Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren, I wanted to bring you up to date about what has happened since my last letter, the one I wrote about everything that happened and how we ended up in California. (I got this address from www.bananarama.com. I hope this is the right address, and if not please forward on to Sara and Keren.)

Paque and I always thought the sun shone every day in California, but it rained our first day in Hollywood. The hour or so flight from Phoenix to L.A. was like walking from a sunny day into a darkened room. Stella, who I told you about in my last letter, picked us up from the airport and we gave her Alan Hood’s address on Sunset Boulevard. Paque and I were curious to see where we’d be living—if only temporarily—and got sort of a kick out of telling our friends in Phoenix we’d be living on the famous Sunset Boulevard.

But we had it wrong. Or really Alan told us it was Sunset Boulevard—he gave the address as 21047 Sunset Boulevard. We drove for a while without seeing any numbers, and then we saw 16501 on one of the old-time McDonald’s, the ones that look like the drive-ins from the ’50s. The next thing we saw was Von’s supermarket, 19988. We crossed Hollywood Boulevard where it bisected Sunset and we saw the house, 21047, a smallish white adobe with yellowing patches of grass along a narrow sidewalk. This is 21047 Beaumont Avenue, Stella said. Are you sure it’s the right house? Paque looked back up Sunset and I looked the other way, where you could see Sunset dead-end into a three-post fence with red reflectors nailed to the graying wood.

Alan Hood himself opened the door and we introduced ourselves. Alan shook our hands and invited us in. Even though it was late in the day, he looked like he’d just gotten out of bed. His thick brown hair was misshapen; he ran his fingers through it, piling it high on his head and squinted with his small blue eyes. Stella said, Didn’t you write for that television show La Brea? and Alan was very pleased she knew his name.

A great show, Alan said.

Stella said, Yeah, my boyfriend was on it. Craig Copeland.

This is the kind of stuff that drives Paque and I crazy, about how Stella tries to horn in on everything.

Yeah, Alan said. You could tell he didn’t remember Craig.

The house was bigger than it looked from the street, which had to do with the fact that there wasn’t much in the way of furniture. The front room had the most windows but was furnished with only a desk and a computer. Some framed movie posters leaned in the corner near the fireplace, which looked like it hadn’t ever been used. The desk was littered with papers and somewhere underneath the mess a phone started to ring. Leave it, Alan said.

He gave us the tour: the master bedroom, which housed film editing equipment and a small mattress. Several CD racks stood like sentries against the far wall, swollen with plastic cases. Alan showed us where we’d be staying, a room sort of what I imagined a dorm room in college would look like: two beds against opposite walls, two small dressers and a closet. A window between the beds looked out on Sunset and we could see the Von’s from where we stood.

Stella helped us unload our bags and said, He seems like a nice guy. I’m sorry you couldn’t stay with me, she said, but it’s already too crowded with me and Craig.

No sweat, Paque said. Paque didn’t want Stella getting her meathooks into our film or into Alan Hood. I felt bad for Stella myself. She’d had a rough time since moving to L. A. I would run into her mom in Phoenix and she would always shake her head when I asked about Stella.

We were anxious to find out more about Plastic Fantastic II, the film Alan promised to make with us, so Alan took us to lunch at Deep Dish on Vine and told us there was a slight delay because of some financing that hadn’t come through. He explained about his cable-access dating show, Who Fancies Me? which he was about to sell for big money, money he was going to use to finance Plastic Fantastic II.

How much longer, Paque asked, disappointed.

Not long, Alan said, but in the meantime how about being on the show?

Paque asked him what that meant and he told us how the show worked: contestants came on the show and asked ‘Who fancies me?’ and whoever from the crowd did came up (up to five at the most) and the contestants asked them questions until they’ve narrowed it down to two. Once it was narrowed down, the two final contestants duked it out verbally in front of the contestant, essentially fighting over her or him.

The second person is always a ringer from the staff, Alan said. How would you like to come down and be on the show until we can start shooting the film, he asked.

Shouldn’t we be learning our lines for the film, Paque asked. Alan said he was going to write the script as we shot it so there really wasn’t anything to memorize per se. It’s more spontaneous that way, he explained. So Paque and I said we’d be on Who Fancies Me?

It might be fun, Paque said.

And it was fun. I mean, I was too shy to get up there but Paque wasn’t. We talked to the contestants, who were chosen randomly from a clutter of postcards Alan kept in a box in a cramped office behind the set, which was in this old church right down Sunset from our house. It looked like they still had services there on Sundays. The set was just a stage with a plump red couch on one side (where the contestant sat, patiently awaiting that person who fancied him or her) and on the other side were four recliners of various colors and sizes. If you walked behind the stage you saw the stuffing coming out of most of the recliners.

The contestants, John Blake from Pasadena and Rolf Weddenstein from La Jolla, were OK guys. They were both in college and looked pretty much like hipsters. Alan explained the rules but Rolf said, It’s cool, dude, I watch the show, which made John pipe up, Me too. Alan pointed Paque out, so they would know she was not really a potential idol worshiper and Rolf was perceptibly bummed out, which Paque saw and she gave him a kiss on the cheek for good luck.

I was in charge of letting in the studio audience. Alan explained to me that since one of the worshipers from one of the first episodes went on to become a VJ on MTV, the audiences had been packed with wannabes and a couple times he found out after the fact that scouts were posing as twenty-somethings in the crowd. So keep your eyes out, Alan said. Today we’re shooting two guys, so don’t let any men in, he told me. When do you shoot the women, I asked. Alan pointed at his watch. Men in the morning, he said, and women after lunch.

Sure enough outside the church there was a line of women all the way down the street and around the corner. You never saw so many miniskirts. I found out later I was supposed to actually choose thirty people, not just let in the first thirty. Alan said it didn’t really matter but that people would quit lining up if they weren’t one of the first thirty, and I said next time I’d do it right.

The show used two cameras and both cameramen had on oversized T-shirts that read WHO FANCIES ME? The crowd filed in, sitting in the risers. Overhead a stereo played KROQ, a new song from Jewel.

It feels like an assembly, from back in high school, Paque said.

Alan—his hair slicked back and his face so white his eyebrows looked like two clouds floating in space—welcomed the audience and ‘those viewing from the safety of their homes’ and then introduced John Blake, who came out center stage and looked right into the camera. John gave his name and what kind of mate he was looking for (‘a caring person with a good heart who enjoys the outdoors and laughs easily’). He paused dramatically, like all contestants are supposed to, and then asked the crowd, Who fancies me? Everyone applauded and there was whistling too.

Alan was right about needing ringers. Three chairs filled up pretty quickly, the girls preening for the camera in between smiles to their friends in the audience.

Is there anyone else who fancies John, Alan asked the audience.

A timid girl with glasses was pushed to the stage by her group of friends and you could tell she didn’t want to go up but the camera focused on her and so she sort of had to. Alan winked at Paque, who was sitting in the front row, and Paque sauntered onto the stage, to the delight of the crowd.

The camera panned down the row of girls as each said her name and Alan handed John an oversized envelope, white with a red bow, which contained the questions John would ask to narrow down his admirers.

John opened the bow dramatically and read the first question: After a date would you tell a guy to call you to make sure you got home safely, or ask him to nudge you for breakfast in the morning?

The crowd whooped rabidly.

Each of the girls answered the question and the first girl, the one called Katrina, was the first casualty.

The girl with the glasses looked like she was going to cry as John read the second question: Size matters—true or false?

The camera panned down the row and the girls each answered. Paque was the funniest because the two before her answered false and she looked at them like they were crazy and answered, True. The crowd clapped and whistled, as if on cue.

The girl with the glasses bolted from the stage and disappeared behind the curtain to the exit. Alan deadpanned a stare into the camera and everyone laughed. Well, he said, and then there were three. He turned to the stage, Okay, John, let’s hear the next—

Before Alan could finish an alarm sounded and the stage lights went down while a siren flashed. You know what that means, Alan said, turning to the stage, It’s time to fight for your man!

The alarm stopped and the stage lights came back up and the portion of the show where the remaining girls verbally sparred over the contestant began when John, on cue, said, Who fancies me most?

Girl #1: I do.

Girl #2: I do more.

Paque: I do too.

Alan: Tell John what you love most about him girls.

Girl #1: I love his dark eyes and long fingers. (The crowd oohs.)

Girl #2 (looking at the camera, big smile): I love how his mind works. (The crowd boos. John gives a thumbs down)

Paque (playfully): I like what I see. (The crowd erupts in applause.)

It went on like that—finally it was just Paque and the second girl and they went at it. John, choose me and you won’t be sorry. John, let me show you what love’s about. John, choose your soul mate. John, I’ll take you to heaven and back.

Paque’s job was to whip the other girl into a frenzy, which she did with flair, and John knew he couldn’t choose Paque anyway so it was really an entertainment about what Paque could get the other girl to say.

John, choose me and you can do anything you want, she said, and Paque said, He’s yours then. The crowd stood and clapped wildly and the other girl looked confused for a moment but then John stood up and she went to him and they hugged like they were family. Offstage, Paque stood with her arms folded across her chest, smiling. I thought she did a quality acting job and Alan even said so later, after some of the guys from the crowd tried to give Paque a consolation prize.

Fortunately, Who Fancies Me? was sold shortly thereafter because doing it for a week straight was boring.

