Tarzana
“What happened to your foot?” Baela asks from the kitchen. She’s doing yoga poses in the middle of the floor. Jace is noisily pawing around in the refrigerator. His iPhone is on the counter, and from it emits a horrible throbbing Charli XCX song that sounds like something they would use to torture prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
“Yeah, I wanna dance to me, me, me, me, me,
When I go to the club, club, club, club, club…”
You are lying across the orange couch with your left ankle elevated on a stack of pillows and covered with an ice pack. You flip a page in one of those heavy coffee table books with lots of pictures from Barnes & Noble; Baela’s parents bought it when they were furnishing the apartment, and again you are reminded—the weight in your hands like solid gold—of how much they believe in her. The book is about the history of Los Angeles. “Becca pushed me.”
Jace gasps and looks up from the refrigerator. “Why would Baela do that?!”
“No, Jace, Becca,” you say. “My agent’s fiancée Becca. That’s who pushed me.”
“Oh,” he says, and resumes rummaging around in the refrigerator until he finds a cannister of Pillsbury biscuits. He cracks it open and begins plopping pucks of dough on a baking sheet.
“Did Becca find out?” Baela asks you as she does the Reverse Warrior pose. “About the…you know…”
You shrug, guilty, defeated. Your swollen ankle pulsates hotly. You are bone-tired and wholly uninspired, a foreign feeling that makes you wonder if the part of you you’ve always assumed was eternal could die after all. “I guess. I kind of tried to confess but she seemed to already have it figured out.”
Baela snaps upright and gawks at you. “Why would you confess?!”
“I thought you said what I did was wrong.”
“Well yeah, it was, but that doesn’t mean you tell his fiancée! You don’t know her! What if she’s crazy? What if she’s like that astronaut lady who put on a diaper so she could drive nine hundred miles to pepper spray her ex’s new girlfriend?!”
You frown morosely down at the book. “You’re right. It was stupid. I just felt bad.”
Jace slides his baking sheet of Pillsbury biscuits into the oven. On the kitchen counter, your sunflowers are beginning to wilt and shrivel in their vase. You have fed them and meticulously trimmed their stems at an angle as Google recommended, but still, they cannot last forever. Perhaps you’ll dry them and they will endure perpetually in some other form, trapped in a pressed flower frame, arranged into a wreath.
Now Baela is sympathetic. “Are you in a lot of pain? Your foot’s not broken or anything, right?”
“It’s my ankle. And according to Google, it’s probably just sprained.”
“Do you want me to take you to an urgent care place for an x-ray? Or get you a brace from the Rite Aid down the street?”
“I really don’t think I need an x-ray…and if my parents see the health insurance got billed, they’re going to freak out and call me asking why I’m burning through even more of their money. But a brace sounds awesome!”
“Okay,” Baela says, and gives you an encouraging smile. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You’re going to slay the Marvel audition on Friday.”
“How’d you know about that?”
She points to the calendar. “You wrote it on there.” And sure enough, you did: red ink in a small black box labeled Friday, July 11th. That’s two days from now. Baela says to Jace: “Come on, we’re going to Rite Aid.”
He is distraught. “But I have to watch my biscuits!”
She groans. “How long do they need to bake?”
“Fifteen more minutes.”
“We’ll walk fast,” Baela says, and drags him out the door. Blessedly, Jace takes his iPhone and its disturbing Charli XCX music with him, now playing a song that sounds like television static.
As you lounge dispiritedly on the velvet orange couch, you return your attention to the book about the history of Los Angeles. A hundred years ago, Elysian Park was an oil field, lattice-like wooden rigs peppering the hills that now host Dodger Stadium, narrow sloping streets of working-class homes, Aegon’s unpretentious half-duplex, and you wish you weren’t thinking about him but regrettably you usually are these days.
You grab your phone and open Instagram. You are startled to see Becca’s profile picture in the row of stories at the top of the screen. She must have accepted the follow request you sent her weeks ago.
Why the hell would she do that now?
Surely, there are no benign reasons. After a moment’s hesitation you can no longer resist and click on Becca’s story to view it. It’s a photo of her giving Aegon a kiss on the cheek; they’re both laughing, his nose is scrunched up, it’s honestly pretty adorable. You tap the X in the corner of the screen to escape the image as quickly as possible, and yet it remains: red neon glowing on the backs of your eyelids, flames of arson in your throat.
