A Curse

You begin reading and it hits you, and you dissolve until all of your molecules are the black typeface of the audition script, just one scene that wipes you clean like steam from a window until there is no more California or Minnesota or Aegon or Becca or Mason or your family awaiting your inevitable return to them like a meteorite crashing down to earth.

Here is your new life: Gilded Age, Daddy gambled and died and now the money’s gone, Mama and your sisters need shelter from the storm amidst the Panic of 1893. Fortunately you have a suitor, a good man, a young handsome doctor with a small practice, and he would provide for you and your family, he would be an innocuous and obliging lifeboat. He asks you to marry him, and you almost say yes; but there is another fellow who comes courting, chance encounters at nightscape balls, evening walks under stars and streetlights. This lover of darkness, rippling in and out of your life only when the sun is on the opposite side of the planet, implores you to reject the doctor’s advances, and so you do…only to discover that this nocturnal bewitcher is not a man but a monster, a murderer, a vampire who can offer you nothing more than love that is bloodstained and fleeting and cursed.

Aegon has scrawled the date, time, and location of the audition on the inside of the manila folder. You Google the directions, use Maps to scope out the parking situation. You’ll take the 110 north, then the 91 east out of the city limits of Los Angeles, then the 710 to the 105 to Paramount Boulevard. The Rives Mansion, built in 1911, has been trapped in time as a century grew up around it like grasping threads of ivy; across the street is a Mexican restaurant and the Downey Brewing Company, a sports bar known for their mediocre wings and pizza, currently sitting at an illustrious 2.5/5 stars on Yelp. But the interior of the house will transport you back to the Gilded Age, and this must be why the casting director has chosen it.

You remember what Aegon said about getting you the audition: I didn’t do anything. They reached out to me. But where would they have heard about you? From the people at the Grey’s Anatomy shoot? From Dan or somebody else involved in the Maroon 5 music video?

You need a gown for the charity gala, so you tell your parents you want to buy a dress for Clara’s rehearsal dinner and they enthusiastically approve and give you the green light to charge whatever it costs to your credit card. In the fitting room at Elie Saab, you are torn between two options: sensuous bold red with cutouts and a plunging neckline (all the better for someone to sink their fangs into), timeless beaded gold that feels more like you. You send photos of yourself wearing both to Baela via WhatsApp. She is presently in Paris, nibbling on croissants and downing shots of espresso and filming the new Yorgos Lanthimos movie in which she has third billing.

She replies: Are you lowkey tryna fuck your agent again or nah?

You are scandalized. You type: Definitely not. His future wife will be there.

There is a pause as Baela considers this. By the time you are back in your street clothes—denim shorts, white Sketchers, and a Pacific Palisades t-shirt—she has reached a decision: Still get the red one. It’s brave. It’s memorable.

But you cannot bring yourself to buy it, even if that means the gold is comparatively modest and forgettable. You choose the gold gown and swipe your Chase Sapphire, but not before you make one last discovery: a black lace dress with a high frilly neckline that circles the throat like a noose, out of season and damaged with a rip in the back by the zipper, sold as-is and at a much reduced price. It reminds you of the style of dresses women wore in the Edwardian era, and it fits with the script, and the Rives Mansion, and the person who you will be at the audition on Saturday, July 19th.

