Page 26 of Hollywood, Ending

This is part of you, he often said. Part of you we need to bring out.

“Don’t say or whatever. Or molested. Say assaulted.”

“I’m not saying any of those words, because I’m not talking about it.”

“Okay,” Ellen said. “You’re not talking about it, and I will make it clear if someone digs it up that you’re not talking about it. We can keep it out of the press. But I can’t keep it from leaking if I don’t know about it.”

“Well, you know about it,” I said.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Ellen said. “It’s not bad for us.”

“Well, it wasn’t great for me.”

“I mean it’s not bad for the movie. Anyway, you need to tell me these things so that I won’t be surprised. I know this part of it sucks, but it comes with the territory. Is there anything else I need to know?”

“I don’t know. Did anything else come up when you called my friends from high school?”

“Your friends didn’t say anything, if that makes you feel any better. I found out from one of your teachers. Nobody had a bad thing to say about you, Kai. They saw the same sweet, sensitive kid I see.”

He always told me it was only me, that no other student had or could ever tempt him. That was a lie, of course. It turned out there were many of us. But I was chosen to testify at the trial, because I was the all-American, straight-presenting athlete. They kept my name sealed, but that doesn’t mean much in a high school.

The gum was starting to lose its flavor. I could smell the coffee in the air again. “We done?” I asked.

“You can’t be pissed at me for doing my job, Kai. You know how many movies have tanked in the last ten years because it came out that the actors were fuckwads? Studios have to be careful now. I’m sure you get it.”

“I do get it. I’m just asking if we’re done.”

“If you want my advice, you should get out in front of it and put it behind you. We get you a sympathetic profiler—someone at the Times or maybe The New Yorker—and you acknowledge it and move on. You’ve got to remember, you’re a victim here. You didn’t do anything wrong. But if you hide it—”

“If that’s it, I’m going to go home and pack,” I said. “I hope I passed the test.”

_____

On the train home, I wondered if I should tell Juniper. In the four months since we’d wrapped on Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, Juniper and I had met up maybe five or six times. I was in Canada for a couple weeks playing Kevin the Intern in a spectacularly unfunny comedy, and Juniper was obsessively prepping for Gods of Andromeda in LA.

Telling her would feel weird, but also not telling her felt weird. I should’ve told her in Pittsburgh, but I was scared. I am always scared. Part of me will never not feel the fear that boiled up when the defense counsel began her cross-examination.

The hardest thing in life is to be small, to not have any say over what happens to you or who does it. To be at other people’s mercy. I required mercy. I always would. And I hated that. You couldn’t get out in front of that, not ever. You can’t put it behind you. I was twenty-one years old and he was dead and he still had his goddamned hands all over me.

2

Juniper and I were sitting across from each other on the plane with a fold-out table and a sizable vase of flowers between us, such that Juniper’s head seemed to be made of tightly bunched rosebuds. The flight attendant asked me if I wanted a glass of wine. I said I would love to try the red. She poured, the wine not splashing into the glass but swirling into it, and I took a sip as the flight attendant looked at me expectantly. “It’s great,” I told her, and she said, “I’m so glad you like it,” and Juniper said, “When I die, bury me with this plane,” and Katie the Publicist said, “If you want to own a plane like this, you better crush Gods of Andromeda.”

After a while, Juniper said, “Will you run a scene with me?”

“From Gods of Andromeda?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Sure.” I wanted to push the flowers out of the way. It was ridiculous to have a conversation without seeing each other. But I didn’t do it for some reason. They didn’t feel like my flowers.

Juniper scooched out from the table and came over to my side. Her hair was down over her face. She was wearing sweatpants and a tank top, but neither looked particularly casual or comfortable. She pulled out an extremely folded paper from her pocket and handed it to me. It reminded me of a middle school love letter. I unfolded the pages and scanned the action. “You’re Agrippah, right?”

“I guess if I want this plane I am. Agrippah, Queen of the Realm.”

I smirked and just went into it. “You dare disturb the lawful trial of Medivh?”

“I fear I must, for—”