I see the canyon the minute I’m awake. It takes me several minutes to process anything else: that I’m lying on my side, looking out at the view through two full walls of windows. This is nowhere I’ve ever woken up before.
I’m dizzy, when I finally raise my head. I’m still wearing my clothes from last night, my shoes and bag lined up neatly on the ground. Someone put me to bed last night, and though I have a dim memory of this, I have no idea who it was. I don’t even remember leaving that party. The transition into too drunk came suddenly, and now here I am, unmistakably waking up the morning after in Clark Conrad’s house.
A voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Faye’s is telling me to take a selfie in Clark Conrad’s bathroom, except that this is not a moment I ever want to relive. Just when I was getting closer, I may have scuppered everything. There is no way he’s going to take me seriously as a journalist again after this, if he ever did.
I don’t remember seeing this bedroom during our house tour, probably because it’s one of so many, all of them equally stunning. This room is quite literally larger than my apartment, and flooded with morning sun, because I’ve slept in for the first time in weeks. It’s almost nine by the time I make it downstairs, showered but still fuzzy-eyed, wishing I had a change of clothes. The kitchen looks exactly the same as in the photographs we ran on Nest, neat and clean and barely lived in, with no sign of the ‘bachelor pad reality’ Jerome referenced. I can’t imagine Clark ever leaving anything out of place.
‘Morning, miss,’ comes a voice to my left, and I turn to see a woman smiling from behind the breakfast bar. She’s middle-aged, Hispanic, dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, and I remember now that Clark has a housekeeper named Lupe. Though a lot of Hollywood stars on his level employ a full staff, Clark keeps it ‘low-key’ as Jerome put it to me, employing just a housekeeper and a gardener, and occasionally a private chef when he’s prepping for a role.
‘Morning!’ I chirp back, trying too hard to seem casual. After my dad left, for several years my mother hired a cleaner who came once a week, and even though I was young I already felt a deep-rooted kind of discomfort, something close to guilt. I know that given Clark’s reputation for largesse, Lupe probably makes more money than I do, and yet I still feel it. I should tip her, probably, but I have no cash.
‘Is – um, is Mr Conrad here?’
‘No, miss, he’s always out by eight. Goes to the water to swim.’
‘The ocean?’
She nods, and I understand. He doesn’t use the pool any more.
‘He said to make sure you eat.’
‘Oh.’ I laugh, too hard. ‘Yeah, I probably— That’s a good idea.’
‘Any special diet? Vegetarian?’
‘No, I eat everything. But I can just pick something up, I don’t want to put you out—’
She acts as though I haven’t spoken, already cracking eggs into a bowl and halving an avocado and slicing bread, and I’m too hungry to put up any real resistance. It’s been a very long time since anyone cooked for me.
‘Thank you so much,’ I call out lamely as I leave a few minutes later, having washed up my plate and silverware. ‘Have a great day!’ But she’s too far away to hear me, probably outside, and rather than prolong our interaction I leave a thank-you note on the counter, on a pad of thick cream notepaper that I realize too late is embossed with Clark’s initials. I put my own name in the corner, for clarity.
Undead is shooting on a studio lot in central LA, less than a half-hour drive from here, and though the rush-hour traffic is close to gridlock I still arrive with time to spare, and pick up my ‘guest’ security pass from a bored-looking man in the entry booth, who directs me to Stage 17.
I’ve grown used to these spaces over the years, the jarring fact that the most glamorous industry in the world has its roots in vast, dusty lots full of warehouses and trailers. Visitors are ferried around in golf carts between sound stages – sprawling hangars that house fake worlds, entire city streets and apartment buildings and family homes beloved by audiences who look at them and believe they are real. I’ve been on sets so large and convincingly lived-in that it’s possible to forget yourself, and forget your surroundings, right up until the moment you look through a seemingly sunlit window and see empty space and a lighting rig outside.
Inside the stage it’s dark and cool, with stacks of plywood and mechanical equipment lining the walls, and though the sets are still being constructed I can see part of a graveyard from a distance.
‘Hello there,’ Tom whispers into my ear out of nowhere, and I turn to smile at him.
‘Sneaking up on me in a darkened room is very method of you.’
‘You could probably get hired to play the undead yourself right now.’ He gives me an exaggerated once-over, but apparently the dim lighting here isn’t doing much to hide my dark eye-circles and lack of makeup. ‘Too much Oscar night revelry?’
‘That’s only the half of it. Please take a seat while I fill you in on the wall-to-wall horror show that has been my life for the past forty-eight hours.’
I tell him about my extermination saga, carefully omitting everything that took place after ten o’clock last night.
‘Wow. From roaches to red carpet.’
