When Eric felt his toe snap on the ATV, he knew Sasha would give him hell. Shooting for the running scene began the next day. His character was to chase her through the Mall of America. She was a professional and he’d done something incredibly dumb. What shit timing. Just the night before, they’d started to get somewhere, debating the script over cocktails in her hotel room. They had nothing else to do. Niall, the British boyfriend, had had to go back to London to play the O2 arena. And St. Paul wasn’t necessarily known for its nightlife. The city could be better, and so could the script.
“Take the sex scene,” Eric said, flipping through the pages he’d marked up. “It’s just not necessary. It doesn’t move the plot forward.”
“She sees them in the mirror,” Sasha said, her long legs in wine-stained cutoff shorts spreadeagled on the carpet. “So it shows she’s in her head while having sex. You’ve never been in your head?”
“Not while having great sex. You?”
“Don’t change the subject. Point is, Mary needs to achieve intimacy with herself to have great sex.”
“I never got Mary, anyway. She spends half the film crying and the other half treating life like Disneyland.”
“You tell Bill then,” Sasha said, her mouth full of Cheeto dust as she downed her third mojito.
If only the paparazzi could see this, Eric thought. Their It girl, their red carpet belle, their Met Gala queen, in all her lazy filth.
“Tell him to rewrite his book,” she said. “Did you even read it?”
Eric had, in fact, read the book, and hated it, but his agent had said this was a golden ticket. They had to take DiCaprio seriously after The Basketball Diaries, didn’t they? And it was with the Sasha Pitt-Bolaji. The Sasha Pitt-Bolaji who, when she saw him limping to the set, supported on Michael’s arm, covered her face with a magazine, and waved her makeup artist away.
“She’s a great forgiver,” Mike said while staring at her legs, obviously still in love with her. He and Sasha had worked together three years before on her first sci-fi. “So she’ll run a little more slowly.”
Eric doubted it. Whatever Mike had ever done to Sasha, it must have been trivial; in the five weeks Eric had known Sasha, she just didn’t seem to bend like that, unless she was being told to, for sex.
***
At the table read for the film, Sasha and Eric had great chemistry. Smashed it. Mike, the director, had had Sasha’s photograph up on a mood board for months, but nobody in the project had actually thought they’d get her. Eric, on the other hand, had been inaccessible in a different way. A protest in Madrid had almost prevented the director from reaching his hotel on the one day Eric had been available to meet; the soap opera also had had to give permission to lend him out. It was a miracle Sasha and he were both there. The perfection of it. Sasha hadn’t lost her nondescript accent from her last indie and Eric hadn’t lost his abs, for which he was best known.
Bill joined them on set, delighted his novel was finally being adapted, having been stuck in development hell for years. This was Eric’s first time shooting a book; everyone said having the writer with you was a treat. But maybe not when the writer in question was a coke-snorting, thrice-divorced, sorority-girl hounding ninety-year-old egging one on to an ATV on their day off, saying it would be fine.
“Live a little,” Bill had said, patting the hood of the vehicle.
Eric acquiesced, having only wanted to research for his next potential role, in which he would play a man-of-the-woods type. He was getting scripts sent to him now, but was gradually learning—about the movies and more about himself. For example, even if he wished to be, he was certainly not a man-of-the-woods type—he had hay fever. He was also probably allergic to Sasha’s lipstick. It was the day after the accident, her face was too close to his, and she had this magical power of not blinking when they kissed. Mike kept saying in the kissing scenes he wanted more tongue. Sasha took hers and scraped Eric’s teeth clean, sucking out his breath. Finally, they cut.
“What is there to do around here?” she asked, backing out of the kiss casually and bringing a Diet Coke to her lips.
“Well, there is the—”
“Off-roading? No, thanks. I like the footwear they gave me.” She smirked.
Eric hated the special boots he was wearing for his splinted toe, but at least they were giving him another day to get used to them before the running scene. “I was going to say Mall.”
Mike arrived. “You should check it out. Ride the rollercoaster. Eric grew up around here. He’ll show you.”
“I’ve never been on a rollercoaster,” Sasha said.
