I looked around the party: forty or so people clustered in threes and fours, pretending not to look at the Famous Actor (even here in Bend, we know not to go goony around celebrities), but no one went more than four or five seconds without stealing a glance at him. Nobody but me seemed to notice what his right elbow was up to.
After a few minutes, he stopped elbow-fucking me and turned so that we were face-to-face. It was weird staring into those pale blues, eyes I’d known for years, eyes I’d seen in, what, fifteen or sixteen movies, in a couple of seasons of TV, staring out from magazine covers. He muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.
I leaned in. “I’m sorry—what?”
“I said . . .” he bent in closer, so that his mouth was inches from my left ear “. . . the universe is an endless span of darkness occasionally broken by moments of unspeakable celestial violence.”
I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he’d said.
He laughed as if he recognized what an insane thing that was for someone to say. “You ever think shit like that at parties?”
I tend to think about crying at parties, or if someone might be trying to kill me. But I didn’t say that. I don’t very often say what I think.
“Hey,” he said, “this is going to sound like a line, but . . . do you maybe want to get out of here?”
He was right. It did sound like a line.
And I did want to get out of there.
“Okay,” I said.
I disliked him from the moment I decided to sleep with him.
In one of his first movies, Fire in the Hole, he plays a scared young soldier. I can’t even remember which war but it’s not Vietnam. It’s maybe one of the gulf wars, or Afghanistan, or something. It’s a truly awful movie, but somehow too earnest to really hate. Still, you know you’ve made a bad war movie when they don’t even show it on TNT. At the time he was cast, the Famous Actor was still known as the kid from the Disney Channel. I think the role in that war movie was supposed to launch him as an adult actor. But you got the sense that people watched the movie thinking, Wait, what’s the kid from The Terrific Todd Chronicles! doing carrying a rifle, for Christ’s sake. Still, I guess it did turn him into a real adult actor because he started doing more movies after that.
We made our way through the party. He didn’t ask how it was that I didn’t need to tell anyone that I was leaving. I was glad I didn’t have to explain that I wasn’t actually invited to the party.
There were a few people I knew outside and I wondered what they would say about him leaving with me. The Famous Actor climbed in the passenger seat of my Subaru. He sat on my makeup bag, held it up, then tossed it into the back seat. He had a small hiker’s backpack with him, which he sat at his feet. “Must be weird to go to a party in Bend, Oregon, and end up leaving with me,” he said.
I shrugged. “There’s always a party at that house. Everybody knows about it.”
“No, I didn’t mean the party. I just meant this probably wasn’t how you figured your Friday night would go.”
“This is my Wednesday,” I said. I explained that I had Mondays and Tuesdays off from the coffee shop, so I always thought of Fridays as my Wednesdays. He looked at me as if he couldn’t tell if I was crazy or if I was fucking with him. It’s hard to explain, but I can make myself distant, make my face as blank as possible.
“Huh, funny,” he said. He stared out the window as I drove. He hadn’t buckled his seat belt and my car bonged at him.
“You know that thing I said at the party—about the universe being an endless span of darkness? It was really a comment on how it gets old, everyone looking at you like you’re going to say something profound. Sometimes I play off that expectation by saying something totally crazy.” He laughed at himself. “You know?” My car bonged at him again.
When he dies in Fire in the Hole, you can tell it’s meant to be the emotional peak of the movie. The soldiers are walking through this destroyed city and a sniper’s bullet zips into the spot where his neck meets his chest, just above his body armor. He slaps at the wound like he’s been stung by a wasp, and only then does he seem to realize what’s happening to him. That he’s dying. It should be a profound moment. Those tuna-blue eyes get all wide and he frantically reaches around his back to feel whether the bullet has gone all the way through. His line is something like, Sarge! Did it go through? Did . . . it . . . go through? And then he just falls over. It’s hard to say what’s wrong with it, but it became one of those unintentional laugh lines. Like: Sure, war is hell, but it’s nothing compared to Terrific Todd’s acting.
He pulled a cigarette pack from his pocket. “You mind?” Natural Spirits. Naturally. I can’t remember the last time I dated a guy who didn’t smoke Natural Spirits. Every guy in Bend smokes them. He blew the smoke to the roof of the car, which answered by bonging at him again about his seat belt.
