Page 41 of Hollywood, Ending

“So you’re a hero.”

“I don’t know about that.” My phone buzzed. I glanced down at it. Ellen. Call me.

“So Brian,” Bob said.

“Yeah, I mean, I like his movies obviously. And it’s a big movie, I guess.”

“Speaking of which, I’m trading calls with business affairs at the studio, but it looks like around two hundred thousand up front, with a little on the back end.”

“Is that good?”

“We’re gonna try to get them up to two fifty, but they’re always gonna lowball us. There are a thousand eager young actors they could cast, and they know that and we know that. So you want the role because it’s a good role, not because it’ll make you rich.” Two hundred thousand dollars seemed rich to me.

“Okay,” I said.

“So you want to sign the test deal,” Bob said. “Assuming we can get it to two fifty.”

“I guess,” I said. “The book is good, but the script is pretty, uh, generic. I worry it’s just another action movie, you know?”

“It’s just another action movie made by the guy whose previous action movies have generated a combined billion-with-a-b in international box office, a guy who literally makes stars for a living. Tom Calloway can’t act his way out of a fucking parking ticket, and he’s the fucking face of Armani because of Brian Arawas. Kai, you pay me to give you advice, and my advice is that Gods of Agamemnon is going to blow up, and you can blow up with it. Honestly, with the amount of money the studio is putting behind this thing, it could be directed by a goddamned robot trained by watching Transformers movies and still turn a profit.”

“Andromeda,” Zoe said.

“Right. The title is a fucking problem. You and shitty movie titles, Kai, name a better combination.” He belly laughed.

“I guess I should do it.”

“You should,” Zoe said.

“Zoe’s right,” Bob said, which is when it occurred to me that Zoe had never been at any of the previous coffees or dinners or lunches I’d had with Bob. She’d always greeted me at the agency, walked me back to Bob’s office, asked if I wanted anything to drink, chatted with me until he was available, and then disappeared. I wondered if she’d gotten some sort of minor promotion or if she was just here to convince me to sign the test deal.

“So if I say yes and I get the part, I have to take it, right?”

“You don’t have to do anything. You want us to get you out of it, we’ll get you out of it. But yes, broadly speaking, you’re agreeing to a deal that you will take in the event that you get the part. Again, though, nothing’s set in stone right now.” Zoe reached into her bag and produced the contract. “This is written with you getting two fifty,” Bob said, “in the hopes that they’ll just be like, well, fuck, he already signed this one; we might as well give him the extra fifty grand so we don’t have to bother with more paperwork.”

“Seriously?”

“I’ll appeal to their fear, and they’ll make the deal. They always do, if they’re afraid. Fear runs this town. Fear that someone else will get the thing that is so special, so unprecedented, so once-in-a-lifetime.”

“And in this case, that thing is me?”

“That thing is fucking you, kid.”

“Plus,” Zoe said, “you’re famous for saving Juniper’s life last night.”

“I didn’t—” I started, but Bob had thrust the contract at me, so I didn’t say anything; I just signed it.

11

I felt like taking a nap when I got back to my room, but I made the mistake of checking in with Ellen, who informed me that she was coming by at ten to “run scenarios.” It was already nine forty-five, so I took a quick shower and changed and by then she had arrived. “Goo­odd­ddd mmoo­oorr­rnni­iiii­nnng­ggg,” she sang when I opened the door. “It’s a beautiful day for my new media starlet. You are trending on Twitter, Kai. I have to know: Who set it up? Because it wasn’t me. I wish I had ideas like that, but I’m not that cunning.”

“Nobody set it up. Some guy got in Juniper’s Uber—”

“Oh, come now. It’s simply too good not to have been orchestrated. A handsome young man saves his beautiful young costar from a sweaty old creeper? It’s all out of central casting. If anything, it’s a bit too on the nose. I wonder if it was Katie. Katie’s got a flair for the dramatic.”

“There’s no way it was Katie,” I said. “Juniper was terrified. She was literally shaking. I don’t think it was a setup.”

“Well then perhaps the gods just gave us a wonderful gift. Regardless, you literally can’t buy this kind of media. I’m sure it was traumatic and everything, but it’s also gold. Let’s have class outside, shall we?” She pulled the patio door open and sat on one of the lounge chairs with her iPad. I wondered what Ellen’s life was like. I couldn’t tell how old she was. Thirty? Forty?