You take your shopping bags and step out of the Elie Saab boutique of Beverly Hills into the sunlight, over one hundred degrees, over a century past the glittering deceit of the Gilded Age.

~~~~~~~~~~

“You lied to me.”

The actor’s name is Santiago, but he introduced himself as Santi. He’s been cast already. There’s a chemistry between you, not romantic but corporeal, following each other’s footsteps and inflections, the unspoken potential of improvisation. Across the otherwise empty room are four people seated at a table, two men and two women. Aegon lurks in the corner in his I-give-a-fuck suit, chomping on Juicy Fruit and holding an iced coffee that drips condensation. Morning light cascades in through the vast Palladian window and over the hardwood floor. “I omitted,” the vampire counters.

“You lied by silence. You lied like a coward,” you hiss at him, hair pulled back from your face, black lace at your throat, black shimmering on your eyelids, Renegade by Huda Beauty, Poison by Urban Decay.

He reaches for you. “I could not surrender you to any other man—”

“And now I’m all yours!” you scream, flinging his hands away. “My other prospects are squandered and my family will lose our home and our heirlooms, and I will lose the future that I dreamed of sharing with you, and if your love had been true for even for a moment you would have spared me this.”

“My love was sincere, and it endures.”

“It is selfish,” you seethe, lips quivering and tears slithering down your cheeks. The vampire stalks you, and you flee one blind step at a time until your back hits the wall. “It cannot give or preserve, only consume.”

He reaches out to touch you again, and this time you let him—you cannot resist him—and his fingertips ghost from your hairline to your jaw, tracing the borderlands of your face like the arc of a crescent moon. Then his hand settles lightly on your throat. And you are drawn to him, bound to him, invisible threads weaving his bones to your own, drowning in the opaque pools of his irises. “We can still be together.”

“Yes, in darkness. In destitution. In transient minutes between the murders that sustain you.”

“I never asked to be a monster. I was made this way by another.”

“And now you have proven yourself to be without humanity.”

He turns away and storms out of the room, and you are supposed to wait for him to return. But instead—because you feel that this must be what happens next—you bolt after him, and as you pass through the doorway you hear the puzzled clamoring of the casting director, producer, and two assistants: What is she doing? Where is she going? Then when Aegon follows you they hurry to do the same, their metal folding chairs squealing against the floor, their footsteps pounding like thunder or a racing pulse.

You chase the vampire onto the landing and down the staircase. “I rejected the doctor for you, I endangered my reputation and disregarded my family’s counsel for you, and what have you given me in return? Lies and horror and bloodstains on my conscience that I’ll never wash out. How can you claim to care for someone you’ve destroyed? What do you have to offer anybody except suffering and death—?!”

Three steps from the bottom, he whirls and pins you to the wall, his hands careful (as they are required to be) but his eyes hard, glass or stone or pavement, intractable, inhuman. “Stop fighting the horror. Join me in it. It calls to you, and you yearn for it, and to only me can you confess this.”

“You ruined my life,” you choke out, a loathsome lethal desire, a death rattle.

He touches his forehead to yours, his heat radiating through your skull. “I cannot be without you.”

“Let it end now,” you whisper, you plead. “Let the next artery you drain wash away the taste of me.”

And you both lean in, your lips a second from meeting, and farther up the staircase your audience of five watch in rivetted silence, as far from you as the stars from Earth, Betelgeuse or Rigel or Proxima Centauri. And then you are you again, and Santi is Santi, and you laugh together and each take a step back, the tension of your muscles unraveling and your memories already beginning to degrade.

The casting director, producer, and assistants all shake your hand and thank you again for taking the time to audition. You thank them for their consideration. They seem pleased, but when you turn to Aegon, he doesn’t give you his usual signal that you’ve done a good job. He doesn’t slip his aviator sunglasses out of the pocket of his suit jacket, put them on, and smile: You are so bright, sunshine. He just steals glimpses of you as he’s deep in conversation with the casting director, discussing the timeline for callbacks and when a final decision is expected to be made.

“See you tonight,” you tell Aegon when it’s over and you are both walking out to where your cars are parked on the curb, your Honda, his Chrysler. His white convertible has a sizeable dent in the front passenger’s side and the headlight busted out. “What happened there?”

“Someone cut me off,” he says, and passes you the iced coffee he hasn’t taken a sip of, a venti-sized vanilla latte.

~~~~~~~~~~

When you are dressed, you send a photo of yourself in the gold gown to your parents and Clara. Rehearsal dinner outfit! you type.

Mom replies: Very flattering, honey! and then sends back a picture of her snuggling one of the Akitas on the couch. Dad responds with a thumbs-up emoji. Clara leaves you on read.