The Famous Actor explained that he’d been making a movie nearby—I knew this, of course; everyone knew they were filming a postapocalyptic movie called The Beats in the high desert, and we all knew the cast. Someone had told the Famous Actor that Bend was known for its rock-climbing, so he’d called a climbing guide and they’d gone bouldering that day. Then the guide invited him to the party.
I knew the dick-guide he’d called. Wayne Bolls. Wayne’s website is covered with pictures of celebrities he’s climbed with, like he’s some old New York dry cleaner. Starfucker Tours, we call it in Bend. We put the climber in climbing.
“It’s so great to get away from the bullshit,” he said. I guess the bullshit was Hollywood, and wealth and fame—pretty much everything that everyone else in the world completely craves. He took a long drag of that cigarette. “But hey, Bend’s a cool town, huh?”
I nodded. That’s the worst thing about Bend. Its coolness. That and its size, how everyone thinks they know you.
He picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “For me it’s just a treat to be around normal people.”
I made a noise that must’ve sounded like a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” He took another drag of his cigarette. “I’m serious.” He seemed genuinely hurt. “I don’t see why people have so much trouble believing that famous people just want to be normal.”
In his last movie, New Year’s Love Song, he is one of like a hundred celebrities paired off in parallel love stories. He was cast as the manager of a rock band that is doing a concert on New Year’s Day in New York. The band is supposed to be a modern-day Fleetwood Mac, I guess—two young guys and two young girls—but without the hard drugs or anything else that made Fleetwood Mac interesting. The cute singer is married to the drummer and, as the band’s tongue-tied manager, the Famous Actor needs to keep the press from finding out that they’re divorcing until after the concert—although they never really make it clear why that would matter. The singer is played by the girl from that Nickelodeon show You Can’t Fool Tara!—it was billed as a kind of Disney meets Nickelodeon thing; this was right after her whole sex-tape scandal, so the movie was meant to redeem her image or something. The movie ends with the Famous Actor’s band manager character stumbling out onstage in Rockefeller Plaza and telling the singer that he’s always loved her in front of, like, a jillion people. But here’s what I don’t get: Why do we find that romantic? Are men such liars that it’s a turn-on to have so many witnesses? It’s one of those movies that make you sad to be female, that make you want to stab yourself in the ovaries. It’s truly a hateful movie, but I was still teary at the end, in a completely involuntary way, the way crying babies are supposed to make women lactate. “I want to start every year from now on with you in my arms,” the Famous Actor says to the singer on the stage, in front of everyone in the world. There should be a German word for wanting to gouge out your own teary eyes.
“I like your apartment,” the Famous Actor said. He walked around like someone sizing up a hotel room. He ran his hand along the spines of the books on my shelf and crouched in front of my albums. “Vinyl,” he said. “Cool.” When he got to a band he approved of, he would say the name. “Love this old Beck. Ooh, Talking Heads. Nice. The New Pornographers. Yes.”
I put my keys on the kitchen table and looked through my mail. There was a late notice for a credit card bill, a late notice for a water bill, a solicitation for a fake college, and a postcard from my ex. The postcard showed some old 1960s tourist trap in Idaho called the Snake Pit. On the back he’d written, Expected to see you here. It’s this thing my ex and I have: we send each other old postcards with slights on them. I sent him one from Crater Lake on which I wrote: The second biggest a-hole in Oregon. We never really broke up; he just moved to Portland with his band. Not that we had this great relationship. He always said I needed help. I always said he was a pig who fucked any girl who would have him. But I’ll say this for him: he was not a liar. He told me all about it every time he strayed. He’d get back from some gig in Ashland or Eureka and say, “Dude, I got something to tell you.” After a while I’d get anxious even seeing his name on my phone because I thought he was going to tell me about some new girl he’d junked. But I couldn’t seem to break up with him. When he finally left for Portland I wasn’t sad, just more deadened, the way I get. Sometimes I think our real problem wasn’t his infidelity; it was his honesty.
I think we sent old postcards to say—Hey. Still here. I wondered if he’d be jealous if he saw who was in my apartment.
The Famous Actor plopped down on my couch. “It’s so great to just be in, like, a fucking apartment! Right? You know? A real place? With just, like . . . walls . . . and furniture and books and a TV and real posters and . . .” I wondered if he was going to name everything in my apartment, room by room: dresser, nightstand, alarm clock . . . toothbrush, antibacterial soap, Tampax . . .
I opened my fridge. “You want a drink?”
