Page 74 of Hollywood, Ending

Before we can get inside the theater, Ellen walks me back to the photographers one last time to take a big group photo with the producers and Studio Todd and Juniper and me and Matthew. Matthew has his arm around me, and we walk together. He’s telling me how proud he is, and at the end of the carpet, he gestures to the cameras and the fans behind them lined up along the barricades. “You really were Most Likely to Make It in Hollywood, kid.”

“Wait, from my yearbook? How do you know that?”

Matthew shrugs ever so slightly. “Always good to do a bit of advance research. Sent my guy to poke around your school.”

Something cracks inside my chest. All at once, I understand. “You leaked it,” I say. “It was you.” I look up at him. He’s still smiling at his assembled admirers.

“Look how great it all turned out. You see why I had to do it. You get it.” I don’t get it, but I’m quiet. I’m always quiet in the face of betrayal. Always scared dumb. “Look at all these people,” Matthew Malone tells me, “for a movie about Andy Warhol? I know it’s been rough on you, kid, but we fucking did it.”

He doesn’t define the it. He’s looking at me now, and seems to be waiting for some absolution or something. After a moment, he says, “You don’t get to be Matthew Malone without wanting it, kid. You’ve gotta want it really fucking badly. Like Junie does.” Again, I’m not sure what the it is. Success? Fame? A life in entertainment? Andy Warhol paintings on your wall? I can’t say anything. My throat is strangled shut. “If you need me to be your villain, I’m happy to play the role,” Matthew says calmly. “But ten years from now, you’ll have me to thank for your career.”

_____

Juniper’s already in her seat at the theater. I sit down next to her, lean close, and say, “It was Matthew. He just told me.”

“He leaked it?”

“He didn’t even say he was sorry. He just said he had to do it.”

“What a fuckface,” she says, and then after a second, “But, I mean, we have to work with him.”

“We do?”

“It doesn’t end today,” she says with a measure of pity in her voice. Again, that terrible pronoun. “Hopefully there will be an awards push. Lots of screenings. A whole campaign. And he’ll be there for everything. What are we gonna do?”

She’s not asking Are you okay? or Do you want to get out of here? She’s asking what we’re gonna do. I feel the panic rising up in me again, the old dread. Somebody’s got me in their clutches, and there’s no good way out. If I run up to the front of the theater and shout that Matthew Malone is a fucking monster who will screw anyone to get ahead, I hurt the movie and myself and Juniper. So what can I do? All I want is not to feel the way I’m feeling right now—cornered, helpless. The movie starts. I’m sweating again. I can’t think, can’t even feel the comfort of Juniper’s hand in mine.

_____

After the screening, I’m up at the front of the theater with Matthew and Juniper and Kathryn, and Juniper’s Very Famous friend is interviewing us. I say that Matthew is so kind and generous and funny. I elaborate on his generosity with a story I’ve told a dozen times before about how he gave the whole crew cash bonuses. I hate myself as I tell this story, but I would hate myself more if I didn’t tell it.

Matthew tells the audience that he loves working with us because “there’s a purity in their acting that you can lose along the way, a willingness to be fully open and vulnerable with each other, which is essential to great films.” The audience applauds that, as they applaud every Matthew applause line, and laugh at every Matthew joke. I realize the audience is also playing along, that they’re also part of the show. Everybody feeds the machine.

How to describe the feeling? In high school, we’d have two dances every year. I am a good dancer—I understand my body in space; I’ve taken classes; etc.—and I’d always be out there during the upbeat songs. Maybe on the slow songs I’d dance with a girl.

But he was always there. He was always a chaperone, always lurking, often in literal shadows. He was there to prevent kids from hooking up on the dance floor or spiking the punch or whatever kids weren’t supposed to do. I would always feel him there, even when I was dancing and trying not to be self-conscious, trying to give my body over to the music, I would sense him, and it would make me feel like I wasn’t actually in my body but was instead observing it from somewhere else. Like I was hovering up by the ceiling of the gym, looking down at everyone, including me. And I feel like that again. I feel like my soul is not in my body but instead somewhere up in the balcony, looking down on these tiny figures in their fancy form-fit clothes. Nothing has changed. He’s still in the room with me. I’m still dressed up. And I’m still really scared.

_____

I’m not sure exactly when I decide to do it. Maybe it’s during the movie. Maybe it’s at the afterparty, as I’m dancing with Juniper, flipping her upside down as she gasps and laughs. “Kai,” she says, “you can move.” Maybe it’s when Matthew puts his arm around me while the DJ plays The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” and shouts the chorus, expecting me to shout it along with him, which I find myself doing because I don’t want to make a scene. Maybe I don’t decide to do it until I’m outside, sweaty, my bow tie untied. Maybe I don’t decide until I see a cab and flag it down. Maybe I don’t really make the decision until I’m in the back of the cab, saying, “Can you take me to the Mandarin Oriental, please? And then on to JFK.”

“What airline?”

“Not sure yet.”

_____

At the hotel, I grab my passport but leave my suitcase. They’ve got clothes wherever I’m going.

I wonder sometimes if I enjoy fucking up my life, if there’s something way down deep within me that wants to see everything torn to rags, that wants to walk away calmly from the explosion of my self. I don’t drink too much (or at least didn’t before the junket); I don’t do hard drugs; I don’t cut myself. But I still need that jolt, and I get it by sabotaging my own life. Which is why I’m not entirely surprised to find myself plotting against my own best interests as I sit in a cab on my way to the airport and book a flight on my phone to somewhere warm and far away.

I’ve cleared security and printed out my boarding pass. I’m walking to the gate when I get a text from Juniper: Where’d you go? There’s an afterparty at Matthew’s.

I look at my phone for a second, dump it in a nearby trash can, and keep moving.

Part 4

The Comedown