Eric groaned internally. Were they meant to feel sorry for her? It would make sense to. Everybody on the planet knew Sasha Pitt-Bolaji hadn’t had a normal life since she was two. The daughter of a diplomat who’d been on duty when the President was shot in the ankle at a rally, she’d had to deal with Daddy’s PTSD ever since. Since he never let her go anywhere except to film, the tabloids rumoured she broke her parents up on purpose at sixteen to get free. Right after the divorce, she’d received her first Oscar nod playing a troubled maid of honor.
Her pale blue eyes gleamed. “That could be fun. Eric? You’ll come?”
Eric knew he was the one who suggested it, but there were rollercoasters everywhere and this one was just in the middle of a gigantic mall. Whoop-dee-do. All he really wanted out of going was to research the chase scene. He had just spent two years in Spain, where half the malls were outdoors.
“Go on, puke,” Mike said. “Then you’ll know what it’s like. Pure, unadulterated American consumption. Wish I could join.”
And that’s how they ended up strapped in next to each other on the “medium-scary” coaster, while a kid kicked the back of Eric’s seat. Eric was about to yell at the kid, except Sasha kept giggling, jamming her baseball cap down, covering her face so she wouldn’t be recognized. He hated how safe it was for him here. And that she wanted to eat fried chicken and then do the rollercoasters, in that order.
The ride started moving, creaking up the long slope before the first drop. “Well, now that we can talk,” she said. “You never told me how it happened for you?”
Eric’s mom had modelled for catalogues, paying the bills when his dad, a Nam vet, who’d never wanted kids, drunk-drove into a ravine. Nobody even knew what a catalog was these days. With his two older brothers at school, Eric’s mom brought him to work when he was too sick for daycare. And then suddenly Eric was in a catalog too. They did the whole circuit. Baby GAP. GAP Kids. H&M Kids. Zara Kids. You’ve never really lived till you’ve worn a pair of orange leather pants made for a seven-year-old, he liked to say, to be funny.
“I guess modelling was okay. Then I went to Orlando and they were shooting soaps. Later, they moved it to Madrid.”
Sasha smiled. “You’re cute in it.”
“Great.” Eric knew nobody became Daniel Day-Lewis overnight, but he was more than his muscles. Every day he pored over the new scripts he’d been sent, but he was unsatisfied. His first auditions had given him delusions that he was special. Plus, shooting in Spain sounded somehow more prestigious. Guapo, they called him there. But trying hard didn’t help if he didn’t have the “it” factor.
“What? Poor baby is too pretty?” she cooed.
“I’m realistic about my looks.”
“So am I.”
Was she? Everyone on the planet knew how Sasha was discovered. The same day POTUS was nearly assassinated, her father and the Secret Service had leapt in front of the President and Sasha happened to be in the most iconic photo ever taken, posted on social media by a bystander. After the kerfuffle, everyone had wanted to know the name of the gorgeous teen girl hugging her father under the American flag. Black hair, blue eyes, legs for days. Like an ethnically ambiguous Blake Lively, but all-natural and could do a proper foreign accent.
“Look,” she said. “We’ve been through this. You have no control over this. I don’t either. You got the part because you have the look, the feel for this one thing. Mike likes you. That’s not nothing. I know some people hate the cleft in my chin because women shouldn’t have that. My widow’s peak. One director said only angry women have widow’s peaks. And no one wants an angry woman. Until they want one. Then you’re not angry enough. They want unhinged. What are you reading these days?”
“Uh… there’s this man-of-the-woods thing.” Eric squirmed in his seat.
“I mean, books.”
“Why would I read a book?”
“You apparently read this one.”
“Why do you read the news on set?” he asked, having observed her scrutinizing the Times and the Post in between takes.
“Forgive me for wanting to know what’s going on in the world.” Then she yelped and suddenly he felt his arm yanked back. “It’s starting. Hold onto me! Eric? Eric—” The ride didn’t allow her to finish before it plunged them down and the kids started screaming, leaving him wondering what she could ever get from the news that she couldn’t from her millions—both dollars, and hysterical, worshipful fans, who called themselves the Sashalites. If she really wanted to know about the news, couldn’t she hire someone to read for her? That’s what he would do in her place. And what a thing that would be, to be in her place.
***
“Mary!”