You go to Becca’s profile. A quick browse of her stories and posts reveals homemade baked goods, scenic outings in nature, faux-candid selfies, and lots of home decorating. She has a blog that is linked in her bio—rebeccawilsonwrites.wordpress.com—like she’s freaking Gwyneth Paltrow recommending jade yoni eggs on Goop. She also has three Pekingese dogs, woefully inbred wobbling wheezing creatures, and you are reminded of your mother’s colony of Akitas.
Becca’s most recent culinary masterpiece is apple cinnamon bread. The loaves look flawless, golden brown and scrupulously sliced. Her caption reads: Made with delicious Honeycrisp apples, picked fresh at a local orchard! @superstargaryen loved them! Then there is a series of emojis: apples, hearts, bread, more hearts.
You return to your main feed and scroll manically through the photos and video clips there, desperate for a distraction. You see a post featuring a quote from Robin Williams—I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy—and a foggy memory is evoked like the rippling distortion of heat refraction rising up off a freeway.
You think: Didn’t Robin Williams die by suicide because he had a terrible disease?
You go to Google, conduct some basic research, and confirm the details. Then you search: Viserys Targaryen Lewy body dementia. But you find no relevant results.
You open your email, and at last you have your distraction: a reply to a message you sent yesterday night, an invitation for an interview.
~~~~~~~~~~
Her office is on the third floor. Early afternoon daylight floods in through the glass walls; there is a large tropical orange flower in one corner of the room, a specimen that could never survive here in the arid Southwest without shade from the sun and religious misting. Marion May Davis, Mari for short, is in her mid-fifties and has lines in her face and natural grey hair cut into a tidy Anna Wintour bob. She looks her age, and she looks real, two things you liked about her when you found her online. Mari is an agent. Maybe she’ll even be your agent soon.
“Oh, I love Maroon 5,” she sighs romantically as she scrutinizes your resume.
“Me too!” you lie, smiling so forcefully your cheeks are beginning to ache. You don’t want to leave Aegon, but you have to. He’s torturing you, he’s killing you. The Marvel audition is tomorrow, and you cannot bring yourself to care about it. There is a pink neon sign on Mari’s office wall that reads in whimsical cursive: good vibes only. Not terribly original, but you appreciate the sentiment.
You tap your black ballet flats anxiously against the bamboo floor as you watch Mari contemplate your resume. You have hidden your ankle brace in your purse. You are wearing a simple sleeveless grey sheath dress that Baela saw at a Brooks Brothers and bought for you—It’s so classic! she had said—and matching cool-toned eyeshadow: sparkly lilac Betrayal by Urban Decay, silver Iced Out by Huda Beauty.
Mari asks: “Did you have any trouble finding the office?”
“No, not at all! But I did have to park super far away because I am awful at parallel parking, and somehow it feels even hotter than usual here.”
“Well, we’re so far inland.”
You are in Tarzana, and it is Thursday July 10th, and you have the sense that time is rapidly ticking down, not just to the end of the year when your parents will summon you back to Minnesota but to September when Aegon is getting married on Turks and Caicos. From outside you can hear cars and pedestrians on Ventura Boulevard, an east-west asphalt artery of shops, hotels, and offices in northwest Los Angeles, the site of a former ranch established in 1919 by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Mari puts your resume down on her transparent glass desk, naked except for a MacBook Pro. Frigid air pumps out through the vents on the ceiling. “Okay, I’ll take you.”
“Really?!” you squeal; and yet you cannot ignore that this feels bittersweet. Aegon’s really getting married? I’m really leaving him? “Yay!”
“Yeah, I like your energy. And your outfit is great, very European, very chic. The makeup, well…” Mari chuckles. “They’ll do that for you at shoots. But tone it down a bit more for auditions. They want to see you as a blank slate they can scribble all over.”
“Sure,” you agree instantly. “I’ll do anything you say. I’ll be your best client ever!” I won’t even hook up with you and thereby enrage your significant other!
Mari is typing on her MacBook Pro. “Give me a few days to send your stuff out and see what I can find for you. I love that picture of you with the sunflower…where was it taken?”