I have to sign off now because Stella (the one I told you about) is taking us on our first celebrity scavenger hunt. I’ll let you know…

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

Paque is out with Alan so I thought now would be the right moment to drop you a line to fill you in. Please thank whoever it was in your office who sent the photo and newsletter. I tacked it up on the back of the door in our room, to give us inspiration.

When I said above that Paque is out with Alan I mean that they are at Von’s, which is just up the street, getting some groceries. I didn’t want to give the impression that Paque and Alan were out on the town together, or that they were together in some vague California way. Paque and I haven’t had boyfriends in God knows how long. My last boyfriend, Daryll, didn’t last long (I don’t want to go into that now).

I did meet this guy though. Remember I told you about the scavenger hunt? The hunt was pretty much a bust but afterwards there was this party thrown by a guy named T.J. He works as a professional housesitter, which I think is one of those jobs that you could only find in L.A. But apparendy there’s a real demand, so T.J. doesn’t have a place of his own and, as he puts it, ‘lives around.’

The party was in Brentwood, at this enormous Spanish-style house that T.J. said belonged to one of O. J. Simpson’s lawyers, who was a friend of T.J.’s family. What I liked about T.J. was the way he cracked himself up. He would be in the middle of telling you a story and he’d say, Can you believe that? God, that’s funny. And then he’d laugh in such a way that you’d laugh too, whether it was funny or not. (Also, did I mention, he’s really, really, really cute.)

There were only about ten or fifteen people and we hung out around the oblong pool in the back yard, sipping cold Budweisers. The trees hanging over the pool made the backyard seem really dark and T.J. lit the tiki torches pitched in the mound of lava rocks behind the diving board. Paque told Stella that we had to be back at a decent hour because the next day was the first day of filming and Alan had scheduled an early shoot. But I was happy where I was. T.J. was showing off for me, doing stunts off the end of the diving board. Others stripped down to their underwear and a competition started, who could make the biggest splash, who could jump the highest, the furthest, etc. I dipped my legs in the shallow end with Paque and Stella. Stella was telling us about this guy she met who thinks Kurt Cobain is still alive and that his suicide was a fake but I tuned her out, imagining instead that T.J. was my boyfriend and that we lived in the Spanish-style house. Paque and I have talked about it before and basically we decided that while we’re trying to establish ourselves we’re not allowed to have boyfriends. We want boyfriends, but all of our friends who have boyfriends have to spend all their free time with them. Pretty soon you’d see less and less of them and then they’d get married and you wouldn’t see them at all.

We want to do all that, someday. I just don’t see how you could put anybody through being second fiddle to your dreams. I don’t know if you know Madonna personally but you probably know her story, about how she moved to New York from Detroit with basically no money. She wanted to be famous no matter what and she ended up sleeping in her band’s rehearsal space. After that she moved up to a bedroom smaller than you would get if you committed a crime and were put in prison. She lived off two dollars a day. In New York City. Paque and I have been to New York City and you can’t do anything for two dollars a day. I always think of Madonna homeless, sleeping on a mattress, whenever I get down about how hard it is to get a break. You have to want it more, is all.

Plus, to be honest, I feel responsible for ruining the start we got back in Phoenix. I suffer from anxiety, and that day at the SaltBed Fest was the most anxious I’ve ever been. Everything was really going our way until my accident. There aren’t any second chances either, we learned that. We weren’t so surprised that Scott Key from Sony wouldn’t take our call, but a couple weeks after that even Ian wouldn’t talk to us because of an article that came out in the Arizona Republic. But the reporter twisted what we said all around. In the article it sounded like Paque and I blamed Ian for what happened. And they had a good time about Jammin’ Jay, too. The reporter made Ian out to be some sort of faker for putting out our record even though we didn’t sing every track on it. Paque and I tried to call Ian to tell him that we didn’t blame him, that it was our fault for not practicing as hard as we could, but all we ever got was his answering machine.

That’s why when Alan called from Hollywood with an offer to make a short film, Paque and I said yes right away. Alan had read about the film my brother made, Plastic Fantastic, in an interview Paque and I did with Phoenix Magazine. We’ve never even seen the movie (Chuck was supposed to send us a copy) and Alan admitted that he hadn’t seen it either but he thought making a movie would be a ‘great way to turn around what happened in Phoenix.’ When someone extends you a hand like that, you should take it, right?

T.J. and I ended up kissing in the bathroom, his wet trunks pressed up against me. It was nice to kiss someone. I worried that he would want to do more, but someone knocked on the bathroom door and T.J. smiled. We’re caught, he laughed. God, isn’t that funny?

Paque said it was time to get back and I rolled the window down and let the wind blow my hair as Stella drove us back to Alan’s, who was already in bed. T.J. asked for my number, which was the biggest compliment I’d had in as long as I could remember, but I took his number instead. Paque and I crept into our room, trying not to make any noise, and I put the scrap of paper with the carefully printed numbers under my pillow.

In the morning, T.J.’s number was gone. I tore my sheets apart but couldn’t find it. I even suspected Paque of taking it, but didn’t say anything. The whole thing felt like a dream and it put me in a very bad mood, but honestly I’d forgotten all about it once Paque and I arrived on the set for our first day of shooting.

Our movie is not called Plastic Fantastic II but World Gone Water, and Paque plays Angie Boulevard, a nymphomaniac patient in an avant-garde behavioral rehabilitation center run by Dr. Hatch (who is played by Jesse Armstrong, the guy who plays the father on that show about the twins who have mind powers). I play Jane Ramsey, ‘Dr. Hatch’s fetching assistant.’ The rest of the cast is Brian Del’Acorte, who plays a fellow patient nicknamed X-Rated (you can probably guess why) and Robert Anaconda as Caleb Stone, a guy from Arizona who transferred into the program from prison (where he spent time because he raped someone).

It’s sort of an updated A Clockwork Orange, Alan told us.

Alan explained that we would shoot all the interior shots first and then do the exterior shots, which was confusing to me. I thought that movies were made just the way you see them on the screen. By that I mean, if at the beginning of a movie a friend says a sad goodbye to someone at the airport and then at the end of the movie the friend says a warm hello, that final scene isn’t possible without everything that’s happened in the middle. But Alan said it’s too expensive to set up shots so that once everything is set in a particular locale, you shoot every scene that takes place there. Which makes being an actor that much harder, I thought.

Fortunately, Alan said, most of the movie takes place inside the behavioral center.

I noticed that most of the crew was from Who Fancies Me? The makeup and wardrobe girl, Cindy, recognized Paque and the two of them chatted it up while Cindy made me up in a white labcoat and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. I don’t usually wear makeup—I’m lucky enough to have fair skin—but Cindy insisted that because of the lights I would have to wear a special kind of base to prevent glare. The base made me very uncomfortable. It felt like I had cement skin. I tried smiling and my cheeks felt like they were breaking through a brick wall.

We only shot one scene that first day, which is actually the first scene in the movie. It’s a scene with me, Dr. Hatch and Caleb Stone. Caleb has just come to the facility and Dr. Hatch is giving him an entrance interview. I only have one line in the scene: We respect honesty here, Mr. Stone. But Alan said there’s a lot of subtle stuff going on in the scene, namely that Jane is secretly falling for Caleb, a sort of ‘rebel without a cause’ type. So there were several takes of cutaway shots to me where I’m supposed to ‘smile with my eyes.’

Everyone, including Paque, who wanted to get to her first scene, was annoyed with me because I wasn’t giving a good enough performance. When I felt like I was ‘smiling with my eyes,’ Alan said I looked like ‘a mentally unstable child staring at a piece of candy.’ I told Alan that yelling at me didn’t help and he said he was sorry, but Jesse Armstrong—Dr. Hatch—sighed every time I blew it and Alan had to yell cut.

Finally, Alan called for a break. Paque and I wanted to go outside, maybe take a walk around the block, but Cindy said she’d have to redo my makeup and Alan said to just stay inside. So Paque and I went into the bathroom while Alan and the others huddled around a tiny screen to watch what we’d done so far.

Paque washed her hands in the sink, not saying anything.

I’m trying, I said, the words echoing off the bathroom walls.

I know, Paque said. But you just have to concentrate. You have to forget that you’re Daisy and pretend that you’re Jane Ramsey. I think that’s the problem. You aren’t pretending to be someone else. If you don’t believe that you’re Dr. Hatch’s assistant, then the audience isn’t going to believe it. It’s sort of like Robin Williams. You know how every Robin Williams movie makes you conscious of the fact that it’s Robin Williams—except for Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting—where at a certain point in the movie he breaks out of his character and does that thing with his lip and his voice gets crazy and he starts shaking his head and you say, Look, it’s Robin Williams. He becomes a stand-up comic in the middle of the movie. Compare that, she said, with the character in Good Will Hunting, where the last time you think about Robin Williams is when you see his name in the credits. After that, you believe that that psychiatrist is a real person, that he has a practice in Boston, and that you could fly there right now and be his patient. That’s the difference.

I see what you mean, I said.

So what’s Jane Ramsey’s favorite color, Paque asked.

Blue, I said.

What’s her favorite kind of food?

Mexican.

If she found a hundred dollars on the ground would she keep it or try to find out if someone dropped it?

She’d keep it.

And if she secretly liked a patient but didn’t want her boss to find out, would she try to let the patient know in a subtle way, or would she be obvious about it?

Subtle.