Jace is wearing a floral tuxedo and has already pre-gamed. He’s buzzed when you climb together into the Uber he called; parking will be murder, and you’ll probably have a few drinks yourself at the gala. He pays with the account linked to Baela’s credit card. The charity gala is being held at the California Science Center in Exposition Park, which is on your side of the city: southeast of Tarzana and Beverly Hills, southwest of Downtown, Chinatown, and Aegon’s office in Elysian Park, just a twenty-minute drive dead north on the 110. When you arrive, men in black suits and women in shimmering floor-length gowns are posing for professional photographers on the front steps, and black limousines and SUVs are honking at each other as they battle for inches of space in the drop-off lane.

On your way to the glass doors at the building entrance, you and Jace pass beneath a vast hanging structure of spiraling red beams like arteries. When you look up, you see a myriad of gold dots like the infinitesimal glimmers of stars.

“This is the Aerial!” a museum employee is proudly telling a group of ogling guests. “It has precisely 1,578 spheres, each plated with gold leaf. And the sculpture right here underneath is the DNA Bench, engraved with images of all sorts of organisms…a bat, an octopus, a snake, a tree…”

Inside, the ground floor of the California Science Center is illuminated with soft pink light, and everywhere there are glamorous people chatting and nursing drinks and eating hors d’oeuvres on tiny plates, and you don’t recognize anyone, and you are very grateful that Jace is here. You cling to his arm so you don’t lose him in the crowd. There is an open bar beside a set of escalators heading skyward, and a DJ with his table set up against one wall. From the ceiling hang fighter jets and disco balls. Confetti litters the floor. As you open your gold clutch to get your phone and text Aegon that you’re here, the DJ puts on Pink Pony Club.

“Ah, I love this song!” you shout to Jace over the noise of the room, and then you sing together:

“I know you wanted me to stay,

But I can’t ignore the crazy visions of me in L.A.,

And I heard that there’s a special place,

Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day…”

“Hey,” Aegon says from behind you, and you lose your footing when you spin towards him—you are much better in wedges than heels—and Jace grabs your hands to steady you, and he’s laughing too loudly in that I’m-kind-of-drunk sort of way, and Aegon is glaring at him. He’s wearing a powder blue suit, and it actually fits him, and strands of his sandy blonde hair are escaping from his sheen of gel to fall down over his forehead, and for a few seconds you’re a little stunned by how beautiful he is, here in the dim distorted light and looking like he wants to hit someone. That’s never been why you felt drawn to Aegon, what he looks like. But here he is, engaged to another woman and a decade older than you and kind of horrible, surely, and you are in disbelief that you can’t reach out and touch him.

“Hi, hello, sorry,” you say, prying your hands out of Jace’s grasp. “I thought I’d just be able to walk in and find you, but it’s really crowded! But I’m here. I’m fine. I’m ready to work.”

Aegon’s turbulent blue gaze sweeps over you. “You look like an Oscar.”

You are puzzled. “The fish?”

He smiles. “No. The award.”

“I’m going to get a drink!” Jace tells you, and saunters off towards the bar.

Aegon watches him leave, then says: “I didn’t know you were bringing a guest.”

“Well, you have one. And I was worried I’d be lonely.”

“Sure,” Aegon says, irritated. Then he holds up two glasses. “I have a lemon drop and a Long Island iced tea. Which do you want?”

“The lemon drop.”

“Great.” He hands it to you, takes a gulp of the Long Island iced tea, and leads you off to be introduced to the elites of the city, here to raise money for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

There is a series of people whose names you can’t remember but you beam radiantly for: producers, directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, assistants, models, journalists. Aegon lies to them about your experience and says you’re better than you are. He says you’ll have your own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame someday. You take delicate sips of your lemon drop, determined not to get tipsy, but Aegon drains his Long Island iced tea and swings by the bar for another one. Now Jace is talking to the DJ like he’s trying to convince him of something.

Aegon hurries past where Becca is mingling with a flock of women, tall and small-boned like flamingoes; Becca casts you a glower that is sharp and swift and belittling. She is wearing a white ballgown, very bridal, with powder blue palm leaves overlaying the skirt to match Aegon’s suit. No one can forget they’re about to get married, and you assume this is intentional.