“The Flower District,” you say, thinking of the day you went there with Aegon and got ice cream afterwards, and he had remembered that you like vanilla.
“Delightful.” Mari is still typing. “I’m also going to email you the contact info for a friend of mine. He’s a plastic surgeon, he’s fantastic, I recommend him to all my clients. I’d like you to do a consult with him.”
You are ripped out of your not-so-distant memories, your effortful enthusiasm, and you have to be intentional to not seem offended. “Thank you so much, I really appreciate that, but I’m not interested in breast augmentation.”
“Oh no, I was thinking of your face.”
You stare at her. Reflexively, you touch your fingertips to your cheek. “My face? You want me to change…my face…?”
“Not change, dear!” Mari says. “Just enhance. Just make little tweaks here and there. I think you could really benefit from a rhinoplasty, and maybe something around the brows too…a lift? John will know when he examines you. He’s a magician! Have you seen the before and after pictures of Blake Lively? Or Mindy Kaling, or Taylor Swift? You’ll still look like you. You’ll just be an even better version of you!”
Outside, some tiny dog is yapping from a stroller or a purse. In this office, icy air blows down from the ceiling vent. You study Mari: undyed hair, no face or neck lift, probably not even Botox or Juvederm. “But you…you haven’t had any procedures done, have you?”
Mari smiles patiently, like she’s trying to explain a hard truth to a child, the fact that parents don’t always stay together or that pets inevitably die. “I work behind the camera, dear. Not in front of it.” Then she resumes typing on her MacBook Pro.
You watch her for a few seconds, listening to cars whooshing by on Ventura Boulevard. Then you grab your black Michael Kors purse—borrowed from Baela’s closet, at her suggestion—and stand up. Your wounded left ankle gives a shriek of protest. “Thank you for your time, but I don’t think this is a good fit. Have a great weekend!”
“What?” Mari says, peering up incredulously at you from behind her laptop, like she’s not used to being the one who gets dumped. You are already at the doorway.
“Bye!” you call with a wave, and sprint to the elevator at the end of the hall. You hammer the circular button and run inside when the doors open. Once you are alone and descending, listening to an instrumental version of Despacito, you take your ankle brace out of Baela’s Michael Kors purse and put it on. Then the elevator doors open again, and you are in another cold sterile hallway, and you hurry through a glass revolving door and escape out onto Ventura Boulevard.
The sun is blinding, the heat like an oven, your heart pounding heavily in your ribcage; your ankle throbs through the dose of Advil you took this morning. You stand on the sidewalk, jostled by women carrying shopping bags and men striding importantly by as they talk on their phones, and you try to remember which direction you came from.
I don’t want another agent, you think dizzyingly, nauseatingly. I want Aegon. But he’s driving me insane, and he’s hurting me, and soon he’ll be gone.
You get your bearings and walk east. It must be a hundred degrees. The palm trees are sparse and very tall and cast almost no shade; sweat drips down your face, your underarms, the ridge of your spine. You can’t tell if you’re panting because of the heat or because you’re freaking out or both. It’s probably both.
Your phone is ringing. You yank it out of the Michael Kors purse and answer in a breathless huff. “Hello?”
“Hi, honey!” Mom chimes. “How are you?”
“I’m okay,” you say, although you’re certainly not. The sun is beating down like you’re a lizard under a heat lamp. “I just had an interview with—”
“Listen, we have to get you home for bridesmaid dress shopping,” Mom continues briskly. Ambiently, you can hear Clara chatting away about different fabrics, chiffon and tulle and satin and lace. “I’m looking at flights right now. How’s the first week in August?”
“Well, Mom, I’m really not sure because my schedule is changing all the time and I never know when I’m going to have an appointment or an audition and my manager Josh yells at me when I don’t put in enough hours at Cold Stone and—”
“This is important,” Mom snaps. There is the click click click of her manicured fingernails against her laptop keyboard. “Your sister only gets married once.”
“I know it’s important.” But what I’m trying to do out here is important too. “And I’m really happy for her and I’m thrilled about the wedding. I love weddings.”
“Then act like it.”
“I just honestly don’t have a regular schedule right now and missing a week can make a big difference. Do I have to be there in person for the dress thing? Can I just send you my measurements? You and Clara have a vision for this, so just pick whatever you want me to wear.”