For Sasha, “running slowly” through the mall was like a cheetah being told to give ninety percent. She looked back at him, sprinting her way past the Abercrombie & Fitch. According to the script, Eric was supposed to catch her on Floor 2, but he only got the squeeze on her by the Nike Store. Sasha had asked him, the day before, between rollercoasters, what made the MoA so American anyway. She didn’t see and still wouldn’t let the subject go.
“For example, why… would you need two Victoria’s Secrets?” Sasha gasped as he held her, waiting for Mike to cut.
“You do realize I have a broken toe?” Eric gritted into her ear. “And I don’t know—because women have two breasts?”
“But endless secrets,” Sasha shot back.
Mike was right. Eric grew up around here, in the so-called “bad” part of Minneapolis, but he’d never actually been to the Mall of America that much because he’d have had to bus and inevitably would have been messed with for the same “dainty bones,” as most photographers called it, that were so desired in his career thus far. He knew what those bones read as to the dealers and muggers. Weak. Easy. Come beat me. By nine, he understood why his two brothers had joined the Marines. But his mother had wanted Eric behind a lens, and what little boy didn’t like making wads of pocket money while pleasing Mom, all while being told he looked good in mini-Nikes that he got to take home after the shoot?
“How do you choose?” Eric asked Sasha, as they sat in chairs, recovering, after the take. “Between everything you’re offered, I mean.”
“Well,” she said. “You have to be perfect while you’re still young and can be made up to rapidly age. Then you actually age and you do a sexy romantic film with some established actor two decades older that shows your body to full advantage. Make some money, then pin a franchise. And as your name is out, get a fucking amazing stylist so you can top the Met Gala best dressed list and win some indie roles to curry favor with the critics. Yes, you’re still young, my little Leo.”
Eric startled, realizing he was touching his face, unconsciously wondering if he was still boyish. Suddenly, DiCaprio’s trajectory sounded impossible.
“Hey,” Sasha said, brushing his hand. He looked up, almost swept up in her blue eyes. Then he hated himself for thinking the phrase swept up. What was he, cliché? “Relax, Eric. How’s your toe?”
Eric saw Bill heading towards them, gesticulating at him, mouth full of something that looked like more CBD gummies. He was not going to be tricked into another “adventure.”
“It’s fine,” he said, standing up. “Excuse me.”
“Eric!” Mike called. “We’re not done here. You need to get her in front of the Abercrombie! They’re sponsoring the film!”
Eric stilled. “Really?”
“Yes, what do you think you’re wearing?”
Eric hadn’t really stopped to consider the costumes. They just looked like jeans and a button-down to him. Mike didn’t know he had modelled for A&F during the, how should he put it, days before the rebrand, when the stores were dark, house music pumping, and a shirtless dude with a six-pack stood constantly at the door. Eric had been twelve or thirteen and had done some hoodies for Abercrombie Kids. Before the shoot, he and his mom were taken for a tour of a regular store. He had examined the constantly revolving line of shirtless men and wondered if they were cold, except they were also barefoot and wearing scarves for some reason. His relief had been immense when the soaps mostly wanted him to keep his shirt on, except for when they didn’t.
“Kiss her on the neck,” they often said. “When you scratch your stomach accidentally lift up your shirt, you know. Like, accidentally.”
Eric was horrible at making things look accidental. He wished that it had been like that with Sasha, the accidentally discovered. At the same time that he wanted so badly to speak with her, to ask her every stupid question about the industry, he had a feeling she would never know what it was like, faking it, and then working it all the time at the stupid gym. The stupid resistance bands he’d packed in his suitcase. The reps in the hotel room.
“And Sash,” Mike said, finally pointing the finger at his golden girl. “Stop making it difficult for him. This is the scene. Bill thinks it’s critical, okay?”
“I’m coming,” Eric told Mike and got ready to run again.
***
By Wednesday night, the chase scene still wasn’t perfect, but Thursdays were off, so in the morning, Eric finally called an Uber and gave the driver an address.
When Eric’s mom found out he’d won the part and would be shooting near home, she couldn’t believe it. Her son whom she hadn’t seen for two years since the soap launched in Spain—coming home! And working with Sasha! She couldn’t wait, she said on the phone, to read the scripts he was receiving now, and believed he could one hundred percent be a man-of-the-woods type.