“Becca, you have such gorgeous hair,” one of her friends, noticeably drunk, fawns as she pets Becca’s long sleek tresses, artfully styled into miraculously frizzless waves.

“Aww, thanks!” Becca says. “According to family legend, we’re part Native American. The Karankawa tribe.”

Another friend, not so easily impressed, rolls her eyes. “Becca, everybody claims their family is part Native American.”

“No, seriously! My mom’s maiden name was Broadwater, that has to be Native American!”

“Becca, it’s literally English.”

“Do a test,” Becca’s drunk friend says, poking at her bare shoulder. “One of those DNA thingies you send through the mail.”

Becca seems inspired, her eyes bright, her thoughts racing. “Maybe I should! Like 23AndMe?”

“There’s a new one,” the not-drunk friend says, slurping what appears to be a mojito. “It’s called Legacea, I think. It’s supposed to be super fast and super thorough.”

The drunk friend is stymied. “Legawhata?”

“Legacea,” the not-drunk friend repeats. “I know, it’s pretentious, it’s legacy and panacea smashed together. But Becca should totally do it and if she is so much as one percent Native American, I will personally redress historic wrongs by gifting her my Brentwood apartment…”

Now Jace is moshing with a group of newfound friends. He has at last convinced the DJ to put on a Charli XCX song. The bass reverberates through the rose-colored twilight of the room; some sophisticated guests appear baffled, others alarmed.

“When I go to the club, I wanna hear those club classics,

Club classics, club, club classics,

When I go to the club, I wanna hear those club classics,

Club classics, club, club classics…”

A woman, mid-fifties and auburn-haired, appears out of the multitude with large, nervous eyes. “We should have gotten an orchestra,” she tells Aegon fretfully, twisting the rings on her fingers. She is wearing a gold wedding band, although if she is who you assume her to be—the resemblance is striking—she hasn’t had a husband in over fifteen years. “Shouldn’t we have gotten an orchestra?”

A man who looks very much like a younger version of Aegon, late-twenties instead of mid-thirties, laughs as he materializes beside her. “Mom, no one wants to listen to an orchestra.”

“No one under eighty years old,” Aegon says.

“Aemond thought we should get an orchestra,” she replies.

Aegon says sarcastically: “And of course, Aemond is an expert on all things cool and timely.” Then he introduces you to them both: his mother Alicent, his brother Daeron, an up-and-coming actor who has been in a successful Netflix series and has innumerable Tumblr blogs devoted to him. He’s been called the blonde Timothee Chalamet.

“Oh, aren’t you lovely,” Alicent tells you, although she seems perpetually a little distracted, a little sad. She tugs at a thin gold chain she wears around her neck with a cross suspended from it. “And we’ll be seeing you again at the wedding, won’t we? I know Aegon has invited all his clients.”

You hesitate. You doubt Becca wants you there. You have no interest whatsoever in watching Aegon marry her. “Um…well…actually, I might have a prior commitment that weekend, so—”

“She’ll be there,” Aegon says.

“Wonderful.” Alicent smiles at you. You smile back, a reflex. Then yet another Targaryen arrives, a woman with dreamy blue eyes and a butter yellow gown covered in ruffles. They are so massive she seems to be drowning in them. “Helaena, have you met Aegon’s newest client?”

“I don’t believe I have.” Helaena, a fashion designer whose work is a staple on red carpets and runways, exchanges pleasantries with you. Her eyes never quite meet yours; instead they bounce around weightlessly to your gown, your gold heels, your hair, your hand clasping your lemon drop, and then to where Aegon is standing next to you probably too closely for someone who is supposed to be your agent and nothing more.

“I absolutely love your dress!” you tell Helaena. “It’s so fun. And yellow is my favorite color.”

“Thank you,” Helaena says, soft and placid. You can barely hear her over the horrible Charli XCX music. “I love your eyeshadow. Is that Alchemist?”

You are startled; you touch your fingertips to your orbital socket before you can stop yourself, hopefully not smudging the glittering gold powder. “It is, yeah. By Natasha Denona.”