‘I was nowhere near the carpet, thank God. I watched it from a bar, but only because I had to wait for the roach bomb to clear before I could go home.’
He mimes a dry heave.
‘You know, Jess, there are times when I think the unremitting glamour of your life here in Hollywood is going to your head.’
‘It was inevitable.’
‘So did you come home to a massacre? Bodies strewn as far as the eye can see, one lone roach just screaming for its parents, wandering through the wasteland of its fallen brethren…’
‘You’re really wasted as an actor, this is beautiful. I almost feel guilty for the roach genocide I committed. Almost.’
‘Well, now that we’ve established your taste for the kill, want a tour of the vampire lair?’
These being modern, urban-dwelling vampires with a satirical edge, their ‘lair’ is actually a penthouse apartment with Caesarstone countertops and heated floors and sweeping views of an indeterminate skyline. A running comic thread of the series, Tom tells me, will be that the vampire protagonists move into this apartment building for the amenities, only to gradually discover – thanks to the new world order in which vampires now outnumber humans – that all of those amenities are unavailable without humans to run them.
‘There’s no concierge at the front desk, no staff to clean the pool, nobody to repair the machines in the gym, the rooftop terrace is unfinished, there’s nobody to take Amazon Prime deliveries—’
‘Do vampires use Amazon Prime? Or gyms?’
‘These ones do. They’re very entitled.’
He shows me around the apartment set, which so far only consists of the open-plan living room and kitchen, the refrigerator impressively already stocked with vacuum-sealed sachets of fake blood.
‘Isn’t this living room going to be kind of… sunlight flooded?’ I ask, pointing at the huge windows. ‘For vampires that are allergic to sunlight?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom replies slowly. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure the writers have entirely got their version of the vampire mythology down. Maybe they’ll just explain it away as being sunlight-proof glass. I do know we’re doing a hell of a lot of night shoots.’
‘Wait, you haven’t even told me what your character is.’
‘Oh!’ he exclaims, then slips seamlessly into a honeyed Southern drawl. ‘Why, I’m the eccentric neighbour with a cross nailed to his door who carries holy water in a flask. Which is smart, by the way.’
‘So you’re not a vampire?’
‘You’re gonna have to watch the pilot and find out!’
‘Oh come on, I’ll sign whatever NDA you need me to, just don’t leave me in suspense.’
‘Basically, it’s unclear what his deal is for the first couple of episodes, but he’s a vampire hunter who lost his entire family, and now he’s kind of unhinged. Not in a single-minded vengeance way – he’s kind of lost his edge, and so if we get picked up to series, he’s going to end up being turned into a vampire by about midway through the season. Which is his worst nightmare.’
‘Sounds dark.’
‘Yeah, but then I think he’ll probably discover the upsides, reunite with his undead family, or whatever.’
‘And they’re letting you keep the hair?’ It’s not as long now as I’ve seen it before; cut to just above his shoulders, but it’s still an unusual look for a teen-skewing network TV show.
‘Oh yeah, they love the hair. I think that’s why I got the role, honestly; it’s a bit of a Jesus vibe.’
He takes me to another corner of the stage filled with racks of costumes and props designed to be worn by extras and background actors.
‘So your boy won his Oscar,’ he says quietly as I’m rummaging through a box full of prosthetic fangs.
‘Yeah! I missed half his speech because the bar was so loud, but seemed like people online were happy about it.’
‘Well yeah, everybody loves him.’
Feeling the need to distract him, I slip on a set of fangs and grin.
‘You’d better keep those, and don’t tell anyone. Thief.’
‘I’m really just here for the free stuff.’
There’s something different about Tom. He carries himself differently, a little taller, maybe he’s started working out since moving here, or maybe the confidence of having landed a pilot has shifted something in his body. I can’t entirely put my finger on it, but when I briefly turn away and then look back at him, there’s a moment where he seems new to me.
‘If we get picked up, we might end up shooting in Vancouver or maybe Atlanta,’ he tells me as we’re walking from the stage towards the makeup trailer, where he’s due to get fitted for his own customized set of fangs.
‘For the tax breaks?’
‘Yeah, which sucks.’
‘I don’t know, I’d rather live in Vancouver than LA.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘Well, okay, I wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t. But most sane people who aren’t trying to get into this industry would. Anyway, a ton of stuff shoots in Vancouver, you could probably just as easily get cast there than here. Here just has the mystique of Tinseltown.’
‘I hate that,’ he grumbles. ‘What is the tinsel part about? It’s not like this is a massively Christmassy place. Or is it secretly always Christmas in LA and Tinseltown is like, a code word for those in the know?’
‘You’ve clearly given this a lot of thought,’ I say, bumping my shoulder into his. ‘Weirdo.’