Then let’s see it, Paque said. I gave her a hug and Cindy knocked on the door and said, Okay let’s do it.

Alan was grimacing and the others settled in, figuring it was going to take all week to get the scene.

I’m proud to say I got it right in one take, which gave me a boost of self-confidence. When one thing goes right, it seems like everything is going right. (I found T.J.’s number, which had snaked itself inside my pillow case.) I’m riding that wave for now.

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

Alan got a new client today. Annette Laudin. She’s from London, but I’m not sure you would know who she is. She’s recently famous, as they say. Annette read the article in Variety about Alan and how he took on Paque and me. She flew from New York to meet him. I asked Paque if she knew who Annette was but she said she didn’t, that Alan told her later that she used to be queen of the socialites in Manhattan, but that that was all just an experiment by these two women who had taken Annette away from her boutique job and decided to make her famous.

How did they make her famous, I asked.

Apparently one of the women was a publicist and the other one was a socialite, Paque said. The story reminded me of that movie Trading Places, where the two old men fuck someone’s life up for a dollar.

These two women, the publicist and the socialite, decided to take Annette and dress her up in designer clothes. Betsey Johnson, Prada, Versace, DKNY, etc. They put her up in their houses in the Hamptons, making sure she arrived at all the parties in limos. At these parties they made sure Annette was photographed with any celebrity in the room. And the next day they called up their friends at the New York magazines and gave them nice little stories about Annette, what she was up to, what she said about so-and-so (only nice things, though).

And it worked. Annette was a ‘must-have’ on every party list. She made friends with all the other famous people in New York—even Donald Trump. The daughter of some billionaire, one of Annette’s new friends, asked her to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. But the weekend of the wedding, the daughter of the billionaire discovered that her husband-to-be was in love with Annette and the wedding, hours away, was canceled.

The next party Annette showed up for, she was turned away from the door by the very two women who had made her. You’re an ugly bitch, they screamed at her.

I agreed with Paque that this was awful but in the back of my mind the story made me worry about our future. Alan had used his friends at Variety and Entertainment Weekly and the L.A. Times to print stories about World Gone Water, like those girls did to make Annette famous. I felt like we were Alan’s experiment. I started to think about what would happen to Paque and me after the movie came out. A certain number of people would hate it on principle, because these two no-names from nowhere were given attention that they, or someone they knew, deserved. A certain number of people would love it for the same reason. And maybe it would lead to parts in other films, and maybe we’d go on late-night talk shows and talk about what it was like to make it big. But I couldn’t fight the feeling that on the other side, no matter how hard it was to get famous, it was somehow harder once you did become famous. You had to watch out who you were seen talking to. You had to be careful where you went. You had to treat your body like a car you loved more than your own life.

These thoughts circled around in my head as Paque and I sat for what Alan called ‘some pre-publicity publicity.’ Filming was suspended for a day to capitalize on an article that Alan ‘placed’ in Daily Variety about World Gone Water. The article reported that Julia Roberts and Elizabeth Hurley originally expressed interest in the roles of Jane Ramsey and Angie Boulevard but that ‘director Hood selected two fresh faces from obscurity to play the roles of seducer and nymphomaniac.’

We woke the morning of that article to the sound of the phone in the living room ringing every few minutes. The answering machine took the calls. Paque and I stood and listened as agents, publicists, personal trainers, nutritionists, personal assistants and even someone from Paramount Pictures left messages offering their services. It gave me goosebumps, but scared me at the same time.

Hello, Hollywood, Paque said.

Alan said, Forget those people for now. He hauled us off to a house in Woodland Hills where Paque and I spent the day in the pool while a photographer friend of Alan’s—John Henry—told us to hold our breath under water for as long as we could (and to make sure our eyes were open). John Henry took some shots from a ladder he’d constructed on his diving board. Then he stripped down to his boxers and switched cameras and jumped in. He told us just to swim towards the camera slowly. He went under and we chased him around the pool until our fingers and toes were waterlogged.

John Henry had a TV the size of one whole wall and Paque and I watched a Road Rules marathon while Alan went over the photographs, selecting the best one.

That night Alan took us to a party for the all-girl issue of R*O*C*K magazine at Shampū.

It’s time to show you off to L.A., Alan said.

Paque and I still had the outfits that we bought for SaltBed, so we wore them to the party. I miss Ian, Paque said as we got ready. Just hearing his name—and standing there in the mirror in the outfit he paid for—made me tremble.

I wonder how he’s doing, I said.

Maybe we could give him a call later, Paque said.

His phone is disconnected though, I reminded her. I passed her the bottle of Keri lotion and she smoothed some on her legs.

I think I’m sunburned, she said.

Alan appeared in the doorway dressed all in black and Paque let out a low whistle. Ready to dazzle, he asked. He smiled, and I think it was the first time I’d seen him smile since we met him. I took the chance to ask him something that had been bothering me.

Is it right to do what we’re doing, I asked.

Paque stopped lotioning her legs.

What are we doing, Alan asked patiently.

You know, I said, the way you said in the article that Julia Roberts and Elizabeth Hurley wanted to be in World Gone Water, and the posters of Paque and I in the pool that are going to go up all over town. I mean, it’s sort of like lying, isn’t it?

Alan unbuttoned the top button of his black jacket and sat down on Paque’s bed. Well, he began, it’s sort of like this. In Hollywood, everything is about illusion and expectation. How many movies do you think get made every year?

I looked at Paque but we couldn’t guess.

Too many, Alan said. And let’s face it—I’m an unknown in this arena; I haven’t made a movie before. But I believe in second chances. Everyone who needs one should have one. Including you two. So the only thing that can launch this second chance is to get as many people as we can to want you to have a second chance. Does that come close to making sense?

I see what you mean, I said. I guess it just feels … dishonest.

Robbing banks is dishonest, Alan smiled. We’re not robbing banks.

Not yet, Paque said. Which made me laugh.

Alan laughed too but then got serious again and said, And I should probably tell you that there isn’t even going to be a movie. The plan is to shoot a few scenes and put them on the Internet. Then we’ll start returning those phone calls on the answering machine. And hopefully by this time next year you’ll be filming a movie with Tarantino or Scorsese or Oliver Stone or whoever.

Paque fished through her purse for her lip gloss. You know, we tried to manipulate the public before and got burned, she said.

That was my fault, I said.

Paque stopped smearing peach gloss on her lips and said, It wasn’t your fault.

You were in the hands of amateurs in Phoenix, Alan said. Besides, this is Hollywood. It’s different. Didn’t you read in Entertainment Weekly about the actress who was supposed to be eighteen but was really thirty-two? She lied and she doesn’t have to worry about running out of work ever again.

Alan convinced us that what we were doing was making an advertisement for ourselves, like a résumé, and that made me feel better about the whole thing.

The limousine Alan rented for the evening picked us up right at seven and we navigated the streets in style, though passing so many limos made it feel less special. We came to a stop at a red light and we had limos on either side of us.

Alan told us not to talk specifically about World Gone Water, especially to any reporters. That includes photographers, he said.

At Shampū it felt like people knew who we were. The volume of the conversations seemed to increase as we walked in, Paque and I each looping our arms through Alan’s. Silver and gold confetti littered the floor, and Paque’s tennis shoes were caked in it by the time we made our way to one of the plush sofas next to a wall-sized poster of Sarah McLachlan on the cover of R*O*C*K, looking glum and alluring in the way rock stars sometimes do.

Look, Paque said right as Sarah McLachlan walked by.

Weird, I said.

Alan went to get us drinks and Paque and I scanned the crowd for people we recognized: Chloë Sevigny, Matthew Broderick, Courtney Love, Anjelica Huston, David Geffen, Natalie Merchant, Shania Twain, Charlie Sheen, Denis Leary, Janeane Garafalo, Ben Stiller, Fiona Apple, and Abra Moore. Bruce Springsteen was talking to Gloria Estefan when someone bumped him and he spilled his drink on her shoes.

Look, she’s dancing, Paque joked.

Alan made his way back through the crowd, dodging a very wasted Bryan Metro, who someone pointed in the direction of the men’s room. We should work the room, he said.

Paque and I sipped our vodka tonics while we strolled with Alan, who introduced us to Sarah McLachlan, whose skin was so white she appeared to glow. Paque and I told her how much we loved her music and she seemed genuinely flattered.

We posed for pictures with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Melissa Etheridge, and Vince Vaughn, who asked Paque for her number.

I started to feel a little ill, remembering that I hadn’t eaten any dinner. A plate of hors d’oeuvres floated by on the arm of this really cute guy and Paque and I stopped him and ate three or four of the little cheese things wrapped in bacon. We followed that with some cold peas with chevre and melba toast with salmon and brie.

Hey look, Paque said. She pointed out Hilken Mancini and Chris Toppin from Fuzzy.

We broke free of Alan, who was chatting up Marilyn Manson, and went over to Hilken and Chris, who remembered us from SaltBed.

Sorry about what happened, Hilken said. That must’ve been really terrible.

Yeah, it was embarrassing, I said.

The worst part was that we were being scouted by Sony Records, Paque said. Do you guys know Scott Key?

Hilken shook her head no and looked at Chris.

Never heard of him, Chris said.

Matt Dillon leaned in and told Hilken and Chris how much he liked their new album, Hurray For Everything. He said a friend gave it to him and it was the only CD he played in his Jeep. We were all sort of mesmerized by how handsome Matt Dillon was and after he walked away it took a minute for us to realize he was gone.