Mom sighs impatiently. “No, we can’t do that! Honey, you know you have difficult proportions. We need to see the dress in person and order any alterations.”
“Okay,” you concede, feeling woozy and leaning against a streetlight that burns your arm. “Fine. Yeah. The first week in August is great.”
“And it’s especially vital that you look your best because you’re going to be the maid of honor. Yay! Isn’t that exciting?!”
You touch your furrowed forehead; it’s slick with sweat. Your period started this morning, and that can’t be helping the situation. “Does Clara want me to be her maid of honor?”
Faintly, you can hear Clara saying something about her best friend Kinsley, and your mother shushes her. “It should be her only sister,” Mom tells you.
“…Is that a no? Because Kinsley can do it, I really don’t mind. If I land a role I’m not necessarily going to be able to fly back for planning and parties and stuff—”
“You will be the maid of honor,” Mom insists. “Your father and I are paying for the wedding. We want you to be the maid of honor. Friends come and go, but family is forever. That’s the end of it.”
“Okay,” you say, and it comes out like a whimper; the heat is overwhelming. “Mom, I have to go, I have to try to find my car. I forget where I parked.”
“I’ll email you the tickets once I buy them.”
“Thanks!” you manage weakly, then hang up and wobble on your sprained ankle in the direction of your Honda, eastward, away from the ocean, back towards the Midwest from which you once made your botched exodus.
Suddenly you feel violently ill, and your vision begins to go dark, and you know you need to sit down before you pass out on the sidewalk and roast to death. You dart into the nearest building, a T.J. Maxx, and flee through throngs of shoppers to the furniture section. You collapse into a leopard-print armchair and sit there slumped and gasping, glistening with sweat, the room spinning around you. There is a fawn-colored shag rug on the floor that reminds you of one of Becca’s Pekingese dogs. You lean over and vomit the contents of your stomach onto it: a piece of toast with a teaspoon of peanut butter, a banana, some red grapes, a lot of Diet Coke.
Oh God. Oh no.
You look around to see if anyone has noticed yet; it doesn’t seem like it. Then you quickly roll up the shag rug and shove it under a dresser. You return to your leopard-print armchair and cover your flushed face with your trembling hands, your blood like boiling water beneath your skin.
Do I have to change my face to be an actress?
You shake your head, trying to expel this thought like seagulls from a picnic, sharp bold beaks pecking mercilessly for crumbs.
I have to get out of here. I have to get back to my car.
Your 2003 Honda Accord is parked no less than a ten-minute walk away. You wait a little while to give yourself time to cool down—a T.J. Maxx employee asks if you need assistance and you politely decline, then he frowns down at the floor as if he’s thinking: Isn’t there supposed to be a rug here?—and then you venture back out into the heat. Immediately upon leaving the shade and air conditioning of the T.J. Maxx, your nausea returns with a vengeance and you stumble as the sidewalk sways beneath your black ballet flats. People laugh at you like you’re drunk or high. You retreat back into the T.J. Maxx and seek refuge in the leopard-print armchair.
What am I going to do?
You fumble your phone out of the Michael Kors purse and go to call Baela…then you remember she’s currently on a transcontinental flight to Paris to film Yorgos Lanthimos’s new movie. You call Jace three times, but he doesn’t pick up. Maybe he’s in class. Maybe he’s asleep.
Aegon?
“No,” you mutter to yourself. “No way.” Out of ideas, and not able to think all that well anyway under the present circumstances, you call Mason. He picks up on the second ring.
“Hey!” he says excitedly. “You back in Minnesota?”
“No, sorry, I’m in L.A.”
“Oh.” There’s a pause. “How’s that going?”
“Actually, not that great at the moment.”
“Yeah, you sound weird.”
“I’m really sick. I think it’s the heat. I’m trapped in a T.J. Maxx and I can’t get to my car, and even if I could I’m worried I’d crash while driving home.”
“Damn, that sucks,” Mason says distractedly, and you can hear that he’s typing two thousand miles away in his Minneapolis office.
“What should I do?”
“Call an Uber?”
