by Lark O'Neal
A fit, graying man with glasses emerges. He’s wearing a thick gray sweater over a red turtleneck. “Hello, Jess, Kaleb. I’m Bob Howard, assistant production manager for the film. So glad to see you. What’s the problem?”
“Tip money,” I say, and cough a little in the sharp, thin air.
“Got it.” He gives the men two keys and room numbers with instructions. “Let’s get you settled. Everyone will want to meet you in the morning. Did you have a good flight? Are you hungry or anything?”
Dazed, we follow him into the cavernous lobby, all wood and low lights with fireplaces at either end. A handful of guests drinking wine watch us cross curiously. I think I recognize a very famous actor and my nerves zing. “Is that—?” I whisper to Kaleb.
“Yep.”
“You’ll meet everyone in the morning,” Bob says again, punching the elevator button. “I know you’re exhausted and it’s a long day tomorrow. Hope you won’t be too jet lagged. My favorite remedy is melatonin. Ever tried it?”
Kaleb hasn’t said a word. I glance up at him. The world seems very off kilter, but maybe it’s just me. I nudge him with my elbow, giving him a quizzical little glance: you okay?
He nods and looks up as the elevator dings. The door slides open and there’s a girl my age standing there, so much taller than I expected, her hair white-blonde and just this side of nappy, caught in a clip on top of her head. Tiny ringlets decorate her high forehead and draw attention to her eyes, which are the color of the sky on a summer morning.
When she sees me, her mouth opens and she flings her arms wide and cries, “Jess? Oh, my god!”
“Mercedes! You are so tall!” I say before I realize that it’s rude, but then she’s sweeping me into a hug and spinning around.
“Kaleb,” she says, standing eye to eye with him, holding out her hand. “I’m Mercedes Williams. The author of the book.”
He grips her hand. “I’m honored. It’s a great story.”
She inclines her head, her lush mouth tilting the same direction. “Did you read it before you landed the part?”
He shakes his head. “Sorry to say I didn’t.” He points back to me. “Jess did, though.”
“I know.” Mercedes spins back, takes my arm, and gets on the elevator with us. “I won’t keep you,” she says, “but I’ve been looking forward to meeting you so much. I’ll just ride up with you.”
“Me, too.” I look at her closely, readjusting my picture of her. Up close, her skin is marred with old acne scars, mild but visible, and aside from those astonishing eyes and intriguing coloring, she isn’t particularly pretty. Her nose is blunt and broad, her mouth overly large, her forehead strong, her jaw chiseled like Mount Rushmore. But it’s the kind of face you can’t stop looking at.
She’s looking at me, too. “It’s just bizarre how much you look like Jules. It’s so weird.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Kaleb, I imagined someone a little more Latin for Rome, but your test was so fantastic, I knew you were the right one.”
The doors open, and Bob, who has been silent this whole time, gestures. “We’re here.”
“I’ll leave you guys now,” Mercedes says. “Tomorrow, Jess. Call me if you need anything in the meantime, room 671.”
I wave over my shoulder. She gestures toward Kaleb behind his back. “Hot,” her mouth says, and gives me a thumbs up.
As if we are a couple. I shrug and follow Bob to my room. Kaleb is across the hall. We each have a suite.
A suite.
Bob unlocks the doors, shows me everything first, then crosses the hall to show Kaleb his. Kaleb swings back to give me a silly look, his hands in his pockets. My suitcases are already here and I don’t know how they got here so fast, but I’m just ready for my pajamas and a bath and my bed.
First, I look into the fridge and see there is milk and yogurt. On the black marble counter is a bowl of fruit. In a cabinet are boxes of tea and sugar cubes and small coffee maker pellet things that must go with a machine.
It’s deadly quiet and vast and a little too cold. I pull my arms around me and lean on the counter. The windows look out to complete darkness and I feel like I’ve been exiled to a faraway land. For a minute, I think about my dad’s house and the vines and the clutter of board games and magazines and half-read books.