When we get to the makeup trailer, I excuse myself, leaving Tom to his fitting. Wandering aimlessly around the studio lot disoriented by all the identical-looking sound stages, I run into a chunky brunette who’s juggling two cellphones and a clipboard. When I ask, she confirms that she is a publicist, and doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that I’m a reporter.
‘You’re not writing this up for anybody yet, right?’ she asks vaguely, eyes down at the larger of her two iPhones.
‘No, I wouldn’t pitch a piece just on the pilot, but I’m really excited about the show. Just on a hunch, I feel like it has the potential to become something.’
‘We’re hoping so. Who are you with?’
I tell her that I’m a freelance journalist, and barely contain a laugh as I see her face visibly fall. Not even the news that I have a piece in the works for Reel seems to help, and so I bring out the big guns.
‘You might actually have seen a piece I wrote recently, on Clark Conrad.’
‘Oh!’ She looks up from her phone. ‘The Nest piece. Yeah, that was… Good job getting him to talk!’
‘Thanks,’ I smile, glossing right over the way she trailed off from describing the actual piece. I know that it was mediocre, a compromised version of what I want it to be. And now having spent real time with Clark, seen glimpses of the insides of him, I know how much better a piece I could write.
‘I’ve gotta run, but take my card,’ Gina, the publicist, says, pressing it into my hand. ‘Let’s stay in touch.’
I smile and tell her yes, great, but my mind is elsewhere now, stewing once again on Clark and the way I could describe him in words, the way I could reintroduce him to the world in the way he deserves.
‘I’m glad you came,’ Tom tells me later, when we’re taking a break from the sun inside the craft service trailer.
‘Me too.’
Something about the way he’s talking, the way he’s been watching me all day, has set a tension in the air. Conversation is never stilted between us, but now I can’t think of anything to say, and I don’t think it’s just because my head is pounding again.
‘Jess—’ he starts. ‘This whole move to LA, uprooting myself, it’s got me thinking about everything. About what I want out of this next phase of my life, you know? And whatever happens with the show, it’s always going to be a great big question mark. It might get picked up and then cancelled at midseason, or it might become a huge hit and then I’ll be tied into a five-year contract and eventually start hating it.’ He’s talking faster and faster, a tell that he’s nervous. ‘I have no control over that. But I don’t want to be so rootless any more in every aspect of my life, you know?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ I say, uncertain.
‘I don’t want to be one of those clichés who just never commits to anything, is what I’m saying. I’ve always been like that. And I’ve only been in LA for a couple of months but I already see what it could do to me, how you can just get sucked into this endless cycle of parties and pills and better parties and better pills, and— anyway, what I’m saying is, I’ve been thinking.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you want to have dinner with me?’
There’s a moment where I know I could choose to wilfully misunderstand him. I could choose to take this as a casual friend invite, instead of the larger question it clearly is.
‘Tom…’
He reaches over the plastic table to take my hand, his thumb pressing into my palm, and I try to remember how I felt for him. But it’s impossible now for me to contemplate kissing him.
‘Tom, I’m so… I’m flattered. But we’ve been there, done that. Right? We were great, but we both knew when it ended that it was time. I don’t want to ruin what we’ve got now by—’
‘Don’t give me the “ruin our friendship” line, Jess.’
‘I’m pretty sure you used that exact line on me back in the day.’
‘Yeah, because I was pretending to be okay with us ending things.’
‘Tom, that’s insane, you were the one who broke it off. Don’t rewrite history, because there are at least four girls in London I could call up right now to corroborate my memory of how that whole thing ended.’
‘I know, I was a dick, but you were never really there with me when we were together. You were always somewhere else, always chasing some fictional world, even when we were – you know – together. And I loved that about you, that you got so absorbed in your work and in movies and in all of it, I still do. But now we’re both older and established and—’
‘Come on, I’m twenty-five, you’re twenty-seven, I’m starting to feel like I might be getting somewhere but even saying that is probably jinxing it. You just got your first pilot. We’re not established.’
His face is falling now.
‘Okay. That’s a no to dinner, then?’
‘Tom, do you really want to do this right now? Here? It’s your first day, why don’t we just— In fact, yeah, let’s get dinner, and we can talk this over properly.’ I grasp inside my bag for my phone, intending to pull up the calendar to schedule a date. ‘Let’s just pick a day when I feel less like death.’
The moment I look at my phone, I forget the calendar. My screen is taken up with a series of push alert news notifications, three in a row from different outlets.
Clark Conrad Accused of Domestic Violence – Report
Amabella Bunch Alleges That Clark Conrad Physically Assaulted Her
Clark Conrad, Fresh Off His Oscar Win, Accused of Abusing His Girlfriend