This is sensible, and yet you moan helplessly in your armchair. A T.J. Maxx employee is sniffing around the dresser where you’ve stowed the soiled shag carpet, grimacing. “A ride all the way down to Harbor Gateway is going to cost over a hundred dollars. And my parents will see the charge on my card. And what if I pass out and the Uber guy robs me?”
“Call your agent?” Mason suggests. “He probably won’t rob you.”
“I can’t call him.”
“Why not? Isn’t that his job, to take care of you?”
You blink dazedly at a rack of baby clothes, sailboats and elephants and ladybugs. “It’s complicated.”
“Well I can’t drive to L.A. to pick you up, so you gotta figure something else out.”
“Okay,” you surrender. “Thanks anyway. Bye.”
“Bye. Let me know next time you’re home for a visit!”
“Totally.” But you have no interest whatsoever; you can’t even envision kissing him. You are, to your misfortune, very much so a one-dude kind of girl, as Aegon put it.
You stall for a moment, opening random apps on your phone, scrolling blindly through Instagram. Now you feel less sick and more exhausted, like you could fall asleep and never wake up, although you’re developing a powerful hammer-like thudding just above your left eye. Another T.J. Maxx employee asks if you need help finding something, and you pretend to be considering buying the leopard-print armchair. A manager is using her radio to ask if anybody knows where the shag rug went. Out of alternatives, you call Aegon.
“Hello?” he says when he picks up, like he’s surprised to see your name on his screen.
“Hi,” you reply miserably. “I’m dying.”
He snorts a laugh. “You’re not dying. Where are you?”
“I’m stranded at a T.J. Maxx in Tarzana. I think I have heat sickness or something. Every time I try to walk to my car I almost pass out.”
“Yeah, you’re not used to temps like this, are you?” Aegon sounds kind, gentle, wise, and you hate how much you want to like him again, to be friends, to be more than that. “Well, you’re in luck, because I’m just finishing up a shoot in Studio City and I can probably be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Cool!” you cheer feebly.
“A T.J. Maxx, right?”
“Yup. On Ventura Boulevard.”
“Okay. See you soon, I’ll let you know when I’m close.”
“Thanks,” you murmur drowsily.
“No problem,” Aegon says, and hangs up.
You drag yourself to the bathroom, splash cold water on your face, gulp some down to clean your mouth out and immediately throw it up into the sink. You hide in a stall and rest your head in your hands for a while—ankle throbbing, skull aching, cramps in your lower belly—and only leave when Aegon texts you that he’s two minutes away. As you stumble past the leopard-print armchair now damp with your sweat, you see an employee discovering the shag rug under the dresser and unrolling it. He recoils and shouts: “What the fuck is that?!”
Just outside the T.J. Maxx, Aegon is double-parked and receiving jeers and honks from his fellow motorists. He ignores them. Aegon has closed the top of his Chrysler Sebring convertible and inside the air conditioning is on full blast, an Arctic tundra, the ice cream freezer at Cold Stone Creamery. You throw yourself limply into the passenger’s seat and pull the door shut, which feels like it takes immense effort. Then Aegon surges into traffic and barrels down Ventura Boulevard. You rest your head against the car window and close your eyes.
Aegon prods you with a large chilled bottle of blue Powerade he must have grabbed from a 7-Eleven or something.
“I can’t drink that,” you say dimly.
“Yes you can.”
“Do you have, like, a sugar-free version or—?”
“Shut up. Drink the Powerade.”
You take the bottle, twist off the top—again, this seems to take far more strength than it should—and swallow several gulps, hoping they’ll stay down. Almost immediately, the hammer strikes just above your orbital socket begin to dissolve away, and you feel a little more alert, and your nausea does not make another appearance.
“Better, right?” Aegon asks.
“Yeah,” you admit, touching your skull in dull amazement.
“It’s the magnesium. It’s good for headaches. And the salt helps you rehydrate. What the hell are you doing all the way up here in Tarzana, anyway?”
You sip your Powerade as you stare out the window, watching buildings and palm trees soar anonymously by. Aegon gets on the 101 heading east towards Elysian Park. You know that’s where he’s taking you without needing to ask. “Do you think there’s something wrong with my face?”
“What?”
“My face. Like my nose and my eyebrows. Do I have weird eyebrows? Is that why no one thinks I can be an actress?”