“I’m in recovery,” he said. “But you go ahead.” He held up his pack of Natural Spirits again. “This okay?” When I said it was, he lit up, took a deep pull of smoke, and let it go in the air. “No, this is really nice,” he said again. “Just what I needed.” He pulled a piece of tobacco off his tongue again. Or, actually, I suspect that he pretended to pull a piece of tobacco off his tongue. He leaned his head back onto the couch. “I just get so fucking tired of . . .”
But he couldn’t seem to think of what it was that made him so fucking tired.
In Amsterdam Deadly he plays a UN investigator who goes to The Hague to testify in the trial of a vicious African warlord. As soon as you see the cast you know he’s going to fall in love with the beautiful blond South African lawyer defending the warlord. The actress is that girl from My One True, and because she’s as American as Velveeta she got knocked pretty bad for her South African accent, which sounded like an Irish girl crossed with a Jamaican auctioneer. Still, she and the Famous Actor really do have chemistry. Watching that movie is like watching the two best-looking single people at a wedding reception; not a lot of drama about who’s going to fuck whom later. But if the romance in that movie is okay, the politics make no sense. The dialogue is like someone reading stories out of the New York Times. The Famous Actor has a speech near the end where he yells, “If the Security Council won’t pass this joint resolution then I will get these refugees across the border to the safe zone!” Not exactly Henry V. I think sometimes movies, like people, just try too hard.
We had straight missionary paint-by-numbers sex: some foreplay, exactly enough oral to get us both going, then he pulled a condom out of that backpack he carried and rolled it over his dick. It was ribbed, which I could see he believed was thoughtful of him. There was nothing weird or obsessive or porny about the sex. Or particularly memorable. First sex is always kind of awkward, though; you don’t yet know what the other person likes. Everything’s basically in the right place, but it doesn’t feel right, or it takes a minute to find.
First sex is like being in a stranger’s kitchen, trying all the drawers, looking for a spoon. There was one point where he was over me, his eyes closed, head back, weight on his arms like he was doing a pushup, and it was kind of weird—like, Oh, hey, look, Terrific Todd is boning someone. Oh wait, it’s me. But I shouldn’t make it sound like the sex was bad. It was fine. Really, the only disappointing thing was how much stomach fat the Famous Actor had—I mean, really, when you have that much money, how hard is it to do a few sit-ups? Of course that might have been intentional, too, part of his normalcy campaign.
Afterward, we were lying on my bed naked and he was smoking another Natural Spirit. He smoked so many I wanted to buy stock in it. “That was great,” he said. “And thanks for not taking a selfie or anything weird like that.”
I must’ve made a face like, Christ, are you kidding me?
He sat up. “Oh, you’d be surprised how often that happens. I know actors who have, like, a contract they have women sign before they’ll have sex.” He named two actors of his generation, both of whom had been in movies with him. “I mean, can you imagine?” he asked. “Making a woman sign a contract before you fuck?”
He offered me his cigarette. I took a small drag. Those organic cigarettes tasted a little like dog shit.
“That’s the part I really don’t think people get.” He picked another fake tobacco bit off his tongue. “You know? About fame? How dispiriting it is, how dehumanizing? It’s like you’re this . . . product. Right? I mean: I’m not some product. I’m a fuckin’ person.” He slapped his little intentional belly fat. “Right? Why can’t people understand I’m just a regular guy?”
“I think people understand that,” I said.
In Big Bro, he plays a guy in a fraternity whose older brother is a Wall Street trader who shows up after his divorce to act out some Animal House fantasies, only to find that frats now are full of serious students. The actor who plays the Wall Street brother had recently left Saturday Night Live and you can really tell the difference between someone used to making live audiences laugh and someone who falls into a giant birthday cake and reads lines like, “Oh boy! Here we go again!” to a Disney laugh track. Still, Big Bro was the Famous Actor’s breakout. It must’ve made $200 million and it’s watchable in part because the Famous Actor seems so easygoing and likeable in it (in other words, exactly like no fraternity guy ever, in the history of the world). People saw him differently after that. I think when an actor exudes such charm we assume the character must be close to his real self. But there’s no reason to think that: he could just as easily be the selfish loser who raids his senile dad’s retirement account in Forty Reasons for Dying, for instance. We really want to like people, even famous people.
It’s not really possible to sleep next to someone the first time you’ve had sex together. That’s something I’d like to take up with Hollywood if I ever get the chance: how they always cut from the kissing couple to them lying peacefully in bed postsex, snoozing with smiles on their faces. I’d like to grab some screenwriter by his ears: “Hey, you fuck a stranger and then try sleeping afterward!”