“Is Aemond nearby?” Aegon asks his family, and you are aware that he seems to want to get away from them, like he’s rushing towards the end of the conversation.

Alicent peers around. “Um, I don’t think so…maybe he’s up on the second floor?”

“Okay. I’ll bump into him eventually.” But as Aegon turns away, his mother places a palm on his arm, and he stops even if he hasn’t been seized or commanded, yielding to her forcelessness. When Alicent speaks, her voice is gentle and her dark eyes wounded, like there’s a knife in her somewhere that no one has ever pulled out.

“Aegon, I’m very happy to see you here tonight.”

“No problem,” he says briskly, and ushers you away to the bar where he orders another Long Island iced tea.

“Why would I go to your wedding?” you ask as you wait with him. You still have half of your lemon drop left, but Aegon’s cheeks are flushed and he’s beginning to sway, and when he gazes at you from under the sandy strands of hair that have fallen over his eyes, the blue of his irises is murky and slow and far-away, miles away, years away.

“Because you promised you’d do whatever I say, and I want you there.”

“Maybe I don’t want to fly to Turks and Caicos to watch you marry someone else.”

“There will be industry people in attendance. You can network. Consider it good for your career.”

“But—”

“Steve! Hey!” Aegon calls out, then waves some people over to the bar. These are his other clients, the last of a dying breed: a young Scottish guy, a middle-aged man who spent his twenties and thirties in the Navy, a disorientingly beautiful woman who came to the United States as a refugee from Somalia when she was eight years old. They are all kind and welcoming and real, amazingly real, and they adore Aegon, they speak about him with a gratitude that is bone-deep and eternal, and you marvel at this quiet magic he has to him, this way of finding people who’ve fallen through cracks like continental divides and dragging them back up into the daylight.

“Aegon?” the woman, Fatima, says a bit regretfully. “I’m so sorry to steal you away, but I remember you mentioned a certain director last week, the one who worked on Only Murders in the Building. Do you know if he’s here tonight?”

“Oh yeah, totally!” Aegon says, picking up his fresh Long Island iced tea off the bar. “Come on, I’ll help you find him and get the ball rolling.” Then he looks at you, conflicted, as if he isn’t quite comfortable leaving you alone.

You are nonchalant, like you don’t care what he does. “I’m fine. I’ll be with Jace.”

Aegon glances at your aforementioned date, who is presently shoveling his mouth full of crab-stuffed mushrooms and shrimp cocktail by the DJ. “Fantastic,” he mutters, and vanishes into the crowd with Fatima.

You weave through guests as you make your way towards Jace, then someone runs up and throws their arms around you before you can process who it is. Fortunately, you are not one to turn down hugs. When he pulls back, he is grinning. It’s Brandon, doubtlessly cashing in on one of the few benefits of being Aegon’s receptionist. “Hey, girl! Oh my God, I didn’t realize you had a drink. I didn’t make you spill your lemon drop, did I?”

“Oh no, it’s fine! Hi, Brandon!”

“How’d the audition go this morning?”

“Good! We’ll see. It was intense, and I can never really remember what I did afterwards. But I think they liked me.”

He smiles warmly. “Great. I’m so glad it went well. Aegon was really obsessed with it. He must have spent two hours on the phone with those people.”

You are confounded; you have no idea what he means. “On the phone…?”

“Convincing them to give you an audition,” Brandon says, as if surely you already know this and he’s just jogging your memory. Before you can respond, he is rejoined by his date Dylan and dashes off to dance with him. Evidently, Brandon and his date appreciate Charlie XCX.

The indie movie people didn’t know about me, you think, your skull hazy with organ-pink light and gala guests brushing by you and the bass beat thudding from the speakers. They didn’t call Aegon. He called them. And then he lied to me about it.

You look around, wondering where Aegon is, needing to find him; and then you spot someone up on the second floor, not Aegon but another man you have to talk to, a phantom you only know from television and the internet and a rarely-utilized contact in Aegon’s iPhone. You take the escalator up to him, ascending slowly, and he doesn’t even notice you until you speak. He’s standing amidst suits and gowns but he’s in solitude somehow, thoughtful, somber, fidgeting with a gold rush rather than drinking it, gazing vacantly over the crowd down on the ground floor. He wears a navy blue pinstripe tuxedo and a scar down the left half of his face, some sort of childhood accident that cost him an eye. He wears a prosthesis in its place, and you wouldn’t know the difference if this wasn’t common knowledge in Hollywood.