“Your eyebrows are fine,” Aegon says, glancing over at you, confused. He’s wearing the black suit that he dons for film sets, a skinny tie, a half-untucked white shirt. He notices the brace on your left ankle. “Damn, Sunshine, you’re a mess today. What happened there?”
You drink your Powerade as you debate whether to tell him about Becca. You decide against it. “I tripped and fell because I’m an idiot.”
“Why are you dressed like that?”
“So my new agent will take me seriously.”
Aegon must be startled—he turns to look at you, then back to the rushing five eastbound lanes of the freeway—but he stays calm, dispassionate, like he’s trying not to scare you away. “Is that who told you to cut up your face?”
“Turns out I don’t like her, so. Never mind.”
“Guess you’re stuck with me,” Aegon says, sounding a bit relieved.
“I am.” And maybe you’re relived too. “For now.”
“You down to get lunch?”
“I don’t want to vomit in front of you.”
He smiles. “I’ve seen worse things, I guarantee it.”
“What about my car?”
“Where exactly did you leave it?”
You have to think for a while, finishing the Powerade and letting your mind become useful again, and then you recall that you parked on a side street by a dog daycare, Dog-E-Dayz or Dog-E-Den or something like that.
Aegon picks up his phone and calls his receptionist Brandon. “Hey, Brando! Listen, your favorite client left her car in Tarzana. Yeah, I know. Way out there. So it’s parked near a dog daycare about a half-mile from the T.J. Maxx. Can you look up the address and get a tow guy to pick it up and take it down to the garage at her apartment building? Great. You have the model and plate number and everything? You’re a genius. And I’ll pay you extra for the inconvenience. No, no, I insist. Talk to you later. Bye.”
Then Aegon plugs his phone into the aux, and for some reason he puts on an Eminem playlist, and you doze against the cool clear window until you get to Chinatown.
The waitress Lanying asks Aegon about his siblings—“How is Aemond? What about Helaena? Okay, and what about Daeron?”—and Aegon smiles and nods and patiently reiterates that they’re all fine. You are led to the usual spot by the fish tank, massive black-and-orange oscars floating behind the glass and glowering at you, their bulging eyes reddish and hostile. Soon the table is cluttered with a tea kettle and two cups, wonton soups, your moo goo gai pan, Aegon’s boneless spare ribs. You eat cautiously, each bite slow and groggy. A family seated nearby has a baby girl, and she giggles and smacks the table with her tiny chubby hands each time you wave at her. Aegon watches this, oddly wistful for someone who admittedly has never wanted children.
“Here,” Aegon says, offering you a forkful of his boneless spare ribs. “Eat.”
“I shouldn’t.”
“You look droopy. You need fat and sugar and deliciousness.”
You acquiesce and let him feed you the morsel of pork, sweet and fatty and rich and sublime. You chew very slowly, and still it’s gone too soon.
“You have to eat more,” Aegon says. “I think that was part of the problem today.”
“Thank you for rescuing me. I’m pretty sure it was just the heat. And I was kind of upset about the appointment with the agent lady, and my mom called and stressed me out about Clara’s wedding. And oh, by the way, I got my period so no need to worry about that. Whoo hoo.”
Aegon doesn’t seem to appreciate the joke. He gazes at you thoughtfully, then uses his fork to point at the baby girl at the next table. “Do you want kids?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. I love kids. But I have like fifteen more years to reproduce, and if I want to be an actress I kind of have to do that first.”
“I figured. You worked at summer camps in Watts, right?”
“After-school programs. All the other employees hated me, I never wanted to yell at the kids or tell them what to do, I’d just get down on the ground and play with them. I’m so great at Uno.”
Aegon smiles. “Yeah?”
“And Sushi Go, and Scrabble, and Apples to Apples.”
“Apple girl from Appletown,” Aegon says, skimming the zodiac calendar written in red ink, twelve animals and their descriptions, attributes, shortfalls, perfect mates. Then he taps it. “Which one are you?”
You flinch, cave in, feel tremendously low. He really doesn’t remember. It didn’t matter to him, I didn’t matter to him. You stab at your moo goo gai pan with your fork, looking down so he won’t see how upset you are. “You are so fucking mean.”