We were lying there on our backs, staring at the ceiling. He was smoking another cigarette. Our legs were touching.
“If you want me to go, I can call for a ride,” he said.
“Only if you want to,” I said.
“Cool,” he said. “Yeah, cool. I’ll stay. I like it here. It’s chill.”
I didn’t say anything.
He sniffed. “I think people would be surprised at how hard it is for someone like me to find a place where I can just . . . you know—be? Where there’s not some PA constantly buzzing around asking if I want a Sprite.”
“You want a Sprite?”
He laughed a little, took a pull of smoke, and when he started to reach for his mouth, I watched him closely. He looked like he was picking something off the end of his tongue again, but I’ll be damned if I saw any tobacco bits there. He looked right at me with those Pepsi-blue eyes.
“Sometimes I daydream about hiding out someplace like this. Just saying ‘Fuck you’ to the fake industry stuff and just dropping the fuck out. Not tell anyone either, just chill in Bend, Oregon, for a month, go out to breakfast, rock-climb, maybe get a bike, read poetry in the park, go to parties like last night, hang out with someone cool like you? Know what I mean?”
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t say the rest of what I was thinking, which was: Who doesn’t daydream of that, of not having a job or any worries, playing around all day, riding a bike and reading poetry and having sex? The difference is that most of us would fucking starve to death in a week.
I started to imagine the Famous Actor hanging around my apartment for the next month like some unwanted houseguest. A month becoming two, and three, him smoking forty cartons of organic cigarettes and never finishing that book of poetry he was supposedly reading, me coming home every day to Terrific Todd marveling still at all the normal shit in my normal apartment—dish soap, spatula, salt pig, can opener!—that band of fat around his middle getting bigger and realer all the time.
He leaned over, got his tennis shoe off the ground, put his cigarette out on its sole, and put the butt in the pocket of his jeans. Then he propped himself up on one elbow—the one that I had gotten to know so well earlier. “Hey, can I ask you a personal question?”
Look, I don’t mean to go all double-standard feminist—I mean, I wasn’t some victim; I’d fucked him, too—but that seemed like such a guy thing to say right then. Hey, remember a few minutes ago my dick was inside you? Well, now I was wondering if we could talk.
“Sure,” I said.
“It’s just . . . I can’t get a read on you.”
I didn’t say anything.
I get that a lot from guys.
Also, it wasn’t technically a question.
“I just keep feeling like . . . I don’t know . . . like you think I’m . . . kind of a douchebag or something.”
Also not a question.
Toward the end of Big Bro, after this huge party where Snoop Dogg inexplicably shows up with a bunch of hookers, the rest of the frat pulls the Famous Actor’s character aside and tells him that his big brother has to go. He’s nearly gotten them all expelled and they’re all flunking classes and in danger of losing their fraternity charter. It’s probably the most moving scene in the movie, the Famous Actor telling his brother he’s got to leave. “Hey, Charlie, these are my brothers now,” the Famous Actor says, “but they’ll never be . . . my brother.” Chastened for his boorish behavior, the older brother slinks away sadly. Of course, he doesn’t really go away, but shows up three minutes later with Mark Cuban and Donald Trump to save the day at his brother’s oral presentation in his business class.
“I don’t think you’re a douchebag,” I said to the Famous Actor.
“No, I think you do.” He sat up higher.
“It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just . . .” What are you supposed to say—after years of therapy to untangle your difficulty in forming relationships, your self-destructive behavior, the depressive periods and suicidal thoughts? And some narcissist expects you to pillow-talk it out?
“Seriously,” he said, “I need you to tell me what you think of me.”
What I thought of him? That his insecurity was infinite? Instead, after a minute, I said, “You’ll always be my brother.”
You have to wonder how a movie like Big Bro 2 even gets made. In it, the younger brother has graduated from college and been hired by the older brother’s company, which has somehow morphed from a Wall Street firm in the first movie to a tech company in the second. They’re about to unveil this new kind of biocomputer, but an evil tech company called Gorgle wants to take over the brothers’ company, so the old SNL comedian has to gather all the old frat guys together to use their special skills to defeat—Ugh, you know, it actually hurts my head to even think of the plot of that movie. It’s like having to recount all the sexual positions your parents might have used in conceiving you. The best thing I can say about the second Big Bro is that the Famous Actor is barely in it, and only because he’s clearly fulfilling some line in a contract that required his presence in a sequel. The SNL guy’s career had stalled, and most of those frat guys would’ve starred in animal porn just to work again, but the Famous Actor had gone on to become the Famous Actor by then. He seems truly apologetic in the six or seven scenes he’s in—like, I’m sorry America. I really am sorry.