What are you guys doing now, Chris asked.

We told her that we were shooting a movie, which felt like a lie and we liked them too much to lie so I said, It’s really a short film.

Wait, I think I read about this, Hilken said. Julia Roberts wanted to be in it, right?

Right, Paque said.

Alan dragged us over for another photo and we waved goodbye to Hilken and Chris. My eyes started to burn from squinting at the flashbulbs so I excused myself and slipped into the bathroom, which was entirely marble. My shoes clicked as I shut the door to the stall. The attendant whistled something I vaguely recognized. On the back of the stall door someone had Magic Markered THE WORLD IS FULL OF VANITY AND MALICE in slanted letters that made me feel like I was losing my balance, or maybe it was the vodka, or my empty stomach, or the flashbulbs exploding like tiny crashes around the room but when I walked out of the bathroom the last thing I saw was Bill Murray and I passed out cold.

It was pretty embarrassing.

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

I’m enclosing one of the World Gone Water posters. What do you think? I think it looks peaceful, the way the deep blue water sort of envelops us (we aren’t really that white!) and the way our hair fans out behind us. Even though you can’t really tell, we’re both extremely out of breath. Also, Paque’s face is air-brushed (she has a mole high on her right cheek). Doesn’t it look like we’re staring right at you?

You can’t go anywhere in L.A. without seeing the poster. Which is kind of funny considering what Alan said about it not even being a real movie. Paque and I ran around with Alan the other day—-just doing errands—and we saw the poster all over. On the side of a 7-Eleven on Pico, stapled to telephone polls along Vine, plastered in the window of the Trax-n-Wax on Hollywood (Alan knows the owner), even one someone had ripped down and put in the back window of their car in the parking lot of a bar in no man’s land called the Liquid Kitty. Alan said there were a few you could see from the Santa Monica Freeway, and some in Malibu. Paque and I said we’d like to go to Malibu but Alan said, Maybe after we’re done shooting. Paque and I discussed it and decided we’d give Stella a call and maybe the three of us would take a drive. We intentionally haven’t called Stella because we know she’s desperate to break into the movies and we don’t want her horning in on our deal. Paque is still very pissed about Stella leaving us back in Phoenix, but I’m wishy-washy on the subject. There was no answer at Stella’s though.

We shot another scene as well. It’s in the can, as they say in Hollywood. (I just thought of a question: Why didn’t Bananarama ever make any movies? You know, the way Madonna did. Your videos are so good it makes sense that you could’ve made a movie.)

Annette Laupin has joined the cast, too. Paque and I were a little miffed at first but we really like Annette. She’s a cool chick. She seems like she’s stuck up but she’s funnier than shit and you can tell she’s been through a lot. She said she doesn’t have any desire to be a movie star—she told us not to say anything, but she felt Alan probably wasn’t the right person to help her rehabilitate her image; she thinks she might move back to New York after ‘an extended vacation’ and that that might be enough—but that Alan asked her to play the part of Natalie Stone, Caleb Stone’s sister, and Annette thought it would be a kick. That’s the kind of chick she is. Like I said, pretty cool.

We haven’t had a scene with Annette yet. The scene we filmed was another scene at the rehabilitation center. A group session scene featuring Caleb and Angie Boulevard, who act out a sequence as husband and wife where Angie has to confess that she has cheated on Caleb, monitored closely by Dr. Hatch and my character, Jane. The scene was pretty intense. Robert Anaconda, who plays Caleb, must be a method actor, or must have studied method acting anyway. His reaction was not the normal reaction you would expect if a husband finds out his wife has been unfaithful: He basically accepts it as part of human nature, and it’s shocking in a quiet way (that’s the best way I can describe it). When Angie Boulevard becomes confused by Caleb’s reaction (Paque is very convincing), Jane, who you’ll remember is having an affair with Caleb, challenges his views. My role is really psychologically challenging and I stayed up the night before rehearsing with Alan, who read Caleb’s lines. The trick to my part, as I might have mentioned before, is that no one knows about Jane and Caleb, but Jane takes the wild theories Caleb espouses in group session personally—for obvious reasons.

Paque and I hung around through lunch to watch Annette film her scene. Alan fussed quite a bit over her appearance—she wore a beautiful white gown—giving Cindy the make-up girl a lot of specific instructions. The scene as Alan explained it was that Natalie, or Talie, had been stood up by her cotillion date and called Caleb (who Alan filled us in was out of rehab by then). Caleb shows up in jeans and a shirt but Talie, as is part of her character, doesn’t care what other people think and they go in and dance one dance and then leave.

The rehabilitation center was quickly transformed into a dance floor. The boom guy and the cameraman hung a disco ball above the four-by-four tiled floor. The cameras moved in and Annette and Robert Anaconda did a run-through without the music. The script called for Caleb to console Talie about being stood up, but Alan changed it on the spot to a conversation about their first loves. It was amazing to see Alan work—he dashed out the dialogue in about five minutes.

The film rolled and Annette and Robert Anaconda swayed slowly back and forth, staying within the tiles (which were their markers—Paque and I learned about that when we filmed Plastic Fantastic for my brother, Chuck, in New York). Annette and Robert Anaconda had an instantly easy rapport and I felt a little embarrassed because they seemed like lovers. I thought we were going to have to spend all day shooting but when the scene was finished and the music stopped and the lights came up, Alan was crying.

That’s it for today, he said.

It was a pretty awkward moment. Annette and Robert Anaconda went off somewhere and Paque and I had to hang around and wait for Alan, who just sat and stared into space until finally he got up and said, C’mon, let’s go. We rode home in silence.

Oh, hey, you can check out the scenes we’ve done so far. They’re on the Internet at www.worldgonewater.com. You have to have a special video thing in your computer and you have to have speakers. Alan showed it to us the other day and I think it looks pretty cool. It looks like a scene from an actual movie. When Alan first brought it up on the screen Paque said, I bet we’ll sound like robots. But we didn’t.

The phone continued to ring with interest in the movie and with offers for Paque and me. Alan said it was too early yet to start calling people back. The hype has to reach just the right level, he said, before we can really capitalize. Alan said so far the people who had called were ‘little fish’ and that we had to wait for the right bite. It won’t be much longer now, he told us. These things take on a life of their own.

We know something about that, Paque said with not a little hint of irony in her voice.

I know even more than she does. I never told Paque about my father—the one time she asked I said he lived in Minneapolis, which is true, but I didn’t tell her why. I’m always curious about rumors, about which ones make it to full-blown gossip and which ones turn out to be true (so few rarely do). In the short time we’ve been here it seems to me that Hollywood is full of rumors. Everyone starts a conversation with, I heard this, or, I heard that. Everyone is hearing things. I overheard a woman in Von’s talking about how she heard that one of Michael Jackson’s kids was ‘on death’s door.’ The woman she was talking to didn’t even know Michael Jackson had kids, and the other woman assured her that he did.

I was just a kid—ten—when I heard the rumor about my father. Funny, now that I remember it, it was in a grocery store, too. I was with my mom and my brother and my mom ran into one of our neighbors. I forget their name now. My mom stopped to talk to them and my brother and I got bored so we ran over to the cereal aisle. Chuck loved Cap’n Crunch (he ate it breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and I wanted Lucky Charms but my mom always made us agree on a cereal (consequently I hate Cap’n Crunch). Chuck and I raced back to our mom, who had moved down the aisle and as we raced past the neighbors, I heard the man say, He’s as gay as the day is long. Naturally I didn’t know who he was talking about, or even what the phrase meant. And I forgot it until a few weeks later when Linda Pegg came up to me at recess and said in front of everyone, Your dad’s a homo, you’re dad’s a homo. The others started saying, Homo, homo, homo. None of them knew what it meant—not even Linda Pegg—but they kept on until I started crying. I left the playground and ran home. I asked my mom what ‘homo’ meant, and she started to say something about how it means you’re not like everyone else but she gave up and just started crying. That’s when my mom moved Chuck and me to Phoenix. My father sent birthday cards for a while after that but pretty soon we just didn’t hear anything anymore. Sometimes I wonder what he’s up to and secretly I hope that he’ll read something in the press about the movie and try to get in touch with me. I can’t ask my mom. I don’t know why I know that, I just do. And Chuck doesn’t care. He says he can’t even remember what our father looks like. Wouldn’t know him if he passed him in the street, he always says. I told Chuck he probably looks a lot like us and Chuck said, Yeah, so what?

I thought about calling Chuck the other night. Paque and I were bored, and not tired, and we were flipping through the channels and we saw ourselves on TV. On C-Span2 (it’s an egghead cable channel that usually has very boring programs on). We were just going from one channel to the other, talking about how many more scenes we would have to shoot before we could accept an offer for a real movie, when Paque’s face lit up the screen. She was clicking so fast she didn’t even see it.

Go back, I said.

Paque clicked it back and there we were in New York, the time we went to go see Paul Newman with Chuck. Chuck raised his hand and Paque said, God, this was embarrassing.

What’s it doing on TV, I asked.

Sometimes they put stuff like that on TV, she said.