Bob knocks, sticks his head in. “Anything else you need tonight?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“My number is right there if you do. Get some sleep. We’ll call you at 8.”
I nod and glance up at the clock. It’s already ten. He’s right—I should get to sleep. But I wait, knowing there will be another knock, and there is.
I open it for Kaleb, who widens his eyes as he comes in. “Can you believe it?”
With my arms wrapped around my waist, I look over my shoulder. “Crazy. Is this how we are going to live, like for the whole movie, do you think?”
He pushes his hand through his hair, looks around. “Yes.”
“It feels lonely in here.”
“Yeah.”
“We could stay in just one of them. I mean, I’ll sleep on the couch or whatever—”
“No.” He doesn’t look directly at me. “I’m right across the hall if you need me—just call. But we need to have our own spaces.”
He needs his own space, he means. I shrug and fling up my hands. “Whatever.” It makes my chest feel hollow, lonely, and to hide the sudden sharp tears, I head over to the couch and fling myself onto the cold leather, pulling a pillow across my chest.
“Do you want anything right now?”
I shake my head.
“Get some sleep, Dolphin Girl.”
“Don’t call me that. It’s part of our other world.”
“Other world?”
I look at him finally, swallowing my sadness, looking for anger or pride or something else that has a little backbone. “Jess and Kaleb world.”
It intrigues him. He sort of sways toward me. His hair is all tousled and his eyes are tired from all the travel, but he is still so amazing and I want him to hold me, to be the Kaleb he was when we were filming the commercials, loving and supportive and understanding. For a minute, I think he’s wavering.
Then he asks, “Is there a Jess and Tyler world, too?”
I don’t answer, and I don’t have to. He shakes his head. “I thought I could just outlast him, Jess, but it turns out I want more than that. I want you to choose.”
And in that second, it’s blindingly obvious that he is the one that I want, that I love Kaleb and all of my loyalty is directed to him, but—
“He’s in the Olympic trials this week, next week.”
“That’s your choice. Good night, Jess.” He pauses on the way out. “Come lock your door properly.”
I glare at him. “I don’t need supervision.”
“Fine.”
He leaves me sitting on the couch in the cold rooms, and I am so furious with him that I fling the pillow after him. He was the one who put everything between us in motion. He’s the one who said we could make it work, that he didn’t care about “that guy.” He said it over and over. I was honest with him. I told the truth. I have never once lied or pretended anything I didn’t feel.
Now he’s pulling back.
The room is deadly silent, everything in tasteful beige-y brown hues and high end fabrics. I stand up and flip the safety lock on the door, and the deadbolt, but in a way it makes me feel kind of panicky, locked in.
Stupid. The lights are tastefully placed, and I discover I can turn them all off with the click of a switch by the bedroom, which I do. There’s another door to the hallway in here, and I throw those locks, too, and pull the heavy drapes. Every movement is like a robot, a scared and lonely robot girl who wants a cat to sleep with and her step-mom downstairs humming, and her dad outside somewhere.
But I’ve lived alone before. I’ve been wildly lonely before. I thought I would die of loneliness when my mom died, but I di
dn’t. I won’t die now either. Out of my suitcase, I gather my toiletries and my pajamas and my Kindle, which I put in a baggie to keep it safe in case of dropping it. Then I run a hot bath in the big, deep tub, and forget about everybody. Everybody who left me, everybody who stole me away, everybody who wants something from me on their own terms. Forget them. I’ll be fine on my own.
Chapter ELEVEN
Of course, I’m awake in the middle of the night, restless and cold. I get up and make a cup of tea and read some more of A Moveable Feast, which has a sort of sadness underneath that makes it a bad choice. After a little while, I put it down. My iPad internet isn’t working and I must need to get a password or something
Luckily, I’m never without actual paper books, and this time I had a big suitcase, so there are quite a few. Knowing I would feel homesick, I bought a bunch of New Zealand writers before I left, Whale Rider and The Bone People and Once Were Warriors, which are three classics the lady at the book store told me I should read. But she was Maori and these are all Maori titles and I am mad at Kaleb, so I put them on the dresser and sort through the others. A thick historical romance by one of my favorites, Stephanie Laurens. It will just make me think more about the sex I want and can’t have. A non-fiction book about acting. The script, which I’ve read about twenty times so far.