“I think I have to thank you,” you say.

Aemond Targaryen turns to you, startled and then amused. “Thank me?”

“Aegon forged my resume and listed you as a reference. That’s how I got my first job out here, a Grey’s Anatomy episode. So…thank you for the fraud.”

He chuckles to himself and sips his gold rush, ice clinking in the glass. Artificial pink light shifts across his scarred face. A film he wrote the screenplay for won Best Picture at the Oscars last year. “I can’t condone the deception, but I’m comforted that it was for a good cause. I assume you’re the new client.”

“And the last.”

Aemond furrows his brow at you. “The last?”

“Before Aegon retires,” you say. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. Probably end up living under a bridge somewhere.” Probably return to Minnesota to spend the rest of my life impersonating someone my parents want me to be.

But Aemond still isn’t following. “Aegon is retiring?”

“Yeah,” you say, a little tentatively now. “After the wedding. He didn’t tell you?”

Aemond’s eye—the right one, the real one—shifts down towards the ground floor like he’s looking for somebody and then back to you. “Did he say why?”

“He said he was sick of how shallow this place is.” How dangerous. How cursed.

Aemond’s voice is flat. “But it’s always been this way.”

“I mean…I guess? I don’t know. I love it here in Los Angeles!” But you don’t think you mean that as much as you did two months ago.

“Where is Aegon right now?”

“He’s downstairs with Fatima, one of his other clients.”

“I have to go,” Aemond says abruptly, and leaves you alone by the railing. You watch him descend on the escalator, too impatient to wait, walking instead of riding and taking two steps at the time.

Was I not supposed to say anything? Does Aegon’s family not know he’s leaving?

You finish your lemon drop and then frown with your free hand resting on the railing, looking down into the throng of people on the ground floor: freckled with the light scattered by the disco balls, slipping drunkenly on strips of confetti, tolerating yet another Charli XCX song, this one not so offensive and with a plucky tempo that’s easy to dance to:

“I think the apple’s rotten right to the core,

From all the things passed down from all the apples coming before,

I split the apple down symmetrical lines and what I find is kinda scary,

Makes me just wanna drive…”

You are suddenly aware that a woman is standing beside you. White ballgown, blue palm leaves, a long dark shock of hair. “You can’t act if your leg is broken,” Becca says.

You are so alarmed to see her that you physically recoil. “Sorry, what?”

She nods to the escalator. “Be careful. If you trip and fall on that—or on a staircase, or on a curb, or, you know, anywhere—you could break your leg and then you wouldn’t be able to take any acting jobs for months, and I suppose that would derail your plans quite a bit.”

You blink at her, half-terrified, half-disbelieving, gripping your empty lemon drop glass so tightly your hand aches. “Are you…threatening me…?”

Becca gasps, theatrical, mocking. “I would never do that. I’m just looking out for you.” Then she leans in close so no one else can listen. She smells like flowers, like summer, like all the golden days she and Aegon will share together. “You will not be at my wedding. You have somewhere else to be. You can’t make it, how sad. We’ll spare you a thought. You’ll send a gift. Maybe a waffle maker, Aegon loves waffles.”

“Okay,” you squeak. And she swishes away in her bridal gown without saying anything else, but even if she did you wouldn’t be able to hear her. Your heartbeat is thunderous in your ears; your face is scalding with blood, panicked and ashamed and confused.

Breaking legs? Impending wedding?? Waffles???