He had that same sorry look on his face as he sat on the edge of the bed and looked back over his shoulder at me. “You know, I think you’re not being very generous.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I mean, maybe you’re the asshole. Did that ever occur to you?”
“Yes,” I said.
He turned away. “You can’t know how weird this fame shit is. It’s like you’re see-through. Everyone assumes they know everything about you, but you know what? Nobody knows a fucking thing about me!” He stood and rubbed his forehead. “Always trying to be what people want—after a while, it’s like you don’t even know how to trust yourself anymore. You’re always second-guessing, like, Wait, how do I talk again? Is this how I react to things or how I want people to see me react? And when no one’s watching, you feel totally fucked—like, Am I even here? You don’t know how hard that is—to not know yourself!”
He really seemed to think famous people were the only ones who didn’t know themselves.
“Then I meet someone like you, someone I might genuinely like, someone I don’t want to think that I’m a celebrity dickhead . . . and what do I do?” He laughed. “Act like a dickhead.”
He walked across my tiny bedroom to my dresser. Behind a pile of clothes there was a picture of me with my sister, the last picture of us before she disappeared. He picked up the picture and stared at it. In the picture I’m eleven and Megan’s thirteen and we’re standing in front of the hammer ride at the county fair. We both have huge grins on our face and Megan’s giving the thumbs-up because we’re so proud of riding that scary ride together. Three months later she would run away from home. We never found out what happened to her, if her body is somewhere or if she’s working as a hooker in Alaska or whatever. She could be in the Taliban, or she could be in the circus, or she could be rotting in a field in Utah. That was the hardest thing for my parents—just never knowing. Our house was a tomb after that; my parents never the same. The Famous Actor stared at the picture a moment and then put it down. He turned and faced me.
“So if I’ve been a little self-absorbed, I apologize.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“No,” he said. “It’s not fine.” He was getting worked up again. “You can’t just say, It’s fuckin’ fine and then keep acting like some zombie! You can’t fuckin’ do that! You have to give something back! You can’t just sit there in judgment thinking that I’m an asshole and not give me the chance to show you I’m not! I mean, am I asking too much? For a little human interaction!”
“What’s my name?” I said.
He stared at me for a few seconds. “Aw fuck,” he said.
If I was trapped on an island or something and I could only have one movie to watch, but it had to be one of his movies, I’d choose Been There, Done That. It’s telling that my favorite of his movies is one where he’s just a supporting actor. I think it’s hard for even good actors to carry a whole movie. He’s great as the gay brother of the heroine, who has come back to her family’s home in 1980s Louisiana with her black boyfriend. He has several opportunities to go too broad with the gay brother, or go all AIDS-victim-TV-movie-of-the-week or something, but he’s really restrained. And when the gay brother ends up being the most racist person in the family, the Famous Actor turns in a really nuanced and smart performance. It’s even a little bit brave. I suspect it’s what happens when you work with a great director. But I also think there’s something deeper that he managed to find in himself in that movie.
He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “Katherine!”
I shook my head.
“But it’s something with a K sound, though, right? Caroline or Cassidy or . . .”
“Sorry.”
He had his eyes closed, concentrating. “You work at a bar.”
“Coffee shop.”
“Well fuck me,” he said. “Fuck me fuck me fuck me.” He opened his eyes, as if suddenly finding out someone he’d known for years was not who he thought they were.
“You had a lot on your mind,” I said. “And your elbow.”
He shook his head—like, Can you believe me?
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I suspect it’s harder to not be a douchebag than people think.”
He gave a little laugh, but I think, of all the things I said, that might’ve hurt the most. The condescension and truth of it. I felt okay then, in control of things.
“Well, thanks for understanding, Katherine,” he said, “or whatever your name is.”
I just smiled.
He reached into his backpack for his phone. “I should probably—” He turned on his phone and it buzzed and buzzed. He began reading messages. “Oh shit.”
“Girlfriend?”
“What?” He scowled. “No. No. I have an earlier call tomorrow than I thought. I’m gonna have someone come get me.”
“Sure.”