It feels like the right thing to focus on. I’m here to work, after all, and I want to be good. I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m not, as often as I suspect that I might be. The commercials were one thing. This is going to be a lot more actual acting.
But every time I start reading Jules’s lines, it sucks me right back into the story. She drinks scotch and eats rare meat, and she wants to escape but has no idea how. Rome is the more innocent one, but he still sees her at the masquerade and sneaks into her house to find her while his father and her lover are playing cards. In a twist I love a lot, the nurse character is a body guard, a man who loves Jules and wants her to be happy and thinks it’s just twisted, the whole thing.
I read the lines and let them come alive in my mind. I try to imagine how it would be to be such a hardened character, to have to deal with something so crass.
There is a kiss scene with the older guy that makes me nervous, but when we came into the lobby this evening, I realized that he’d be played by a very handsome older actor I’ve had a crush on for years, Grant Christiansen. It’s short and meant only to show how much he dominates her and how unhappy she is.
In one of the many closets, I find some extra blankets and pillows, which I carry out to the couch and turn the TV on very low for company. In the darkness beyond the window are tiny lights here and there, but I must be facing the slopes.
The couch is comfortable and working makes me feel less lonely. Wrapped in blanket and propped up by the pillows scattered all over the suite, I fall asleep, feeling Jules sink into my bones, insinuate herself into my cells. I am lost and sad and desperate to have a different life. I know her. I can become her; I know it.
* * *
The knock that wakes me belongs not to a crew member or Kaleb, but Mercedes. She’s holding two giant cups of Starbucks coffee. “Surprise!” she says. “I thought you might like a little something before you have to face the whole crowd.”
I blink, still sort of lost in the jet lag, and push hair out of my face. “What time is it?”
“Only six-thirty,” she says with a wince. “Should I come back in a little while?”
“No! Don’t you dare.” I grab her wrist. “Come in.”
It’s only as I swing back, closing the door, that I see the view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Oh, my God!” Dawn is just creeping over high craggy peaks, turning the snow a soft pink, so delicate it looks like very thin china.
“Amazing, right?” She lifts the coffee cups. “One is a latte, the other a chai. Which one do you want?”
I’m so glad to see her, to have a conversation and not have to worry about how I look or talk. “That coffee smells so good.”
“Done.” She hands it to me and settles on the couch, shoving the blanket out of the way. “Were you studying the script?”
“Last night. Jet lag, you know.” I sip the coffee and it is one of the five best things I’ve ever tasted. “God, that’s good. Thank you so much.”
“It was hard for me to wait for even this long, I have to admit. Everyone is so old around here. I just want a girlfriend. Is that going to make you run away screaming?” She smiles as she says it, and it’s dazzling—wide and white and enormous. Her hair is loose this morning, shoulder-length tiny curls, so blonde, and she’s wearing a baggy sweater in tones of pink and red with glittery threads that knocks me out.
“No,” I say emphatically. “I haven’t had a friend for awhile, really. Not counting Kaleb.”
“He’s your friend?”
I frown a little. “That’s a hard question to answer.” I rub my face, feeling a headache come on the second the whole thing comes into my brain. “We are friends, but sometimes we’re more.”
“Only sometimes?”
I sip the coffee, nodding. “There’s another guy, too.”
She leans forward, eager. “Ooh, triangle! I love it.”
“It’s breaking my brain right now. Tell me something about you instead.”
“Hmm. Okay. I’m twenty. I have big fat thighs and way too much chest and I’m almost six feet tall in bare feet.”