I imagine you’re both used to seeing yourself on the screen but I have say it was thrilling to come across ourselves randomly on the television like that. It made me feel like we were famous. And it made me miss Chuck. You always miss someone when you think about them, and seeing Chuck on TV like that made me miss him even worse. I wanted to call him and tell him to come out to Hollywood—he would love all of it—but not knowing exactly what was happening day to day made me hesitate. But I did call and left a message on his answering machine that I missed him much.

I hope you can take the time to write back. I’d appreciate any sort of advice you could give about what Paque’s and my next move should be.

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

You’ve probably had times when you realized something unknown was moving against the balance of things. Like when Siobhan left the group to be in Shakespear’s Sister. There might have been a change of energy in the recording studio once Siobhan made up her mind, or maybe she skipped out on an interview, or was constantly late for shooting a video, etc. Once she left Bananarama you both could probably pinpoint the exact moment—in retrospect—that that conclusion was foregone.

Paque and I had that feeling one morning—last Wednesday to be precise—when Alan woke up early and disappeared. We had overslept and panicked when we couldn’t find Alan (he keeps his bedroom door locked so we pounded on it, but knew he wasn’t in there), especially since the interview Alan had arranged with L.A. MovieNews was that morning. By the time Paque and I realized Alan really wasn’t home, the MovieNews people were knocking on the front door.

Just let them knock, I said, and they’ll come back later.

Nonsense, Paque said, let’s do the interview. Paque was frustrated at the pace of the World Gone Water shoot. The clips had been on the Internet for more than a week and Alan hadn’t started returning the calls on the answering machine like he promised he would. Paque asked him when he planned on calling them back but Alan would just mutter something about ‘critical mass’ and then he’d go in his room and lock the door.

So Paque and I would spend our days answering the growing cluster of fan mail on our website, which was fun for a while. Guys were writing in and asking us our favorite color and what was our favorite food and all kinds of crazy questions. There were a couple gross ones too, but because it’s over the computer it was sort of easy and okay to find those ones funny, too.

Then we got the letter in the mail from the toy company. Paque read it over and said, They want to make dolls of us. I took the letter and saw the bright pink logo. What should we do, I asked her. The letter said that if we agreed to the contract we’d receive $25,000 within a month of signing, against future sales of the dolls.

I wonder if we can help design them, Paque said. You know, what kinds of clothes they wear. Stuff like that.

Does it say anything about that in the contract, I asked.

There were a lot of things in the contract that we didn’t understand, but we didn’t see anything about us being involved with the manufacture of the dolls.

We signed the contracts. Paque wrote Let us help with the outfits at the bottom of each copy and we walked the envelope over to the mailbox on the corner so Alan wouldn’t find out.

We did the MovieNews interview, too. We let them in and they set up in the front room. I don’t think we knew what we were going to say—at least I didn’t—and I just sort of followed Paque’s lead. She’s quick and I guess she decided that she was going to give them the most scandalous interview they’d ever printed. Before I knew it, I was going along with what she said.

They asked us what life has been like in Hollywood for us and that opened it up. Paque said, Well, you know, it’s been a little bit rock and roll. (Which I thought was a great answer.) For instance, take the other night, she said. Me and Daisy were hanging out with the guys from Counting Crows, we were getting cones at that great ice cream place on Olympic, and we run into Jack Nicholson, who is also getting cones with his girlfriend and his daughter. Jack invites us all to go with him to the La Brea Tar Pits—his daughter wants to look for dinosaurs—so we all follow Jack’s Mercedes to Wilshire and we park and get out and the guys from Counting Crows keep telling Jack how much they liked Chinatown. Jack is very gracious and his girlfriend and his daughter go to the fence to look at the pits and Jack tells us about this great party at Dennis Hopper’s house, which we go to sans Counting Crows. We never meet Dennis, and we didn’t see Jack, but we met Gary Busey, who was walking around with Buddy Holly glasses on singing ‘Peggy Sue.’ We tell them about Ashley Judd, who asked us if we wanted to go on a beer run—apparently she only drank lite beer and Dennis didn’t have anything that wasn’t imported—and we said, Sure, we’ll go. Gary Busey came along too and he did this really funny thing with the Coke display in the grocery store, but then they wouldn’t sell to us and we got kicked out.

Paque looked at me and I was biting the inside of my cheek so hard I could taste blood. Yeah, I said, but the night before was even cooler. Jerry Seinfeld had a party at the hangar where he keeps his Porsche collection. It was a really society affair. A champagne and caviar party. We ended up laying in the grass at the end of a runway at three in the morning with Seinfeld and Michael Richards, the guy who played Kramer.

The MovieNews people were making notes and hurried to flip over the cassette in the tape recorder when it snapped off.

Paque gave them the best one though. She told them about going to Hollywood Park, the horse track, with Magic Johnson, who we supposedly met at Dennis Hopper’s party. Paque described us going to the winning horse’s stable after the race because Magic knew the owners. The house was full of people in tuxedos and gowns, mostly moneymen from Los Angeles, along with some Arab sheiks (I thought that was a nice touch myself). Someone rang a bell, Paque said, and we all went out to the stable, where Hallelujah, the horse who’d just won at Hollywood Park, was frolicking with Little Lady, the mare who’d won the Preakness and the Kentucky Derby the year before. Everyone gathered at the fence—even the ladies in gowns—and these two models came out in bikinis. All the men hooted and hollered and the models tried to settle the horses down. A guy who looked like a ranch hand came out and steadied Hallelujah. The models crawled under the horse like you would get under a car and cupped the horse’s balls. Hallelujah danced around a little bit but the ranch hand had a hold of his reins and petted his nose as the models massaged him. The horse’s thingie came out just like a ladder on a fire truck and everyone clapped and whistled. Little Lady came sniffing around and the two models and the ranch hand helped Hallelujah mount her. Once he was inside her, everyone lifted their glass. The two guys standing next to me and Daisy shook hands. There was a china bowl in the hall on the way out where you could win a trip to all three Triple Crown races by naming the soon-to-be horse.

Paque and I told them some other stuff that wasn’t true, like that World Gone Water was going to be a five-hour epic movie that incorporated elements of sci-fi, animation, the Western, rock-u-mentary, and French period pieces. Alan didn’t think that was very funny when he returned but L.A. MovieNews didn’t end up using our interview after all (the bit about the horse showed up in a gossip column the next day though).

Paque demanded to know where Alan was and why he messed up the interview. She screamed at him that he was fucking things up royally and chased him to his room. He slammed the door in her face without saying anything and she kicked it over and over and I held my hands to my ears.

Let’s call Stella, she said. We’ll tell her to come pick us up.

I called Stella’s number and Craig (her boyfriend) answered. He told me Stella wasn’t there and that he hadn’t seen her in a couple days. He said he thought she was with Paque and me and that now he was really worried. We called the photomat where Stella worked and they said she didn’t work there anymore.

I was so frazzled that I ran out to get a couple of hot apple pies from the McDonald’s on Sunset, and by the time I walked there and back, Paque had cooled down and was sitting at the kitchen table with Alan, who looked like his entire family had been killed in a plane crash.

I have something to tell you, Alan said. I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and set the McDonald’s bag down next to a completed script with the words World Gone Water typed on the front. Some big investors picked up on the movie, Alan said, and they want to back a full-length movie.

Great, I said but the look on Paque’s face told me it was not great.

It’s not that simple, Alan said. These guys have conditions attached to their investment.

I looked across the table at Paque, who I noticed was smoking Alan’s Marlboros. She sat with a dazed look on her face. I nervously opened the McDonald’s bag and unsheathed one of the apple pies.

How is it hard, I asked.

One of the conditions is that I have to use two actresses that they want, Alan said.

I swallowed the gooey filling and said, So you’re replacing us. Just like that.

Alan winced as he ran his fingers through his hair. It isn’t like that, he said. I don’t want to have to do it but I have to play by the rules if the movie is to get made.

I thought you said it wasn’t even going to be a movie, I argued. You said we weren’t going to make a real movie.

We weren’t, Alan said. But this story is important to me—it’s my story—and I’d like to see it get made.

Why do we need these guys then, I asked. We can do it without them.

They have enough money to get it done and I don’t, Alan said, leaning back. It’s that simple.

So what are we supposed to do, I asked.

We’ll have a project together, I promise, Alan said. I’ll develop something especially for you two. He tried to get Paque’s attention but she was staring at the floor.

Who are these actresses anyway, I asked.

You wouldn’t know who they are, Alan said. They’re nobodies.

Like us, Paque said.

I started crying and excused myself from the table. Paque came into the bedroom behind me. She ripped down the World Gone Water poster taped to our closet door and for the first time that I could ever remember, Paque cried.

Alan knocked on the door and Paque screamed, Go away, but Alan knocked again and said, Daisy, your mom’s on the phone.

Tell her I’ll call her back, I said.

Should I ask my mom to get us plane tickets home, I asked Paque. She’d stopped crying and was studying the weeds growing outside the window and said, I don’t think that’s necessary.

Okay, I said.

Alan’s car was gone and I called my mom back and when she asked how it was going I said, Everything’s fine.

That night I had a dream Paque and I were back at SaltBed and that we were on stage singing while Alan was in the audience. My mom was in the audience, along with my brother Chuck and everyone I’d ever known in my life. People were screaming out requests for Masterful Johnson tunes and we sang them perfect, every one the crowd asked for and in the morning I woke up exhausted, as if I’d spent the night giving every ounce of energy I had.