The Uber passed the old familiar light rail, which had been renovated with new cars, though the rough clientele remained the same. Through the tinted window, he watched as the neighborhoods grew dingier as they travelled further from the hotel. He saw his elementary school. Then the Burger King to which he’d run once as two guys with brass knuckles chased him home from the playground.
“Eric?” his mom called, her voice muffled. It was weird to ring the doorbell to his own house. Meanwhile, Sasha, Mike had said, was going to get a surprise visit from Niall, who was back stateside since the band’s lead singer lost his voice halfway to Manchester. How unoriginal. Of course, Sasha’s boyfriend had to be a rock star. Niall stood six-foot-ten, a ridiculous height in Eric’s opinion, wore ripped bell-bottoms every single day, and acted like he thought he was the sixth member of The Strokes. He donned too much leather, fringe, and black tees for Eric to tell if he had a six-pack as nice as Eric’s. Not that Eric cared. He wondered if Niall could taste the films on Sasha, all the other men (and women) who had kissed her, the fans who had grabbed at her body, almost jabbing her with their pens, begging for autographs. Eric wondered what it was like, making love to her and the fame at once.
“So what’s she like?” his mom said, after she’d kissed Eric thoroughly and inspected him and fed him in the kitchen.
“Who?”
“SPB, of course.”
“Sasha?”
“Yes, Sasha. Who else?”
There were so many ways to answer. Legs. Lolita. Star Wars. Okay, yeah, Jedi Master.
“She’s like, I don’t know, a Yoda? She thinks I’ll be fine.” He wracked his brain. “She calls me Leo,” he offered.
His mom scoffed. “Please. That man hasn’t been hot since Catch Me If You Can. And what do you call her?”
“Um, ‘Sasha’?”
“What does she smell like?”
“Skin?”
“Eric, come on, stop being sly. Tell me about it. Is she like everyone says? Isn’t it hot when you grab her? Turn her around? Crush your mouths together? Ugh, I just want everything she’s wearing. I saw some of the promo.”
Mike hadn’t told him about any promo or posters. This must be something new. In the book, their characters read playful. Sasha was sort of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl type and he was a student of sculpture, making copies of the Greco-Roman forms, when they met in the Minnesota Museum of Art. Bill had told Eric to not try too hard, but also to get it right. Mary/Sasha belonged to him. Eric, that is. His character.
“No,” he said. “I do nothing of the sort. I do my job.”
“Your job,” his mom said, booping his nose, as he flinched, “is to be the sex, baby.”
Even her, he thought.
“Now, read to me.”
You mean the-man-of-the-woods? Eric thought, but he pulled out his bag and handed her the sheaves of papers anyway. Not worth it to argue.
***
In Madrid, when Eric had first tested for the part, Mike was in crisis over getting his Mary. He’d lost sleep auditioning hundreds of the world’s best young actresses. None were Mary. But he’d liked Eric’s pictures and said he looked even better in motion. In an anteroom off the hotel lobby, they’d posed Mike’s assistant as the yet uncast female lead while Eric spoke Bill’s words. Standing in front of them, Eric did his best Leo-frown. Bill had nodded along, tossing back CBD gummies by the palm.
“Is he… okay?” Eric asked after he’d read and the old man had toddled towards the bathroom.
“Bill? He’s great, thinks you’re great too, by the way. But he wants SPB.”
“Oh… Sasha Pitt-Bolaji? She’s up for this?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I want her too. You two would look great together. But she’s just wrapping up that indie and she doesn’t do book adaptations ever since…”
“Yeah,” Eric said. An older co-star had assaulted her on set that one time. It had made headlines even in Madrid. #Inclusoella, the newspaper read. #Hertoo. Niall hadn’t been in the picture back then, though Eric wasn’t sure she could have been protected from the asshole. She didn’t talk about it in interviews.
Then the words simply came spilling out of his mouth. “You don’t think we could get her? Did you ask?”
