Page 12 of Hollywood, Ending

I didn’t even need to think about my mother, my actual family member who died of a substance use disorder. I didn’t have to think about the times I’ve watched people snort coke at parties, invulnerability thrumming through them. Didn’t have to think about the one time I tried weed, maybe a week after Mom died. A friend gave me some gummies and I took one in the hopes that I might be able to sleep, but I just lay in bed immobilized, thinking about all the worst things that still might happen, how if my brother and dad died I’d be actually alone in the world.

I didn’t need memories to be within Carly. I only needed what I already felt, to feel the fatigue in my body and transform it into fear and longing and pulsating yearning.

_____

With each take the word cut was a slight surprise, and then Kathryn would talk to me, but I couldn’t really listen because I was so deep in the experience of being high as hell, wanting to fuck someone just so they would look at me the way men do when you make them come. “You’re doing great,” Kathryn told me. “I hesitate to tell you to pull it in but we probably need a smaller version as well.”

“Got it,” I said. I closed my eyes. Took some slow breaths. I was high in a nightclub where the music didn’t actually play while we shot, because we didn’t know what would be on the soundtrack yet. Kai was yelling over silence, because he needed to be shouting above music that wasn’t there. And I was screaming at him, blood dripping from my nose, trying to make “a smaller version” of my most emotional scene in the movie.

Jude was crying, too, begging me to go back to his apartment. “You’re gonna die like Cam did. You’re ruining your fucking life.”

“MY LIFE!” I shouted back. “ALL FUCKING MINE.”

“I care about you. Because you’re worth caring about.”

I danced sloppily toward him, then lost my balance but saved myself by grabbing hold of him. I tried to kiss him and he dodged it. “WE ARE HAVING A GREAT FUCKING NIGHT.”

“I am having a terrible night.”

“TAKE A LUDE AND CHILL THE FUCK OUT.”

“You’re bleeding.”

I looked down at my shirt. Blood dripped. I wasn’t crying now. I was more casually baffled. “ANDY IS HIGH TOO AND YOU’RE NOT YELLING AT HIM.”

“Andy’s not bleeding on his shirt. I gotta get you out of here.” He sounded strangely distant as he said it, but I tried to stay in the scene.

“MY LIFE,” I shouted back, pulling away from his grip. “MINE TO SPEND. MINE TO WASTE. MINE.”

Jude rolled his eyes, raised his hands in surrender, and watched as I fell to the ground, then walked away.

“Cut,” Kathryn said. She took Kai aside, and I could hear her whispers but not what they meant. Kai felt somehow blocked off, like he wasn’t quite meeting me in the scene, as if he was worried about embarrassing himself. And maybe that was true to character, but I felt like the scene needed to properly explode, the way in a movie everything has to go fully wrong before anything can resolve.

“Let’s go again,” Kathryn said.

_____

Kai tried again, hitting his marks and his lines, but there was something a little dead-eyed in it, something self-conscious. He kept looking around at the other people milling about, as if they mattered.

“Cut. Going again,” Kathryn said.

We tried again, but we were getting further away, not closer now, and I could feel myself pulling away from him, trying to find a Carly that could exist separate from his slightly aloof Jude.

“Cut. We’re gonna go again.”

We tried again, and now there was anger in Kai, a frustration, which felt closer to the right note but still lacking in depth. “Let’s just take lunch,” Kathryn said after that take.

“Bit early for lunch,” Jo the Line Producer responded.

“Lunch.” Kathryn said it again, this time more forcefully.

As I was walking with a PA toward the van that would take me back to my trailer, Kathryn grabbed me by the shoulder. “See if you can get through to him,” she said. “Your costar. See if you can unblock him.”

_____

Kai had been great to work with all week—fearless and heartbroken and ambitious and fast-talking and absolutely dripping with charisma. But I knew what Kathryn meant. Although there was nothing radically out of place about his actions or line readings, he seemed more concerned about the other people at the club than he was about me, which felt strangely wrong for an actor whose natural choices were always extremely right.

I went back to my trailer. I was exhausted. I could hear Kai playing a video game as I lay down for a minute on the little vinyl couch. It always took me a while to emerge from the character after intense scenes. I had the cathartic rush you feel after crying hard for a long time, when you’re reminded that somehow, in spite of it all, you’re still alive. I remembered the morning after they told me my mom had died, I took a shower, and as the water droplets hit me I kept thinking, I am still alive. It seemed impossible that I could exist without her. And yet.