You give your empty glass to a museum employee and take the escalator back down to the ground floor—after ensuring that Becca isn’t standing nearby—and then hunt through the mob for Jace. But you can’t find him. The only people you bump into are tall booming men in suits or women with tight lineless faces and bony arms and full breasts that stay exactly where they’re supposed to be even without a bra, and you want to go home but you can’t leave without making sure Jace is alright, and he doesn’t answer the texts you frantically type to him. You try to hide in the bathroom but the first one you seek refuge in is lit with pink tubes of neon and full of women fixing their hair and makeup, and you can’t risk someone important seeing you freak out and making a bad impression. Instead, you follow a dark hallway that leads to some of the museum exhibits, and then a benign bluish glow appears and beckons you to a sanctuary: the kelp forest, a tunnel surrounded by a microcosm ocean.

You place your palms on the cool curved glass and breathe, slow and deep, your heartrate going quiet again. On the other side of the transparent divide, angelfish and blue tangs dart between thick ropes of kelp. Above you, a leopard shark sails by over the crest of the tunnel. From far away, you can hear echoes of Alicent addressing the crowd and thanking them for being in attendance tonight, and how much it would have meant to her late husband Viserys.

I don’t want to go to the wedding anyway, you tell yourself, but that’s not helping.

You check your phone again. Jace still hasn’t answered your texts.

And here’s the truth: I don’t want Aegon to marry anyone else. Not even if she was a saint, not even if she was perfect for him.

There are footsteps here in the ocean and the glass and the blue, and you turn to see Aegon stepping into the tunnel, looking around with great confusion as if he’s trying to figure out how you ended up here.

“Are you lost?” he says.

“Yes. But it’s intentional.”

He comes to stand beside you, watching the fish flit through the kelp forest, his hands in the pockets of his powder blue suit, the one Becca picked out for him. And because at last you are alone and the world is hushed, after a while Aegon says: “That was insane, what you did this morning. That was some of the best work I’ve ever seen.”

“So you think I’ll get the job.”

“I think you deserve it. But sometimes that doesn’t have a lot to do with who ends up being cast. We tried, that’s all we can do. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”

You look over at him. “You lied to me.”

He seems afraid. “About what?”

“You got me the audition. And you had to convince them.”

Aegon smiles to himself. Is he relieved? “Yeah, alright. I did.”

“Why are you working so hard to help me?”

“Because you’re my girl. And I have to make sure you’re taken care of. And I don’t have much time left.”

“Don’t leave me,” you say, pathetic like a child. Don’t marry her. Don’t move across the country with her. “You’re the only person who thinks I belong here.”

“Other people will believe in you soon. You’re too good for them not to.”

“But I don’t want another agent.”

And Aegon gazes at you, rippling blue light on his face, and when he kisses you he tastes like the Long Island ice teas he’s been drinking since you got here: vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, Coke, lemon, poison cut with sweetness, a cold swig that burns all the way down.

You stop him, one hand on his chest, too frail to mean it. “Your fiancée is out there doing a victory lap.”

“But you don’t care,” Aegon says. “And I’m right here with you.”

And now you surrender, you fall into him like a pool, like an ocean, and like a riptide he pulls you to the nearest bathroom—this one small and abandoned—and you drag each other to the frigid tile floor beneath cobalt neon light, and you unravel yourself from him just long enough to lunge for the door and throw the bolt so no one else can open it, and then Aegon is on top of you again, tearing off his suit jacket and unbuttoning the white shirt beneath, and you yank up the hem of your sparking beaded gown until it’s at your hips; but this isn’t enough for him.

“No,” Aegon murmurs against your throat like he has fangs, like he can’t stop until every blood drop of you has hemorrhaged out to satiate him. “I want to see you.”

And so you sit up so he can unzip the top of your dress and help you slip your arms out of the straps, and then you fall back again and let the cold blue chemical light flood over you as he nuzzles you, warm lips, teasing teeth, and it’s perfect, and now he’s rummaging around in his wallet until he finds a condom and you need him now, now, now, and he’s kissing you like he feels the same desperation in this dwindling eleventh hour. But when you reach down to touch him, he’s barely hard.

You are bewildered. This has never happened to you before. Undeterred, you straddle Aegon, kissing him deeply as your hips grind against his, and he seems like he wants to…he really does…but it’s not working. Now he’s completely soft.

