Clifton is the one I lobbied hard for to be in Concealed, the one I took back to Doheny when I found out he was dating an actress I'd been interested in and who showed no interest in me since there was nothing I could offer her. It was made clear what Clifton needed to do if he wanted me to lobby for him. The actor eyed me with a chilled-out glare in the lounge of a restaurant on La Cienega. "I'm not looking for a dude," the actor said. "And even if I was, you're not him." In the jovial language of men I suggested that if he didn't comply I would try to make sure he wouldn't get the part. There was so little hesitancy that the moment became even more unsettling than I had initially made it. The actor simply sighed, "Let's roll." I couldn't tell if the indifference was real or faked. He was planning a career. This was a necessary step. It was just another character he was playing in the bedroom on the fifteenth floor of the Doheny Plaza that night. The BlackBerry on the nightstand that kept flashing, the fake tan and the waxed ass**le, the dealer in the Valley who never showed up, the drunken complaints about the Jaguar that had to be sold - the details were so common that it could have been anyone. The same actor came in this morning and smiled briefly at me, did a shaky reading, then improved slightly on the second reading. Whenever I saw him at a party or a restaurant he would casually avoid me, even when I offered my condolences about his girlfriend, that young actress I had wanted, who overdosed on her meds. Since she had a small role in a hit TV show her death was recognized.
"He's twenty-four," Jason complains.
"But he's still really cute." The director mentions the whispers about Clifton's sexual orientation, a supposed gig on a p**n site years ago, a rumor about a very famous actor and a tryst in Santa Barbara and Clifton's denial in a Rolling Stone cover story about the very famous actor's new movie which Clifton had a small part in: "We're so into girls it's ridiculous."
"I've never gotten the g*y vibe," the director says. "He butches it up, I guess."
And then we refocus on the girls.
"Who are we seeing next?"
"Rain Turner," someone says.
Curious, I look up from Laurie's messages that I keep deleting and reach for a headshot. Just as I lift it off the table the girl from the veranda at Trent and Blair's house in Bel Air walks in and I have to pretend I'm not trapped. The blue eyes are complementing a light blue V-neck and a navy-blue miniskirt, something a girl would have worn in 1985 when the movie takes place. Immediately introductions are made and the audition happens - bad, strident, one-note, every other line needs to be reread to her by the director - but something else starts happening. Her stare is a gaze, and my gaze back is the beginning of it, and I imagine the future: Why do you hate me? I imagine a girl's anguished voice. What did I ever do to you? I imagine someone else screaming.
During the audition I look at Rain Turner's IMDb page on my laptop. She reads for another role and I realize with a panic that she'll never get a callback. She's simply another girl who has gotten by on her looks - her currency in this world - and it will not be fun to watch her grow old. These simple facts I know so well still make everything seem freshly complicated to me. Suddenly I get a text - Quien es? - and it takes me a while to realize it's from the girl I was flirting with in the Admiral's Club at JFK the afternoon I flew out here. When I look up again I also realize I've never noticed the white Christmas tree standing by the pool or that the Christmas tree is framed within the window next to the wall with the poster for Sunset Boulevard on it.
I'm walking Rain to her car outside the offices on Washington Boulevard.
"So, is this the movie you wanted to put me in?" she asks.
"It could be," I say. "I didn't think you recognized me."
"Of course I recognized you."
"I'm flattered." I pause, and then go for it: "Why didn't you introduce yourself to the producer instead? He was at the party."
She smiles as if amazed, then raises an arm to hit me. I back off playfully.
"Are you usually this brazen before cocktail hour?" she asks. "Jeez." She's charming but there's something rehearsed about the charm, something brittle. The amazed smile seems innocent only because something else is always lurking along its borders.
"Or maybe you should have introduced yourself to the director?" I joke.
She laughs. "The director has a wife."
"His wife lives in Australia."
"I heard he doesn't like girls," she stage-whispers.