Page 71 of Hollywood, Ending

“Ah, right. She’ll be up in a moment.”

“Are you—Did you—” Ellen starts. “You know what? None of my fucking business. Send her upstairs.”

“We were just watching a movie,” I say.

“Not my circus, not my monkeys. Send her up to the room, though, will ya?”

Juniper is already pulling her underwear back on, and then hopping into her pants.

“Well,” she says. “This is a major development. This is breaking news. Can, uh, can we do this again?”

“I think so,” I say.

“Unfortunately I fly to Paris tonight,” she says.

“Incredible news: I also fly to Paris tonight.”

“Great. I’ll make a note of that. The boy I love is flying to Paris with me.”

10

That afternoon, I have time scheduled for “fact-checking,” which turns out to be a woman from The New Yorker devoting two entire hours to asking me everything about my life: Is it true that you went to Greenbriar Elementary School? Were you in a summer stock production of Annie? Did you feel, when playing Paul in You Can’t Take It with You, that you weren’t inside your own body? Did you say that you are “sometimes” in love with Juniper Castillo? Your parents both grew up in Evansville, Indiana, correct? Your publicist is named Ellen Kim. Your abuse was widely publicized despite Ms. Kim’s attempts to keep it under wraps. You choose not to discuss the abuse with reporters if given the option, but you sometimes aren’t given the option. Is it true that when you and Juniper first met, you were drawing an ink portrait of her? You identified as a theater kid, yes, but also played baseball? Is your brother a dentist in Noblesville, Indiana? This is your first feature film? You are five feet and eleven inches tall, of a slight build, and will be starring next in the film adaptation of the bestselling novel Gods of Andromeda. You’ve never made a film without Juniper Castillo. Is it true that you did not know the man who you threw out of a car in Los Angeles?

When she finally finishes, I feel as if my life is some kind of dead butterfly pinned to a wall in a museum somewhere, but it’s over, and I realize that Jill can write whatever she wants about my past, but she cannot write about my future. People always say that the present is the only moment that matters, but for me it’s the future. When it was happening with him, I would always think about the future, how one day I’d be an adult. Now I think about Vancouver and making a fun fantasy movie with Juniper, and I think about rehearsing and working out all the time to look appropriately jacked. I do not actually have the present, this moment I don’t control. What I have, what I will always have, is the perpetual future.

After the fact-checking, I talk to Ellen about how everything went and what I suspect the profile will be (damning of the machine but generous toward me) and then I choose what to bring to Paris among the many things Prada has sent me. I can barely get my suitcase closed, and I know there will be a new outfit for me in Paris, because Prada has told Bob they want me to wear something different at each premiere. By four p.m., I’m down in the lobby, where Ellen and Katie and Kathryn are having a drink at the bar. Kathryn kisses me on both cheeks and says, “Can you believe our little film gets a Parisian premiere?”

Juniper makes her way down in sunglasses and a hat, and then we all drive to the airport, where an elderly man is waiting for us outside who whisks us through check-in and then bypasses the security line, directly to the metal detectors. This causes more attention, and I hear someone saying, “Bro, look, Juniper Castillo.” After clearing security, some girl comes up to me and asks for a selfie and Ellen says, “As long as you can do it while we’re walking, but we can’t stop,” and the girl holds up her phone and makes a kissy face and I smile while walking. Kathryn says, “This is why I asked them for private; our starlets are becoming proper stars.” Juniper keeps her head down and her sunglasses on, and finally we’re at the gate. The elderly man from the airport goes up to the counter and the door opens and we board before the babies or the active-duty military or anyone else. We’re in business class, with lie-flat seats, and I’m seated directly in front of Juniper, so I kneel on my seat and look back at her as she settles in.

“So it’s just gonna be like that for a while,” I say, somewhat bewildered by the experience.

A flight attendant brings me champagne, and Kathryn comes from across the aisle to clink glasses with me. Matthew isn’t on the plane; I suppose he has one of his own. Soon the flight fills up with civilians, only one of whom asks for a picture with Juniper, which I take. The rest of the business-class cabin either doesn’t recognize us or is too cool to say anything about it.

Once we’re settled, I watch a movie—Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn—and settle into my little cocoon. I eat some dinner and then lay my seat down to sleep. I wake up once in the night to pee and so walk past Juniper’s pod. She’s asleep, and I pause for a moment just to look at her, curled on her side.

“Don’t watch people sleep. It’s creepy,” Ellen says from across the aisle, and I turn to her. “Jesus Christ you’re smitten,” she says.

I give her a look but don’t say anything, because they can’t quote your looks.

“Oh, don’t use my own media training on me, buddy!”

I go to the bathroom, then go back to sleep, thinking about how Juniper is just inches from me.

_____

When we land in Paris, a person is there to greet us and helps us skip to the front of the passport line and then walks us to the exit, where three black Mercedes sedans are waiting for us. Juniper and I get in one with Ellen in the front seat. “Long day today,” Ellen says. “We’ll give you a minute to freshen up and get dressed and then at eleven we’ll start media. Mostly you’ll be paired, but Juniper, you’ve got a photo shoot with French Vogue in the afternoon and Kai during that time you’ll do a feature interview with a Dutch newspaper called NRC. Around three, you’ll both go to your rooms for hair and makeup and wardrobe and then we’ll be in the cars to go to the premiere by five at the latest. You’ll walk the carpet and do some interviews on the carpet and then Matthew will introduce the movie and after the screening, we’ll have a panel.”

“Great,” Juniper says. “Then we get to go back to the hotel?”

“Yes, and in the morning we fly to New York. Light work, as the kids say.”

_____

French press junkets are more or less like American ones, except the reporters are better dressed and speak with accents. I tell them that I prepared for the movie by reading everything Warhol wrote. I tell them Juniper is funny, thoughtful, and wise beyond her years. Juniper tells them I am charming, caring, and kind. One time, she even calls me handsome. We exchange anecdotes about the film. Now these stories have lost all their hard edges and have become river rocks we hold in our hands. A different reporter comes in every seven minutes. The set is the same, except the hotel is different and the movie poster behind us advertises the film Andy Warhol ne Vieillit Jamais.

Here the reporters are far more comfortable asking us about our personal lives. Perhaps they have less to lose, or maybe the culture’s just different, but almost every reporter asks some version of whether I used my own traumatic abuse as a teen to help me understand the challenges in my character’s life. I say that of course you bring your full self to a role, but I didn’t learn anything from abuse that I couldn’t have learned somewhere else, somewhere easier. Whether this answer is true is almost irrelevant to the experience of saying the words; all I know is that the answer, practiced dozens of times now, allows me to feel safe and sane.

_____