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

When you need someone, you can’t count on anybody. Stella is either avoiding us (she’s probably mad because of all the publicity Paque and I have been getting), or she finally got an acting gig and is somewhere on location. Those are the only two answers Paque and I will accept. We really needed her after Alan dumped us. Neither one of us wanted to say it but we realized we didn’t have anyone we could call.

Then I remembered T.J. I paged him and he agreed to pick us up.

Should we pack up our stuff, I asked.

There isn’t anything that can’t be replaced if we don’t come back, Paque said.

T.J. picked us up in a cinnamon-colored convertible BMW, which turned out to belong to the actress Jennifer Grey, who T.J. was house-sitting for. She really lives in New York, but is renting out here because of her TV show, T.J. said.

Paque sat up front and I closed my eyes and let the wind whip around me. Whatever romantic feeling I thought I had for T.J. disappeared when I saw him again. Behind the wheel of the car, checking both ways for traffic, he seemed like just another guy to hang out with. I sensed from his coolness that he felt the same way. The clean scent of the new leather seats comforted me and I imagined it was the day before we got dumped, before we knew anything about how quickly something certain turns into something completely unknown.

Paque and I decided not to say anything to T.J. about what had happened. We told him we just wanted to get out of the house for a bit.

It sounded like an emergency, T.J. said.

It wasn’t, Paque said.

Have you seen Stella, T.J. asked. She owes me some money.

Neither Paque or I said anything.

Well, T.J. said, I’m sure she’ll pay me when I see her.

T.J. drove us back to Jennifer Grey’s house in the Hollywood Hills, a cute little yellow house nestled safely behind a sprawl of lilac bushes. T.J. carefully pulled the BMW into the garage and you got the feeling that he probably wasn’t supposed to be driving it.

Guess who used to rent this house, T.J. asked.

Who, I asked.

Barbra Streisand, he said.

It looks a little small for Barbra Streisand, Paque said.

T.J. stopped and collected a few empty beer bottles lined up on the pathway between the garage and the house.

Who is Jennifer Grey anyway, I asked.

She was the sister in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, T.J. said.

Think Dirty Dancing, Paque said.

What TV show is she on, I asked.

It’s a new one where she plays herself, T.J. said, and the storylines are based on her real life.

Are they going to use the one where she and Matthew Broderick accidentally killed those people in Sweden or Norway or wherever it was, Paque asked sarcastically.

From what Paque said I knew then who they were talking about. I remembered reading in one of Stella’s notebooks about the crash, about how Matthew Broderick had pulled out on the wrong side in his Volvo, right into an oncoming car. Stella’s information had it that it was an accident, and that Matthew Broderick didn’t have to go to jail. Anyway, I think that’s what happened. I only remember it because I thought it was weird that they were playing brother and sister in the film but they were really boyfriend/girlfriend.

Paque opened the side door and was startled by a man in a blue silk shirt and boxers rummaging through the pantry. His skin was tight and tan and his hair was bleached white. Oh, hello, he said with a British accent.

This is Jason, T.J. said. He’s with the production.

Paque and I introduced ourselves and Jason said, You’re in that movie. He snapped his fingers trying to come up with the title.

World Gone Water, Paque said.

That’s it, Jason said. He pulled down a box of strawberry Pop-Tarts and opened one of the shiny packages with his teeth. If you’ve got call for a mechanized go-cart driver, I race professionally, he said.

Paque said, I don’t think there’s any go-carts in the movie.

Jason’s jaw bounced up and down as he chewed. That’s too bad, he said between bites, I’m really good. He disappeared out the sliding glass door in the kitchen and Paque and I went to the window above the sink and watched him rejoin a small group out by the pool. A woman in a red robe sat in a lawn chair under an umbrella, reading Entertainment Weekly while an enormous man waded in the shallow end of the pool with a camera perched on his shoulder. A second man stayed dry at a soundboard at the edge of the pool.

That’s Earl, T.J. said. He gives me money to let him film porno at the houses I stay at.

What happens if the person sees their house in a porno, Paque asked.

That hasn’t happened yet, T.J. said. He rapped his knuckles on the wooden kitchen counter.

The refrigerator is covered with photos of a woman and a chocolate Labrador. Is this Jennifer Grey, I asked.

Yep, T.J. said, help yourself to anything in the fridge.

It doesn’t look like Ferris’s sister, I said. I leaned in to study one of the photos.

She had a nose job, T.J. said.

I thought she had a cute nose, Paque said.

It definitely looks better now, T.J. said.

It’s wild, I said, it really doesn’t look anything like her.

T.J. looked at the photo. Yeah, when I got the gig and I came up to the house I couldn’t believe it was really her. Don’t get me wrong—she’s beautiful, maybe more so. But when you think of Jennifer Grey you think of Baby in Dirty Dancing or Jeanie Bueller. I think it’s been hard for her to get work because people don’t recognize her.

Only in Hollywood can you be tossed to the bottom of the heap by improving your looks with plastic surgery, Paque said bitterly.

T.J. offered to let us stay at Jennifer Grey’s—Jason and the woman in the red robe, Maria, were staying there as well. We thanked T.J. and told him we’d stay the night, and he didn’t make any sort of joke about us owing him big, which we appreciated.

T.J. ran out for Kentucky Fried Chicken and I took the opportunity to talk to Paque. I want to go home, I said. There’s nothing here for us now.

You might be right, Paque said. But what harm is there if we hang around to see if Alan makes good on his promise to find something for us.

I looked out the window at the scene in the pool. Alan’s going to be tied up with that movie for at least a year, I reasoned.

Maybe we’ll get bit parts, Paque said.

That’s part of the problem, too, I said. We’re only good for bit parts. We’re not actresses. I don’t even want to be an actress, do you?

Paque didn’t answer.

Sure, I jumped at the idea when Alan called, I said, but that was because I was desperate to get away from the humiliation in Phoenix. I’m not even sure I can ever go back to Phoenix, but things can’t be as crazy as they were. Plus, I’m afraid we’re going to get involved in something that’s going to humiliate us even more.

Humiliation is sometimes the easiest way to become famous, Paque said smartly.

It seems like we’ve tried everything, I said.

Yeah, Paque sighed. She looked out the window at Jason and Maria, who were toweling off. But it’s precisely because we’ve tried everything that we should probably stick it out just a little bit longer. Why come as far as we’ve come—and you have to admit we’ve been lucky along the way, even if the end result has been unlucky—and not go all the way? We can always go back to Phoenix. And if we humiliate ourselves, as you put it, here in Hollywood we’ll either get a book deal or a TV show at worst, and then we can decide whether or not we want to walk away.

I don’t know, I said.

Why don’t you call Chuck and see what he thinks, Paque suggested.

I’ve been trying to reach him actually, I said. But I can’t find him.

Paque stayed up watching television and smoking pot with the others. I took one of the spare bedrooms, the smaller one at the end of the hall with the thick white shag carpet and the twin bed. It smelled like no one had ever been in the room and dust motes rose when I switched on the bedside lamp. It seemed to me there wasn’t anything to be happy about. The last thing that really made me happy was making the record for Ian. If you would’ve told me we were going to blow that one the way we did, I would’ve bet against you. Plus Paque and I really love music. All those nights we stayed up late designing album covers and picking who we wanted to be in our videos seems like a waste of energy now. I started to think about second chances. Jennifer Grey got one, but she had to play her last trump to get it. I mean, what would she sell after she sold her life to the TV show?

I decided Paque was right, that we should ride this one out as far as it would go. And if it went badly, we would walk out of Hollywood and not look back.

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

I’m sorry to be sending you a letter again so soon after the last one, but you’re not going to believe what’s going on now. Paque and I camped out at T.J.’s for a couple of days, listening to Jason and Maria’s stories about trying to make it in Hollywood—you never heard such terrible stories. Jason once pitched a tent on a director’s lawn, was beaten up (not by the director), and thrown off the property. He pitched his tent again and the director gave him the part. And Maria told this disgusting story about what she had to do to just to get to read for a part. It all but convinced me that you have to have a check on your ambition. There has to be some things that you’re not willing to do. Though I agreed with Paque that being famous is the loftiest of goals, more ambitious than being president. You can pretty much divide the world up into people who are famous and people who are not (otherwise known as People Who Wish They Were Famous).

What’s behind wanting to be famous, Maria asked.

Don’t give me that need-for-attention horseshit, Paque said, or that it’s insecurity. It’s about freedom. It’s what money used to represent. But now anyone can get rich.

Exactly, Jason said.

I thought for me it was setting out to get something and getting it, but didn’t say so. That’s why I didn’t hesitate when Alan asked us to do what we did. That and because I was still smarting from what Alan did, which pointed up how out of our control Paque’s and my situation had become.

We actually saw it on Jennifer Grey’s TV before Alan told us anything about it. Paque and I stayed up late talking. I said I was having a hard time dealing with the guilt I felt about what happened at SaltBed. I was sure Paque blamed me and I knew I was risking making her mad by bringing it up. We were sitting cross-legged on the L-shaped sofa—T.J. was asleep in the recliner—and Paque said, It’s my fault. It was me who convinced everyone that it was a good idea to lip sync. I told Ian and Jammin’ Jay that you agreed with me, she said, even though I knew you wanted to skip SaltBed.

There’s no way we could’ve had our voices in shape for SaltBed, I said. Things were happening too fast around us for us to be able to make the right decision.

