Page 28 of Hollywood, Ending

“Like Cobra Kai?”

“Exactly like it,” I said.

“You’re coming in from New York?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t sound like a New Yorker,” he said. Beside me, Ellen was inside her phone. The SUV didn’t smell like one thing or another so much as it smelled overwhelming.

“I’m from Indiana,” I told him.

“My condolences.”

Ellen handed me the phone. It was Juniper’s Instagram, a picture of her and me holding hands with the plane in the background. “Juniper posted this?”

“If I had to guess, Katie posted it for Juniper.”

“She said I was the last Truffula Tree in Lorax Land, and then she cut me down.”

“No need to be dramatic, Kai. It’s Instagram.”

Katie was not a studio publicist like Ellen; she worked for Juniper. Once you get famous enough, you get your own publicist. Juniper was famous enough. But now she was about to happen. That’s what Ellen said. Ellen said people like Juniper don’t know what’s coming, but it’s coming anyway.

“Where in Indiana?” Al asked.

“Indianapolis.”

“Race cars,” he said. “That’s all I know about Indianapolis.”

“Yup. You from here?”

“No, I’m from Iran. You know Iran?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You in a movie?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“What movie?”

“It’s called Andy Warhol Never Gets Old.”

“About the artist?”

“Yes,” I said.

Ellen jumped in. “It’s about the last year of Warhol’s life. Kai is an absolute revelation in the film.”

“So who do you play?” Al asked.

“I’m Andy’s intern. The movie is mostly about Andy, but there’s a subplot where me and this journalist who’s writing about Andy kind of fall in love.”

“They don’t kind of fall in love. They do fall in love,” Ellen said. “It’s very romantic.”

“But we’re both kind of messed up,” I said. “In the movie, I mean.”

After a while, Al said, “I meet a lot of actors.”