But Aegon is bewildered, like he’s not sure what he’s done wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~
It’s Monday, July 14th, and you are ringing up a Gotta Have It-sized Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some for a Los Angeles Southwest College student when Aegon walks into Cold Stone Creamery, the string of metal bells jangling against the glass door. You go to meet him by the ice cream freezer, where Aegon scans the menu of Signature Creations. He is carrying a manila folder and wearing a yellow t-shirt with a tan jacket thrown over it, dark jeans, and white-and-gold Nike Killshots. He seems confused.
“You don’t want an Our Strawberry Blonde like last time?” you say. You haven’t seen or heard from him since your Marvel audition, which was pretty dismal. Aegon stood in the corner with his arms crossed over his chest, and even though he put on his black sunglasses and grinned at you when it was over, you could tell he didn’t mean it.
“Oh yeah,” Aegon says. “Yeah, I do, thanks. That’d be perfect.”
You make his ice cream, Aegon pays in cash, and then you ask Josh if you can take your fifteen-minute break now. Aegon evidently wants to talk to you; he sits at the table by the window and watches you expectantly. Josh reluctantly agrees and you take a seat across from Aegon. He holds out his spoon and won’t speak to you until you take a bite. Eventually, you do: chunks of fresh strawberries, sticky caramel, rich fluffy whipped topping, jarringly sweet and cold and perfect, even if it’s not what you’d usually order.
“Well, you didn’t get the Marvel job,” Aegon says.
“I’m not shocked. They barely looked at me.”
“But I might have found you something else.”
“A dog food commercial? A brief and soulless flashback of somebody’s dead wife?”
“A feature film,” Aegon says, and you stare numbly at him.
“What?”
“Indie, Sundance. Starring role. First billing. I got you an audition.”
You snatch the balloon down just as it begins to float away. You’re trying to prepare yourself for disappointment. “They’re not going to like me.”
“They might,” Aegon says. He lays the manila folder on the table and slides it over to you. “I’m not supposed to let this out of my office, so don’t lose it.”
“It’s the script for the audition?”
“It sure is.”
This can’t be happening. “How did you get them to agree to put me on the list?”
Aegon shrugs. “I didn’t do anything. They reached out to me.”
You place your palm on the folder to make sure it’s real. “What’s the movie about?”
He smiles as he licks strawberry ice cream from his spoon. “Vampires.”
“It’s horror?”
“Kind of horror. Kind of romance. I think it’s just right for you.”
“When’s the audition?”
“This Saturday.”
“Okay,” you say, savoring it, this liminal hope you can’t stop yourself from feeling. You’ve always been an optimist. Perhaps no number of curses can change that. “Okay. I’ll be ready, I promise.”
“Don’t forget about the charity gala,” Aegon reminds you. “It’s Saturday night, the same day. But there are like ten hours in between so it shouldn’t be a problem, even if the audition runs late.”
You peer through the window at pedestrians walking by outside. It’s twilight, and streetlights are turning on, and neon tubes glow with cold chemical fire. “I don’t think I want to go to that.”
“You have to. It’s work. I can introduce you to industry people.”
“Is Becca going to be there?”
“Of course. But she won’t bother you.”
Why does he cheat? you think forlornly, and then you remember something Aegon said the day you first met: Life is short. I try to keep it delicious. “I’ll go,” you agree under duress.
“You sure will,” Aegon says, and scrapes the last of the ice cream from his bowl and gives it to you, his plastic spoon heavy with melting pink magic.
When you return to your apartment well after 11 p.m., Jace is sprawled across the orange couch in his pajamas and watching Blade. He is noisily slurping Pad Thai from a takeout container. You kick off your work Sketchers and remove your ankle brace. It still twinges, but you’re healing.
Abruptly, you recall Aegon’s paranoia concerning Jace’s presence at your 4th of July festivities. “Hey, Jace?” you say, getting an idea.
He glances lazily over at you. His dark hair falls in chaotic curls around his face. “Yeah?”
“I have to go to a charity gala on the 19th. That’s this Saturday. It’s very fancy and very formal, and I don’t really want to go alone and have no one to talk to. Do you want to go with me?”
You had imagined this might take some convincing, and yet Jace is immediately amenable and has only one question. “Will there be free food?”
“Yeah, I assume so. Probably an open bar too.”
“I’m in.” Then he winks and makes a joke. “It’s a date.”