy.
“I’m hungry,” she said then. “Come on.” She dragged him by the hand into the kitchen, and ten minutes later they were eating cheese toasties with Marmite and cups of tea. The warmth of Margo’s demeanor faded a little along with the secondhand glow of reality TV exploitation, but she never seemed quite as angry to see him after that. The axis of the world had shifted: Their relationship, such as it was, suddenly had room to grow.
Years later, after Will’s parents divorced and Eddie moved in with Carla, and then after Carla kicked him out, and then finally when Margo was old enough to move out and get a place of her own, she and Will would still drink tea and watch telly together. When his own mum forgot to do any food shopping, he knew that if he dropped in on Margo, she would begrudgingly make him a toastie. When Bandit finally died after spending his final years half blind and peeing on the curtains, Will shoplifted a bottle of tequila and joined a tearful Margo in toasting the mangy mutt’s memory until they both threw up and swore off the stuff. When Margo got together with Owen, and then Owen got her pregnant, she told Will before anyone else. And when Owen left, Will became Margo’s de facto babysitter, reimbursed in dinners and bags of clean washing.
There was no clear point at which Will could say that she became his sister, no event horizon where they transitioned from forced proximity to genuine affection. All he knew was that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to his dad, and his mum spent her life pinballing from one spiritual retreat or pyramid scheme to another, and the only remotely stabilizing influence he’d ever had in his life was this mess of tangled dark curls and smoky eye shadow who might have an even shorter temper and fouler mouth than him.
* * *
•••••••••
“That’s so sweet,” Patrick said. “I mean, for a story about trauma bonding.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Will rolled his eyes. “Could you be any more LA? Not everything is trauma. Sometimes it’s just a thing that brought two people together. Obviously, it was far from ideal, but I think I am remarkably well-adjusted. You know, for a part-time cross-dresser with a secret lover.”
“Is that what we are?” Patrick asked. “Lovers?”
“Oh god. Pretend I never said that. It sounds so cringe.”
“No. I like it. ‘Lover.’ It’s…Continental.”
Will laughed derisively and then looked away. Patrick knew he had said it offhand, as a joke, the way he said most things, but they were veering close to dangerous territory. For all the legal jargon they had both signed their names to, the NDA had not included an actual definition of what they were to each other. It might have been easier if it had.
Supermarket Sushi finished their short set, and the band they had opened for started playing. They were older, better, more polished. Out of a rapidly growing sense of loyalty, Patrick immediately disliked them.
“So anyway, that’s my origin story,” said Will, and Patrick was grateful to him for bringing the conversation back onto safer ground. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How does a guy go from South Amboy, New Jersey, to Hollywood?”
Patrick folded his arms. “Well, it sounds like you should know, you’ve clearly been reading up on me.”
Will raised his hands—a tacit admission. “I may have googled you the night we met. But I want to hear it from you.”
“There’s not much more to tell,” said Patrick. “I was an only child, both my parents worked, so they sent me to a lot of after-school clubs at our local church. They weren’t super religious, but it meant somebody else would watch me after school.”
“What are they like? Your parents?”
“My parents are nice people,” he said. “I don’t see them as much as I’d like to because of work.” It was a well-rehearsed line, rolled out so many times in interviews it could have left grooves in the carpet. “But anyway, that’s how I got into plays,” he continued. “Church productions, haunted houses. It was fun, playing pretend. So when I started high school, I joined the drama club. Did every school play. Eventually got into a college theater program on a partial scholarship. Worked in every diner and drugstore in South Amboy to pay for it. Moved to New York, auditioned for some plays. OK, a lot of plays. Salesman, Streetcar, Six Degrees of Separation. I was almost George in Our Town. I understudied for Ricky in Glengarry Glen Ross. I was an admittedly shaky Burrs in The Wild Party.”
“A sexy clown,” Will mused. “Not unlike a drag queen.”
Patrick laughed and nodded. “I guess. Anyway, I got a lot of bad reviews, then a couple of good ones. Moved out West.”
He sounded, he realized, like he was reading his own biography: the last ten years condensed to a PowerPoint presentation.
Got an agent. Did some small walk-on TV roles. A small part in a reboot of a slasher franchise set in a frat house called Pledge Week. Then he met Simone. Started getting better work: a role in an ensemble show on HBO that was critically acclaimed but only ran for one season. A soldier in a war movie, then a gunslinger who fell in love with an Indigenous woman in a sweeping Western that was called “ambitious” and “problematic.” Got the lead in The Bullet Journal, an action movie that caught the attention of a Wonder Studios head, who was on the lookout for the kind of handsome, all-American leading man who could shoulder a reboot of the entire Captain Kismet universe.
“And what about having a life?” asked Will. “Outside of work, I mean.”
“Getting the work was the life,” said Patrick. “I was friends with other actors who’d moved to LA around the same time as me, who were going up for similar roles. We’d go out, drink, complain about always being passed over on parts we’d’ve been perfect for…But then I started booking bigger gigs, and that momentum really took off, and things changed so quickly. They were happy for me, but I kind of felt weird going to drinks with them and hearing about their shitty auditions when everything was going so great. And they felt the same. Once or twice, one of them would ask me if I could pass on their reel to my agent, and I’d give them her number, but nothing ever came of it. Then one of them asked if I could get him a part in the show I was doing, and I felt weird, but I said sure, I’d see what I could do. Connected him with the right people, he came in to read. He wasn’t right for the part, and he blamed me. Seemed to think that I was hoarding all of the success instead of sharing it. After a while, the guys stopped inviting me out to drinks.”