Paque said, Yeah, but you were right, we should’ve skipped the festival.

I smiled. It probably would’ve heightened expectations, I laughed.

Paque laughed and looked away and that’s when we both heard the guy from CNN say our names. It was like someone had our heads on a string and had pulled tight. The World Gone Water poster flashed on the screen too quick for us to really catch it and then the story, whatever it was, was over.

What was that, Paque asked.

She flipped to E!, the cable entertainment station, and we didn’t have to wait long to hear the story.

At first, the story didn’t seem to involve us and we were beginning to think we’d imagined seeing the poster. The woman on E!—that dipshit I can’t stand—talked about how Arnold Schwarzenegger escaped near death while appearing in a cameo role for an indie film, apparently some sort of favor to the director. The ceiling of the sound stage collapsed during the filming and there was a picture of Schwarzenegger striding out of the building with soot on his face and his shirt ripped, just like an action hero from any one of his films. He mugged for the local news camera but looked a little shaken.

Then it happened again. The World Gone Water poster appeared and the E! woman said, There are unconfirmed reports tonight that the much-hyped film World Gone Water was filming in another part of the soundstage. A call to Alan Hood, that film’s director, went unanswered.

Paque grabbed the phone. Pick up, pick up, pick up, she said after the answering machine beeped.

Alan picked up and before Paque could ask anything he said, Where are you?

We’d only been gone two days but seeing Alan made it feel like we’d been gone for a year. He was so nervous he drove ten miles under the posted speed limit.

I tried to call you last night when it happened, he said. I thought you were at your friend Stella’s. Her boyfriend told me Stella was at the Chateau Marmont and I figured you were there so I went over.

A pickup truck came up behind us, the headlights shining like daylight through the back window.

Did you see Stella, Paque asked.

They didn’t have anyone named Stella registered there, Alan said. I thought you guys were fucking around with me. I called the boyfriend again, but he hung up on me.

Alan pulled to the side of the road and asked Paque to drive. They switched seats and Paque pulled out into traffic, gunning it.

I wondered where Stella was.

So, Paque asked, is it true.

Alan adjusted his glasses. It’s true, he said.

Are they dead, I blurted out.

Jesus, no, Alan said. He turned around in his seat and glared at me. They’re in the hospital, he said.

How bad are they hurt, Paque asked.

Broken legs and broken arms, Alan said. We weren’t even filming, just having a preliminary meeting. The ceiling didn’t fall on them but it knocked over a camera and some of the set. They got caught underneath.

One of my favorite songs came over the radio and I wanted to ask Paque to turn it up—I wanted the song to drown out the image of those poor girls in hospital beds, their once perfect bodies cracked and sewn together—but I didn’t. It’s funny how fast you can go from hating someone (Paque and I were calling them the Bitches) to feeling sorry for them.

The phone won’t stop, Alan went on. It just keeps ringing and ringing and ringing.

So what happens now, I asked.

Alan stared straight ahead, pretending to think it over, as if he had just came up with the idea on the spot: I need to ask you a big favor, he said, The biggest.

I think I knew what he was going to ask before he asked it. Anyway, I wasn’t surprised when he proposed his plan.

I need you to make a public appearance, Alan said. They all think it’s you who are hurt and if they see that you’re okay, that’ll buy me some time.

Time to do what, I started to ask, but Paque slammed on the brakes and we skidded into a Mobil parking lot. I bounced back against the seat and Paque yelled, You’ve got a lot of nerve. You bring us out to California with all these promises and then you kick us off the film and now you want us to pretend we’re still in it to save your ass? Fuck you. Why should we?

Paque was so mad she frightened me. I hadn’t seen her that mad since Stella told her she was moving to California.

Calm down, Alan said. All you have to do is go with me to this benefit tomorrow night—some dance thing—pose for a couple pictures and you’re done. What you get out of it is you can tell whoever will listen that you’re quitting the picture. You can even say what you want about me, I don’t care. That’ll start the phone ringing. You’ll have enough offers to keep you in pictures for ten years.

Alan looked at each of us, pleading, and I said, I’ll do it.

Paque looked at me incredulously, but then she realized what I did—that it was the only way to get ourselves away from Alan and the whole mess.

Okay, she said.

Alan looked touched, as if he was surprised he had persuaded us.

The benefit—a star-studded evening put on by Chase Dance Theater for the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation—was held in the auditorium of Hollywood High. A train of black limousines waited to pull up to the red carpet that gaped from the auditorium entrance like a thirsty tongue, drawing celebrities inside in groups of two or three. Our limo idled and Alan said, Remember, no interviews. Just wave and smile.

When the door to our limo opened, Paque and I stepped out into the warm evening. A single flashbulb went off and I looked in its direction. Up ahead, Will Smith and his wife were posing for pictures. The one flashbulb drew attention our way and Will Smith looked over his shoulder as the paparazzi moved towards us.

This way, someone shouted.

Over here!

One here!

Look!

Paque!

Daisy!

Were you hurt in the accident?

Is anything broken?

Were you scared?

What was going through your mind?

This way!

Over here!

Alan, Paque and I linked arms and smiled, ignoring the questions. Where usually ignoring reporters’ questions only makes them ask more, no one pressed the issue—it was enough to take our pictures, I guess.

It was a relief to get inside the auditorium. Something funny: We all had to take our shoes off because a special dance floor had been assembled and the floor was ‘sensitive.’ They had a guy in a tuxedo who exchanged your shoes for a little red ticket.

Besides Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who were skating in their socks in the hall, Paque and I noticed how uneasy some of the celebrities were around one another. After the handshakes and the cheek kisses everyone took their seats and it seemed like the first day of class, like no one knew anyone. The dance company was waiting for the sun to set so we all just sat and shifted in our chairs. Pierce Brosnan sat next to Alan and I kept asking Alan pointless questions about the performance and the architecture of Hollywood High just so I could sneak a look at James Bond, who Paque and I agree is one of the handsomest men alive. You just know he would make a good boyfriend and/or husband. Alan, in contrast, wouldn’t.

Watching the first dance number, a funny piece called ‘Con Queso,’ I remembered the ballet I put on in the kitchen when I was five for my mother and father. The ballet was called ‘Up and Up and Up’ and was about a little girl who met a magician (played by my brother, Chuck) who gave her the power to fly. (I repaid Chuck by appearing in his Batman and Robin costume drama. How he talked the principal into letting him chase the Joker—who had me in tow—from classroom to classroom I’ll never know. That’s just Chuck. I remember one fifth-grader was so scared she peed herself and her mom had to come pick her up.)

The rest of the numbers—‘Red Delicious,’ ‘Untitled #1,’ and ‘Lemons for Loveliness’—were breathtaking. My mother had me keep one of those books you write in that asks your height and weight and age and what you want to be when you grow up. I wrote ‘dancer’ every year through sixth grade. It was my dream to become a ballerina, though now that seems like a dream only a child could have.

Daisy

Dear Sara and Keren,

Paque and I demanded that Alan take us to the hospital to see the actresses. He hesitated, saying it was too gruesome, but when we insisted he relented. Based on his hesitation, I imagined body parts here and there but the truth was Alan didn’t want Paque and I to know that one of the actresses who replaced us was Annette Laupin. She and the other actress, Portia (like the car) D’Angeles, shared a room, but they were so bound up in traction that they couldn’t communicate with each other. Identical breakfasts of eggs, toast, and orange juice sat perched on the stand between the beds.

Hospital rooms make Paque nauseous—she spent a lot of time in them when her parents died. She doesn’t ever talk about it but when she was with me in the hospital in Phoenix, I could tell she wanted to bolt.

Alan waited in the hall and Paque and I set the pink and blue teddy bears we bought in the hospital gift shop next to the breakfasts. Annette opened her watery eyes and smiled when she saw us.

I’m on goofballs, she said.

Paque and I laughed.

Does it hurt much, I asked.

Only when I think about it, she said.

Portia tried to lift her head but struggled under the effort and gave up.

Alan thinks you’re going to sue him, Paque said loud enough for Alan to hear. Alan pretended like he wasn’t listening, but he was.

Annette grimaced. I can’t do anything until I can walk, she said.

I wanted to apologize for the things Paque and I had said about Annette and Portia, but they wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. Of course we didn’t know it was them when Paque and I called them the Bitches. We were just mad; no one could blame us. Still, seeing the two of them strung up and cocooned in so much plaster made me sorry for the things I’d said before.

There didn’t seem to be anything to say. Portia called for the nurse to give her some more painkillers—the nurse refused—and Paque and I just stood there.

Well, Paque said.

Annette filtered back into consciousness and said, Thanks for stopping by.

Paque and I said we’d stop by again, wondering if we really would, but didn’t discuss it in the elevator. Alan kept quiet, too. When the elevator doors opened, Paque and I saw someone from our past who startled us: Fred Meyers, the reporter from the Arizona Republic.

Well, well, Meyers said. Just who I was looking for. He seemed older, and swaggered towards us like he was going to prove to his buddies that he could pick us up in a bar.

Hi, Fred, Paque said, What are doing here of all places?

I’m with the Los Angeles Times now, he grinned.

Congratulations, Paque said.

You’re Alan Hood, right, Meyers asked.

Alan and Meyers shook hands. Nice to meet you, Alan mumbled.

A pale young girl in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse passed in front of us. I smiled at the girl, who was trying to grasp a balloon someone had tied to the wheelchair.