“You don’t have fat thighs.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s not even a discussion point, and I’m not doing the girl thing—telling you something’s fat so you can say I’m not. I don’t do that shit.”
I grin. “Good. I hate it.”
“Right? What’s the point? My thighs are 18 inches. I’ve measured them.” She sits up straight and pushes her chest out. “And my tits—yeah, 34 double d.” She shakes her head. “Too much.”
I smooth my hands down my braless chest. “While I, on the other hand, have almost nothing.” I grin. “I wear a bra sometimes, but I don’t really know why.”
She laughs.
Curling up in the corner, I say, “Are you totally amazed at everything that’s happening from your book?”
Her face goes serious. “No. I planned it.”
“Really?”
“I grew up in LA, right? All that movie stuff, and you see all those people with all that money, and all those other people—like all my foster families—with nothing.” She raises an eyebrow. “I decided I wanted to be one of the ones with the money.”
I’m inclining my head, frowning a little, thinking I’ve never met anyone like her.
“Did I freak you out, Jess? I’m a little much for some people.”
“Not for me,” I say. “My life has been so random that—” I frown more deeply. “Things happen to me, you know? It’s not like I go around making them happen.”
She curls her legs under her, too, kicking off her boots. “Like what?”
I lift my shoulders. “Like everything. Like, my mom stole me from my dad in New Zealand when I was a little kid. And then she got killed by an icicle when I was fifteen.”
“What? No way.”
“I know. Bizarre. And my best friend at the restaurant where I worked got killed by a car that crashed through the window.”
“I’m taking notes.”
“That’s right, you’re a writer.” I think for a minute. “But you know, I guess I took control when I moved out of my step-dad’s house when I was seventeen and got my own place.”
“See. I knew that about you, somehow. I was fifteen.”
“Now, see, I have the advantage because I know that. It’s in your publicity stuff. You emancipated yourself, right?”
“Yep, got rid of the last fat pawing bastard who wanted in my pants. And that was the wife!” She laughs, and it’s a robust sound coming from that wide mouth, but I can hear the echoes of pain under it. Who wants to live alone at fifteen?
“That was brave.”
“
You, too. Why did you move out from your step-dad?”
I take a breath. “He’s a good guy, you know, but he’s sort of lost and a bit of a hoarder, and I just had to go.”
She grins and in a perfect New Zealand accent, she says, “You’ve picked up a bit of an accent over there.”
“Have I?” Out of the corner of my eye, I spy something familiar on the television. “Ooh, look!” I grab the remote and turn up the volume. It’s a trio of snowboarders, young and reckless-looking, with hats and warm coats and thick gloves, answering questions from a tiny woman in a puffy jacket and pink hat. “That’s a friend of mine.”
“Which one?”
Tyler’s face was made for the camera, all those aristocratic angles. “The one talking right now.”
He says, “It was a good run today, but you know every one counts.”
The announcer says, “You’ve had a lot of trouble with that ankle. Will it hold up?”
He gives her his most charming smile. “I guess we’ll see.”
I sigh, so hard.
Mercedes says, “That’s the other guy?”
Eyes still on his amazing face, seeing him so happy and seemingly well-adjusted, I feel the familiar lure. “That’s him.” I twist my mouth and let go of another sigh. “He’s kind of a mess, but I met him first. Before Kaleb.”
“He’s hot, too, no doubt about it. Very different.”
“Yeah.” The segment is over and I turn the volume down again. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Her eyes go sleepy and bright at once. “I have a man,” she says. “I don’t like boys. Men have better stories.”
“Man? Like thirty or something?”
“Oh, no. Older than that.” She looks at her phone, which is buzzing in her hand. “They’re going to want us down there a little early. Go shower and we can get some breakfast. Is Kaleb coming with us?”
“Who knows.” I stand up and fold the blanket. “I can meet you down there if you want?”
“Nope.” She scrolls through her messages with a purple painted thumb. “We should make an entrance.”
“Whatever you say.”