He pressed a number and put his iPhone to his ear. “Hey. It’s me. I’m at this girl’s house. Yeah, in Bend. I know. I know. Hey, is there any way . . .” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I guessed there were a lot of sentences he didn’t have to finish. “Yeah. Cool. Just a sec.” He looked up at me. “Hey, what’s the address here?”
In Been There, Done That, he has a great scene where he has a beer with the black boyfriend, who, it turns out, is super religious and has a problem with gay people. It ends with the two of them laughing together, two otherwise decent men confronting their old biases. As Hollywood pat as it sounds, the scene comes off as entirely genuine.
I have to say, right before he left, it felt that way in my apartment, too. Genuine. Like we’d come through something. He took a quick shower, and came out dressed in the same jeans and gray T-shirt.
He bowed. “Well, nameless queen of Bend, it was a pleasure to meet you tonight. Thank you.”
I’d put a T-shirt on.
“Can I kiss you goodbye?”
I said he could.
It would be hard being with an actor. Figuring out what’s real. That goodbye kiss he gave me—honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever been kissed like that: one hand behind my neck, the other on my waist. It was a great, generous kiss and I felt myself opening up to him, more than I had in bed. In fact, the kiss was so good I started to think about that laughter in Been There, Done That. I mean, clearly, they weren’t really laughing like that, but in a way they sort of were. I guess in acting, you become the very thing you’re portraying. In sex scenes, if you act turned on, you get turned on. Act like something is hilarious, it becomes hilarious. And that’s how that kiss was—
My God, if that kiss wasn’t real, I don’t even care. I’ll take fake over real any day. I’ve seen real.
Maybe it’s that way with our lives, too. Normal people. I mean, we’re all acting all of the time anyway, putting on our not-crazy faces for people, acting like making someone a cappuccino is the greatest thrill in the world, pretending to care about things you don’t, pretending not to care about things you do care about, pretending your name isn’t Katherine when it is, acting like you have your shit together when, the truth is, well—
I didn’t want to look out the window as he left—it seemed like such a stupid movie-cliché thing to do—but I couldn’t help myself. I looked out. He gave a small glance over his shoulder to my window, but I think the light was wrong and he couldn’t see my face. Then he flicked at his hair and jumped into the passenger seat of a blue Audi, which zipped away. I imagined his Big Bro driving the car. I imagined the Famous Actor lighting up a Natural Spirit while the car bonged at him to put on his seat belt. He hated seat belts. It was three in the morning. I wasn’t tired.
I looked around my apartment.
The Famous Actor was in a serial killer movie, too. It’s called Over Tumbled Graves and he plays this young cop, the love interest of the girl detective hunting a serial killer. It might be the only movie of his that I’ve never seen—because of Megan, I guess. If you suffer night terrors and insomnia you sort of learn to avoid serial killer movies. Not that I begrudge him being in it. We all make choices. And he generally makes good ones. I just read that he is getting a franchise superhero in one of those reboots. And that he’s engaged to the girl who is going to play Blue Aura in the same movie.
I’m really glad for him. He’s been through a lot the last year. It wasn’t even two weeks after the postapocalyptic movie finished production in Bend that I read that the Famous Actor was going back into rehab. Of course, I might have been the least surprised person in the world.
The morning he left, I rubbed lotion on my arms so that I wouldn’t start scratching. I cried for a while, then I cried for crying. I went back to bed but I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I had to be at the coffee shop at six. I repeated the steps: Get out of bed. Keep moving. Take care of yourself. I got up to take a shower. That’s when I noticed my medicine cabinet door was slightly ajar. I opened it all the way. He had cleaned it out. The Zoloft I take for depression. The Ativan I take for anxiety. The Ambien I sometimes have to take to sleep. But not just that. He took the Benadryl and the Advil and the Gas-X. He even took the Lysteda I sometimes take when I get these ungodly heavy periods. I can’t imagine what he thought he was going to do with that one. Two days later I got a visit from a nice young woman from the production company. I signed the nondisclosure documents without negotiating. She gave me a check for $6,000. All I had to do was promise never to mention his name. But what’s a name anyway?
That morning, as I stood there, staring at that empty medicine cabinet, I felt the strangest sense of pride in him. Warmth. Love, even. Well, look at you, I thought, you are normal—as normal as the most fucked-up barista in Bend, Oregon. Relax, Terrific Todd, wherever you are, you’re one of us.