Eric didn’t know what had made him so bold as to speak to Michael Marr that way. But Mike had twice lost out to Aronofsky at the Oscars for Best Director. Bill’s had not been the kind of book Eric would have read on his own, but it wasn’t genre, slightly Hollywood-on-Hollywood, which Hollywood loved—even if the chase scene was a clear rip-off of Bertolucci ripping off French New Wave—and Eric knew Mike had ambition. It took one to know one.
Mike grimaced. “No, I haven’t.”
“Why don’t you?” Eric pointed out the window at the protestors in the Plaza de Mayor. “If this didn’t stop you.”
And Eric knew he had him when Bill came back, glassy-eyed, pinching his nose with a tissue, and Mike said, “SPB.”
“SPB?” Bill repeated, the tissue falling to the floor. “SPB!”
“SPB. I’ll get her agent. It’s worth a stab,” Mike added. “Let’s see if she’s a great forgiver, after all.”
***
“Eric, I need to talk to you about the chase scene,” Sasha said, the next morning, hauling him away from the breakfast spread.
For a second, he didn’t know how to greet her. His mom had to make it all weird. SPB this and that. Pointing out the old poster in his childhood room that he wished he’d burned. Yes, okay, he had had a little crush on Sasha just like everyone else after the picture that went around the world. But he was a professional now. Post-broken toe. “No more ATVs?” he joked.
“Close,” Sasha said. “Bill’s in a terrible mood. Lost at the tables last night and tried to pull some college girl. Jesus, he’s not Salinger. But also, can you—” She tugged him behind a piece of lighting equipment. Hair and makeup, cameramen, errand girls and boys moved around them. “Can you, um, not catch me so hard? I know what it says in the script. But, I would appreciate, if, maybe you could try? I’ll be soft. I’ll slide into your—” She started again. That was when Eric noticed her taut voice. Her eyes darting. The rings on her hands shook. “Last night, Niall—I just—”
Mike arrived before she could finish and Eric could only nod at her as everyone maneuvered them into position. It was decided Eric would start running at a different point midway in the mall and they could splice scenes to make them one.
Eric swallowed, glad his face was supposed to appear strained from exertion. What had Sasha been about to say? What had happened “last night”? He looked around and Niall could be seen towering over everyone, moving behind tripods, the hem of his bell-bottoms ragged and grotty from brushing against the mall floor. Niall stared at the back of one of the interns and Eric pretended not to pay attention. The rocker held a Guinness.
The brown bottle reminded Eric of the time after the table read, when Mike and Eric, as a get-to-know-you thing, had decided to get beers. Women’s tennis was on the television and the director was a fan. Eric didn’t mind. Mike was a talkative drunk, and five beers in, chasing them with shots, he had started spouting off on the industry, then women, then Sasha. His desire was so evident. Eric, sipping on a dry cider, called the director out on it since he knew men like Mike—he wouldn’t remember in the morning.
“Don’t you?” Mike asked.
“Have a crush?” Eric thought of the poster in his room. “I don’t think anyone can help but be a little in love with Sasha.”
“Disarming, the little minx, isn’t she.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to call people that anymore,” Eric said wryly. “So what? Did you cast Sasha just so you could see her up close again? Is it what you thought?”
“I think I made it worse,” Mike sighed then continued, “Liza’s divorcing me.”
Well, shit. Eric held his green can mid-sip so he didn’t have to make direct eye contact. This was the first day. Hell, not even. First day minus one, two. He wanted to keep it light, not talk about another Hollywood marriage meltdown. “Still need a hitman,” Eric said finally. “It’s not like Niall’s just going to fall over dead.”
He flicked his gaze to the television, where little white skirts flounced over grass courts and the crowd cheered.
“So I’ll convince her to fall in love with you on set. Should be easy, with your muscles. Not like this beer gut.” Mike pinched his mid-section. “But then I’ll steal her from you. I’ll offer her Academy bait, stuff she can’t turn down. I’m this—” He hiccupped. “This close to getting the okay to remake 1984, the right way. Niall doesn’t have a chance. Plus, he’s touched her, you know. Nasty fucker when he’s high.”
God, there had been so much wrong with that sentence, Eric had not wanted to make implications, hadn’t even understood where to start. Touched her. Obviously, Mike hadn’t wanted to come right out and say it.