So, are you just here for a check-up, Meyers asked. He reached for his notebook.

Uh, yeah, Alan said. Just wanted to make sure nothing was broken.

Is anything?

Nope, Alan said.

Meyers scribbled something in this notebook and at that moment I noticed that he was slicking his hair back now. It scared me that I didn’t notice at first and I nervously laughed, What’s with the hair?

Meyers seemed taken aback. He ran his hand along the slicked down side of his head. What, he asked.

Paque laughed.

Anyway, Meyers said, I’d like to get an interview for the paper. Can we do it now? Just a couple of questions?

Hey, buddy, how would you like a scoop, Alan asked. Daisy and Paque are quitting the film. How’s that for news?

Meyers looked at us and we nodded.

Why are you quitting, he wanted to know.

Because I’m the worst filmmaker in the history of Hollywood, Alan said. Make sure you spell the first name right. A-L-A-N.

Meyers waited for the punchline but Alan didn’t say any more.

We’re fielding other offers now, Paque said confidently. We want to work with Spielberg, or Frances Ford Coppola.

Or Penny Marshall, I said.

Okay girls, Alan said, let’s go. He turned to Meyers, Better print that story quick. There might be a press conference later today. A scoop like this can make a reporter’s career.

Meyers looked indignant but didn’t argue. I’ll call for a follow-up, he said.

Alan herded us out of the hospital and nobody said anything on the ride back to Alan’s.

Since I’m sure you read about it in the papers—someone Alan knew called up to say it was in the London Sunday Times, too—you know that Meyers did call us up and that we gave him the real story. I don’t think Paque and I knew that we were going to rat Alan out. We were pretty pissed off with him, but he had this way of making you feel sorry for him even though you really despised him and what he’d done.

But that didn’t matter. Meyers had dirt on us. He tracked down some guy who said he hired us to come to his hotel room and that he ended up getting beat up and robbed (this isn’t what it sounds like; Paque and I used to be fantasy wrestlers—just once, really—and this guy tried to kill us). The guy even had pictures, which could only have been taken by someone hiding in a closet.

Paque and I got on separate phones and told Meyers what really happened in that hotel room, but he wasn’t interested.

I want to know what’s going on with World Gone Water, he said.

We’re not doing it anymore, Paque said. We told you that already.

What if I said I didn’t think you were anywhere near that set the night the ceiling caved in, Meyers asked.

I’d wonder who told you that, Paque said. I couldn’t tell if she was as nervous as I was, but if she was you couldn’t hear it in her voice.

What if a certain porn actress said she was with you the night of the accident, Meyers asked. He paused to see if we were going to respond. What if someone else said they were sure you’d been replaced.

Stop it, I yelled. If you know all this why are you asking us? What difference does it make? We told you that we’re not doing the film any more, we told you that we’re not even … affiliated … with Alan Hood Productions.

Paque tried to shush me but I was delirious.

You know, Fred, you should think about your life, I continued. Remember how concerned you were for us back in Phoenix, remember how you protected us from the reporters who were trying to eat us alive. Well, now you’re one of those vultures. Are you happy now that you’re a vulture? Yeah, sure, it’s all true. You want to know the truth. The truth is that we were replaced, and we weren’t there that night, and that those two girls are in the hospital with broken bones. I fail to see how that’s even a story. How did this become a story?

Hey, I just—Meyers started to defend himself.

You just what, I said. You’re just doing your job? Isn’t there real news in the world? Doesn’t anybody care about anything that’s real, that’s not phoney baloney make-believe and put up with cardboard walls? I’m hanging up, and don’t call back.

I gripped the phone to give it a good slam and the last thing I heard was Meyers answering my question: Not in Hollywood.

That’s how the real story got in the papers. I called my mom to arrange a flight back to Phoenix and she put two tickets at the Southwest Airlines counter.

But we couldn’t get to them. By the time the story broke—Fred Meyers didn’t break it; it was in Daily Variety—we had our suitcases packed. Alan’s bedroom door was locked and we weren’t even going to say goodbye. We weren’t going to say anything to anyone. Except for Stella. We wanted to say goodbye to Stella. I did especially because I didn’t know what was going to happen once the plane landed in Phoenix. I couldn’t remember the last time Paque and I had a conversation about anything that wasn’t related to trying to make it. And since we didn’t make it—and since I didn’t want to make it—it seemed realistic that Paque and I saying goodbye to Stella might be the last time the three of us stood in the same room together.

It started with the afternoon edition of the papers. HOLLYWOOD OUTRAGED AT STUNT. PLOT TO CONCEAL INJURIES TO ACTRESSES ABHORRED BY THE BIZ. FELLOW ACTORS EXPRESSING SYMPATHY. DISTRICT ATTORNEY TO FILE RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT CHARGES AGAINST HOOD. Paque and I imagined a mob scene if we showed our faces at the airport.

Imagine anyone in Hollywood being outraged by anything, Paque said.

Craig told Paque that Stella had moved into the Chateau Marmont with Bryan Metro. Why would she do that, Paque asked, but Craig had already hung up.

Should we stop by and see Stella, I asked.

Paque thought for a moment. Who knows what’s going on over there, she murmured.

I could guess what Paque was thinking. On the one hand what if Stella had some great advice on what to do about our situation, but then again, on the other hand, what if she was living it up with Bryan Metro? Paque wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of that.

We should say goodbye, I said.

Paque didn’t disagree but just shrugged her shoulders, so it was decided.

On our way out to the curb to wait for the cab we noticed a pink box on the front steps. Paque tore off the top and sifted through the plastic peanuts, pulling out the prototypes for the Paque and Daisy dolls.

Which one is you and which one is me, I asked.

Paque held them up. The dolls were long and slender and looked the same, except one had light hair and one had dark. It’s hard to tell, she said.

Where’s the money, I asked.

Paque read the letter. ‘A check for the amount due on signature of the contract follows this package in 6-8 weeks,’ she said.

Fairy dust, I said.

In the cab a woman on the radio was saying how disgusting the whole episode was and that she thought Paque and I should be held responsible. She went on and on about taking responsibility for one’s actions, etc. She called Paque and I frauds. Actually she said scam artists. The woman on the radio said she only heard of such things in the movies, not in real life. She said what Paque and I did might make a good movie, but it wasn’t acceptable in real life.

It might make a good movie, I thought, but I wouldn’t want to star in it.

When the cab let us off at the Chateau the place seemed deserted. The trees in the courtyard shook with the wind and you could hear a dog barking off somewhere. The woman behind the desk let Paque use the phone to call Stella up in Bryan Metro’s room and in the elevator Paque said, She sounded terrible.

As we walked down the hall my mind bounced back and forth between going back to Phoenix or staying in L.A. You can’t go there but you can’t stay here, is what I thought. I thought maybe I’d go to New York and stay with Chuck, maybe try to get into college. The idea of me in school, hitting the books, was so much of a fantasy that it depressed me further and I started taking deep breaths to keep from fainting.

Stella answered the door wearing a long white dress shirt and dark sunglasses. The shirt had what looked like a wine stain down the left sleeve. God, I’m glad you’re here, she said and hugged us both. She smelled like she hadn’t showered in a week.

We heard voices inside and I was stunned into silence when my eyes focused on my brother, Chuck, standing with Bryan Metro and David Geffen out on the balcony. Chuck turned around and saw me and I felt instant relief. There you are, he said and put his arms around me. I went limp against his body. I felt like I could sleep for a year.

I’ve been trying to call you, I said.

I know, Chuck said, I was worried about you so I came out to find you. Craig told me he thought you’d be here. Are you okay?

I started to cry and Chuck hugged me tighter.

It’s OK, Chuck whispered. I think we’ve figured this out.

Stella excused herself and went to the bathroom and for the first time I noticed the sea of litter on the floor. Paque was out on the balcony introducing herself to David Geffen, who was talking on a cell phone as he shook her hand. He put his hand on her shoulder as if to say, Hold on a minute, and I started to ask Chuck what was going on when Bryan Metro came in off the balcony and said, This is so great.

I could feel Paque getting excited as Bryan Metro and David Geffen hatched their scheme involving us. Stella would be involved, too. They’d do the whole story, Phoenix and everything. Bryan would do the soundtrack and Geffen would get Spielberg to direct. Can we sing on the soundtrack, Paque wanted to know and David Geffen shook his head no. Absolutely not, he said. Chuck had worked it out so that he would be the second unit director, which Paque and I didn’t know anything about, and Stella came out of the bathroom and everyone was staring at us, waiting. Paque looked at me and all my anxiety came back. You could see how much it meant to everyone in the room—to Stella, to Paque, to my own brother. The sunglasses Stella was wearing reminded me of a long time ago, when it was the three of us, out by Stella’s parents’ pool, leafing through magazines of celebrities at parties and movie premieres, celebrities smiling out at you in a way that let you know that their life was just fantastic, that every day was like their birthday and that their worst day was nothing like your worst day. We spent hours by the pool talking ‘What if,’ which over time became ‘When,’ but I don’t think we had any idea of what it would take to have a life where every day was like your birthday.

Geffen’s cell phone rang but he didn’t make a move to answer it. What would you say if someone offered you a chance like that? The phrase ‘make it big’ floated through the room—it seemed like everyone was saying it at once—and so I guess you probably know what we said.

Daisy