Aegon sighs heavily. “Just stop,” he says, rubbing his face with his hands, and you crawl off of him and sit beside him on the floor, draped in uneasy blue, the room silent except for your own rapid breathing and distant rumblings from the gala.

You have no idea what to say. You don’t even look at him. You stare at the wall instead, feeling like you’ve made some horrific mistake, like you’ve shattered something that could have been beautiful.

After a moment, Aegon grabs your thighs roughly and tugs you closer to him. “Come here. I’ll get you off.”

“But I’m not going to be into it if I feel like you’re not into it.”

“I am into it,” Aegon insists, frustrated.

“What did you want me to do that I wasn’t doing?” What does Becca do for you?

“It’s not you. You’re not the problem.”

“But I want to know what I should have done differently—”

“It’s not about you,” Aegon snaps. “I’m just…I’m not in my twenties anymore, you know?”

You stare at him. “You’re thirty-five, Aegon. You’re not old.”

“Please, please, just shut up and let me take care of you, and we can move on.”

But you draw away when he tries to reach between your legs, and you lay an open palm against his flushed cheek, and you are suddenly struck by a lightning bolt of a theory. Why is he really leaving Los Angeles? What did Viserys Targaryen die of? “Aegon…is there something wrong with you?”

“I’ll take you home,” he says, and starts putting his clothes back on.

“Because if you weren’t okay, I would want to know, and I could help you—”

“I’ll take you home,” Aegon says again, so severely and with such finality you can’t argue, because you can’t speak at all. If you try to, you’ll burst into tears. You feel completely rejected by him. You feel like you ruined your very last chance to touch him, and soon he’ll be getting married on Turks and Caicos, and soon you’ll never see him again except in Becca’s blissful Instagram stories.

Aegon walks with you quickly through the museum, past the guests he ignores, and outside where a long line of black SUVs and limousines are waiting. He puts you in an Escalade and then jogs around to the other side, sitting so the skinny middle seat is between you. Then he tells you to give the driver your address. He must not remember it.

Once you have relayed your address, you say miserably to Aegon: “I can ride home by myself, thanks.”

He’s gazing blankly out the window and running his fingers through his hair. “I’ll feel better if I make sure you get there safely.” It feels patronizing, humiliating, like a weak wordless goodbye. You wonder if tomorrow you’ll get a text that he’s officially offloaded you onto some other agent.

The Escalade driver begins to pull away from the curb, and you realize you’ve forgotten something…or, rather, someone. “Wait!” you shout, and the Escalade lurches to a halt.

“What’s your problem?” Aegon says irritably. His powder blue suit is wrinkled; his face is exhausted.

“I can’t leave without Jace.”

“Are you fucking serious?”

Right on time, you look through the tinted window to see Jace wandering around the entranceway. He must have seen you hurry out of the museum. You open the Escalade door and call to him. Jace runs to the vehicle, scrambles over your lap, and flops into the middle seat between you and Aegon.

“You can’t get your own ride?” Aegon flares at him.

Jace is incredulous. He looks at you. “We’re going to the same place, right?”

“Right,” you agree casually, and Aegon shakes his head and resumes staring out the window, although there is nothing there but darkness and blooms of artificial light.

“That was so cool,” Jace says as he types energetically on his iPhone. He spends the entirety of the twenty-minute drive posting photos and videos of himself with minor celebrities on his Instagram stories: Frankie Muniz, Cole Sprouse, Meghan Trainor, Katy Perry. He asks you for suggestions as he chooses filters and adds music. Aegon doesn’t say a word; he aggressively chews several sticks of Juicy Fruit instead.

When the Escalade stops in front of your building, you and Jace depart beneath omnipresent light pollution that blots out the stars.

“Hey,” Aegon says just before you shut the car door, and you are powerless to walk away until you’ve heard what he has to tell you—an apology? an explanation?—and you stand frozen on the sidewalk under a streetlight as Jace goes inside. “You know, I, uh…I had a lot to drink, right?”

“You tried to think of an excuse the whole way here and that’s the best one you came up with?”

Before Aegon can reply, you slam the door and follow Jace into your apartment building.