But what had SPB been to Eric then? Imaginary. Things were different now. She was kind of funny, when she wasn’t being mean about his toe. And as much as he hated to admit it, the rollercoasters hadn’t been the worst thing in the world. On them, she had clutched his arm for his protection, over and over. And he had held Sasha for the film, was about to hold her, again and again. She had Yoda’ed. He had Padawan’ed. There was something to be said for shop talk, for the things no one else would tell you about what it took. And Eric knew that the sour drop of his stomach meant he didn’t want Niall—nor Mike, for that matter—anywhere near Sasha without an adequate explanation. Not with that tightness in her voice.
The call of, “Action!” brought him back to himself, pose prepped, outside a LUSH.
Sasha ran. He did too. Then he caught her. At their endpoint in front of the Abercrombie, Sasha was as she promised, soft, this time. Her bones elastic, pliant, only a pressure against him. In response, Eric found himself brushing her only with his arms.
Now that he wasn’t plastered against her, he noticed her light perfume. Slowly, he placed his nose against her neck. Inhaled. He felt her shoulders drop.
It was a world of difference. He could hardly believe it.
Though he could only see the back of Sasha’s head, Eric, intuitively, as a model, as an actor, understood. This was far more sensible. She was right.
From the corner of his eye he could see Niall, watching. Glassing them through his Guinness.
So this was Mary, after all. Welcome to the world, Mary. And as though his character seemed more dimensional along with hers, Eric felt introduced to him.
With care, Eric slid his palms along her forearms and interlaced their fingers. Sasha smelled like woodsmoke.
Silence, other than mall music. He continued to muse. Mary, who was always in her head, Mary, who needed this Disneyland.
Eric was glad they were doing this. Smart Sasha, as usual. She had deserved that Oscar nod and much more.
He was unprepared for the stern voice that cut in.
“Grab her!” Bill hollered. From a beanbag at the edge of the set, before a Hot Topic, the geriatric sat up. He made a snatching motion with his fingers, which trembled. A zippo, flame open, swayed in his other fist. As he walked towards them, his face, menacing, no longer spoke adventure. The brows contorted, the acrobatics of his cheeks. He no longer looked like the old man of benevolence, nor of pleasure, the Dionysius of the set, but the Hades, the soul-stealer, closing in on his quarry.
Eric, without thinking, let go of Sasha’s hand. And shielded her with his body. His back slid around her so he faced Bill. “Bill, what are you doing?”
“I said grab her!”
“She doesn’t want that.”
“Oh, sod what she wants! You little muscle-mouth! I wrote the damned book, didn’t I?” And Bill lunged.
Suddenly everyone was standing, Mike, forgetting they were still rolling, made for the writer. “Cut! Cut! For Pete’s sake, cut!” He ran for Bill before he could get to Eric. “Bill, come on, sit down, I’ll get you a drink.”
“Stupid kids,” Bill muttered, allowing himself to be steered back to his beanbag.
Eric, pulse thumping, finally turned around to look at Sasha, but she was already gone.
***
He found her in the stairwell. She’d run up a flight and somehow, he knew. Whoever chased her would go down. If it were him, pursued by bullies, he would have chosen up too.
She was looking at the menu of a Panda Express, seemingly ignoring the patrons in line who gawked at her. It was still a Friday and the crew had only secured permission to shut down two floors of the mall.
“Forget what I said.” She didn’t turn around. “About the movies. As you can see, it’s not even worth it. Is this the life you want?”
Eric waited.
“You want to know why I read the paper? I read the paper because I need to know what else is out there. My father, through his work, wanted to bring reconciliation to the people. You know, they say that I made them—that I made my mother—”
Eric didn’t think it was true anymore that Sasha had broken her parents up.
She finally faced him. “So what’s next for you? Only a few scenes left, heartthrob. Then you can go be the man-on-the-woods. Be Dicaprio. Fly away.”
“Sasha, it’s not okay.” He frowned. “You remember that? The man-of-the-woods?”
“I know you’re not dumb enough to get on an ATV out of interest. You’re not the type. You’re the method actor.”
Eric reddened.
“Plus, Niall’s bandmate is auditioning too. Everyone’s going for that part.”
“Sasha, I’m not playing the man-of-the-woods. It’s not me. I mean, I’m from here.” He gesticulated towards the mall, the distant sound of rollercoasters. “But Bill. It wasn’t right. And whatever Niall did—”
Sasha lifted her chin. “You can stop. I’ll go back. I’ll do it the way he wants.”
“Do you think they sent me?”
“Didn’t they?”
“No.”
“Well, aren’t you the hero.” A sad smile turned Sasha’s lip and Eric thought, perhaps, hidden in its crescent, lay the unhinged, that she had talked about. A tiny vein of mascara moved down her cheek, pulled by gravity, meeting the hated cleft in her chin. Her eyes clouded.
“I’m written to be,” Eric said.
His stomach tightened at the expression. He was, wasn’t he? Bill had said so. But for the first time, he questioned whether they’d lied to the audience. It certainly wouldn’t be the first gotcha moment in film history.
He squeezed his hands together, then squinted at the menu, all thousands of calories upon calories of it. “Do you want Panda Express?”
“Please, I haven’t eaten a carb since 2016.” Sasha held her head.
“You did the other day,” he said. Then he knew what would make her feel better. “You wanna ride the rollercoasters again?”
***
The crew were packing up the set at the end of the day when Mike tapped Eric on the wrist. After Bill’s outburst, an attractive intern had been tasked with escorting the writer back to the hotel. In his absence, and after their fill of rides and chicken, Eric and Sasha had nailed the chase scene in the next take.
“What?” Eric said, massaging his temples.
“I liked what you did there today. Standing up to Bill like that. It was good. Very good. Very early Christian Bale. Frankly, current Christian Bale.”
“I wasn’t acting,” Eric said. “It was a little fucked-up, don’t you think?”
When he and Sasha had returned to a hysterical Mike, wondering where his leads had gone, Mike had looked so relieved to be getting back to it that they hadn’t talked about what happened. But if Mike was inviting it…
Mike laughed. “Mary’s a mess. Maybe she needs ‘fucked up.’ But I liked your way too. So we’ll keep it. You do know that Bill is just a… consultant. I’m here to take his stuff and make it money, you get me?”
“Sasha’s smart,” Eric said. “Really smart. It was her idea to do it like that.”
“Well, it looked good. I don’t think it matters whose idea it was.”
Before Eric could ask, “Why wouldn’t it?” Mike continued, “So I wanted to ask, do you want to be in the next movie?”
“What, yours?”
“Yeah. It’s a coming-of-age thing. I have it before the 1984 thing. Your face, those bones, they’re perfect. I just thought of it now.”
The stores were starting to close around them. Sales associates pulling accordion doors shut halfway. Eric had never seen the mall this late before.
“Let me think about it,” Eric said. “There’s still the rest of the movie.”
“Don’t think too long,” Mike said. “You might age.”
Eric watched the rest of the pack-up, knowing Mike was only half-joking. He nodded at the Best Boy and Gaffer, who did tricks with light meters and silver umbrellas. Tomorrow they should shoot the final scenes, back at the studio. No more mall. No more chase. Thank God. They needed to get Bill out of the public eye.
His phone bleeped. His agent had left eleven messages, saying that the man-of-the-woods part really was the ticket, that he had managed an in for them, that Eric was going to read for it next month. His mother would be ecstatic. Eric wondered if, despite her disdain, Sasha would recommend it for his career, or Mike’s movie, or something else altogether. He should speak to her about that the next day, before they wrapped. And about the other thing.
Eric remembered the poster in his room, and back to the first time he had ever seen Sasha. How she had looked to be sobbing, draped around her father, the moment perfectly captured by an iPhone and immortalized on the internet forever. The Greco-Roman art student he was playing would have said she’d resembled Mary, mother of Jesus. Like a Pietà, a broken woman crying with the corpse of her slain son. Now that was kind of fucked-up too, but also fascinating. How feelings were transmitted, through centuries, across space. How you could feel someone’s sadness and grief, long after their touch left your body. For a moment, Eric’s arms and hands tingled with Sasha’s imprint and he sat with it, with the phantom limb of their temporary understanding, until he could feel it no more, and he treasured it no less.
END